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Muay Noir: Where Muay Thai Photography and Film Noir Meet


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I'm opening up a thread here to do some note taking and possible discussion on what I've termed Muay Noir, which is the engagement of Muay Thai photography, probably most explicitly Thailand Muay Thai photography (but I'm not sure), with the Film Noir aesthetic. My own photography has been heading in this direction (see some of that here: muaynoir.com), and it feels like the same direction is being taken up successfully by others in the field, enough to think that something very creative and important is going on here. There is an affinity between the Thailand Muay Thai subject matter, and the Film Nor, and neo-Noir aesthetics. This is some of my exploration of that, inviting others to think through this too.

Reading a few essays on Film Noir this boils down some of the core elements of the genre, at least in the classic sense:

Noir Universe
 
existential crisis
 
self-destructive compulsion
 
alienation
 
feminine betrayal 
 
sexual thrills cost
 
fated endings
 
universe of moral ambiguity
 
good intentions produce bad results
 
or, from the famous 1955 essay "Towards a Definition of Film Noir" by French critics Borde and Chaumeton, 5 adjectives:
“oneiric, weird, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel”
 
 
Noir Aesthetics
 
low-key lighting
 
claustrophobic framing
 
shadows and reflections
 
unbalanced composition
 
great depth of field

more on Film Noir aesthetics written on here.

Some of my photos that have me thinking in this direction:

Arjan Not MMA.jpg

 

Sawsing Swagger.jpg

 

up.jpg

 

Sawsing Looking Up at her Husband.jpg

 

Fight 238 tipping point.jpg

 

Bank and Dieselnoi intense-2.jpg

 

Is there a fundamental concepts of alienation, a morally ambiguous universe, the role of the feminine (as betrayal or lure), the isolation of the subject aesthetically (use of lighting, composition), the psychologicalization of the subject (how faces and expressions seem to amplify in these aesthetics (thank you Instagram commenter, I've forgotten your name but not your excellent point!); and also the nostalgia brought on by the form, the old-timey, Old Hollywood theatricality (the throwback Noir film Raging Bull was mentioned by Dana Hoey in the context of this photo of mine), the rich sense of heroic, or articulate protagonist storymaking, how does this all fold together in creating both an artifice and a truth-telling?

What does it mean to photograph the Muay Thai of Thailand as any of these things:

“oneiric, weird, erotic, ambivalent, or cruel”

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To any sense of nostalgia - a return to the 1950s, which does have parallels in Thailand in that much or some of the country does feel anchored in a conservative or traditional past - must also be added the influence of what is often called Tech Noir, which could be oversimplified as "everything that flowed from Blade Runner". The unique and beautiful way that cyberpunk, Japanese anime futures and overall alien-ness became grounded in a backwards facing Noir world. Yes, replicants are running about, but a 1950s gumshoe detective is on the case.

Blade Runner noir.jpg

 

IMG_0800-550x227.png

 

t-Blade-Runner-1982.jpg

 

The combination of the future alienation, and throw-back aesthetics has a deep and satisfying history in our culture, and there is a sort of sci-fi, Blade Runner experience to many ex-pat realities in Thailand, though these seem quite far from Muay Thai depictions which already turn back up on the real. The Real. But, there is in that Tech Noir history a powerful sense of figure depiction that could play a role in what we could be looking for in Muay Noir meanings. I recent read through the Japanese manga Battle Angel Alita (1993) and its connective books, and was terribly struck by the force of its action depictions, the cleanliness of the lines (Noir contains excessive contrast, purifying the subject) as well as the emotionality of its characters while in action. It is a Tech Noir work of art.

 

Alita 71.PNG

 

Alita 22.PNG

 

Alita 33.PNG

 

Alita 14.PNG

Alita 1.PNG

btw, you can buy the digital version of the Alita manga here, highly recommended. The Guided View, cell-by-cell presentation is very cinematic

The possibilities of Muay Noir seem to reside in the confluence of these two aesthetic traditions. There is the classic evocation of Film Noir, with it's Raging Bull-like call back to a time of clarity and figure bas-relief, perhaps set against a morally ambiguous Universe, and there is the Tech Noir negotiation with the future itself, and the entire history of action depictions in manga and anime, with explicit action captures through bold lines/outlines, and intensified character states. Between these two shores: the evocation of the very old and classic, and the hypermodernity of the figure alone in space, lies the territory of Muay Noir, perhaps.

 

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Maybe it would be safe to say that what binds Classic Noir and Tech Noir is the morally ambiguous Universe (no clear heading or outcome (criminal underworld or the presence of evil in the former, the uncertain future and impact on technology in the later), AND the aesthetically/spatially isolated hero, or anti-hero, in such a universe, with an amplified focus on that tension. What does it mean for that matrix to be placed upon the Muay Thai of Thailand? The fighter in Thailand is a form of hyper-masculinity (for Thais: read Sylvie's Thai Masculinity: Postioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng – Peter Vail.The fighter falls between the monk and the gangster. You can see this summation graphic:

The-qualities-of-Monk-and-Nak-Leng-in-Nak-Muay.png

bogart.jpg

 

Bogart-and-Cagney-header.jpg

One can see how this positioning sits well within the Classic Film Noir framework. The ideological worlds overlap in several ways with the protagonists of Noir. The hyper-masculinity fits the Thai concept of the fighter. For westerners, who enjoy a kind of exoticization of Thai culture, or maybe even more importantly, a Blade Runner quality of experience in tourist center cities, one can see where Tech Noir elements comfortably might work to express, or negotiate that truth. We have a hyper-masculinity portrayed in a classic way, along with the accompanying alienation and allure of futuristic possibilities.

bladerunner_1982_471-h_2016.jpg

Blade Runner Noir 2.jpg

At bottom it feels like we have an alienating, or at least delineating, morally ambiguous universe, supporting a hyper-masculinized protagonist narrative...a moral character cut out of space.

