Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Hey Francis, I'm not Sylvie but I'm sure soon. But I've spent a lot of time around Yodkhunpon and I have to say there is very little power in Yodkhunpon's elbow attack. In general the elbow in Golden Age Muay Thai is a cutting weapon, so looseness of movement and accuracy (bone on bone) is prized. It's not a strength or power strike. Everything Yodkhunpon teaches is about creating torso whip, a play in the shoulders. You can find much of this in the Muay Thai Library and Sylvie Study sessions. Things he's advocated for are like: throwing a 1,000 elbows a day, or hanging to open up the shoulders. You want fluidity of movement, not power.

Really well said. This was really even much more the case in the Golden Age because fighters could do everything. There were very few successful one-dimensional fighters. These days you get much more singular fighting dimensions, it seems. Back in the day all the top fighters had all the skills. You couldn't just take their weapon away and win. I can never get out of my head the fight between Boonlai (a kicker) and Somrak (a few years before he won Gold as an Olympic boxer). Somrak wins without throwing a single meaningful punch (maybe not even a single punch, I can't recall). It's pretty amazing: But so many of the top fighters had just capacities across styles. Chamuekphet was a relentless knee fighter, but could kick with anyone. Weeapol had very heavy hands, but could kick with everyone.

You kind of tend to have two kinds of kickers, if you want to be really generalized. You have southpaw kickers who tend to have big, thunderous kicks (because their kick goes right into the power side of the orthodox fighter), like Yodsanklai and Samkor that you mention, and then you have orthodox fighters who are really more Muay Femeu, artful in scoring points and taking angles. Silapathai was unearthly in this. Check out his fight versus Karuhat were Karuhat, one of the most Muay Femeu fighters ever elected to kick with him: Very few fighters ever could out kick Karuhat. It's best to keep in mind that these "styles" are all just descriptors. If you said someone was Muay Tae, it isn't some kind of club he belongs to, you're mostly just saying "that guy kicks a lot". It's not purely that, but we tend to make a bigger deal of these style types than Thais do. Most kickers of the Golden Age though would consider themselves Muay Femeu. Femeu fighting just means "skilled" and "artful", something pretty much any fighter wouldn't mind being said about themselves. The torso kick was the most dependable highest scoring strike in Muay Thai, so the "art" of the kick was using it repeatedly to just rack up the points and demonstrate your control over the space.

The one to watch is Silapathai, maybe the best Muay Tae fighter ever: https://www.patreon.com/posts/21484000 Also Boonlai was a hell of a kicking fighter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/25122414

He did gain quite a bit of weight, but fought Sagat as little as 8 years ago, don't know if you saw that:

We did, but I'm not sure if it is worthy of a translation. It was mostly just Dieselnoi hanging out with him, which was nice enough. Dieselnoi literally got on his knees to greet him, which is really extraordinary to see a Thai do. And on his knees when he went to leave as well.

An interesting dimension to walk when thinking of a possible Muay Noir, is that in the minds of many film critics, Film Noir does not constitute a genre. Writers like Paul Schrader like to say that Film Noir is just literally "black film" (as opposed to gray film, or off-white film), meaning, I assume, it's a gray scale pallete choice. One is painting towards that end of the scale. Thinking in these terms, instead of grafting on genre or definition types, presents us with a much more open ended set of possibilities. For instance my thought that for me darkness slows time down, brings a sense of peace, asethetically goes against many of the more genre-centric uses of darkness (to produce tension, or foreboding). This kind of reversal is much more understandable if you just start from the "Black Film" perspective. What does Black Film give us or present as possible? We are looking at a pallete, and a relationship to light, and maybe less than an appeal to a convention. I don't think we can push this too far and still meaningfully use the reference Film Noir, but it can act as a creative starting place.

I don't shoot a lot of these, but thumbing through ran into a reportedly Noir angle:

Logic of Shadows Doing a little research into the aesthetic of Film Noir last night we watched Jeanne Eagels (1957) with Kim Novak. I was drawn to it because it was in a list of Noir genre busting Film Noir films, in a critical essay list that included 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was filled with beautiful frames. But this series below just captured my brain. Kim Novak, caught in emotional desperation, turns her face away from an old flame who has come to save her from self-destruction. I'm just mesmerized by her turn-away, how she suddenly incandesces in almost a blownout white of sun, as she turns away, despondent. The Logic of Shadows. Here she is "going away", but growing brighter, which in just a few frames enacts her tragic arc as a character in the film, a kind of Icarus of morality. Catching more light, but burning up. It shows that even in a simple binary of light and dark you can compose a calculus of great meaning.

