Following Quentin Tarantino’s comments regarding criticism of Bruce Lee’s depiction in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee has spoken up and said that she is “really f****** tired of white men in Hollywood trying to tell me who Bruce Lee was.”
Tarantino was a guest of The Joe Rogan Experience as part of a media tour for his novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and said that, while he understands Shannon having a problem with her father’s portrayal in the film, everyone else can go “suck a d***.”
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“I can understand his daughter having a problem with it, it’s her f****** father, I get that,” Tarantino said. “But anybody else [can] go suck a d***. If you look at it, it’s obvious Cliff tricked him, that’s how he was able to [beat him,] it’s explained a bit more in the book.”
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Shannon for a comment on Tarantino’s words, and she responded to the request by writing a guest column that dives deep into her thoughts on “the director’s characterization of the scene and other comments on the actual Bruce Lee.”
“Why does Quentin Tarantino speak like he knew Bruce Lee and hated him? It seems weird given he never met Bruce Lee, right? Not to mention that Mr. Tarantino happily dressed the Bride in a knock-off of my father’s yellow jumpsuit and the Crazy 88s in Kato-style masks and outfits for Kill Bill, which many saw as a love letter to Bruce Lee,” Shannon began. “But love letters usually address the recipient by name, and from what I could observe at the time, Mr. Tarantino tried, interestingly, to avoid saying the name Bruce Lee as much as possible back then.”
Shannon continued by saying that she is so used to others seeing “one facet of my father and blowing that up into a caricature.” Usually, in her experience, there is a “nugget of love” for her father in that caricature, but that is not the case with “Mr. Tarantino.”
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“As you already know, the portrayal of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Mr. Tarantino, in my opinion, was inaccurate and unnecessary to say the least,” Shannon wrote. “(Please let’s not blame actor Mike Moh. He did what he could with what he was given.) And while I am grateful that Mr. Tarantino has so generously acknowledged to Joe Rogan that I may have my feelings about his portrayal of my father, I am also grateful for the opportunity to express this: I’m really f****** tired of white men in Hollywood trying to tell me who Bruce Lee was.”
Shannon said she is so tired of hearing “from white men in Hollywood that he was arrogant and an a****** when they have no idea and cannot fathom what it might have taken to get work in 1960s and ’70s Hollywood as a Chinese man with (God forbid) an accent.”
She is also tired of white men in Hollywood mistaking his “confidence, passion and skill for hubris,” finding it hard to believe that “Bruce Lee might have really been good at what he did,” that he “wasn’t really a martial artist and just did it for the movies,” “footnoting the impact he had on the action film genre and fight choreography,” and much more.
Shannon went on to clarify that this obviously doesn’t apply to “all white men in Hollywood” as she has worked with “some really wonderful collaborators and partners,” but there have been enough examples of those who have tried to “mansplain” Bruce Lee to her so it suits their narrative.
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While Shannon understands what Tarantino was going for in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and, while she agrees that Cliff Booth could have “beat the crap out of Bruce Lee,” she just believes that he could “have done it so much better.”
“…The scene he created was just an uninteresting tear-down of Bruce Lee when it didn’t need to be. It was white Hollywood treating Bruce Lee as, well, white Hollywood treated him — as a dispensable stereotype,” Shannon wrote.
“In closing, at a time when Asian Americans are being physically attacked, told to “go home” because they are seen as not American, and demonized for something that has nothing to do with them, I feel moved to suggest that Mr. Tarantino’s continued attacks, mischaracterizations and misrepresentations of a trailblazing and innovative member of our Asian American community, right now, are not welcome.
“Mr. Tarantino, you don’t have to like Bruce Lee. I really don’t care if you like him or not. You made your movie and now, clearly, you’re promoting a book. But in the interest of respecting other cultures and experiences you may not understand, I would encourage you to take a pass on commenting further about Bruce Lee and reconsider the impact of your words in a world that doesn’t need more conflict and fewer cultural heroes.
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“Under the sky, under the heavens, we are one family, Mr. Tarantino, and I think it’s time for both of us to walk on.”
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
