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| Dan Inosanto |
I find it quite interesting that in mainstream pop culture martial arts such as Tae kwon do, karate, Mauy Thai and Kung fu are such widely known. With iconic movies, video game characters and actors such as The Karate Kid, Fists of Fury, Enter the Dragon, Ong Bak, Street fighter’s Ryu, Tekken’s Jin, Hworang, etc, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan. Such household names bring about recognition of these martial art styles and a general belief that martial arts looks like how they are portrayed in pop media. I mean, how many people joined Karate after watching Daniel San? Or Mauy Thai after seeing Tony Ja in Ong bak? And let us not forget the infamous Bruce Lee and his promotion of Kung Fu. However, when it comes to Filipino Martial Arst such recognition is not made and in many cases is even confused by the general public as being a different martial art all together or dismissed as just hardcore street fighting. Despite the fact that FMA has been in popular culture just as long as many of these other martial arts. With this in mind this expose’ will look at FMA in pop culture and due to its length is written in two posts.
The earliest film that I could find that showcased Filipino Martial Arts was a French documentary on the
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| Arnis/Escrima/Kali |
Philippine islands shot in the 1950s (this was the date posted on youtube), the film was was only shown to selected audiences in France and thus did not bring much attention to FMA. As a side note, it is interesting to see that the French have their own stick fighting art known as La Canne’ which resembles FMA. The next two films featuring FMA were produced in the Philippines. One was a small documentary called “Arnis: Sticks of Death” and was released in 1984 and the second starred Lito Lapid in 1986 titled “Kamagong,” these films were Filipino attempts to enter into the booming Bruce Lee/Kung fu craze that had hit the shores of American. Unfortunately these films never made as big an impact as the kung fu movies at that time.
Therefore it was not until the release of the lost footage in Bruce Lee’s the game of death in 1988 that audiences in America and around the world were exposed to Filipino Martial Arts. A famous fight scene between Bruce Lee and Dan Inosanto showed FMA on the big screen. Dan Inosanto at the time of filming was a sparring partner of Bruce and is currently the founder of Inosanto style Kali/Escrima. However, Game of Death was never finished by Bruce Lee because of his untimely death and was released as a showcase of his martial art hybrid Jeet Kune Do, therefore not many people outside of the FMA community may have picked up on the FMA in the film.
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| Mortal Kombat |
Interestingly a year before, the world witnessed the very first video game character to ever use Filipino Martial Arts, in the iconic video game that started a craze in 1987 “Street Fighter.” The character was one of two British bouncers controlled by the computer who went by the name of Eagle. Funny enough, Eagle was not seen in the latter games in the Street fighter franchise and was replaced in Street fighter 2 which was an even more popular game with the likes of Chun Li an exponent of Chinese martial arts and a more attractive ass. Eagle would not make a resurgence until decades latter in Capcom vs SNK2. Fortunately FMA was supposedly showcased in another popular video game of roughly the same time, “Mortal Kombat” with fighters such as Sonya, Quan Chi and Dairou being cited as using Escrima, however due to the over graphic nature of this video game FMA was probably overlooked in favour of the blood and boobs that mortal kombat is famous for. Another video game that looked promising and was set to showcase FMA at its more hardcore, was True Crime:Hong Kong which featured moves from Sikaran, Kali and Silat. Unfortunately this game was canned before its release in 2011.
In the 90s FMA was finally being showcased in American movies by non-Filipino actors. One of the first films to do this was released in 1991 and titled “The Perfect Weapon” starring Jeff Speakman, unfortunately despite the use of Arnis and scenes depicting Sinawali and Redondo, FMA was passed off in the film as being part of Kempo Karate. Whilst in the 90s, Arnis supplanted the Japanese weapons in many Kempo schools in America due to the believed effectiveness of FMA, the film made no mention it was FMA based not Kempo therefore giving the wrong impression to viewers. The next American film to use FMA in film was non-other than a film starring Pamelia Anderson “Barb Wire,” in 1996. However, only one scene depicted FMA and was choreographed by Diana Lee Inosanto the daughter of Dan Inosanto. Unfortunately the film was not critically acclaimed and showcased Anderson’s assets more than martial arts anyway.
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| Blade |
Finally in 1998 “Blade” was released starring Wesley Snipes, which had fight scenes choreographed by Jeff Ward a Pekiti Tirsia practitioner and had stunt men on board such as Jeff Imada a long-time student of the Dan Inosanto Academy. Unknown to many viewers all three movies in the “Blade” series featured Filipino Martial Arts, with most viewers just thinking it was some cool ninja Sh@#! In fact many marvel characters are cited to have learnt FMA in conjunction with other martial arts such as Electra, Deadpool and the Punisher in fact in the 2008 movie “Punisher” FMA was used.
Continued in part 2…
Cool movie links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v26eEuj8g8&feature=related – Blade 2002
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkz9N6h2C9A&feature=related – Game of Death 1988
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64QvLCIjrUw&feature=related – “Eagle” Streetfighter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNwUeF5y_Po&feature=fvwrel- True Crime game
Link to ASTIG FMA
www.astigfma.com learn FMA!