Unfortunately, this one didn't work out all that well! We got Dieselnoi to set it up, and he came with us and we all sat down and had a conversation, chatted old times, but Vichannoi was not in a place where he wanted to do any instruction. He's gained a fair amount of weight, and seems like a super successful businessman. So, we didn't push it, and instead and a nice talk. Not every effort to film works out!

In general, I think it's pretty good practice to learn to get comfortable throwing techniques higher because it kind of moves your baseline. When you get stressed, your teep might lose elevation. If you are used to throwing higher teeps mid-teeps will feel easier. As to ideal teeping height, this is the way the Dieselnoi explained it, if I recall. If facing a puncher, teep high. If facing a kicker, teep mid (controlling the hips).

The first thing is probably doing 100s of teeps each day, just to get more and more comfortable with the elementary action. As you get more habituated you become both more grounded (balanced) and quicker too. The second thing is to learn to pull that teep back after contact, a little like the jab is pulled back. Your teep is like a jab, its not a power shot, and all power comes from the body weight transfer, so getting the feeling of that little "pop" will just improve over time. Pretty awesome that you are listening to the Muay Thai Bones podcast! If you keep having trouble with your teep being caught, one thing to do to get a partner every day and have them hold your teep, and work on your balance and counters to the catch. A quick turn of your leg "in", with the knee turning to point toward the floor, should free almost any catch, if you do it quickly. You can also do a "heavy leg" counter, which is you just lean forward and just weight the leg directly downward, while it remains straight. It's surprisingly effective, most do not prepare for that weight transfer. And lastly, you might be more comfortable with more of a side on teep, like the one favored by Samart at times. A straight on teep gives your heel to the opponent, as a handle to cup from below. If you teep quickly it shouldn't be a problem, but turning the foot with a side angle removes this handle. You can see Samart using his side teep in this fight: Just a few thoughts. If anyone is wondering about the podcast in question, here is the episode, we talk about the teep in the first segment:

In terms of personal inspiration again, Kurasawa all the way. I've read that there is some debate about how many of his films would qualify as Film Noir (some fancy a very narrow boundary), but a film like Stray Dog (1949) definitely fits the bill, and is incredible. For my part, a great number of Kurasawa films are quite Noir, so many of them in the aftermath of a disillusionment in society. This is leaving aside for a moment his Samurai films, which may be one of the more important templates for a Muay Noir photography. Kurasawa is a director who sometimes slips from my mind despite having enormous impact on me, visually, and when I go back to him I shake my head and think to myself: There may never have been as great a director as him. Stray Dog

More on classic Film Noir aesthetics, from Paul Schrader's - Notes on Film Noir Most interesting in these observations to me is #3, that the subject and the context are given the same lighting. I experience Noir as plucking out the subject from the darkness, with the avenue of light, while I can definitely see what Schrader is saying. This is maybe a fundamental tension of a subject swallowed up by the corrupting or oeneric world, and the subject disjoined from it. Maybe there is a passing into and out of existence, between these two poles. I have to think on this.

Additional aids in defining classical Film Noir: Perhaps it could be called the Romance of Fatalism, Corruption and Death.

I'm still thinking about your questions about performativity and femininity. There is really a perfomative aspect of Film Noir and also in Muay Thai, and there is a hyper-masculinity in both, but I'm not quite sure how they connect up. We get that line of Dorothy Parker's "Scratch an actor, you find an actress". The Film Noir construct seems to be pretty bulwarked against any such revelation, even if true. In some ways the performative elements of masculinity are the essence of masculinity, especially when we climb out of western sensibilities. The Samurai, highly performative. The executioner.

On the history of Noir. In this essay on the Noir found in the 1955 film Night of the Hunter, it is argued that while Americans may have created the classic Film Noir genre (preceded in time by the French), it was the French who created the concept in regard to those American films. Post World War 2 French audiences suddenly were exposed - after a 5 year absence - to triple billed films in theaters, drawing together their similarities. In this way it was from the start a kind of meta-genre. Derived from German Expressionist influences, born of post-war American social critique, and then recognized and theorized by French audiences. on an alternate reading of the same history, "Paint it Black: The Family Tree of Film Noir"

I think a recurring, and perhaps substantive element of Film Noir is captured in the phrase: A stranger in a strange land. (Heinlein's title, but not the book, only the phrase.) There's often a disjunction in Noir photography (when it's not quotational), like being out of Time, or out of Space. You can't say that definitively that this is a requirement, but is an important thread.

This photo shot by lordk2 I think was a huge inspiration on me, and maybe says a lot about what Muay Noir can be. lordk2 shoots a lot in black and white, but his work really has lost me (our aesthetics diverge maybe). I really adored his much earilier Sumo wrestling series, some of the most beautiful photography of athletes I've seen. This photo is special. It contains I think to very compelling elements of what Noir photography can bring: Psychology and Structure. And I think this photo really propelled me in my own direction. I think it's important to ask what the difference between just turning a photo black and white, and bumping contrast and creating a Noir frame or exploration. I think it has to do with focus, the nature of focus, maybe. In any case this is a seminal photo. It's Sylvie fighting for a WMC world title maybe 3 weight classes up, with two incredible legends in her corner, Dieselnoi and Karuhat.

