commentary: the dork factor

since i've started taking kung fu lessons, i've gotten no end of teasing and ribbing from people in my life.

dude, kung fu?
dude, seriously, kung fu?
dude, just...what...is...up...with these crazy ass moves?
dude, WHAT are you doing?
dude, you have GOT to be kidding me!

friends, strangers, acquaintances, random people walking by, it's all been the same. a lot of it is good-natured, and just meant to be humor. but sometimes it crosses over into outright taunting and mean-spirited heckling, with a good mix of derision and sneering.

for the most part, i've chosen to ignore it. that's about the best you can do when dealing with what can only be considered as ignorance. especially when they're college students. drunk frat boys. snotty sorority girls. over-testosteroned jocks. undereducated spoiled brats with no knowledge of the world. people tend to belittle things they don't understand. and sometimes, they express that lack of understanding with hostility. it's something that unfortunately we have to expect to encounter in this life.

sometimes, if addressed by someone who's actually curious and expressing an open mind, i'll try to be patient and explain things as best i can. but i'll also hint that this is something personal and thus not something i'm really interested in seeing mocked by others.

in part, i know that i do open myself up for teasing and taunts, seeing that i usually practice in the only safe, open, well-lit, and readily available areas (those are all key terms...and the combination is surprisingly difficult to find) that i know of: the track stadium on campus where i go to school, or in local parks near where i live. these are public spaces, and so my practice is open for basically the entire world to see--including all my mistakes, moments of confusion, and times of deliberation to sort things out. this means that people get to see a strange man occasionally falling over, frequently staring off into space, or continuously repeating the same strange movements over and over again, all of which would induce most of us into making at least some kind of jest at another human being's expense. given this, i'm surprised i haven't gotten more derision or worse, been challenged to a fight.

but for all this, there is still some wonder on my part as to why all this invective exists. not just against me, but against the entire concept of kung fu in general. i mean, it's interesting that kung fu would incite this kind of negative response in people, and that they would adopt such views on it.

for me, personally, it revolves around a number of questions: why do people see kung fu as something unnatural, uncool, and unrespectable? why is it not something that is accepted with the same level of recognition as other sports like football, baseball, basketball, or tennis? for that matter, why is it not something given the same appreciation as other martial arts like boxing or wrestling?

to distill this down to one central point: why do people give kung fu such a high dork factor?

i've given this some thought over the past few months, and i've come to believe it revolves around issues of the "other," media overexposure, and marketing overpromises and underdelivery. on each of these issues, this is pretty much what i've come up with:

1) the "other"

this is a concept derived from social science literature, and largely refers to the distortion and fabrications made when a particular society (or culture) describes another society (or culture). for the most part, the theory argues that a society will often objectify, stereotype, oversimplify, misrepresent, or outright falsely label any other society it considers strange or different, particularly in situations where power are involved. for example, in political circles, it is used to illuminate how European imperial powers of the 16th-20th centuries disempowered and ultimately subjugated the peoples of Asia, Africa, and America during the process of colonization. essentially, it deals with the notion of how people alienate and antagonize each other, not just physically, but also socially, economically, politically, and culturally.

the creation and continuation of the "other" is perceived by social scientists as ongoing today. for example, it is seen in the ways mainstream American society still views ethnic cuisine as "exotic" rather than as the staple diet of a segment of the American population, or that certain religions such as Hinduism, Islam, or Judaism are still "unusual" or "not normal." a classic example is that Asian-Americans are often viewed subconsciously as not "American" but as "Asian," and so are often asked "where are you from?" (with the answer expected to be outside the U.S.), "what is your first language?" (even though the person may have grown up in Orange County), or "i bet you're really smart in math and science, but suck at sports, huh?" (despite the fact the person being asked is a scholarship athlete at an NCAA Div. I school and dumb as a rock).

this kind of behavior is taken by social scientists as perpetuating (intentionally or accidentally) historical patterns of discrimination and suppression by the mainstream against those deemed as "other." they point to the continued marginalization of minorities from corporate leadership (i.e., "the glass ceiling"), exclusion of minorities from government posts (i.e., the lack of minorities nominated for political office because they're not seen as capable of broad appeal), and suppression of minorities from mass culture (i.e, the dearth of minorities in fashion magazines, TV shoes, movies, etc.).

i suspect that kung fu, at least in modern American life, is no exception to this phenomenon. kung fu, by its origins and by its public representation, is seen as something uniquely Chinese, and hence as something specifically Asian. in which case, it is accorded the same view that Asian-Americans are accorded in mainstream America: as the "other." this results in kung fu being perceived with the same labels given to Asian-Americans: exotic, unusual, different, mysterious.

combine this with the human tendency to belittle something seen as mysterious or unusual, and you get result of people taking the next step and mocking kung fu.

not that everyone does this--since not everyone is guilty of holding to concepts of "other," but enough people do it to make it more than just occasional.

