spacewastrel

“The hardest battle is to be nobody but yourself in a world that’s fighting harder every day to make us all like everybody else.”

What is, in fact, the difference between Ken and Ryu? Are they simply two sides of the same coin like Mario and Luigi are? In a way yes but, in another way, definitely not. On a surface level, they represent collaboration between East and West themselves. Their friendship partly symbolizes the reconciliation between the US and Japan after the “ancient battle” of World War 2. However, Ken and Ryu can also be read from a much wider angle than that.

In fact, Ryu and Ken represent two opposite but complementary aspects of the economic role of the creative life in human society. It’s a modern extension of the ancient balance between Daoism and Confucianism and of the Buddha’s quest for moderation between the extremes of asceticism and abundance. For one thing, it’s important to society for artists to be able to make a living from their art. Certain types of achievements are only accessible to us as a species by being able to rely on this kind of support without having to make one otherwise. For another, it’s just as important to art as a concept for it to be possible to practice it for what it is, without having to monetize it to justify its existence. Some anti-capitalist social truths could never be expressed if art always had to be subordinated to the demands of capital, and Van Gogh’s art is worth no less now for his poverty when he died.

Ken and Ryu trained together with their master as children. They were less different from each other back then, and they became very close to each other. As an adult, Ken returned to the US to marry Eliza. Ken earns his living in public in official martial arts tournaments, famous, beloved by the audience for his skill and charisma. Ken is the poster child for the modern quest for work/life balance. She seems to get along with him well enough, there’s no apparent tension between them – he treats her well, she wants for nothing. Back from a tournament, she pretends to attack him and he parries, kissing her as he laughs. “How’s my champion doing today?” He often wonders what happened to Ryu, who he hasn’t seen for a very long time now.

Ryu’s become some kind of minimalist, wandering purist who devoted his life to fighting for what it is, without an “ulterior motive” for it. His survival depends completely on his ability to win enough bets on his own fights to be able to meet his own basic needs. He is literally putting everything on the line in his quest for personal perfection. While people come from all over the world to fight Ken, it’s Ryu who wanders the world to meet other fighters himself. Bison is seeking to create an army of battle robots which he could program with the techniques of all the other fighters at his beck and call. The recent context of the attempts to replace artists with artificial intelligence definitely gives it a more immediate resonance. After all, if a martial artist can be replaced by a machine, any artist can...

Cammy’s brainwashing by Bison reminds us that those who seek to replace humans with machines often also seek to make humans themselves more robot-like. Already a stoic British soldier with a cross around her neck, her vulnerability to social conditioning is pushed all the way to its logical limits. Bruce Lee was already talking about the implications of replacing the authentic with the artificial through the symbol of Mr Han’s metal hand in Enter The Dragon.

The first of Ryu’s fights that we see one of Bison’s research robots film is against Sagat. Sagat went through the exact opposite of Neo from the Matrix, who merely had to press a button to ‘know kung fu.’ Sagat’s most powerful move – his Tiger Uppercut – he developed after this fateful shoryuken left him with his distinctive chest scar. Art isn’t just the application of a technical exercise but the expression of a lived experience. Transmuting the pain of defeat into determination to win is something that Bison’s automatic predictions models can never do. The process of it is intimately part of its result.

All the street fighters have heavily defined national traits except Bison, who always comes from ‘nowhere.’ Evil comes from nowhere in particular, it can come from anywhere, but it can never be superimposed on national boundaries. Bison is defined by his refusal to understand the complexity of his opponents, by his desire to reduce them to their simplest expression, to what he’s willing to accept coming from them. He wants to make them adapt to him, not adapt to them. Despite its comedic exaggerations, Street Fighter ultimately does celebrate the way all those little bells and whistles make us distinct from each other, in its own way.

When Bison first approaches Ken to capture him, Ken is driving his car on the road between two tournaments. Ken’s brainwashing becomes like an actualization of his underlying fear of having “sold out to the system.” Ryu doesn’t drive, he always seems to be walking and, when one of Bison’s people comes at him in a car, Ryu knocks him out with a flying kick right through his windshield. Ryu doesn’t rely on any external structure to guide his life and rejects materialism completely. Even the well-known bonus stage from the game is about destroying a car.

When Ryu finds Honda fighting Dhalsim, he probably sees himself reflected in Dhalsim’s ascetic minimalism. Honda bonds with Ryu because they’re both Japanese himself, since he still thinks in national terms. Honda’s sumo is about spectacle, not self-deprivation, which makes him closer to the missing ‘half’ of the pair that Ken represented than Ryu. Honda’s wrestling moves represent external pressure, which Dhalsim escapes and resists because he is inwardly flexible. This is the context in which Dhalsim’s questioning of the role of violence even to help the poor from his village takes place.

When Ken compares T Hawk to Ryu however, T Hawk is not flattered at all but rather insulted. Ryu is not rich nor famous, he’s a reclusive homeless wanderer and T Hawk represents the fear of not being seen as having succeeded, no matter what one’s actual value. Comparatively, the first thing we hear about Fei Long – which brings us back to Bruce Lee – his producer is looking for him on his movie set but can’t find him anywhere. He vanished to have a real match against Ryu. Even having dedicated his life to movies, Fei Long still puts reality ahead of fiction, authenticity before artifice. They accept that getting hurt is part of the game, become friends, and even exchange info about Bison. The historical rivalry between the Japanese and the Chinese also makes their friendship noteworthy.