A personal influence, which for me touches on some of my Muay Noir project are the frames of the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, who often is Noir-ish, or German Expression-ish. If not familiar, here is a video montage of many of his films. I'm not completely sure what Tarkovsky has to say about Noir, but he does oscillate between the dark and contrasted, and also sci-fi subjects, working around tradition.

Sylvie said something interesting the other day, about my Muay Noir photography. Something along the lines of, Muay Thai photography has too long been focused on the action, but you focus on the stillness. There is maybe something about the use of shadows that produces a pervading sense of stillness, and this use of dark maybe is another thing that make Noir a compelling vehicle for Muay Thai photography. It allows us to open up the moment more, to catch the glimmer of immanence. or the foundation of a quality, or a relation. I think there is something too this. Shadows can slow things down. Non-being creates a bath of calm and rest. Of course shadows can also be used to produce tension and drama, a sense of dread (the father of Film Noir, German Expressionism), but for me they work in the other direction. The provide the conditions for a certain emerging, a revelation. Or perhaps a stage setting.

Another photo edit by Emma (origin) There is something revolutionized about a woman working on her own image, within the Noir framework which contains a history of the spectral projection of the femme. This edit contains the reversal of the contradiction in gender, autopoetically generated. Does it mean something different for a woman to be working in Noir, in the sense that they are more working IN the constructed Looking Glass to a greater degree, and therefore able to subvert or synthesize it?

A segment on Plotinus and light, from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, setting up a possible metaphysics of photography, and perhaps a Noir foundation. Noir as immanence. Why does Being complicate all beings? Because each being explicates Being. There will be a linguistic doublet here: complicate, explicate… …Why? Because this was undoubtedly the most dangerous theme. Treating God as an emanative cause can fit because there is still the distinction between cause and effect. But as immanent cause, such that we no longer know very well how to distinguish cause and effect, that is to say treating God and the creature the same, that becomes much more difficult. Immanence was above all danger. So much so that the idea of an immanent cause appears constantly in the history of philosophy, but as [something] held in check, kept at such-and-such a level of the sequence, not having value, and faced with being corrected by other moments of the sequence and the accusation of immanentism was, for every story of heresies, the fundamental accusation: you confuse God and the creature. That’s the fatal accusation. Therefore the immanent cause was constantly there, but it didn’t manage to gain a status [statut]. It had only a small place in the sequence of concepts. Spinoza arrives… …It’s with Plotinus that a pure optical world begins in philosophy. Idealities will no longer be only optical. They will be luminous, without any tactile reference. Henceforth the limit is of a completely different nature. Light scours the shadows. Does shadow form part of light? Yes, it forms a part of light and you will have a light-shadow gradation that will develop space. They are in the process of finding that deeper than space there is spatialization. Plato didn’t know [savait] of that. If you read Plato’s texts on light, like the end of book six of the Republic, and set it next to Plotinus ‘s texts, you see that several centuries had to pass between one text and the other. These nuances are necessary. It’s no longer the same world. You know [savez] it for certain before knowing why, that the manner in which Plotinus extracts the texts from Plato develops for himself a theme of pure light. This could not be so in Plato. Once again, Plato’s world was not an optical world but a tactile-optical world. The discovery of a pure light, of the sufficiency of light to constitute a world implies that, beneath space, one has discovered spatialization. This is not a Platonic idea, not even in the Timeus. - rabbit hole here

This is really beautiful, so many of these frames inspire me. A video essay on French Film Noir, written about here. Some elements of French noir we recognise retrospectively, looking back (as it were) from vantage point of the later, almost over-adored American version: fatalism, doomed lovers, a melancholic portrait of city life and a visual style that borrows and develops lighting effects and camera angles from German Expressionist cinema. But other elements strike us as being very different from Noir USA: the emphasis on everyday life and labour; a sharper analysis of fraught racial and cultural relations, even within the most exotic Kasbah; an earthier, sometimes infinitely more perverse sexuality; and a refusal of last-minute, happy-ending resolutions.

Noir Boxing References Looking at these early examples reminds us how far the genre has drifted. These are stark, simple depictions, almost atomic, and the cynicism comes through in an almost bold, ontological way. Far from the cult of cool, instead an unnerving, existential situation. Boxing sequence from Stanley Kubrick's Film Noir Killer's Kiss (1955) An increasing disorientation of angels and movement. The Set Up (1949) opening sequence: pre-fight