4 ms·

One of my pet grievances is how love is portrayed. If you were to believe movies, you can get ANY woman if you're persistent enough. Then poor young boys and me

by b0rsuk 5y ago

One of my pet grievances is how love is portrayed. If you were to believe movies, you can get ANY woman if you're persistent enough. Then poor young boys and men set out in the world showering someone else in gifts and attention. Girls with narcissistic tendencies become more, more and more narcissistic and entitled. Another very damaging myth is that kung fu will save you from muggers. Muggers may have no objections to stabbing you, and if they attack they often attack from surprise. Or really, that a fight looks anything like in a martial arts movie. Go watch a fight in a Karate or Judo championship. It's quite boring, contestants are quite evenly matched and move with respect to each other.

MagnumOpus 5y ago
High level karate or judo (or boxing or MMA or Muay Thai) championships are usually only tactical and boring because they are evenly matched. They would all whip a „casual“ experienced martial artist within half a minute in a movie-like fashion, who in turn will be able to do that to the man on the street. (Source: been there, done that, sparred and competed both against world class olympic martial artists as well as complete beginners.)
- b0rsuk 5y ago
  "another martial artist" already assumes that you're in some ways evenly matched - you're using the same weapons, and it's 1 on 1. What there are two, one with a metal bar and another with a broken bottle? People like to go in with overwhelming odds, that's why around 80% muggings are men against women. And the weapons they may have may be in their pockets. Fancy playing russian roulette? What if they don't attack one at a time, like in movies?
  - r3trohack3r 5y ago
    Very much this. Most martial art studios teach over confidence and methods that fall flat on their face in the face of real assailants. Preaching martial arts as a form of discipline or structure is fine as long as you don’t attach “self defense” to it. As soon as you’re teaching self defense, the content needs to change and very few studios tackle it well. If your curriculum doesn’t teach: * Pre-incident indicators * Local law, when is violence justified * De-escalation branching into explosive violence with maximum damage * The goal is to escape safely, not submit your opponent (your opponent likely has friends, even if you don’t see them) * The difference between defending blunt weapons, bladed weapons (don’t put yourself in the blender), and firearms * Avoiding training “scars” from drilling (like handing a gun back to your opponent after a disarm, which I have second hand knowledge of someone doing in a real confrontation and dying) * Coarse motor skills > fine motor skills (your adrenaline is pumping, relying on a technical fine motor skill to save your life isn’t going to go well) You’re not prepared for street violence. Your self defense class is liable to get you killed if you ever need to use it. So far my favorite honest take on self defense is Kelly McCann’s street combatives series. I’m sure there is better content out there.
    - rrauenza 5y ago
      I've also heard this story of "handing the gun back"... In the context of aikido. I could never trace it back to anything. Is your 2nd hand knowledge also through aikido?
      - r3trohack3r 5y ago
        He was a Combatives instructor, the story was from a Krav studio he attended and it was another student there.
hutzlibu 5y ago
"If you were to believe movies, you can get ANY woman if you're persistent enough." Anyone believing that, would also have to believe, that ANY woman can get YOU, if she is persistent enough. And most would clearly object to that, but yeah logic consistency is not usually a theme of movie romances or of the target audience. "Another very damaging myth is that kung fu will save you from muggers" But if you know kung fu (or any martial arts) on a high level, then yes, it usually will save you from muggers. Because martial arts at its core (unless we are talking only about the sports turnament situation) is about situational awareness ALL the time. Meaning you do not get close enough to a person, that might stab you, in the first place. You are aware of dangers. Of people posing threats. You check the persons and places around you for signs of trouble. So you are in control of the situation - so you can be calm. Even when there is indeed trouble. But if fear and anger are not controlling you, you can control the situation and diffuse it. (and knowing that you can take someone out in a moment, helps with the confidence, unless it feeds your ego seeking such moments) Otherwise yes, martial arts masters bleed as anyone else. I think some world champion of kickboxing was killed in a bar fight. And the mystic glorifications of kung fu and co does lives on in the movies, but in reality it mostly vanished by real bullets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
- samatman 5y ago
  My Sifu in kung fu would get asked about muggers frequently, by new students. He always stressed the importance of having the laces on your shoes tied, and practicing your wind sprints.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > My Sifu This is itself an example of "art imitating art" as per upthread. English speakers use the word "sifu" as part of its own independent cultural tradition. They use it even in contexts where it makes no sense, surrounded by Mandarin references - notably in Kung Fu Panda and less notably here: http://gowdb.com/troops/6582 http://gowdb.com/troops/6582 - because they are sure it's "Chinese". But if you learned the word by studying Chinese you'd spell it shifu. The English word comes from exposure to southerners who make no distinction between "s" and "sh". But distinguishing those two sounds is not a problem for English speakers.
rrauenza 5y ago
My pet peeve is action movies that establish an emotional connection between the hero and the damsel with a obligatory sex scene (often a one night stand)... After which she is put into peril. It's a lazy way to up the emotional connection between the two characters. If I recall, more recent movies like Deadpool actually begin to work against it by the hero and damsel being in a long term relationship.

