Looking for parody of popular Chinese Philosophy

April 11, 2006 12:06 PM

Looking for parodies of Asian philosophy in Western Media...

I'm doing a presentation in Chinese Philosophy in about 3 weeks and I've decided to run with the idea that often in Western media, Chinese philosophers come off like wise, albeit obtuse, mystics. You know, there's a cartoon and some guy with a robe shows up and says: "The sun will always set with the tree bends with the breeze" and suddenly a character is enlightened.

There are a million examples, I'm sure, but I'm having a little trouble coming up with some off the top of my head. Specifically, I'm looking at Confuiscianism, Chuang Tzu's "Mystical Way", The Doctrine of the Mean (Chung-Yung), but I'm sure I can draw a line between any general example and one of these works.

Anything is helpfuL: Cartoons, movies, political cartoons, text, music. I'm thinking visual might be a little more useful, but hey, beggars and choosers, right? Thanks!

posted by GilloD to religion & philosophy (21 comments total)

The Tao of Pooh
posted by SashaPT at 12:22 PM on April 11, 2006

Hmm... this isn't exatly pop media, and it's text only, but I've always found David Chess's broken koans to be hilarious.

The anti-koan may be the best:

One afternoon a student said "Roshi, I don't really understand what's going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I've been doing this for two years now, and the koans don't make any sense, and I don't feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what's going on?"

"Well you see," Roshi replied, "for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It's impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse."

And the student was enlightened.

posted by miagaille at 12:22 PM on April 11, 2006 [1 favorite]

You may be looking for something less juvenile, but there's always the classic "Confucius Say" jokes.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:28 PM on April 11, 2006

The Tao of Pooh isn't a parody. It's a sincere examination of Zen.

You might like The Life And Times of Tofu Roshi. But it's also actual Zen masquerading as humour.

Wait! I have it. The classic sketch by the Frantics: Boot to the head.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 12:39 PM on April 11, 2006

Beverly Hills Ninja
posted by Pollomacho at 12:39 PM on April 11, 2006

See also (or rather, don't see, it's aweful!)
posted by Pollomacho at 12:47 PM on April 11, 2006

Thanks guys. Juvenile is fine. The more sensational and silly, the better, really.
posted by GilloD at 1:01 PM on April 11, 2006

How about the whole "Kung Fu" tv show? You know, "you are tiny grasshopper".
posted by cosmicbandito at 1:05 PM on April 11, 2006

I'd suggest Big Trouble in Little China, which mocks many Asian cliches, including Victor Wong as the wacky-but-wise mystic.
posted by O9scar at 1:13 PM on April 11, 2006

The Golden Child
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
The Karate Kid
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
Kill Bill
posted by MasonDixon at 1:18 PM on April 11, 2006

That old saw about the Chinese word for "Crisis" being composed of two characters. The first means...

(though it is often taken seriously)
posted by kurumi at 1:32 PM on April 11, 2006

this may not be exactly what you're looking for, but the minigolf episode of the simpsons, with Lisa's training of Bart for the competition might work.
posted by piratebowling at 1:54 PM on April 11, 2006

off-topic derail related to kurumi's answer- wei ji also can mean "feed the chicken"
posted by Pollomacho at 2:15 PM on April 11, 2006

Another Simpsons reference:

Lisa: Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for "crisis" as they do for "opportunity"?

Homer: Yes! Cris-atunity.
posted by kableh at 3:04 PM on April 11, 2006

There's the wildly offensive (and sometimes hilarious) "Confucious Say" bits on Crank Yankers.
posted by rossination at 3:33 PM on April 11, 2006

See if you can get your hands on The Complete New Yorker DVD set and run a cartoon search for 'Tibet' or 'guru' or 'enlightenment'. There are oodles of cartoons there for your picking. The enlightened old sage on the mountaintop is a New Yorker cartoon staple, like the man on a desert island.
posted by painquale at 4:26 PM on April 11, 2006

You really should check Hanzi Smatter if you haven't already. It mainly deals with bad "kanji" tattoos, but other stuff shows up too. How about the more ridiculous westernized mutations of feng shui?

And Karate Kid 2 would probably work even better for you than the original, since that's the one where they head off to Okinawa.
posted by Vervain at 4:49 PM on April 11, 2006

No Retreat, No Surrender is kind of the ultimate 80's implementation of this, IMO.
posted by mkultra at 7:31 PM on April 11, 2006

The excellent 1970s Japanese NTV series Monkey! always ended with a cod oriental proverb along the lines of 'Do not despise the snake for having no horns, for who is to say it will not grow into a dragon?' (Although that quote was taken from its 'sister' show, the equally excellent 'The Water Margin'). There's 52 episodes of Monkey!, although (so far) I haven't been able to find a list of the sayings online.
posted by timpollard at 11:35 PM on April 11, 2006

Confucius say ...

Many men smoke, but Foo man chew.
posted by KRS at 12:40 PM on April 12, 2006

More koan parodies (somewhat more directly parodiacal than my Broken Koans, which thanks for mentioning).
posted by davidchess at 5:32 AM on April 13, 2006