They also use animal carcasses like sides of beef and torsos of pig which also simulate human tissue. Than they use weapons from the ancient and modern world of war on these items to see what they can do. This interests me but not Loo, so I watch it by myself. In season two they started filling the test items, ballistic gel, and animal carcasses with bags of presumably fake blood. When a weapon hits they bleed, which is useful to judge from afar how lethal a weapon is. However as time goes on and more shows get made the blood and gore increases and becomes sensational. I don't really like that. But at the same time, after awhile, I do. What I like most about the show is seeing these weapons from all over the world. There was this Maori weapon called a 'Mere' which is a flat club made of Jade.
It didn't look dangerous at all because it had no sharp edge. But he broke a cow's skull in half with it. A cow's skull is twice the thickness of our own, which is just crazy from a hand-held weapon. Oh I should talk about the Maori here. This is from memory:The Maori (Mow-ree) are a group of Polynesians that traveled to New Zealand around 1300 CE. Form there, in isolation, they developed their own language and culture and were considered the last 'pure' native group having lived in seclusion until around 1800 when Europeans started showing up. It is from the Maori that the world got tattoos. Captain Cook's crew drew pictures of the natives facial tattoos and brought them back to England. The Maori also practiced cannibalism which is not unique among humans. Humans all over the world tend to think the body has power and when an enemy is bested you gain his power by eating him. If he was courageous you might eat his heart, strong you might eat his muscles, fast his legs, etc. Anyway, the Maori fought against the Europeans who had Gun Powder and muskets and scared them out of New Zealand. Maori are tough dudes.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the weapons from all over the world interest me a lot. The Deadliest Warrior show did a comparison once with Pirate vs Knight. And I thought for sure the knight would not stand a chance because the Pirate had gun powder. But when they put a ballistic gel torso on a stand and put the knight's steel breast plate on it and had a pirate guy fire the flintlock pistol at it the lead ball bounced of the breastplate harmlessly.
There was a very famous episode we talked about in my Japanese Film and Visual Culture class where they had the epic match up of Viking vs. Samurai. It is so culturally charged. The Vikings are huge white guys wielding steel weapons with brute strength. The Samurai are small Asians wielding weapons of perfect quality used with skill and speed. Who will win? (neither of those two statements are accurate btw because both are GIANT stereotypes)
Because of WWII there is a competetive culture war going on between America and Japan and you see it in our movies and our games and our news stories. The Japanese are ninja warriors, faster than light, move without sound, with martial arts training, a serious honor code and a fearless reputation. All of this depicts the Japanese as ninja super men, better than Americans, able to take on huge groups of people and emerge victorious, due to martial training and dedication, they are depicted as being capable of everything, everything except being human. Which makes it easy to fight them in war. An enemy that is like you is hard to kill. I'm jumping around a lot. Point is that episode of deadliest warrior only fed this erroneous idea. Contrary to popular opinion the Japanese are very human with idiots and jerks among them just like us.
Sidenote: WWII propaganda worked for both the Americans and Japanese. The Japanese were told by their government that the Americans were savages, you are better than them, and not to surrender to them because they would cut you up and do unspeakable things to you. The Americans were told a similar thing. They were both told this because humans are scared of that.
When they met each other on the battlefield they fought tenaciously. The Japanese soldiers didn't want to get chopped up or tortured. And the Americans didn't either. After the fight the Americans were victorious and started cutting off the ears, eyes, fingers, toes and teeth of the Japanese as trophies and started hanging them around their necks. The other Japanese saw the Americans do this, forever cementing the propaganda they had been told as truth. Now the Americans had seen similar things done to their guys. So both people did the same thing. I'm not sure who started it first, but it doesn't really matter. What you hear in our stories is how the Japanese did that to our guys. The Japanese were savages. We had to beat them. The fact that we did it back or even did it first isn't mentioned. What matters is they BOTH did it because they believed their propaganda. Its also important to see beyond culture and realize that humans are capable of some nasty things regardless of culture.
It's weird. like, I am aware of violence. When I see it in a movie I often react negatively, like I don't like it. I wonder if it was necessary to show that for the sake of the story. Might there be a way to convey that info without violence? Sometimes violence bothers me and sometimes it doesn't and I like it. Though I think that is human and depends on context. Like imagine the movie The Count of Monte Cristo. Imagine you skip ahead to the final fight and you see this savage sword battle between two people. It is hard to watch, the violence is high. You don't know who will win, or how, or why they are fighting. Its only with context that you understand why they are fighting, that the bad guy ruined the good guy's life and tried to take everything he held dear and now after all that horror the good guy is going to get him back, REVENGE! Revenge is soooo human. We get it, and because we do some of the most violent images can be shown and we can watch and feel justified in doing so.
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