Muay Lertrit Diaries - Coming to Thailand To Train in Traditional Military Muay Thai
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By Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu · Posted
The above is a kind of rough hypothesis, joining together broad brush issues of social mobility in traditional culture, Buddhistic cultivation of the proper affects, and the aesthetics of meaningful fighting in the culture. Along these same lines one could consider the traditional role of Muay Khao in the Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu dynamic. This could be considered a Bull vs Matador aesthetic, which I've argued expresses a deeper aesthetic dyad (the divinity vs the animality dyad). In thinking about social mobility within the culture, and the socio-economic factor in fighting style, it needs to be noted that the "femeu" fighter is often associated with the sophistication of the Capital of Bangkok (even though some provincial centers like Khon Kaen have produced a great number of Femeu fighters, Karuhat, Somrak, Pudpadnoi, etc), and Muay Khao, a style pridefully expressive of physical endurance, strength and a spirit of persistence, is strongly associated with rural life and the provinces. The classic Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu matchup of the Golden age could be seen as a passion play of the strong-from-work farmer chasing the cultivated artful Bangkok technician. (Some Muay Khao fighters like Dieselnoi chaff against this negative stereotype, emphasizing their femeu-ness when talking about themselves, others like Samson embrace their "unbeautiful" power and endurance, as an identity.) Within this matchup there is a cultural weighting of the art of fighting toward the sophisticated Bangkok artist. Just thinking in archetypes and clinches, the chasing Muay Khao fighter can be depicted as low "IQ", "just strong" and any number of class related pictures. (We have these same class divisions in America, we often don't think about them. The rough-and-tumble slugger, or the guy who is only "country strong".). Just thinking about the socio-economic realities of Thailand, & even Siam, and questions of social mobility, there has always been a polarity between rural and Capital power. When the Muay Khao fighter wins, and they won quite a bit in the Golden Age of Muay Thai with pretty much half of the FOTYs going to Muay Khao fighters, its that they have overcome the built-in aesthetic bias against the chase in traditional Muay Thai. They had to prove themselves persistent enough and/or artful enough to "catch" the Femeu opponent. Perhaps no fight typified the Muay Khao fighter not catching the Femeu Bangkok Prince of Muay Thai than Namphon vs Samart 2, you can read about it here: I add this inner picture to the overall concept of Chasing in the first post. It's not that chasing is completely removed from the aesthetic in traditional Muay Thai, in fact in its Golden Age the chase was an essential component of it as many matches, most excitingly, were "chase" matches. But, because the aesthetic was tuned to favor control over chase, chasers had to raise their game. It couldn't just be pure chasing, because buried within traditional Muay Thai was the indignity of the chase. This means one chases to control, one chases in a controlled manner, one develops an ART of chasing, of stalking, so that it doesn't feel and look like chasing. It raises the skill level of the chaser, perhaps bringing more social meaning to fighting as entertainment. I think this is something that is missed in people that think about the bias in traditional Muay Thai scoring. The bias towards "not chasing" actually produced some of the greatest stalking, chasing fighters on the planet. -
Sorry for not answering in proper quotations, a quick input. I asked someone who documents lethwei about it: "I think a lot of people mistake the tattoos for being directly connected to lethwei. I've seen them in so many more contexts including theatre and other traditional sports from Burma." On martial arts as warfare I completely agree with you. It would be extremely odd if weapons were not included. Lethwei belongs to "thaing" though, one of Myanmar's traditional martial arts together with banshe which uses weapons. I understand Myanmar army has been trained in Thaing and historically there were differences between various people and parts of the country, lowlands and highlands. Could be a connection there? In lethwei what we see today I think difference is more in personal styles than ethnicity but I'm not 100% sure. -
By Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu · Posted
One of the interesting things in Michael Chaney treatment is that he specifically would like to erase the highland/lowland distinction that a lot of historians focus on. This, for instance, in Thai-Siam studies can be quite emphasized. Part of this may be that highland cultures may have had more of a penchant for aggression or violence in combat - for instance headhunting seems to have persisted in the highland regions much longer than elsewhere in mainland Southeast Asia, and in Siam-Thai ideology these peoples have been positioned as "savage", opposed to the high culture of the Capital and its halo of authority out to the foothills of the North. I don't really know the distribution of ethnicity, but have you noticed an cultural connection between highland (or lowland) Burmese and present day Lethwei? That is a very nice data point. My own intuition is that I have doubts about Muay Boran (or Lethwei) directly coming from combat itself, at least large scale combat tracing back to the 17th century, for example. My main reason for this is that practically every piece of evidence I've seen is that this kind of combat is not weaponless at all. Everyone is armed with blades, spear/lance and/or shield. I'm sure every rice farmer was very adept at using a blade for work. If there WAS a direct development of a fighting art for or from military actions it most certainly would have been a weaponed fighting art, and the shield would probably be a significant aspect of that fighting. We can make conceptual connections to how Muay Thai, Muay Boran or (I guess) Lethwei may be related to weaponed fighting...but that fact that it isn't weaponed fighting seriously undermines some of that historical picture. I could though see subduing an opponent being part of much smaller scale raiding, which would be largely focused on slave capture. I think this makes perfect sense. I think trends in culture and expression really change and can change fast, in a decade or two, and not necessarily reach back centuries. A big part of the ideological picture Thailand presents about Muay Thai is that it is the reason the Thais were never in historical fact colonized (the story that is told). Instead it is presented that a series of Kings through strategy were able to find ways to absorb Western influence & control, and retain a sense of ideological identity. [sorry, I wrote all this before I saw that you brought it up! But I'll leave it in nonetheless] In the Thai telling they "won" because they