What do you feel the most negative impact of hollywood MA is on the real use and practice of MA? - portal.gcgx.com

14 March 2010 [Sunday] @ March 14, 2010 edit

What do you feel the most negative impact of hollywood MA is on the real use and practice of MA?

yes, yes, we all know aobut the mcdojo craze. and 10 year old black belts and bruce lee and naruto wannabees smashing each other with NUMchucks in between twinkie breaks.

but is the "i can whip 20 people" hollywood martial arts notion really harmless entertainment?

or is there a danger to the well-trained as well.

let me know your opinions but,

IMO- there is.

its not every day affecting your training, at least not in ways you would readily think - but when you do get into an altercation, do you worry about the law enforcement aspects and "is this self-defence?".

if the public has a heightened notion of what a trained martial artist can do- don't you think that has a societal impact because it is the untrained who sit on the jury- it is the untrined lawyer who sits in the prosecutor's office making the decision if you used excessive force against that guy with a knife, or againts two people coming at you, or the one that outwieged you by 100 lbs.

i believe this has an unconsious affect on the minds of everyone and somewhat elevates the expectaions of the average untrained person of what a martial artist can and can't do-

not to the point of taking on an entire army of people- but enough that they might think that those two against one odds were not such a desperate situation, or that 350lb guy who can crush beer bottles with his teeth and chew on the glass is no match for a 5 year martial artist.

jackie chan does it in the movies....

If the Hollywood martial artist is what someone wants to become I would not train him or her. To be honest I find this to be a tough question. While I agree that one against twenty is outrageous, my old instructor took out ten in a fight in a bowling alley parking lot back in the late 70's. I myself was able to take on three in a bar fight.

But your right, obviously there is a limit. And let's face it my instructor and I was lucky that they didn't have a gun.

While there are some "tricks of the trade" that can amaze people, a lot of these are exactly that, tricks. For example, ice breaking is about the biggest BS out there. Add a little salt to your ice and the odds are favoring you. Board breaking can be another; just take your boards and bake them dry; or block breaking, if you can go to where they make them, just get ones with a large proportion of sand instead of cement. While granted these cheaters still have to have good form or these things won't break, they have made the odds better for themselves.

While I have said that, this does mean it is all BS. I have personally seen and have known some guys of all shapes and sizes that can do some pretty spectacular stuff, these men are the exception to the rule. And these are the guys that make these legends and the movies play on these legends.

I think the wording of your question is to complex for some people. I think what you are asking is " has hollywood glamorized martial arts to the point were judge, jury and prosecutors see an average martial artist as an advanced killing machine or human weapon?"

my answer is yes. it seems a lot of the times when a person defends them self against an untrained attacker the law has placed the martial artist to an elite level. they think that the training has made a martial arts person a person who can handle a person and not hurt the attacker, after all jet li can tire you hands behind your back with his sword.

I used to read this martial arts magazine that did a story on it. How a martial artist would defend himself and end up in jail or sued for excessive force.

First, I will admit, if one more person compares me to that overweight, sloppy actor because I wear black and have a ponytail, I might snap.
You know who I mean. I can only tolerate the stupid.
Second, I can only hope people recognize the difference between fly-by-wire Ang Lee movies and reality.
Third, I know most people are stupid and will believe or buy anything. Watch late night TV or Daytime TV for that matter.

Hollywood has made it necessary to explain the truth behind the training and exercises, without coming of as some sort of eastern monk or enigmatic caricature of Hollywood's creation.
Has it made my life more difficult?......No and Yes.
I have spent more time studying the ancient texts beyond 'the art of war' (the limit for some) and have broadened my mind. I study more than the how, now, I consider the why.

In my opinion (as evidenced on this board) the misnamed (again...opinion) MMA has made things far more difficult for practitioners of the true form martial arts. Lumping them together is like walking into an olympic precision shooting Competition with an AK-47 and 20 clips. Both have their proper place in the world, and I am working on being more accepting of other opinions (I admit to this problem...."HI, my name's Blasphemer and I am intolerant") but I am only working on it.

Can anything truely damage an art that to some is a belief system?
I'm going to think more on this over the weekend.

