In the Tube

This is a write-up from the Rapid Journal (the only martial art publication available in the Philippines today). Visit, www.rapidjournal.com

Have You Seen the YouTube Lately? If not, then you miss one of the funny but disgusting footages about the FMA.

For your sake, let me describe what is on the screen.

There was this sort of competition held in a faraway land late last year. A female participant (non Filipina) came running after a phantom opponent, twirling her olisi like a metamphetamine-loaded berserk. And then . . . she tiptoed and goes prancing to all corners like prancing horse of Her Majesty. A big round of applause follows from the ignorant crowd, as expected.

This is how they showcase the FMA to the public nowadays. The performance maybe great, but whose idea was this? Was this purely aesthetic or plain idiocy?

Now if you are an FMA enthusiast or in a Filipino shoe, will you be happy with that? Will you be happy to see a part of your Filipino heritage butchered that way? If you are happy, then you are an insensitive, apathetic dude.

If you don’t see the point, then imagine how a judo devotee would feel, if he sees two people pretending to be judoka (in a supposedly judo demonstration), pulling each other’s gi, but instead of trying to trip or throw each other to the ground as expected from them, they continue and dance the tango.

Why is this happening to eskrima or to the FMA in general?

Well, likely because of their ignorance of the Filipino culture, their thinking are clouded with myth, and their lack of respect for us Filipinos, as a people. More likely because we Filipinos don’t appreciate the value of the indigenous knowledge we inherited. By the way Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is described as;

. . . a local knowledge that is unique to a given culture or society. . . . Much of such knowledge is passed down from generation to generation . . . IK is the knowledge that people have gained through inheritance from their ancestors. It is a people-derived science, and it represents people creativity, innovation and skills.

The above mentioned footage uploaded in the Internet is the result of the three- decade (since the 70s) misrepresentation of the FMA, locally and overseas. We are now harvesting the bad fruits (because we planted a bad tree), so it is never a good idea to tell a lie or to propagate myths. Lie and its byproduct, myth, will inspire people to showcase FMA in a wrong way.

Do you think it is good to promote the idea that “carabao wrestling” as an integral part of a traditional FMA training or the idea of developing stamina by running barefooted across rice the paddy? (honestly, I enjoyed seeing those two big but naïve Caucasians panting and floundering in the mud, forgetting the dangers of broken glasses and other tetanus-coated debris, ascaris and all). The only positive thing about going barefooted is to develop callouses, hard enough to open spiny sea-urchins.

What if, someday, some of these misinformed foreign eskrima enthusiasts will find out, that what we are showing them, is actually adapted/plagiarized from other arts like silat, jujutsu and koksut? So if we are concern about the future of the FMA, we can help by telling people the truth about FMA. But then, we need to learn more about our culture, first.

So have you seen, what’s new, in the YouTube lately?

If you don’t know how, go to an online computer and type www.youtube.com and there is a window in the upper right corner of the screen, then type, what you want to see.