Chicken
A chicken was killed in this movie. I think, whatever! maybe some of you think otherwise?
shareYes, they chopped off a chicken's head on camera.
Pretty gross to watch, but I eat chicken and I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't happen to thousands of chickens all over the world every day so they can end up on our dinner plates. Hardly a shocking concept unless you've been raised in a cave.
Nonetheless, they didn't NEED to slaughter a live chicken in the scene. There were fake exploding ones in the movie as well, so 'twas a tad gratuitous just to kill one.
This was made in the 80s. When i went to traditional chinese wet markets in the 90s it was still common for u to pick your live chicken from the cage and have them put it in a bag for u. You then either took it to the market slaughter house (if there was one and you handed it in like you would laundry and picked it up after) or did it yourself at home.
Obviously killing a chicken for that scene and eating it is different but at the end of the day they didn't care about animal rights the way we do.
Chicken sacrifice is also a powerful chinese tradition. It used to be used as a form of quasi-legal arbitration. Each party would bring a chicken and their chicken would represent themselves, they would behead the chicken and swear an oath - like a bloody version of swearing on the bible. I think the fact that an animal that represented you died made it more dramatic for superstitious people and there are records of accused people confessing out of fear.
Some scandal laden politicians in Taiwan would behead chickens and swear oaths a few decades ago to demonstrate their honesty and integrity the way american politicians might go to church and associate with bible basher organizations to increase their standing.
In terms of these movies, they are based on taoism which are in turn an amalgamation of folk religion and shamanism over several millenia. The sacrifice of a cockerel is a power yang symbol. I guess we should be thankful they did not kill a dog as black dog blood has symbolic excorcism powers.
That's a great explanation of the Chinese tradition.
I'll share that in Southeast Asia, the tradition of cockfighting actually developed for a similar reason. Better to have two chickens fight a duel to the death than two humans.