Collect Call of Destiny: The mono myth in Kung Fu Hustle and My Sassy Girl
Scholar Joseph Campbell defines the ‘Mono-Myth’ or Hero’s Journey as a formulaic tale found in many human cultures – a story in which a hero is called from a life of normalcy to an adventure that ultimately brings change to the world at large. Broken into multiple stages, the Journey begins with The Call, wherein some event jolts the hero out of his mundane life, bringing him to a threshold and its gatekeepers which he passes in order to continue on to the adventure proper. But before the Hero can face the challenges of that journey, they must pass the litmus test that is the threshold and its gatekeepers. Not all heroes do so willingly or successfully on their first brush with destiny – they often harbor doubts or insecurities that they must conquer before they can cross the threshold from the known into the unknown. The films Kung Fu Hustle and My Sassy Girl illustrate how heroes grapple with this reluctance – and in the case of Kung Fu Hustle, how a hero can waste half a lifetime struggling to forget his first brush with destiny.
Kung Fu Hustle is the story of deadbeat miscreants Sing and his enormous partner Bone. As a young boy, Sing is hustled by a vagrant selling ‘lost kung fu manuals’ who tells him he’s “a natural kung fu genius” – this serves as Sing’s first call. Embracing the hustler’s claim that he was “destined to change the world”, Sing diligently reads the manual and practices every day, until he tries to stop a pack of boys swarming a deaf girl who clutches a giant lollipop. Calling out her tormentors, Sing’s naïve bravery is quickly squashed as the bullies first thrash then piss on him. The bullies serve as gatekeepers – they represent the challenges ahead for Sing. But when the little girl tries to comfort him, Sing runs away, crushed and ashamed of his failure. He refuses to cross the threshold embrace his destiny.
Sing spends the next twenty years trying to be everything but a hero – as Bone observes, ‘Memories can be painful – to forget is a blessing’. Instead of answering the call, Sing struggles to forget it. After ineptly trying to extort a hairdresser, Sing and Bone petition for admission into the Axe Gang – violent criminals who rule Shanghai. The Axe Gang sends the pair off to Pig Sty Alley, home to a group of kung fu masters who have humiliated the Axes. But Sing and Bone are even more inept as villains than Sing was as a hero – and all they can do is bully a mute ice cream vendor. She recognizes Sing, but he doesn’t seem to know her: she was the girl he protected as a child. Gloating over their stolen ice cream, Sing and Bone head for Pig Sty Alley. Knowingly or not, Sing has ignored the second call to adventure. When Sing and The Girl meet again, he clearly recognizes her and the lollipop she holds out to him. Face to face with the threshold, Sing refuses to accept it. Sing knocks the sucker from her hand, breaking it into dozens of pieces before he runs away. He is, quite literally, running from the Call for the third time.
Sing’s final call comes when he is a Brother of the Axe Gang, having freed the bloodthirsty sociopathic assassin known as “The Beast”, who will destroy the Masters of Pig Sty Alley. Since his defeat as a child, Sing has struggled to be a bad man – but something changes in the moment he watches The Beast locking arms (and legs) with the Landlords of Pig Sty Alley. This is the moment when the Axe Gang could triumph, Sing instrumental in saving face for them all, but he chooses to club The Beast on the head instead, distracting him long enough for the Kung Fu Masters to recover and escape. Twenty years ago Sing faced a similar choice: and it was a choice that left him beaten and reeking of urine because he chose to stand up for the underdog. Sing had spent his entire life running from his past because he was unwilling to face the consequences of rescuing The Girl – but now, presented with a similar choice, he embraces it. He faces The Beast, seemingly to his death, and in doing so he unlocks his true potential to be the hero Shanghai needs.
My Sassy Girl differs from Kung Fu Hustle in that it’s hero, Kyun-Woo, doesn’t spend much of his life running from his calling – but that doesn’t make threshold any less daunting. Kyun-Woo, similar to Sing, is a slacker without much direction in life – he’s a poor son, a poor student, and a poor nephew. But a chance encounter with a drunk girl on a subway platform changes his fate, if he can endure vomit and police pepper spray. Teetering on the edge of a subway platform, Kyun-Woo pulls her to safety as a train enters the station. Soon after boarding, The Girl brashly begins terrorizing the other passengers until she pauses to puke on an older man’s toupe. Delirious, she turns to Kyun-Woo, calls him ‘honey’, and collapses. The Girl calls out to him and Kyun-Woo answers – and in doing so he is answering the call to adventure. Stammering apologies, he sheepishly tries to mop the puke off the old man’s clothes and struggles to carry the girl off the train. But he soon begins to have second thoughts.
When they arrive at Bupyang Station, Kyun-Woo tries to ditch the unconscious girl on the platform, but as he crosses the turnstiles (a metaphor for the threshold), he turns back and takes her to a Love Hotel instead. This illustrates how Sing and Kyun-Woo differ – although Kyun-Woo is reluctant, he doesn’t turn away from the call. Sweaty and probably smelling of alcohol and puke, he washes off as police knockdown the door to their room – likely because the owner though Kyun-Woo was up to no good with a helpless, drunk girl. As Kyun-Woo, naked and helpless, tries to cover himself in front of the female officers, they blast him with pepper spray. Screaming, he falls to the floor. These women, appropriately, represent the gate keepers – and foreshadow the challenges to come for Kyun-Woo. After spending a night in jail, Kyun-Woo receives a phone call – it’s The Girl, and she tells him to meet her at Bupyang Station. Rather than hang up and go on with his life, Kyun-Woo responds to her call and the two meet up. While a reluctant hero, Kyun-Woo accepts his destiny much more readily than Sing – although the ending of My Sassy Girl reveals how the two films explore similar thematic spaces. Just like Sing kept ducking (knowingly and unknowingly) his own love interest, Kyun-Woo unwittingly spent several years avoiding his auntie, who wanted to set him up on a blind date. A blind date that turned out to be his sassy girl from Bupyang Station.
The Call, the Threshold, and the Gatekeepers are the first challenges the hero faces during the course of The Heroic Journey. But unlike the later trials, these components represent the liminal space between this world and the adventure – and are the first test of the hero’s resolve. They are the crux for the journey itself: if the call is not answered and the threshold is not crossed, there can be no transformation. How the hero responds to the call is also indicative of their character – Sing’s shame is deep-rooted and he spends years if not decades fighting to forget it, and it is not until the enormity of The Beast’s threat and power are revealed that Sing chooses to face another beating in order to become the hero. In a sense, The Beast can be a metaphor for the pain and the suffering of his shame as a small child that he has tried to suppress, and it is a wound that he has let fester into the demon he finally faces. For Kyun-Woo, we see him try to shirk his obligations but ultimately embrace his duty to help The Girl – demonstrating that beneath his lazy shell lies a human being with great potential to heal a broken person and set them free. More than any physical journey, Kung Fu Hustle and My Sassy Girl demonstrate that the Hero’s Journey is first and foremost a psychological ordeal in which old thoughts and ways of thinking are purged so that that the character of a person – their very soul and psyche – can be reborn in a new way that brings transformation to others. It is this fundamental change in their nature that is their power, and also the root of all their fears – because in order to change, we must first face the unknown, the most frightening thing of all.
The Work of John Ostermiller 
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