2) overexposure

kung fu has gotten a lot of publicity. a LOT. particularly within the living memory of most people, which has witnessed the explosion of communications and media technology. magazines, comics, books, trading cards, VCDs, CDs, DVDs, tv shows, movies, video games, internet, you name it, kung fu is everywhere. people can't help but not avoid it.

but not all of this publicity has been good. in fact, some of it has been downright bad.

i mean bad in the sense that the publicity has made kung fu a caricature of itself, converted it into childhood entertainment, distorted it into fiction, and reinforced the negative impact of being connected to the "other."

• caricature--so often the popular media expressions of kung fu have been forms that contributed to public mockery of it. for example, the 1960s, 70s, and 80s witnessed the distribution of kung fu action movies with low production values and poor translations to the West, resulting in Western audience perceptions of kung fu as the domain of cheesy, stilted movies rife with bad accents and bizarre English overdubs. another example has been the spread of movies that used kung fu and kung fu practitioners as a source of humor (e.g., Kung Fool, Shaolin Soccer, etc.). either way, the effect has been to make kung fu an object of scorn.
• childhood entertainment--a large part of kung fu images in the media has been in the form of comics and animated features. while in Asia these are typically seen as forms of entertainment for adults as much as they are for children, in mainstream America these are still viewed as something unique to childhood. particularly when the manga (comics) or anime (animated features) involve cartoonish, stylized characters and behavior. the result has been the association of kung fu in mainstream American minds as something reserved for children, and nothing any self-respecting adult would ever do.
• distortion--mass media has also tended to make outright distortions about kung fu, bypassing its history as a genuine form of self-defense for ancient peoples sincerely interested in protecting their lives and possessions, and instead highlighting it as a medium populated by centenarian sage masters with flowing white beards, heroes capable of flying through the air and climbing walls, secret techniques of indescribable power, and magic weapons and talismans of divine origin. in short, media has taken kung fu out of reality and put it into the realm of myth. meaning that it has made kung fu something mystical, or worse, fanciful, with no relevance to everyday life.
• reinforcing the "other"--ironically, the dissemination of kung fu in media didn't lift it out of the problems of being part of the "other," but instead served to legitimize this practice. the popular media, while propagating kung fu, did so in a way that maintained its association with Asians. so much so that anybody Asian is automatically assumed by Americans to "know kung fu." the media actually made it easier for mainstream America to construe kung fu as "an Asian thing" and hence hold it with the same attitudes historically held against Asians.

admittedly, there is extensive diversity in the way media presents kung fu, and with varying degrees of intent to take it seriously, humorously, or derisively. but that's not the issue. what is the issue is how audiences react to media presentation, especially Western ones. frequently, media representations that would be harmless or good-natured in Asian audiences end up being taken as the basis for harmful or malicious interpretation in mainstream American society.

the common perception is that any publicity--good or bad--is still publicity. but i think a review of kung fu in the media would suggest otherwise, particularly when it is interpreted by mainstream American society.

3) overpromise and undelivery

of all the factors described here, i'm beginning to think this may be the most damaging of all. because the one way to dispel scorn is to simply prove people wrong. for all the teasing, taunts, laughs, belittling, misperceptions, misunderstandings, or puzzlement associated with kung fu, they could easily be dispelled by proof of kung fu for what it originally was and hopefully still is: an effective form of self-defense as viable as all other forms of self-defense in the world.

this, however, is too often not the case.

rather, the more common situation is the damaging cycle of overpromise and undelivery taught in most business school curricula as an example of a bad business practice:

• overpromise--whether motivated by the priorities of business, self-promotion, or validation by kung fu schools or practitioners, kung fu is frequently asserted as an automatic solution to assault and guarantor of instant physical domination and victory in a physical altercation. compounding this is that kung fu is further packaged as a provider of all manner of benefits (sexual potency, longer life, better job performance, etc.). to an outsider or stranger to kung fu, this gives it the appearance of something marketed as a 1-stop all-powerful solution for every person's every ill...which a sensible person associates with as something "too good to be true" and reminiscent of the dubious business ethics of P.T. Barnum, with his promotion of "snake oil" to people he described with the infamous tag line "there's a sucker born every minute."
• underdeliver--people who accept the marketing claims about kung fu dedicate more than just their time and their money in it. they also dedicate their faith. and that faith is predicated on the truth of promises that kung fu does indeed provide the guaranteed solutions to all their fears and insecurities (i.e., that kung fu will make them more physically more dominant, more sexually capable, longer living, better at their jobs, etc.). that faith, however, can be shattered. particularly if they attempt to use kung fu and find themselves still unable to solve the problems they were promised kung fu would solve.
  

