Grace finally agreed to watch Cobra Kai properly. The date of the all vallry tournament was yesterday so the creators jokingly apologized for upstaging the royal wedding.
Simultaneously I was looking up stuff online for this lion dance ritual I wanted to make my own but draw from older sources and probably mix it with western stuff because I am mixed....in any case, I was looking in ancient places.
The story of the nian suggests an ancient origin because it suggests the origin of the word for year... nian. Han writing is from the north, but ask a northern Chinese person about the story of the nian and they will look at you funny.
Tell them the story well enough and they will believe that you just taught them something about their own culture. By try to actually trace the story and think about what really makes sense.... and you might come to a conclusion that the traditions, in the form they are, are newer than yoy are... and draw from older traditions....much like what I am doing now.
Cobra Kai, Karate Kid, and Martial Arts in general all do this.
Miyagi Do Karate comes from a fisherman who gets lost and learns Kung Fu on China (this is similar to the actual story of Karate, which is Fukianese White Crane and was once called Chinese hand instead of empty hand) it is practuced by the Miyagi Family in Okinawa. (actual Karate becomes widespread in Japan when an educator makes it part if the curriculum, interestingly at around the same time Suzuki develops his method of violin teaching. The goals are similar and the Karate educator is a pacifist.)
In Karate kid they play with these ideas through Mr. Miyagi, the teacher and then his friend and nephew who represent Modern Japan in the 80s.
In Cobra Kai, Danny is the American who grew up with the Karate kid movies and loves the symbolism, but ultimately is not Mr. Miyagi, and all Larusso has are the teachings.
Simitlarly Johnny is getting his teachings from an 80s movie, from his students, and from people around him. The women in the story, whether it is Danny's wife, Miguel's mom, seem to be the adult voices. The voices of reason. The grandmothers both have more pugilistic views. Aisha often has rational interpretations of strike first that bring the Cobra Kais away from acting too crazy.
My point with all this is that even though Cobra Kai is fictional, it toys with old stories that are ancient.... but one of the symbolic and ancient stories it may be destined to toy with intentionally or subconsciously...has its orugins bot in the east but in the west. After all, the Cobra, snakes, nagas, dragons, these are holy things in the east... in the west too before Christianity. Arthur used the serpent but that is a pagan symbol.
The symbol of Cobra Kai is obviously the snake. What is the symbol of Miyagi Do? It is the Bonsai... the tree. Cobra Kai, is telling the story from the Serpent's point of view.... you see whete I am going here? In fact this symbolism is the only thing that is good about Karate Kid 3.
Hopefully Cobra Kai 2 will draw from the plethora of Kung Fu movies. I mean. Robbie is easily Yang Guo from Condor heroes...
But the "blueprints", as Larusso would say, of these movies is more easily seen in Genesis. Which makes sense given which culture is actually writing the story.
In fact in an interview they compare Ally to Helen of Troy.
Grace was asking me what the point of Cobra Kai is, and why not keep Miguel with Danny. Keep it formulaic.
The point is two countries fighting and that there is always another side to the story.
The point for me is, story tellers are so creatuve and imaginitive that they can make something new and awesome that draws so well from ancient rituals that you believe that they are older than they are. Instead of getting mad about this... get inspired.
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