To start, I agree wholeheartedly that "Be Water" is a prime example of (what Paul Bowman has theorized extensively under the heading of) "mythologies of martial arts." But while [Ben's] critique foregrounds existing myths of Bruce Lee - in fact, one of the charges brought against this documentary is that it spends most of its time just retreading familiar ground, which I think is in large part a sound critique - I was actually surprised by the sense that "Be Water" was looking to take things one step further, that it represented a conscious effort to create an entirely new myth, namely, the myth of "The SJW Dragon."
In all honesty, my fondness for polemics aside, I am not even comfortable calling "Be Water" a Bruce Lee documentary. It seemed to me to lose the individual thread of Bruce Lee immediately, to the point where it would be more accurate and more appropriate to think of it as a propaganda piece detailing Hollywood prejudice which happened to feature Bruce Lee. As a massive Bruce Lee fan, though, the most shocking and affronting part was the way that "Be Water" actually went so far as to distort facts just to fashion an all-too-typical PC narrative.
1) First, they made such a big deal about Bruce's salary while working on The Green Hornet and acted like the only factor was "Hollywood is racist." To be clear, Bruce was not paid less than his co-stars on The Green Hornet SOLELY because he was not white. Now, before anyone starts furiously smashing their keyboards in order to shame me for being a racist alt-right Trump-supporting Nazi for even thinking this, please take note of the word, in caps lest anyone's political fury blind them to the nuances of my position, "SOLELY." Racism was absolutely baked in, but it wasn't the SOLE ingredient. Should we maybe also take into consideration the fact that Bruce had never before worked in Hollywood? Had the show gotten a second season, Bruce would have been in a prime position to negotiate for more money, but it would have been ridiculous for Bruce to have been making as much money out of the gate as, let alone more money than, his established co-stars, especially considering that his character as originally conceived was to play nowhere near as big a part on the show as he ended up playing thanks to Bruce's charisma and self-advocacy.
It is important to note that this is a common occurrence in television - it was back then and it still is today. It is impossible to project into the future what the shape of a show will look like over time or what audience responses to a show or even a character will be initially much less over time. But it is a credit to William Dozier and The Green Hornet staff that they were incredibly hospitable to Bruce, giving him tremendous leeway and autonomy in the production and choreographing of the fight scenes and even incorporating his character and story ideas. Again, this is some random dude nobody had ever heard of who had never worked in Hollywood before and he is choreographing all of his own action scenes and even gets an entire episode devoted to his character and his ideas. (Episode 10, "The Preying Mantis," the best episode of the show.) I can only imagine what a second season would have looked like for Bruce, both artistically and financially.
For comparison, upon joining The League as a minor character who was originally created to appear only briefly in a short arc, Jason Mantzoukas enjoyed more and more improvisational leeway and autonomy the more he worked on the show and the more the fans reacted to him, to the point where his character got so popular that he eventually got to write and star in "spinoff" episodes revolving entirely around his character.
Bruce's time on The Green Hornet was so much more than just racist business as usual, but since nuance was one of the first casualties in this shift to highly if not aggressively politicized discourse, the whole show and everything fruitful in Bruce's time on it was ignored just to make Hollywood more racist and to make The SJW Dragon into nothing but a victim of the racist Hollywood machine. (For more on The Green Hornet and Bruce's time on it, I highly recommend the incredibly comprehensive and well-researched book "The Green Hornet: A History of Radio, Motion Pictures, Comics and Television.")
2) But the segment on The Green Hornet is nothing compared to the segment on Enter the Dragon. In this portion of "Be Water," they flat-out lied. Bruce did not refuse to start production on Enter the Dragon because he was taking a principled stand as a person of color who was being exploited, or marginalized, or what have you, by the racist straight white male producers, yada yada yada. Bruce was so nervous about Enter the Dragon being his big break that he could not bring himself to start the shoot. And when he finally did show up for his first day of shooting, for his first scene - which was the quick little scene where he asks Ahna Capri for "the owner of this dart" - he had developed a nervous facial twitch that was visible on camera. It took two dozen takes just to get that simple scene done. This is a great part of the Bruce Lee story, this tremendous powerhouse of self-confidence nearly folding under the pressure but then summoning up the courage to grab the big break that all of his hard work had finally put in front of him and succeeding in becoming the crossover megastar he had dreamed for so many years of becoming. This is literally the culmination of his personal Campbellian "hero's journey," this is the self-reliant individual overcoming all the odds, jumping over all the hurdles, and achieving what he had set out to achieve by virtue of his hard work and determination. In prior documentaries, made before this super PC age and before there was any incentive or cachet in creating such an entity as The SJW Dragon, this story was discussed often, by people like Fred Weintraub, Paul Heller, Andre Morgan, Bob Wall, and John Saxon.
This is why I hate the Hayden White-esque "history is all subjective narratives, not objective facts" malarkey: It is a nonsensical ontological position that provides (to the satisfaction of its proponents if nobody else) ethical license to promulgate whatever narrative you want without having to worry about that pesky little thing we used to care about called "truth."
To be sure, if we have learned nothing else in this "post-truth" era, it is that "alternative facts" are just as valid, if not more valid, than actual facts. But I still think, perhaps anachronistically, that "Be Water" will not age well. In time, I suspect that its only interest will be as a curious sign-of-the-times oddity. In any event, I just thought that I would spend some time this weekend doubling down on some of the problems that plagued "Be Water" after reading Ben's insightful critique.
And to close this jolly rant with my biggest (and not at all political) complaint: On ESPN of all channels, I thought that we would for sure get to spend some time in the full contact karate world of the late 1960s/early 1970s, but in a documentary on the biggest sports channel in the world there was not even passing mention of Bruce's time spent in that world.
Oh, well. Bruce Lee documentaries will not be going out of style anytime soon, so here's to hoping the next one will be better. Until then, at least we still have Curse of the Dragon, A Warrior's Journey, How Bruce Lee Changed the World, I Am Bruce Lee, etc.
), after which we co-edited two special journal issues devoted to Bruce Lee. In short, I'm not just an amateur nerd, I actually study Bruce Lee in my capacity as a scholar: I'm a professional nerd 
