Bodies, Bodies, Bodies

 

What if people could run at super speed, leap to incredible heights, and take all kinds of punches without hardly flinching? This is the world of Stephen Chow's 2004 action flick Kung Fu Hustle, where the normal limits of the human body don't exist nor do the laws of physics. The action sequences are gratuitously excessive, but these sorts of over-the-top depictions of bodies and what they're capable of are exactly what appeal to audiences across the world.

The film's fixation with bodies is apparent from the start when we're introduced to the people of Pigsty Alley. Even the most unsuspecting residents like little boys and old people are revealed to have insanely strong bodies to a comical extent. However, it's not just those with visible muscles who are able to kick ass. One of the original top warriors was an effeminate tailor, and even the landlady has phenomenal physical abilities like running at super human speed and "the lion's roar". While most films depict the masses as ordinary folks who are generally boring, Pigsty Alley provides an alternative vision of reality in which practically everyone is physically powerful and able to fight off bad guys. Furthermore, Kung Fu Hustle challenges the notion set forth in The Incredibles that if everyone is special then really nobody is. Instead, viewers are likely to believe that the people of Pigsty Alley are indeed special, precisely because they are a mass of seemingly regular people who are actually anything but that.

The main character also has spectacular capabilities. In one humorous moment, his sidekick accidentally throws three knives in his shoulder, and soon after he is attacked by snakes. Just a few scenes later, though, our man is as good as new, shoulder and swollen lip completely healed. He later shows off his skills in kung fu and all of the acrobatics that come along with a well-choreographed fight sequence. The final showdown between him and the Beast is of course excessive. Both men do so many things that humans can't do in real life, but that's why audiences are watching. 

Characters like James Bond, Captain America, and the people in Kung Fu Hustle use their bodies to pull off wild stunts and come out unscathed, and this language of movement transcends national boundaries. David Bordwell writes in one chapter of Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment, "In many movies, the chief pleasures are pictorial," which holds true especially in the case of action films (7). People don't go to gratuitously violent summer blockbusters for the dialogue; they go for the visual spectacle, including seeing bodies moving and acting on screen in ways that they can't in the real world. Regardless of what sort of cultural background we come from, we want to see the impossible become possible, and popular cinema allows us to do that.

Do the Right Thing

 

As Nigeria rapidly urbanizes, some citizens have concerns for its potential effects on people's sense of community and the behavior of individuals. Two such people, Uche Chukwu and Kiki Omeili, voice these concerns through Nollywood cinema. Chukwu is the director of Run (2019), which was written and produced by Omeili who also stars in the film as its protagonist. Run explores the dark side of these sprawling metropolises by exposing the self-serving behavior of the people the main character encounters on a late night jog gone awry. At the same time, this woman, Tomilola, is a beacon of hope among all these self-interested city-dwellers because she always takes the moral highroad, even if it inconveniences her.

Right off the bat, the film establishes Tomilola as a good person, maybe almost too good. She works hard at her company, goes running, checks her breasts for lumps every day, and flosses; the woman can seemingly do no wrong. Even her last name is Wright. One night, however, she makes the mistake of leaving her phone at home to charge and forgetting her wallet, too. After witnessing a national politician shoot someone under the cover of night and the anonymity of the city, one of his henchmen chases her until she has to call a cab to go home.

The driver threatens her when she can't pay him, and she ends up on the run again, this time encountering a variety of people. Tomilola sees a couple engaging in prostitution, a cook and her customers at a food stall on the side of a road, and a group praying around a woman about to give birth. Although Tomilola comes to each of them visibly in distress, none of them make any attempt to help her. This is a critique of the coldness of big city life in which everyone is too caught up in their own lives to take the time to assist someone in need. 

Despite the lack of empathy from those around her, Tomilola still wants to help others. She insists that the prostitute and her client use protection and that the group praying should take the woman in labor to a hospital. Towards the end of the film, her selflessness extends to the man from the roadside food stall who chases her after she tries to take his phone to call her friend in order to get to safety. He suddenly collapses from a seizure, and instead of grabbing the phone and running, she moves his body into a secure position and then calls an ambulance. Tomilola is a prime example of a fictional, on screen character serving as a role model "for upcoming generations of Nigerians who see the country in a different light as portrayed by Nollywood" (Akinola 24). Run concludes with Tomilola finally being aided by local police, and her story from that night leads to the eventual arrest of the politician whose actions caused the whole misadventure in the first place. This optimistic ending illustrates that being a moral person in the face of adversity will lead to good outcomes, a message that is a bit oversimplified but nonetheless encourages people in urban areas to remember the humanity in everyone.