neo-noir archery

1 March, 2013

 

Archery as plot-device in neo-noir revenge thriller? The Bride Wore Black (La Mariée était en noir) is a 1968 French film directed by François Truffaut. “It is a revenge film in which five men make a young bride a widow on her wedding day. She takes her revenge, methodically killing each of the five men using various methods.” Probably not one of his best, but hey.  You can watch an edited clip of it, where the lead Jeanne Moreau turns up at the home of an artist, and he thinks she’s been sent from the model agency, right here (7 mins). Sorry, no English subs, but you’ll figure it out.

Thanks to Rob Galo. 

a bigger splash

28 February, 2013

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Nice alignment, Lara, but you really shouldn’t tilt your head that much. Full size poster at Leicester Square underground station, London, England. (Photo: me)

SIX NATIONS

26 February, 2013

Whoulda thunk it. Hulking rugby forward Tom Wood, currently playing at No.8 for England in the Six Nations competition, is a compound archer, and it sounds like he’s gone pretty deep.

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Kind of intrigued by the “pressing lights into the target face to aim at” bit too.

Olympic Archery 1996: glory days

25 February, 2013

YouTube, eh? Where would lazy afternoons at work be without it? There is this incredible 25 minute video of the 1996 Olympic archery competition. The ’96 Games were held in Atlanta, Georgia with the archery portion being held at Stone Mountain Park nearby; a spectacular, brooding backdrop. You can watch it all here:

I like a lot of things about this film. The amazing displays of what would now be considered quite unorthodox techniques (especially releases). The ‘Hollywood’ inserts. The weird split channel audio. There are many highlights: the mixture of horror and bafflement on a Korean archer’s face at shooting a six. Some seriously 90s bow paint jobs. The way Kim Kyung-Wook comes down, calms down, and recomposes herself to take out a ten and the match – the mental strength, the composure, boggle the mind. In the gold medal match, she takes out the camera in the centre of the ten-ring twice.

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It starts getting really good with the men’s individual, though, and the arrival of Justin Huish. The US team (above), in the era before they let half-decent designers do the national team kits, have ended up looking slightly like a local baseball team in a heartwarming underdog movie. Huish, with his wraparounds and his hint-of-Fonzie burns is a curious mix of slacker king and pumped-aggression. There’s something threatening about him.

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The semi-final match between his and the legend that is Michele Frangilli (looking, with that glove, and that draw-all-over-his-face, like an off-duty Bond villain’s henchman) is a doozy. Watch it all here. The crowd goes apeshit, and does it again for Huish’s semi. You can see him start to respond with more and more passion. By the time he walks out for the final with M Petersson you can see him just drinking it in.

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Playing to the crowd, confidence oozing. Writing the script. As the final winds on, he starts increasingly displaying a showy tic of holding his draw hand index finger to his neck. Look at me. It’s all me.

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The denoument is a delight. The sight of an athlete responding to an ecstatic crowd, using them as a spur, setting up that feedback loop of confidence is one of the delights of watching sport. That sense of collective drama and tension. Sadly, in archery, you only usually get those kind of crowds once or twice every four years. The quality may be there, but the event is missing. (I was never much of a football fan until someone took me to see Arsenal play in the late 1990s. Standing in the North Bank when the home team scored; the noise is just… narcotic. Like nothing else. As William Blake wrote: “Energy is pure delight.”) I don’t think archery should be like football, but I want those collective feelings. I want that sense of narrative.

The film also contains a melancholic contrast to the earlier displays; in the women’s team competition, the sight of Cornelia Pfohl shooting, and then… ah, I’ll let you watch it. It’s better watched than written about (and watched till the end).

There’s a well-known post-story too. In 2001, Justin Huish’s life took a sharp turn and his archery career fell apart. You can read about that here. He was still shooting in the 2000s, and has been seen at a variety of US tournaments in recent years, including Vegas this year.  He was the first male archer to do the ‘double’ of Olympic and team gold in the same year (matched by Ku Bonchan in Rio). Someone should interview him again one of these days.

yabusame!

19 January, 2013

A reblog from me this weekend, courtesy of A Modern Girl, who wrote an amazing piece last month about yabusame, or Japanese horseback archery.

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Yabusame was designed as a way to please and entertain the myriad of gods that watch over Japan, thus encouraging their blessings for the prosperity of the land, the people, and the harvest.

A yabusame archer gallops down a 255-meter-long track at high speed. The archer mainly controls his horse with his knees, as he needs both hands to draw and shoot his bow.

