Kung Fu Walzer

I had heard all about the famous Asian film "Kung Fu Hustle" for so long, but I finally had the chance to actually watch the movie quite recently. It provides what we would expect in any crazy asian fighting film mixed with dashes of humor and drama: awesome butt-kicking action. One thing I could not get out of my head whilst watching the film was how much relevance it had to Walzer; the question is, however, how does this particular movie relate at all to Walzer's "Just War" theory at all? The answer is simply spelled out in 3 words: Jus in Bello

Walzer's "Just War" theory essentially defines the justifications and limitations to war before engagement, during engagement, and after. Respectively, he names the three different types as Jus ad bellum, Jus in Bello, and Jus post bellum. Dustin, in section, had pointed out one particular example of Jus in Bello that we were to think about. Suppose that Nazi soldiers walk past a group of peasants that seemed innocent, so that they do not stop and harm anyone that do not pose a threat. This, undoubtedly, both sets up and affirms moral standards that are understandable. But suddenly, these peasants unsheath assault rifles from their bags supposedly used for some kind of farming that they were holding and gun down the soldiers. The question we end up asking is are they morally allowed to commit that action? To no surprise, this hypothetical situation would attract a lot of attention to debate on; it is obvious that it would be a gigantic benefit but immoral to eliminate the Nazi soldiers, but how does this compare to the morals we expect in war? The aspect in the "Just War" theory that we become primarily concerned with is that of "Distinction", which is the act of distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants. Whatever side one may choose, Walzer brings a point home that either sides must address: War is sometimes justified depending on the situations involved, and morality is something that cannot be ignored in the justification process. This is the "Just War" theory.

Would you kill him if you had the chance and he was the enemy?

So you may ask: how is kung fu involved then? It is not the movie's storyline that is relevant to Walzer's theory, but more of many examples from the movie involving similar elements of morality as the Nazi soldiers and farmers example. Watching the following clip brings a much more visual representation (and is quite fun to see), but I will explain as well how I see Walzer in a silly kung fu movie. In literally the first minute, we see a man (who actually knows kung fu) walking past another guy playing a chinese instrument called the guzheng.
He does not see this musician as a threat even though the man had the power to kill the musician, and so he walks past him. So how would he have known that this guzheng was a weapon that projected "imaginary" blades that would kill the man and that the musician was actually hired to assassinate this man? He wouldn't (and neither would we), so we see this as unfair and, with some debate, can be labeled as immoral. In another part of the clip (more precisely from 6:40 - 7:10), we see that the assassins discover that a woman had a superpower of some sort of sonic-voice called the "Lion's Roar". To give some background, the woman was originally introduced as the landlord of the town in the beginning of the movie and had not seemed to be a threat but more of a stereotypical crazy Asian woman. For instance (at 4:23), the assassins see the woman initially and do not harm her but they even stop playing the instrument to "show some respect". Once the woman shows signs of a threat with her "roar", the assassins feel that it is more morally acceptable to investigate the woman and kill her if she seems to be a threat. Even the assassins take morals into consideration, and face the limitation of the dilemma of "distinction".

Personally, even I was surprised myself how this concept shows up even in present-day media and not just during Walzer's time. It proves that this theory will probably continue to be extremely applicable for quite a while through media at least, war-related or not.

Sources

Pictures/Videos

http://www.siamzone.com/movie/m/2638/picture

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1373571/The-perfect-pitiless-Nazi--Soldiers-interviews-reveal-German-troops-driven-bloodlust-killed-fun.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVjf5CccAwY

Text/Ideas

Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.