This chapter argues that any attempt to construct a linear history of martial arts in media and popular culture as it exploded after the 1970s cannot but fail. The sheer proliferation of martial arts images, themes, texts, and practices precludes easy linear narrativization. Accordingly, Chapter 5 argues for the need to move ‘From Linear History to Discursive Constellation’ in our approach to martial arts in media and popular culture. The chapter attempts to establish the main discursive contours that appeared and developed through the 1980s—a decade in which ninjas and Shaolin monks explode onto the cultural landscape. This is followed by attention to the 1990s, in which three major events took place in the same year: the first Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the Wu-Tang Clan’s release of their enormously popular album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), and the appearance on children’s television screens around the world of ‘The Power Rangers’—all of which took place in 1993. The chapter then attempts to track the major discursive tendencies and contours of martial arts aesthetics through the first decade of the twenty-first century, up to the mainstreaming of combat sports in more recent years.
How Gladiatorial Movies and Martial Arts Cinema Influenced the Development of The Ultimate Fighting Championship