As he approaches a target, he brings his bow up and draws the arrow past his ear before letting the arrow fly with a deep shout of In-Yo-In-Yo (darkness and light). The arrow is blunt and round-shaped in order to make a louder sound when it strikes the board.

Experienced archers are allowed to use arrows with a V-shaped prong. If the board is struck, it will splinter with a confetti-like material and fall to the ground. To hit all three targets is considered an admirable accomplishment. Yabusame targets and their placement are designed to ritually replicate the optimum target for a lethal blow on an opponent wearing full traditional samurai armor (O-Yoroi) which left the space just beneath the helmet visor bare.

Yabusame is characterized as a ritual rather than a sport because of its solemn style and religious aspects, and is often performed for special ceremonies or official events, such as entertaining foreign dignitaries and heads of state.

Read about it and watch the videos here: http://amoderngirl.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/yabusame-the-japanese-art-of-mounted-archery/

Now, where’s my kishagasa?

arrows pt. 25

17 January, 2013

Photo by chaotika89 • Instagram.html - Chloe Bailey

Putting the romance back. Photo by Chloe Bailey.

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

  – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The game of arrows: archery and darts

13 January, 2013

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I’m at the Lakeside Country Club in Frimley Green, about forty miles southwest of London. This curious venue in semi-rural Surrey has been the mecca of darts for nearly thirty years, the place where they hold the World Professional Championship every January. I’ve been here before, but it still feels like a pilgrimage.

You may or may not know about the twenty year old ‘split in darts‘ that has resulted in two separate circuits with (mostly) separate tournaments and two different ‘world championships’, held almost back to back around the New Year. The other (PDC) tournament is now held at Alexandra Palace in London and features more money, more glitz, a larger audience and Phil Taylor, unquestionably the greatest darts player of all time. This (BDO) tournament, once the most prestigious, is increasingly looking like the lesser of the two in terms of players and standards, despite recent changes. You can play in one or the other, but not both. Some people are fans of one tournament only, and loudly badmouth the other as either ‘sports entertainment, not real darts’ or ‘Dad’s Army plodders’, depending.  Some people like both. I like both.

I fucking love darts. I’ve been watching this tournament on the BBC almost as long as I have been alive. It’s as much a part of the cultural fabric of the UK as the Shipping Forecast or James Bond – although it’s probably more popular in the Netherlands per capita. Because of the BBC coverage, there isn’t a person alive in this country who is unfamilar with the basic rules or the ‘onnnee hundred and eeeiiiggghttyy’ bellow of a referee announcing the highest possible three-dart score. The death of commentator Sid Waddell last year made front as well as back pages. At this quarter-finals session I get to watch Robbie ‘Kong’ Green vs. Tony ‘Silverback’ O’Shea, two heavyweight contenders doing nothing to change the image of the sport as solely for overweight men. It’s like watching two giant primates battling for domination of the earth. (UPDATE: The 2013 World Championship was won by Scott Waites.)

Yes yes yes, you may be thinking. What the hell has this got to do with archery? Well, quite a bit, as it happens – particularly in the UK. The history of darts and archery is mired in semi-facts and legends about barrel-staves and blowpipes. The two go back a long way, though – Henry VIII, a well known fan of archery, was given a set of “darts of Biscayan fashion, richly ornamented,” by his wife Anne Boleyn in 1530 – although these were probably not darts as we know them today but more of a small throwing spear. The assumption that darts was an ‘indoor version’ of the famous mandatory archery practice, useful for cold British winters, seems to be well-rooted. (Actually, darts itself appears to be a partially French game). Darts in the UK is frequently referred to as ‘arrows’ or ‘the game of arrows’. The similarities are really based on the targets, though. Round. Banded. A prize right in the middle.

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When I went to watch archery at the Olympics last year (which you can read about here) I had several people describing it as either ‘big darts’ or, more frequently ‘posh darts’. Not unreasonably, the one arrow shoot-offs were scathingly described as similar to ‘shooting for the bull to decide who throws first’. More amusingly, I’ve heard darts described as ‘working-class archery‘. The general perception is that archery is a middle-class sport in this country, which may or may not be true – you can trace different historical strands from the working-class companies at Agincourt to the sport’s green-bodiced medievalist aspirational heyday in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But the class element comes out in the frequent calls for darts to become an Olympic sport. Feel free to Google the wide strand of opinion that says ‘why is archery (or shooting, or showjumping, or whatever) in there but darts isn’t? Posh rubbish’. (The answer is, of course, that archery as a sport is practised worldwide, whereas the vast majority of top darts players are from Britain or the Netherlands).