the truth that is so often obscured from students is that learning kung fu does not instantly make you "super-kick-ass-mystic-warrior." kung fu is not a "magic secret" that ensures victory over all opponents in all settings at all times.

there is nothing that does this.

the truth that needs to be told is that self-defense is an act dependent on many unknown variables: instruction, learning, practice, timing, reflexes, physical conditioning, situational awareness, target fixation, surprise, amount of light, the weather, overall health, etc. etc. etc. and the list goes on. and these variables, by definition, are not fixed. they vary, for every time and place and opponent. in essence, they constitute probabilities rather than certainties.

kung fu can't address all these variables. all it can do is improve the odds.

and kung fu doesn't even guarantee this.

because another truth that is so often obscured from students--and which students need to be told--is that kung fu's ability to improve the odds is itself a variable. it is a variable affected by a student's learning of kung fu, and learning of kung fu is an act of education. education is a participatory process involving a 2-way interaction between teacher and student. while a teacher can teach, a student must also learn. this means that the teacher must be extremely proficient in the subject taught, as well as attentive, patient, responsive, clear, and truthful in their instruction. it also means that a student needs to be involved in trying to understand, explore, and practice the lessons given to them by their teacher. it further means that a student needs to see learning as more than just gaining knowledge, but also about beginning on the path to wisdom through application of that knowledge.

for kung fu instructors, this means that a practitioner's proficiency level is based on having a quality teacher. quality meaning 1) a teacher who truly knows what kung fu can do, whether in self-defense, health, or personal growth, 2) a teacher who can truly teach, 3) and a teacher who can actually fulfill the promises they make.

for kung fu students, it further means that a practitioner's proficiency level is not just based on knowing techniques. it's based on knowing the techniques the right way, understanding their purpose and reasoning, and practicing their application. moreover, since kung fu is a form of self-defense, and self-defense means defending yourself against other people, it also means that a practitioner's proficiency level is also based on practicing kung fu against others...and practicing until the techniques become second nature, so that the practitioner can apply them effortlessly, quickly, and without thought.

to illustrate this point, i was once told a story that an advanced kung fu practitioner of many years was defeated in a free sparring match by a high school wrestler who had only been on the varsity squad for 2 years. the intent was to dismiss kung fu as an effective fighting form.

but after some questioning for further details, my response to this story was that:

1. the high school wrestler was as familiar and skilled in his wrestling techniques as the kung fu practitioner was in his, meaning that skilled technique encountered skill technique
2. the high school wrestler had been practicing wrestling almost every day of his high school career, while the kung fu practitioner had not, which illustrates that the best way to develop familiarity and instinctive reflexes is to practice continuously
3. the high school wrestler had been using wrestling against other opponents, while the kung fu practitioner had focused primarily on solo forms, demonstrating that the best teacher to teach fighting against an opponent is to go fight other opponents--frequently
4. the high school wrestler had the conditioning and physical coordination of a superior athlete, which made up for many factors against the kung fu practitioner, who had less conditioning and possibly less physical coordination. martial arts, for all their "internal" aspects, still involve a physical "external" side, and so still place a premium on physical ability

kung fu can do many things, and for all the exaggerations, lies, and half-truths that have been associated with it, there are kernels of truth in the hyper-promotion. but these kernels require work and practice and focus and diligence on the part of the student to come to fruition.

techniques are just techniques, they don't do anything on their own, and only have as much life as given to them by a good teacher and a good student.

conclusion

i'm pretty much resigned to the fact that i'm going to be seen as a dork by the observing public for my practice of kung fu. i don't plan on changing my places of practice (for matters of convenience and necessity), and i don't expect people's views on kung fu to change. there's just too much inertial mass of skepticism, disbelief, and ridicule on a societal level for 1 person like me to overcome. and i can understand why, for the reasons i've discussed above.

all i expect to do is to continue my kung fu education to the best of my ability and for my own personal reasons, and to continue doing what i have been doing: ignore the ignorant and the malicious, open to the open-minded and the curious. by doing this, i can do what i as a kung fu practitioners can do: represent the best aspects of the art, understand the larger scope of the art, and changing the things i can change--1 person 1 place and 1 moment at a time.