In the past few weeks I have rewatched two of my favorite movies on the Criterion Channel, Odds Against Tomorrow and Bad Day at Black Rock. What struck me in watching them in close succession was the one thing they had in common, besides Robert Ryan excelling at being a racist bastard, is they both introduce elements of martial arts as something new, as something that changes what it means to fight and who could win.
In Bad Day at Black Rock Spencer Tracy uses a combination of karate style chops and what looks like a variation of ukiotoshi throw to dispense with Ernest Borgnine despite only having one arm, and being fifty four years old (older than the character from the original short story). Not only do the martial art techniques allow Tracy to defend himself from a stronger and younger opponent, they also function as a trace of the absent Japanese presence in the film. Tracy's John Macready character has come to the town of Black Rock to present a medal to a farmer named Komoko. The medal was presented to his son, a Japanese American fighting in Italy. This is a reference to the 442nd Infantry Army Division, a segrated group of soldiers of Japanese ancestry, mostly second generation or Nisei, who fought in Europe. Macready is a worldly and liberal contrast to the town's bigoted and narrow minded denizens.
Three concluding notes on this film: first, the film brings together quite a rogues gallery, bringing together Borgnine, Lee Marvin, and Robert Ryan to play some of the meanest bastards. Second, the film is almost a master class in blocking, not much actually happens for the first half, just different conversations between the residents of the town, who are all hiding a dark secret, an Macready, but throughout these conversations how and where people sit and stand speaks volumes, all leading to the slow build up in tension that explodes with a chop to the neck. Finally, if one is looking for contemporary relevance, and even prophetic signs, it is hard not to notice Ryan's red baseball cap.
This brings me to the second example, Odds Against Tomorrow, released four years later. As I mentioned in my previous blogpost about this film, there is a scene in which a young soldier, played by Wayne Rodgers is showing off his new "atomic war," fighting, an aikido arm pin and a judo hip throw, at a bar. In this case it does not win the fight as Ryan's character uses a feint to punch the soldier in the gut. Which incidentally brings up something I read a lot on blogs and youtube channels dedicated to self defense and martial arts, feints rarely figure in traditional training which focuses on committed attacks but they play an important role in combat sports, and, as the film illustrates, in street fighting. However, in both these films the introduction of martial arts is as much a symbol as it is a reality, it suggest a new, more cosmopolitan world in which intelligence and adaptation are as important as force and old fashioned toughness.
I would love to read a history of the introduction of martial arts in American popular culture (here I am using the term as it is often used, to refer to styles and schools of hand to hand fighting from China, Japan, and Korea). If I was to sketch that trajectory it would start with references to judo and karate in the fifties and sixties, kung fu in the seventies, ninjitsu in the eighties, aikido in the nineties, and then in this millennium we get things like krav maga, and eventually Brazilian jujitsu and mixed martial arts. This history is a history both of the movement of bodies and knowledge, US soldiers returning from Japan and Korea introduced a lot of martial arts to the US, and it is a history of images and media. Bruce Lee was responsible in part for the turn to kung fu, Steven Segal and his enormous ego had a lot to with the rise and fall of aikido's popularity (I really hate that guy). Those are just two examples of a history of the martial arts action star, a practioner or competitor in the martial arts who becomes a movie star, a history that includes Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Dame, etc. No less important are the actors trained in martial arts, or at least trained in the appearance of martial arts, such as Keanu Reeves. It is a history in which reality, what bodies could actually do based on training and practice, mingles with its image, what bodies could be made to appear to do thanks to editing, wire work, and stuntmen who know how to take a fall.
It is also an uneven and incomplete history of transformations and trends. Ninjas show up in the bond film You Only Live Twice, but they would only become a household name in the eighties thanks to Sho Kosugi and Cannon films. The eighties was also the era of The Karate Kid, which did a lot to domesticate karate, make it more something to take the kids to afterschool between soccer practice and homework and less some exotic element of a foreign culture. I think that this last element explains why this history exhausted itself. The initial appearance of someone with martial arts skill, like the scene in Bad Day at Black Rock, is as something new and surprising that allows someone to beat a larger opponent or even multiple opponents. As such it hinged on an exoticism and novelty that would eventually exhaust itself. Billy Jack could surprise someone with a kick to the face even after telling them about it, but after such kicks are taught at every YMCA it is harder and harder to believe in that one "secret trick" that could defeat anyone. Maybe there is some yet unseen and unscreened martial art somewhere, or some new star who will bring us a new way to fight that will light up screens, but it seems that the heyday of the martial arts film can trace itself back to a globalizing world that is now saturated.
As I mentioned at the outset, I love Bad Day at Black Rock, I am not one to rank films, but it is one of my favorites, and in watching it again (and again) I am reminded of what the appeal of it is, and how it connects to the history of martial arts in movies, and why I will always love a scene where an unassuming and mind mannered person beats up a bar fully of macho bullies. It is the idea that knowledge can defeat force, that it is better to be open about the world around them than to hunker down on ones own little corner of it. It is a fantasy, but as such it is better than some of the fantasies that have come to replace it.
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