Despite a lot of people’s best efforts and reasonable arguments, I think it’s pretty unlikely the IOC will put it darts on the programme for 2020. I suspect there is an element of snobbery though. Darts has long laboured under the shadow of a famous sketch from the 1980s at the sport’s beery zenith, and the boxing-style live elements introduced by the PDC don’t help matters. Not that I think any of it should change. I love the noise and the excitement and the music and the intros and the lights and the waving of the banners and the pitchers of beer and the dressing up and… the lot. I love it all. The Lakeside venue itself, with its atmospheric mix of faded music-hall and end-of-pier cabaret remains utterly unique. This is how we do it, and we don’t care what you think. What other world championship sporting venue has a giant picture of Engelbert Humperdinck in the cloakroom?

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One strand of thinking suggests that if archery is to become a bigger spectator sport, it should try to become more like darts. Alan Wills mentioned this during the Olympics:

The Cumbrian, who is part of Great Britain’s Olympic squad, says a change could boost the sport’s popularity.

“They could have a masters event with archers from around the world, and have crowds like they do at the darts,” Wills told BBC Sport. “I’m known as ‘Dangerous Al’, so others could have nicknames too. It’d be more exciting for people to watch.”

Promoter Barry Hearn helped revolutionise darts during the last decade, with players given nicknames and entering the arena to music. As a result, attendances at events have vastly improved, along with the prize funds, helped by the growth in television coverage.

That’s all very well, but a cranked up noise level at archery events has been blamed for losses before. The two sports require focus, precision, muscular control, confidence, and a cast-iron mental game, but the more Zen, martial art attractions of archery sit slightly at odds with the noise and the glamour girls and the bookies. (Although I did quite well out of betting on archery at the Olympics. Due to the high turnover of matches, one particular online bookmakers fell asleep at the wheel and frequently failed to close the individual match markets before they had started, leaving you able to watch live and bet in-play at the pre-match odds – this happened at least twice. I was praying for a match to go the ‘wrong’ way so I could really take them to the cleaners, but somebody eventually woke up…). At the Lakeside, they have a Coral’s concession right there by the front door:

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Darts as a spectator sport is really a product of the TV era, with the invention of the split screen. Even at the events, ultimately everyone is watching a giant screen for the information. No one apart from a handful of people right at the front can see the board. Archery, of course suffers from the same problem magnified, although quite often the archer can’t see what they have scored without a scope. Increasing the excitement for the audience, with screens, ideas such as heart rate monitors and targets that give instant feedback as to hits would help. The technology is available – it’s whether there is will or interest to do something else.

I think the reason why target archery isn’t a big spectator sport outside the ‘big dance’ every four years is the fact that there isn’t really a great deal of strategy involved in the actual gameplay itself to add tension and interest. The simplicity of the objective in target archery is, of course, one of the most beautiful things about it, but it doesn’t endear it to spectators, especially non-specialists. The head to head format has helped, but in darts you have the double finishing, the counting, the necessary shift in style from scoring to finishing, the ‘breaking of serve’, the curious ‘punishment for failure’ of the numbering plan, percentage shots, bonuses for a high checkout, the progressive increase in sets, and the holy grail of a nine dart finish to keep things interesting, as well as frequent variants such as ‘double start’. But the real hook of darts is the speed of play, and the fact that a leg isn’t finished until the final dart hits the double or bull – until then, anything is possible. No one can get an unassailable lead. Some of these ideas have been implemented in field archery competitions, but if target archery ‘wants’ to become a bigger global sport, it may require some different thinking.

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Archery and darts have frequently been combined in other ways, though. 70 or 80 cm dart board faces are popular and found in many UK club cupboards. Competitions combining the two have been held, frequently. The Stoke Mandeville games, a forerunner of the Paralympics, used to feature a sport called archery-darts:

Archery-darts or dartchery as its name was shortened to was first demonstrated at the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1953 and added to the competitive programme in 1954. This game began at the Chaseley home in Eastbourne, where a team of wheelchair archers would take on teams of non-disabled darts players from pubs and clubs in the area. The non-disabled darts players would play their normal game throwing at the normal board. The wheelchair archers would use a bow and arrow shooting at a board exactly three times the normal size of a standard dart board at a distance of thirty feet…  Dartchery remained on the Paralympic programme for wheelchair athletes up until Arnhem in 1980.

And there’s this:

In archery-mad Bhutan, they combine archery with thrown darts in something that looks like a laugh, frankly. All this, and annoying TV ads too. As long as target faces are round, it’ll be here. Get used to it.