Yuli Ban wrote:Kunzait_83 wrote:Martial arts fantasy fables, Wuxia, whatever you want to call them...
I actually have a question on this because I tend to default to using "wuxia" for just about every martial arts/kung fu/Chinese-Taiwanese-Vietnamese-Mongolian-themed fantasy that isn't explicitly the shooting-chi-beams or flying-at-supersonic-speeds or punching-planets-away sort (which I default to calling xianxia even though I
know that doesn't technically fit due to not including the Taoist requirement), but when would you actually make the distinction? Or is it like Arthurian/Tolkienesque fantasy in that even using one element (e.g. elves and dwarves) can get something labeled "fantasy" (such as Shadowrun or Warhammer)?
This is a topic that's worthy of a whole thread on its own: but generally speaking, like most people I prefer to keep things nice and basic. Thus I subscribe to the general "umbrella term" principal: if its a martial arts narrative that has fantasy elements (namely of the Eastern/Buddhist/Taoistic sort: so I wouldn't count something like say, a remake of Enter the Dragon that just included Orcs in it for whatever reason*) then its Wuxia by definition.
*Note: that would be utterly batshit bonkers.
As you yourself noted, the same dividing genre lines that are used to distinguish Aurthurian/Tolkienian Western fantasy works from other, similar works line themselves up more or less identically with their Eastern equivalents.
If you have a martial arts narrative that's wholly grounded in non-fantasy-fied reality (like say, your typical Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan film) then it isn't Wuxia, despite falling within the broader martial arts genre. Despite this distinction though, there's still oftentimes some significant overlap between the two. On one hand, basic character archetypes and plot themes can be common to both grounded martial arts narratives AND Wuxia (such as the relationship between master and student, or many aspects of the central heroes' and villains' personalities, motivations, and philosophical outlooks, and so on), despite the dividing line of fantasy between them. And certainly, DB draws as much from many grounded, non-Wuxia martial arts narrative sources as it does fantasy/Wuxia ones.
Thus it can never be highlighted enough that the core storytelling themes and tropes of martial arts narratives are the real core here that binds many of these Eastern kung fu fiction sub-genres together into one broader package. If those core themes and narrative tropes, tied into martial arts and Eastern cultural traditions and philosophies, aren't present (self-improvement, training, personal growth, rivalries, lifelong commitment, honor and respect to one's teachers, a very counter-cultural eschewing of arbitrary social bonds in favor of one's own personal ideals, etc.), then this whole conversation becomes completely moot. Once that solid "martial arts narrative" foundation is present, then whether or not there is that extra layer of Eastern/Taoistic fantasy present becomes more the deciding factor of whether its Wuxia or a more basic martial arts narrative.
And furthermore, you have cases where actual historical Chinese figures or events may be portrayed more straightforwardly in a more fact-based narrative, while sometimes being given more of a fantasy/folkloric facelift for other works using those same real world people and events that are less tethered to real life. The former would be occupying a space that can simply be a traditional martial arts narrative, a historical biopic, or a mix of both; while the latter would just be straight up, out and out Wuxia that simply has some real world names and historical concepts behind it. Pretty much anything involving figures like Wong Fei Hung have fallen quite literally
all over this particular spectrum.
So to sum up: you have standard, grounded martial arts narratives, and you have Wuxia, with the element of Eastern fantasy being what generally separates the two. Real life people and events can sometimes intersect, and sometimes not. In either case, its still solidly Wuxia if there are dragons and martial artists flying around with their Ki and whatnot, regardless if historical Chinese people and events rear their heads or not.
Then finally we have the Xianxia term. That's a relatively MUCH more recent term that, to the best of my knowledge at least, has only really come into wider, popular use within the past decade or two (give or take). Its not a bad subdivision to have on hand in theory (a way of separating more low key Wuxia from more outwardly batshit gonzo over the top variations): but my main issue with it is how wildly inconsistent its broader use still presently is. Insofar as present day Wuxia fandom and critical circles goes, the Xianxia term seems to largely only ever come up when dividing works that are much more current and present from within the last decade or so (roughly the same amount of time as the term's come into vogue).
VERY rarely and without ANY hint of consistency is Xianxia as a term retroactively applied to older works from even as relatively recently as 20/30 years ago, no matter how much it would very obviously apply: no one's rushing out to label stuff like, for example, Zu Warriors or Buddha's Palm as Xianxia, despite how resoundingly clearly the label was made to apply to stories just like them. Fung Wan is very often more than capable of out-DBZ-ing even DBZ itself in its fights (seriously, characters like Sword Saint and Lord Godless are just
beyond ridiculous in what they're capable of doing), and yet that too is simply left in the same old Wuxia category, rather than being re-branded as Xianxia.
And all this is to say nothing of the vast lion's share of Jin Yong and Gu Long's collective output.
Characters like Huang Yaoshi and Feng Qingyang are capable of cultivating enough Ki/Chi to cleave city-sized mountains in half just by blinking, and yet Condor Heroes and Laughing in the Wind are still routinely to this day lumped in as "Wuxia" and never Xianxia. Likewise, no one's really putting Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils into the Xianxia basket, despite several of its three or four main plotlines revolving almost ENTIRELY around god-level Ki cultivation and heavily featuring absurdly powerful fighters like Duan Yanqing, who could easily go toe to toe with any character out of anything that recent, young writers like Er Gen (who's works are rightly synonymous with Xiaxia) have ever come up with, to say nothing of anyone among the cast of characters from something like Dragon Ball.
The reason for this is obvious: Xianxia's still a fairly "new"-ish term, and these older stories (some of which are stone cold literary classics and cultural standards in their home country) have been synonymous with the Wuxia label for a RIDICULOUSLY long time now, and have decades upon decades upon decades worth of built-in cultural inertia keeping them from being linked to a still relatively recent categorical distinction. Whereas works that are still freshly new and recent are among the first to get thrown into the new category, because "shiny new toy" and whatnot.
Contrast that with the term Wuxia itself, where even though the term is only a little over 150 years old, its still widely retroactively applied (including within academic circles) to all manner of works that fit within its definition that date back tens upon tens of thousands of years ago.
Basically: on paper and in theory I'm totally and completely fine with using the Xianxia subdivision to separate Wuxia works that are more lightly supernatural in their content from ones that are more flagrantly, wildly over the top supernatural... but I'd like to see the trend become VASTLY more consistent and broadly used overall within the broader critical landscape for this genre before I start to place more stock into it myself. As it stands now, how the term usually and typically gets applied in actual practice seems to be much more often predicated upon how recent and fresh the work is more so than whether or not a given work (regardless of when it was made and how iconic of a cultural mainstay it has been for a long time) is actually fitting with the intended definition of the term.
Otherwise though, I prefer to keep the genre sub-division nice and simple & straightforward, especially in communities like this one where these concepts are (ridiculously and against all odds) still exceedingly "new" to a lot of people.
