Ok time for more play…
Inspired by the renewed interest in various weaponry floating around Rockstar now, from medieval European armour to the more exotic Asian stuff, that trend of fairly harmless (if you consider fidget spinners also fairly harmless) replicas of otherwise illegal exotic weapons. Think Balisongs (Rockstar has one off Amazon that unfolds into a haircomb 😀 ), Karambit, and I learned a new one recently – “Kunai” …
Not too long ago we realised how serious even grownups get about this when we subscribed to the History Channel, which airs a reality program known as Knight Fight:
(Personally I think the actual fights I happened to watch looked less “violent and bloody” than WWF wrestling (albeit the knight fight site likes to advertise it’s “bloody”) – because the armour they’re wearing is so tough and heavy the “knights” mostly lumber about, run into each other, and batter and break things with their swords or shields 😀 So occasionally, that’s also each other (but no one got very hurt in the couple prelim rounds we watched, they just fell over a lot 😀 …)
For many of the participants both the fights and the creation of weaponry are a very serious sport and hobby… which is when we give a shout out to the Society for Creative Anachronism. As in, something out of place in this time – like the Flintstones sending email, or medieval knights crashing about today, instead of say, playing the video game on their laptops. (We’re probably just one App away from designing the stuff on computer though 🙂 )
Marine reservist Andre Sinou, who owns the largest medieval-armour manufacturing company that is a part of the SCA, managed to turn a hobby into a growing business. He’s also one of the judges on Knight Fight (pic from Men’s Journal)
Most interesting thing (of many) I didn’t know, being fairly limited to the romanticised Knights of the Roundtable young-adult reader versions: We may think of knights as chivalrous today, but they were actually heavily armed thugs prone to violence. Professor Richard Kaeuper, author of various books on medieval chivalry, describes how the “code of honourable behaviour” extended mostly among the noble classes – but not to others. They were not “honourable” to those who were not nobles. The style of warfare in the 14th and 15th Century… laying waste to the countryside, terrorising locals.. was “…In a way… like mafia tactics. ‘You think (your king) can protect you? He can’t. Our king would protect you’.” (No d-uh, you are the one sabo-ing everyone else’s stuff huh..) History Channel article here.
Ok, so let chivalry be dead but let’s run into each other with armour on, that’s always fun. AND we can keep Colin Firth’s line in this one:
“Manners Maketh The Man.” I liked Kingsman better than Bond (sacrilege!) but it carries a strong R rating for violence (pic from Read The Spirit)
Samuel Jackson is an evil tech nerd tycoon who gives out cellphone sim cards promising free internet connectivity… and then at the right time he activates a frequency that affects your neurological waves, removing your inhibitions towards violence so you end up killing or being killed by other affected people around you (hence the R rating). In other words, Jackson’s “Richmond Valentine” has the same idea as Thanos in Endgame – the systematic culling of the population due to increasing scarcity of the world’s (or universe’s) resources. Only, instead of a giant gauntlet with gems, he hands out infected sim cards. (View your cellphone with suspicion right. Now. All the time I’m watching the Huawei Reality Show I’m wondering why none of those politicians put on the glasses and suit and-and worked out and got the haircut, and……. And yes, the Kingsmen all have knight codenames – Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad…)
Another popular program on the History Channel is Forged In Fire: Knife Or Death, where Bladesmiths Hairy And Beefy (most of ’em anyway, but there are a few women) compete to craft the best weapon. Contestants get thrown curve balls like scrapping metal off old cars in the heats, and then in the final they need to make a historically correct period weapon.
pic from Esquire.com
(In case you’re wondering what on earth people do with weapons-making skill – many of the contestants make cutlery for a living..)
(pics from Jamie Oliver- My Cuisine and sg.carousell.com) It wasn’t too long ago when Park n Shop had the Jamie Oliver knife collection up for sticker redemptions and then you’d see the cashiers calculating pages and pages of the things… Ever thought who makes those knives? 🙂 Think carving blades for Thanksgiving turkey, and I’m pretty sure sushi knives would otherwise make scary deadly weapons..
Edged-weapons specialist, U.S. military contractor, martial arts instructor and knife designer American-born Philippino Doug Marcaida has an armed forces personnel pick up the newly-forged weapon and hack at boar carcasses, coconuts, ice blocks, or a mannequin that has dummy organs (and fake blood ready to ooze on cue – caveat!) and then almost always delivers the much-meme-ed line:
Phrase That Launches A Thousand Memes (from the Doug Marcaida Meme Generator)
Told ya Photoshop is really fun (for real though, my kingdom with the wabbit innit for a season where they have these guys craft the weapons of Asgard) – pic from geeksoncoffee.com
Except apparently because this still counts as a “family show” (I said, apparently), what Doug is really saying is:
Meh. (pic from The Plot To Blow Up The Sun twitter)
This one’s probably lotsa mums’ favourite:
“Surrender Your Weapon.” That part is absolutely real. Even winners of the USD 10,000 prize for best piece at the end of the episode are not allowed to carry their weapons out of the studio because of the size of the blades 😀
More Forged In Fire trivia here.
According to Scholagladiatoria, Youtuber whose interests lie in European weaponry, movie producers often deliberately give their lead characters ridiculous-looking things just so they stand out onscreen. Most famous weapon inaccuracies:
Braveheart apparently has another claim to fame – one of the largest number of “silly things” carried around in “battle” like Mel Gibsons outsized sword (pic from movieposters2.com)
His army is carrying the correct weapon, but they decided that was not good enough for Gerard Butler – as lead character and heart throbber he shalt carry something wonky 😀 (from ABposters.com)
AND with that, I saved the best for last – Boxwars: The Art of Destruction. This the medieval-inspired “sport” that has teams across Europe, Australia, the US and Japan constructing full ranges of battlegear using nothing but reclaimed cardboard and packing supplies.
Give the kids their video games, us grownups want the cardboard boxes.