I'd be more worried about those people in martial arts who have never had a fight in their life, but believe all the Hollywood hype. You know, the ones who let the other guy throw the first punch thinking they can defend against it? The ones who get surprised that one punch doesn't put the other guy down? The ones who spend half their class kicking at targets at chest and head height, then suddenly find themselves nose-to-nose with a guy when a real fight goes down? This is the stuff Geoff Thompson calls "celluloid peer pressure", and I worry about that more than what a jury thinks. Rather that the guy makes it out in one piece to be judged, than ends up bleeding to death in a gutter some where because he didn't know what to expect in a real fight.

The problem comes in when people BELIEVE what they see on the screen. When people think that they can walk in a bar and take on 20 drunks empty handed, or think that they can disarm a gun or knife wielding opponent without taking any damage. Some people put themselves in harms way to prove that they can do things that just aren't possible, just because they have taken a few weeks of generic McDojo style TaeKwonDo, or a few sessions at an MMA gym.

naturally u wud have to be stupid to believe one man could take on 28934 guys at once but there is certain MMA training that could help you actually defend or fight. BJJ, Boxing, Wrestling all mixed to gether is alot different from Karate which is what people say the Jackie Chans are doing which in reality is not at all helpful

I think that there are many pieces to the hollywood puzzle that have and will potentially make MA think that they're invincible. Yet, I don't think it's Hollywood's fault. It's most definitely the fault of parents not raising their child in the reality of life, differentiating fact from fiction.

I most definitely worry about the legal, and even moral consequences to any fight. It has a great effect on how I handle the situation. Especially considering my past, though not criminal, it was a bit harsh. I would act before thinking. Thankfully my growth through the MA has helped me to quell the fire inside, and keep me centered.

Just the other night in fact I had to race through my head the California State Laws (as I recently moved here). I was with my girlfriend and we're walking downtown when we were accosted by a drunk man who was just a little too aggressive. He had an extra second of time because I was doing everything I could to avoid violence. Although, if this were a few years ago I would have hit him, based on his proximity, energy, and demeanor. But today, I left him to his own devices successfully whilst protecting my girlfriend.

I've personally been involved in many fights that had more than one person, however, not more than three. I've come away, successfully defending myself every time, though not without decent injury. The last time I was in something involving more than one person, I suffered a broken rib, which was a killer on breathing for the next three weeks.

I've also been up against people with weapons and have successfully, albeit maybe a little to aggressively, handled the situation and walked away unharmed.

It's not an impossibility as is implied or stated all too often. However it is not something that I would recommend or say that anybody can do, as we all know that's just not the case.

MMA fighters will not hands down lose to TMA and vice-versa. MMA training is no more realistic than a good TMA school. No MA actor can beat an MMA fighter, period, unless they truly live the Martial Artist Lifestyle, and that would make them a Martial Artist not an Actor.

I think this is the same thing as with any subject on TV or film, and really isn't the fault of the entertainment industry. They make what sells, and it is us that buy or watch their products. It's the household's repsonsibility to make sure the offspring are raised with proper societal knowledge and interaction capabilities, not the media.

Well in hollywood, you can have a martial arts "master" being surrounded by 10 or so guys in a fight, and the master miraculously defeats them all with little effort. Of course people watching are gonna be like, "I wanna do that!" So Hollywood falsely advertises MA. You know in real life that if you have 10 people trying to kill you, your gonna get hurt regardless of your rank or skill, it's natural. Also, Hollywood MA likes to show a lot of flashy, high, spinning, backflip kicks during fights. Anyone who really knows martial arts understands that those kind of kicks can leave to much to chance, and may highly ineffective compared to the "boring" kicks. In a an actual self-defense situation the flashy kicks may leave you off-balance or expose your blind spot and thus easier to defeat. Lastly, there are a lot of MA movies that tend to overexaggerate the one-shot, one-kill. Yeah the practitioners who have been studying the martial arts for decades and understand the human body may be able to do that, but just joining a martial arts school and earning a "black belt" in a year or two does not guarantee you the same success.

The "most negative impact of Hollywood MA" is the misconception that MA is all about fighting and beating people up! A TRUE martial artist learns how to fight so he doesn't have to! Those who disagree either 1)have not been in martial arts long enough; 2) are missing the whole point; or 3) needs a better instructor!

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