There is a fascinating twilight zone between stage fight and combat. Once upon a time, an audience at the Globe theater knew exactly what good swordplay was, and what killing was, because they might possibly see it in the street. By the 1700 and 1800 hundreds, swordsmanship began to distance itself. By the Victorian era, a good fight might be a long fight of blade-cashing, with the same actions repeated over and over again, until actors and audience were sated. By the same token, Victorian actors sometimes used blood bags and sponges to make stage fight more realistic; a fact which bewildered someone like Sir Walter Scott, who had a pretty good idea of what real combat was like. After WWI, everyone wanted their stage and cinematic combat clean and bloodless. That goes double, during and after WWII. And four times that, after Vietnam. It has only been in the last decade or so, for good or ill, that audiences want their fighting as gritty, bloody, and realistic as possible. I dont exactly know what that says about us as a society, save for the fact that some of us have seen real war, but most havent. When you face something your size, or larger, that has no reservations about killing you, and you drive steel into it, meet it face to face, and kill it.... Well, the romance goes away. It is short, ugly, and a mess. That, we forget, or dont know, as we view film violence. As teachers of fencing, historic European martial arts, or fight arrangers, this is something that we should never, ever forget. And, if you are serious about what you teach, or show an audience, you should get to a point where you put your life on the line (legally), and kill with steel. It changes your experiential frame of reference, forever. Once you do this, you realize how hard it is, and how amazingly simple it is. Both are amazing eureka moments, and will change how you feel about killing in a profound way.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 01:39:31 +0000
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