by b0rsuk 5y ago

MagnumOpus 5y ago

High level karate or judo (or boxing or MMA or Muay Thai) championships are usually only tactical and boring because they are evenly matched. They would all whip a „casual“ experienced martial artist within half a minute in a movie-like fashion, who in turn will be able to do that to the man on the street. (Source: been there, done that, sparred and competed both against world class olympic martial artists as well as complete beginners.)

b0rsuk 5y ago
"another martial artist" already assumes that you're in some ways evenly matched - you're using the same weapons, and it's 1 on 1. What there are two, one with a metal bar and another with a broken bottle? People like to go in with overwhelming odds, that's why around 80% muggings are men against women. And the weapons they may have may be in their pockets. Fancy playing russian roulette? What if they don't attack one at a time, like in movies?
- r3trohack3r 5y ago
  Very much this. Most martial art studios teach over confidence and methods that fall flat on their face in the face of real assailants. Preaching martial arts as a form of discipline or structure is fine as long as you don’t attach “self defense” to it. As soon as you’re teaching self defense, the content needs to change and very few studios tackle it well. If your curriculum doesn’t teach: * Pre-incident indicators * Local law, when is violence justified * De-escalation branching into explosive violence with maximum damage * The goal is to escape safely, not submit your opponent (your opponent likely has friends, even if you don’t see them) * The difference between defending blunt weapons, bladed weapons (don’t put yourself in the blender), and firearms * Avoiding training “scars” from drilling (like handing a gun back to your opponent after a disarm, which I have second hand knowledge of someone doing in a real confrontation and dying) * Coarse motor skills > fine motor skills (your adrenaline is pumping, relying on a technical fine motor skill to save your life isn’t going to go well) You’re not prepared for street violence. Your self defense class is liable to get you killed if you ever need to use it. So far my favorite honest take on self defense is Kelly McCann’s street combatives series. I’m sure there is better content out there.
  - rrauenza 5y ago
    I've also heard this story of "handing the gun back"... In the context of aikido. I could never trace it back to anything. Is your 2nd hand knowledge also through aikido?
    - r3trohack3r 5y ago
      He was a Combatives instructor, the story was from a Krav studio he attended and it was another student there.

hutzlibu 5y ago

"If you were to believe movies, you can get ANY woman if you're persistent enough." Anyone believing that, would also have to believe, that ANY woman can get YOU, if she is persistent enough. And most would clearly object to that, but yeah logic consistency is not usually a theme of movie romances or of the target audience. "Another very damaging myth is that kung fu will save you from muggers" But if you know kung fu (or any martial arts) on a high level, then yes, it usually will save you from muggers. Because martial arts at its core (unless we are talking only about the sports turnament situation) is about situational awareness ALL the time. Meaning you do not get close enough to a person, that might stab you, in the first place. You are aware of dangers. Of people posing threats. You check the persons and places around you for signs of trouble. So you are in control of the situation - so you can be calm. Even when there is indeed trouble. But if fear and anger are not controlling you, you can control the situation and diffuse it. (and knowing that you can take someone out in a moment, helps with the confidence, unless it feeds your ego seeking such moments) Otherwise yes, martial arts masters bleed as anyone else. I think some world champion of kickboxing was killed in a bar fight. And the mystic glorifications of kung fu and co does lives on in the movies, but in reality it mostly vanished by real bullets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion

samatman 5y ago
My Sifu in kung fu would get asked about muggers frequently, by new students. He always stressed the importance of having the laces on your shoes tied, and practicing your wind sprints.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > My Sifu This is itself an example of "art imitating art" as per upthread. English speakers use the word "sifu" as part of its own independent cultural tradition. They use it even in contexts where it makes no sense, surrounded by Mandarin references - notably in Kung Fu Panda and less notably here: http://gowdb.com/troops/6582 http://gowdb.com/troops/6582 - because they are sure it's "Chinese". But if you learned the word by studying Chinese you'd spell it shifu. The English word comes from exposure to southerners who make no distinction between "s" and "sh". But distinguishing those two sounds is not a problem for English speakers.

rrauenza 5y ago

My pet peeve is action movies that establish an emotional connection between the hero and the damsel with a obligatory sex scene (often a one night stand)... After which she is put into peril. It's a lazy way to up the emotional connection between the two characters. If I recall, more recent movies like Deadpool actually begin to work against it by the hero and damsel being in a long term relationship.