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 A fun growing project, mung bean sprouts
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I love this scene because it connects growing plants, martial arts, and the importance of these to our youth. Good martial arts films always have a training montage and Bloodsport has a well-done and inspiring set of scenes that build the relationship between Tanaka and Dux. These training relationships are key in martial arts but as this film also points out, good martial artists see how this training is related to things that grow and take time and energy to produce. In Bloodsport the training sequence shows an interesting departure from what many see as martial arts. A blindfolded Frank balances a tray full of hot tea as he brings it to Tanaka and his wife, calmly setting the table and serving the food. The three enjoy the tea together when all of a sudden Tanaka launches a strike at Frank's face.  Frank catches the strike, demonstrating his ability to listen and be in tune with his environment. I personally enjoy hard martial arts training but only when this training is balanced with mental discipline. Today, many martial arts schools are just about the fitness and their curriculum, we forget that a whole range of other activities such as serving food and growing plants can be tied to martial lessons. This scene from Bloodsport reminds me that old school methods of training were much more strongly tied to balancing the soft and the hard.
This is just one example of finding green issues in martial arts films. If you look around there are often embedded environmental and green ideals in martial arts films. Send your own scenes in and I'll keep looking and writing about them too. -Mike To see the term "multigrain" on a food package you might think the product is something healthy. Be sure to read the package carefully, things might not be what they seem. As martial artists we need to be aware of any hidden dangers in our environment. We can apply the same awareness to choosing our food. -Ben
From an article by Heidi Almond on Livestrong.com: "The term "multigrain" is not synonymous with "whole grain." Multigrain products are made with more than one grain, but those grains may have been processed to have the more nutritious bran and germ removed." Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/492754-what-does-the-word-whole-grain-mean/#ixzz1nzJ2RVus Have you noticed that in the past few years we have been seeing a lot of films about martial arts but also about food? The Kung Fu Panda films have been quality interpretations of martial philosophy and we also saw the re-make of the Karate Kid in 2010. In a similar time line (see the figure I made below) we had films like King Corn (2007), Food Inc (2008), and Forks over Knives (2011) that are drawing attention to the problems in our food system. To me, this seems like our society is starting to think about these two trends, martial arts and food, and there is room to explore a deeper connection.
This will be just the first of a series of explorations of food and martial arts in popular culture but I think this broad look at the rise of these two forms of film can start a conversation about why we are seeing this and what we can do about it. We hope to incorporate many of the ideas in these films in our lessons and keeping up to date on how our popular culture treats these themes is a good start. - Mike Cermak
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