were smart and pliant before a formidable force, something they navigated with great sagacity. You can see how the two mythologies diverge (not making judgements on either). The brief (allied) Japanese occupation left a mark on Thailand, but largely there has been seldom a sense that a foreign invader had to be fought off (since the Burmese defeat of Ayutthaya, with possible exceptions of some of the 19th century slave capture revolts in the Northeast, and the fight against Communism in the 1960s-1970s, and today's insurgence in the South). Largely, Thailand has painted itself as "whole". Maybe this makes a big difference in terms of what fighting means to a culture. Much further up in the thread this is discussed in broad SEA historical view by Anthony Reid. He suggests that even the way in which SEAians thought about property, identity, wealth, was shaped by the transience of wooden houses. This flows into the idea of the perpetual possibility of retreat. Houses were not valuable. The land in a certain sense is not valuable (because fertile land is not scare, as say it is in Europe). Speaking very broadly, invaders or raiders would come, villagers would run to the forest and take all their valuables with them (wealth had to be transportable), and the village would be burned. He presents this as nearly a pan SEA pattern lasting centuries. When the Dutch came and established trading posts in, I think Jakarta?, they were forbidden from building anything with stone. Everything had to be made from wood, with the exception of the palace (and perhaps wats). In the sense or warfare and conflict, if Anthony Reid is right, then raid (and maybe burning) were a regular part of the life cycle, as was fleeing to the forest or mountains, and relocating one's village. The main point was not to be captured, and to escape with one's relative wealth (rice, valuables). Personally, I see in this transience of the abode something even of the foundations of the Buddhist conceptions of the transience of the Self. As the palace and the wat were made of stone, you have the contrastive permanence of spiritual and political authority. This is quite different than in the West where one's home/land helps constitute one's more individual identity much more. The "castle" of the Self, to which Western religions are more focused on. In any case, an interesting speculation.
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By AlexanderWenderson · Posted
I just came across your post and wanted to say that when it comes to video editing, there's a huge selection of applications out there, so it's important to find one that suits your specific requirements. Take your time to explore these options and see which one resonates with you the most. -
Thanks for responding and wow, what a beautiful ram muay. I think I really resonate with what you said about allowing yourself to occupy and utilize masculine and feminine energies without it having any bearing on your actual gendered existence. Being able to "go back" into masculine territory with Muay Thai has really let me take ownership over the parts of myself that I was running from and contextualize them into my post-transition persona. You and Angie are literally who I think of when I am overwhelmed and pessimistic about fighting. You both made room for me in the sport in your own ways and I am very grateful. PS, Bev Francis is so dope. -
By Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu · Posted
I will be sharing your words with Angie, as I'm sure they mean as much to her as they do to me. For me, personally, what drew me to Muay Thai was the performance of masculinity, with these simultaneous soft and fluid expressions. I've written on my blog about how masculinity does not belong to men; men "wear" it just as much as women can, it's not intrinsic or "natural" or inherent. Bev Francis, one of the most famous female Body Builders in the 70s and 80s pushed past the "acceptable" limit of muscles that "feminine" bodies into muscles that were heavily criticized as being "too much" for a woman. But Bev loved muscles and being strong for the exact same reasons males with those bodies love them: because it feels good. A pleasure not "belonging" to a gender, even if socially it is flagged or coded to the binary. As a cis woman, this is how I've navigated the very complex experiences of Muay. The parts that are masculine feel good for the same reasons they feel good to men, but I do get offended when folks comment that I "look like a man," or am "strong like a man." As a Cis woman, I have a more relaxed privilege to those offenses because I don't worry about "passing," but I do, at times, fret that I can never be unaware of being NOT A MAN in a man's arena. But vacillating in the in-between is where the real beauty is and, if Muay Thai allows you to explore and express your gender in a more nuanced way, then that's a wonder I have greatly appreciated as well. If you can find Superbank's stunningly beautiful Ram Muay, wherein he is pouring out feminine grace and at the exact same moment filling himself with masculine prowess...it's that. That's the perfect example. -
I started late, 25 yrs old. I have recently found Sylvie's videos interviewing Angie and while that is a huge inspiration for me as someone now a few months into training, I have found the real hook that kept me coming back to class religiously is the impact of Muay Thai on my relationship to my body. I pass fairly well when I am conforming to western femininity but I actually gravitate towards tom/butch expression (undercut, little makeup, "men's" cloths) despite being MTF. For my whole life, and especially the last few years during transition I have had basically hypervigilance/hyper fixation surrounding my body and how its being perceived/gendered and how I exist in space. Surrendering to the grind/burn of Muay Thai has been one of the biggest non-medical transition tool for reframing my relationship to my body from one centered on the perceptions of others, to one centered around learning how to assert myself in space and exercise balance and autonomy over my body. I have a lifetime of sharpening ahead of me but I have found a great deal of relief and reward in the distance I have come so far. As I become more at home in my body I am able to understand how my natural tendencies match up to the various subdisciplines/systems of Muay Thai and serves as a salient anchor for these parts of myself I want to develop in my regular life, and for getting past traumas. Making this post to share this experience, as after the fact I thought it was very ironic that this thing that is so good for specifically trans mental health (in my opinion) is socially and sometimes legally off limits to us. How does my experience compare to yours? Do you know any trans fighters that have had similar or different experiences?
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Sorry for reviving this thread, but I wonder which video editor you picked in the end? I bought a new laptop and thinking of trying some new video editors.
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