eastern and western arts

JusticeZero · Black Belt

I wasn't being at all philosophical, I thought. It was a rather direct question.

While I understand the basic point, the fact of the matter is that the division is an illusion. The fact that you are considering an art from the heart of Asia to be "western" essentially because of what context you typically see it in should raise red flags about the classification system itself. In point of fact though, once you push past the pop mysticism that people ascribe to the foreign, we invariably find that the same principles apply universally everywhere.

We also find that the way people think of their art tends to be the same from one place to another as well. There are a lot of fantastic traits that people in one place ascribe to arts from another place, and if you talk to people in that other place, those fantastic traits are ascribed to arts from the place you just came from.

And the thing that you end up realizing is that those fantastic things aren't anywhere, it's like chasing a rainbow, it always looks like it's somewhere else, but it actually isn't anywhere at all, it is an illusion.
_________________
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." - Baleia

vasilist · Yellow Belt

oh i see, very impressive!
but i didnt get a thing, excuse my english, could you translate little?

JusticeZero · Black Belt

Hmm.

You say that Muay Thai - an art that is from the middle of Asia, full of Asian flavor and ideas, and dripping with mystic ritual things that mostly make sense only in Thailand (and probably mostly only in Thailand when it originally became popular, too) - is a WESTERN martial art.

That's probably because most people, when they think of Muay Thai, think of where they've seen it - "Oh hey, that's that art that UFC guys cross-train in to learn how to kick people in the shins."

You are thinking "Oh, HERE if we want to get good, we have to work out a lot and practice, and then when we get old we just can't fight as well. But if I were to go visit this faraway place, they just keep getting better and better and they do all these magic things.."(1)

If you go there, and talk to the people who do those foreign arts long enough, they would confide in you that the weakness of their art is something that is suspiciously close to "HERE if we want to get good, we have to work out a lot and practice, and then when we get old we just can't fight as well. But if I were to go visit somewhere like where you're from, they just keep getting better and better and they do all these magic things.."

NOBODY just 'keeps getting better and better', NOBODY is doing crazy magic things, it's all tall tales that people believe because 'those insert_signifier_here people are just different from you and me' and they're far enough away that most people can't easily check to see if it's true.

The whole idea was wrong from the beginning. We're all just people. We're all coming up with stuff. It's more or less the same stuff; there's local and stylistic differences that changes up the tactics, but it uses all the same principles and ideas and physics and limitations.

1: That's what Trouillot referred to as the idea of "the Savage Slot", by the way. "Othering" a group, and trying to accentuate the foreign-ness at the cost of the sameness. This is the same basic principle that brought us things like "Gulliver's Travels", or in a more tragic sense, "The Trail of Tears". "Those foreigners are alien, and awesome, and not bound by human limits the way we are." I assure you, it's not true.
_________________
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." - Baleia

vasilist · Yellow Belt

i dont have knownledge at all
never been artist myself just watching matches for some years
so maybe i am not qualified to judge
but from what i hear muay thai (most times) on 30 can barely walk cause of the damage their legs take from the sport
i never been to muay thai training but when i see sport (and not in mma, in "pure" mthay fights)i dont see any seperate philosophy i just see kickboxing with use of elbows. And this is no cause they are in ring or cause they wear gloves, i just see it that way
but when more example i see a match of karate and kickboxing the differense aint only be at clothes but on style and motion of artists aswell (to way they balance their weight, the timing of hitting or the way they block its all different)
as i said again i didnt do category by place only (although it sounds stupid) but muay thai (in my opinion always) is closer to west arts
at least in matches and fightstyle in my point of view

JusticeZero · Black Belt

If you compare savate and boxing, they will move very differently, too. So will a wrestler. A TKD stylist moves very much differently than a TJQ stylist or a XYQ stylist. The TKD person probably moves more like the Savateuse than they do a baguazhuang practitioner. And they all look nothing like how a judoka moves.

Here, have a taiji competition. No footwork, since "make them move" is the point, but how very foreign and Eastern they look in their T-shirts.
_________________
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." - Baleia

JusticeZero · Black Belt

Oh, and here's some western martial arts. Doesn't get much more European than this. These folks don't even need a lot of impact conditioning, since they had the sense to realize that they could let their clothing take the impact conditioning for them, and so they don't burn out fast like the Thai.
_________________
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." - Baleia

bushido_man96 · KF Sensei

Western stylistic tend to fizzled with age because they stop training as much, mainly because they stop competing.

You see old man "eastern" stylists whoop on younger stylists because they aren't usually pro level athletes. You don't see 50 year old Boxers competing because the pro game is a younger man's sport.

There are some fellows that train western styles forever, but most don't because their competition careers are over.
_________________
www.haysgym.com
http://www.sunyis.com/
www.aikidoofnorthwestkansas.com

vasilist · Yellow Belt

	KarateForums.com Forum Index -> Choosing a Martial Art, Comparing Styles, and Cross-Training	All times are GMT - 6 Hours Goto page Previous 1, 2
Page 2 of 2