When Zangief fights Blanka for Bison, he stands for the “civilizing” arrogance of humankind having set itself against the natural world. One of them comes from an empire (Russia) while the other from a colony (Brazil), hot VS cold. Blanka is like a dog who runs simply because he enjoys running, and Zangief’s “social” motivation to fight is alien to him. Like Dhalsim’s yoga, Blanka’s capoeira situates him as escaping the external pressure of Zangief’s sambo through his inner flexibility. The collectivism implied by Zangief’s communism is the exact opposite of Blanka’s “wild” individualism.

There are of course at least five different versions of Street Fighter characters the details of whose specific characteristics vary from one version to another. There’s the game itself, the “live action” version with Van Damme, the “live action” series with Chun Li, the animated series, and the animated movie which I’m using as my main source for this. In the American movie, Zangief is more noble but less smart and Bison uses his principles against him to make him work for free. Bison definitely pays DeeJay in the American movie – unlike the DJs at furry cons, unfortunately.

In the animated Japanese movie, DeeJay is a good guy from the start, who Chun Li and Guile warn about Bison. It’s been said that “Without music, life would be a mistake.” DeeJay kicks one of Bison’s robots’ heads off who is wearing a shirt that says “Jesus” on it. DeeJay is another “inimitable artist” whose music acts as a “bearer of meaning.” He stands in contrast with the robot who acts as a “remover of meaning,” who dances without hearing the music. Bison’s robot is the “Pharisee,” an “artificial believer” of organized religion who repeats movements “mechanically,” without impulse or understanding. Street Fighter definitely has more of a mystical, punk, anarchist vibe to it, despite a soldier like Guile and a cop like Chun Li. It may not reject social structures outright, but it doesn’t fully trust them either. Characters like the Italian fascist Rolento are not there to endear us to militarism.

The fight between Chun Li and Vega showcases that the logic of domination which shapes the worldview of Bison and his cronies extends as far as its aggressive nature allows. Again, a fighter from a colonizing nation (Spain) is set against a fighter from a country that was deeply wronged by Western criminals (China). Being a matador, Vega sees Chun Li herself as a “piece of meat.” He fancies himself as the human who gets to exploit “animals” for fun just the way that Zangief’s fight against Blanka was used to mean earlier. Chun Li isn’t only avenging her father when she throws Vega out the window: she is refusing his entire categorization of her existence. Her victory poses in the game matter: the “fierce” pose and the “joyous” pose, the very traits that Bison sought to rob from her. It’s the most “film noir” fight in the film, with no supernatural bells and whistles to soften the blow. Guile doesn’t fight Vega for Chun Li but acts as a caretaker for her, by taking her to the hospital to recover.

Guile’s army eventually finds Bison’s base hidden behind Buddha’s face carved into a mountain, which they blow up with missiles. This is partly based on real historical facts because a real paramilitary group was once destroyed hiding behind a Buddha face in Southeast Asia. They say that “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” There’s an echo of DeeJay kicking off the Jesus robot’s head as well. False spirituality only exists to mask the desire to flatten and control others without seeking to understand them. Guile fails in the animated Japanese version exactly where Mr. Van Damme succeeds in the live American version. Guile may be better than the average soldier as a person, but the military-industrial complex can’t truly solve the problem posed by Bison’s Evil. It takes Ryu and Ken’s combined forces working together to save each other from Bison’s psychic attack to finally bring him down.

Most street fighters don’t dress like normal people but, no matter how weird they may look, after seeing them in action, you definitely wouldn’t make fun of how they look to their face. I think this is intentional. Sometimes we should be willing to defend our most unconventional choices, especially when there are so many other ways in which society does not give us a choice. Ryu is like Chuang Tzu’s “naked artist” who must isolate himself from society and its conditioning to express his real inner truth. We see the crowd chanting Ken’s name at tournaments interspersed with Ryu climbing a mountain to train alone without being disturbed by anyone. When they test their skills against each other, they’re measuring their progress in terms of their different life choices.

I found Ryu’s obsession with martial arts limiting as a child. Shouldn’t there be more to life than this? Now as an adult, I see Ryu as severely neurodivergent, unable to interact with others unless it’s through his special interest. The fact that Ryu “forgets” to stay in touch with Ken after their training is like the siren song of hyperfixation, that makes you forget the very existence of the world around you. It’s not that he doesn’t want to “know” others as such but it’s as though he thought that fighting them was the best way for him to get to know them. Ryu represents both “dance like no one’s watching” but also “ethics are what you do when no one is looking.” Ryu is like an introverted friend who finds his extroverted friend Ken near the end to finally realize that maybe, just maybe, he has been alone for too long at the time, and it really is good to see his friend again after all. Sometimes you need a reminder!

We don’t know much about their past before their training, but it’s clear they had little to turn to other than each other and their master, like a small chosen family. “Karate” is literally the “path of emptiness,” and Ryu’s “zen” tendencies are reflected in his meditation theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBZ8k93qRwY. Ken’s theme, however, reflects his emotional turmoil, as though two people were each pulling on both of his arms in their own direction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-14W5XTqL5U. His stage is, significantly, in front of a boat by the side of ocean, where people are reuniting and separating – the very ocean between the US and Japan. Many of us agnostics, polyamorous, non-binary bisexuals can sympathize with Ken’s attempt to be “too many things at the same time,” to live as a walker-between-worlds out of sincere attachment. The idea of Eliza leaving Ken in Street Fighter 6 completely changes his symbolic balance with Ryu.

Raul Julia’s decision to play Bison for his son despite the warning of critics inscribes itself in this dynamic: it’s his own answer to the question that Street Fighter is really asking in the first place. We don’t always create art to become famous for the ages – sometimes we do it just to make our loved ones smile, while we still can...