‘Kata or Choreography’? Know the difference. Part 2.
The second part. Don’t throw your brain away, know what you are looking at.
Why do people continue to make this mistake?
(A continuation from Part 1 of the misunderstandings around Wado knife defence).
I will present to you several reasons:
· The continued seduction of the choreographed fight, super-hyped by the movies (In my mind I can draw a direct line from Ron Van Clief to John Wick).
· The failure to understand how kata works and to get a grip on the cultural roots of kata as a pedagogic method.
· I am afraid to say it but, kata as a teaching method, is considered by some to be an alien concept to those steeped in western thinking. Often, this form of logic and pragmatism leads to a narrowing of the mind, bolstered no doubt by an unconscious ‘the West is the best’ mentality and the never-acknowledged colonial mindset where methods outside of our own culture are often considered as ‘quaint’ but nevertheless… inferior.
Why then do we even bother presenting these demonstrations to an audience?
I guess it’s just one of those, ‘you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t’ things. In the ‘Catch-22’ tradition; what are you going to replace them with?
There is a very simplistic view that the demonstrations are ‘setting out the stall in the marketplace’, with the naïve assumption that the audience will understand it at an elevated level. I don’t blame the public; I think that the instructors have just failed to move with the times.
I am being honest here; beyond being a fighting system, the USP’s of martial arts in the modern age seem less about showy techniques and more about the building of skills, personal fulfilment, wellbeing, self-esteem and an enlightened understanding and appreciation of our own physicality. If all of that is enhanced by intelligent cultural engagement (towards cultures that are outside of and beyond our own, without the colonial condescending and largely unconscious bias) then we are on to a winning combination.
A cynical public easily sees through the gloss of John Wick, they are entertained by the cleverness of it all and are less inclined to view it as any form of reality. The most recent John Wick movie is more closely stylistically aligned to computer gaming (if you’ve seen it, then the ‘bulletproof suit’ scene is so far from reality as to render it almost comical).
A point to ponder: What would the efficiency of a supremely skilled martial arts practitioner in a one-on-one real conflict situation actually look like?
A simple answer; boring.
The complete reverse of ‘dramatic’. It would probably be sudden, short and economical in energy expenditure. Job done, minimal fuss.
I would also add one other word to the above list, ‘judicious’. Because, woven into the fabric of all elevated martial arts is the moral concept of ‘Justice’. But, this is not the place to stray into that area.
What purpose do the demonstrations serve?
It might be more useful to ask, ‘What purpose DID the demonstrations serve’? Because I think how demonstrations were presented and received in the past is very different to how they might be seen now.
As an example; I can remember all that breaking of wood and tiles. Back in the day the public seemed to have an appetite for it; it was expected and many times became the finale of all demonstrations – ‘If it doesn’t have wood breaking, it’s not karate’. But, as I might have said before, it was not representative of what we did in the Dojo; we just did it, on the day, no rehearsals, smash! Splinters everywhere, big applause, job done.
Imagine doing that now…
Despite the dumbing down through too much choice (and lack of choice) on the Internet, the public are largely better informed and would be more inclined to cast a cynical eye at such chicanery. The fakir has pretty much departed the marketplace.
The intentions were right; instructors from those earlier times thought it was the only way to present a showcase of their skills, but now we have YouTube and Instagram and websites with easily constructed and edited video material, sometimes with speeded up sequences (and the hope that we don’t spot it… we do).
Sometimes, during the summer I see that a local church or parish fete will feature ‘a demonstration of karate by the ‘Baka Kai’’ (or some such name). In a moment of weakness, I sometimes think I aught to wander along and observe from a distance, but don’t want to be hit by flying wood splinters. Or suffer a serious case of nostalgia. Probably wise to avoid this guy:
https://www.today.com/video/doh-martial-arts-demo-goes-painfully-wrong-40605251538
Conclusion.
The main thrust of these two articles is to highlight that even people who are supposed to be knowledgeable get themselves all tangled up with the categories I have mentioned. For goodness’ sake understand the differences.
As a reminder:
· Choreographed stunt fighting, designed to entertain, show off acrobatic skills, where you are supposed to stretch your credulity and think, for a moment, that this is how fighting is actually supposed to work. But deep down you know it’s all fake.
· A showcase for an informed, or even ‘expert’ audience to be able to appreciate the finer aspects of the embodiment of the art at a refined level. Unlikely to have anything that appears ‘flashy’, far too technical for that.
· A presentation of self-defence techniques and strategies. As above, unlikely to be flashy. The clue is, the more moves that you have to make to ‘defend yourself’ the more likely it’s not going to work. Something like that scores very low on the ‘entertainment’ index, and so it should.
For those who design these presentations, the problem comes when they try to get clever and mix’n match the categories. I would say, be honest with your audience and clearly state what you are doing.
I am going to let the audience make their own minds up about the inclusion of ‘Bunkai’ in the team kata events of the World Karate Championships, appreciate and marvel at it for the theatre that it is.
As for Ron Van Clief, his honesty was in his silence. He allowed his audience to make their own minds up, happily unaware of their errors; which is a perfect description of what I did back in the later 1970’s.