Have Hong Kong martial arts films managed to rise from "low" art to "high" art? Discuss using pre-1985 and post 1995 examples.
Culture when divided by the term "high" and "low" is usually meant to signify, the audience that has embraced the film is not always the audience that the work has been created for. High and low culture is usually consumed by the "high" class and "low" classes. Often it is argued by those of low culture that high culture is just a label made by those of high culture to alienate or place themselves above those of "low" class. Often stating that those in the high classes making themselves feel more important or different to the "masses". Low class is often considered as the more popular, numbers game end of film where dollars are spent in advertising to make sure dollars are made at the box office. .
When a form of entertainment is looked at from it's native market in this case Hong Kong, china and maybe the rest of Asia and the other possible markets this case the western world the U.S. in this case non-Chinese speaking countries. It takes on a different form. Because it was not so accessible to everyone it took on a specialty market role at first in the west really only available to hard-core martial arts fans or people with a special interest, weather this makes it high or low cultured is debateable.
Since the film "Pulp-Fiction" became a hit around the world, Hong Kong martial arts films have been looked at differently in the west. Even though it is still sometimes hard to get to, except for a larger proportion of Hong Kong film being given western (American) cinema or video release. Pulp-fictions director Quinten Tarantino changed the way that the west looked at Hong Kong films and Hong Kong martial arts films differently. Since Quinten Tarantino gave huge plugs to some of the films and directors that he thought were great or underrated in the west, saying things about John Woo like "John's work in the action genre had a sense of art to it, which is very unusual.