 

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The Ambiguity of the Female in Noir

There is an obvious connection point between Classic Film Noir and Tech Noir, in the figure of the female or the feminine. Classically, the Noir hero is threatened by the lure of the femme fatale, whose powers of attraction are magical ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") and deadly. The femme fatale is a figure whose motives cannot be discerned, a character who operates by its own devices. This is modernized, or hyper-modernized in the figure of the fem-bot, an often highly sexualized version of femininity, who has powers that cannot be properly judged or anticipated, who operates with hidden motives and capabilities that cannot be resisted. They are one and the same figure brought forth in the two genres. The woman is "danger".

This Muay Noir photowork by Emma Thomas really strikes me as powerful for any number of reasons, but first and foremost of which is how it captures the classic femme fatale sexuality in the context of training, without displacing it. She's mentioned to me that my own photography probably influenced her edits.

the femme fatal in Muay Noir.jpg

There is a world of moral difficulty whenever inserting female sexuality in the male-coded Thai kaimuay, layers and threads everywhere. The traditional and the modernist projects collide, but this photo (go to the original posting here), for me, opens the door to the feminine figure that is buried in any Muay Noir juxtaposition. As a matter of sketching out the meaningful possibilities, what is the correlate to the female Noir figure in fighting? Who is the unpredictable, alluring, threatening, dangerous, surprisingly powerful, hyper-embodied "Other"? Clearly, the opponent. The feminine Other in fighting is all of the indiscernible, indecipherable qualities of your opponent. The cleanliness of technique, the unexpected powers, or motives, intentions, can rise to the android (mechanism / drives) in any of us. The automaton, is ultimately the thing that operates according it it's own laws [auto (self) nomy (law)]. Fighting, it might be argued, is the art of imposing your own law (rhythm, spacing, tempo), on the other. A completely, hermetically autonomous opponent would be, by logic, undefeatable (one of the fears of AI).

blade runner femme fatale.jpg   

Note: One of the most brilliant and subversive structural changes in the Tech Noir cannon is found in the Alita manga, where the subjective development of personhood unfolds in the figure of the female "bot", the locus of the usual projection of fantasy and fear. She starts out being given the literal body of a sex-worker (being discovered on a scrap heap, bodyless) by transplant, and passes through various bodies as vehicles and incarnations.

This isn't to say that the figure of the female, if any, is found in a possible Muay Noir, necessarily. But it at least opens up that space for possible interpretation or inspiration. With my own subject matter including female Muay Thai, I find that within Muay Noir, and female fighter depictions there does lie the possibilities for syntheses or resolutions. For instance, as Dana Hoey hinted toward, there is something transcendent or transmuting about this photograph of the Thai female yodmuay Sawsing Sor. Sopit, between rounds, when put in the context of the femme or most Noir:

Sawsing Shaking.jpg

It strikes me as a possible amalgam of the classic Noir pairing of the detective (fighter) and the girl (lure), the Brute and the Beauty:

Brute Beauty.PNG

 

 

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Test Case

Sagat's Fists HD.jpg

This photo is perhaps the most "Noir" photo of all that I've taken, maybe in the sense of just it's purity of elements, its closely hewn simplicity of subject and aesthetic.

Now, as an experiment contemplate these fists in the context of the proposed Noir Universe:

existential crisis
 
self-destructive compulsion
 
alienation
 
feminine betrayal 
 
sexual thrills cost
 
fated endings
 
universe of moral ambiguity
 
good intentions produce bad results
 
Notice how the depiction of the fists fits within a moral/ethical direction. The hero/anti-hero is there, isolated in the moral ambiguity, the hyper-masculinity floating the black, delineated by the light. We can play all sorts of games of projecting values or moral interest onto images, and perhaps at many times they will stick, but the rough conceptual framework of Muay Noir, in terms of Noir Theory, does fit seamlessly with the work.
 

btw, I should note you can purchase prints of this photo here (with 50% of the profit going to Sagat, a legendary Muay Thai fighter of the Golden Age).

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4 minutes ago, WaltZinkPhotography said:

 

IMG_9400-2.jpg

Especially that 2nd one, which is one of my favorite photos of yours for me. I've commented before how that metal riveting and the texture of his face create such an amazing rhyme. I also find it interesting that Classic Noir used great depth of field, but neo-Noir uses shallow depth of field (often) to further enhance the separation (alienation?) of the subject. Your is a perfect example of that isolation.

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Thank you! It's amongst my favorites, also. I find it important to make sure I have a second camera with a long lens to capture the corner shots. Then there's this one from Pattaya. I genuinely have a sense of dumb luck to get a photo like this. 

Next will be my portrait series in the Everest region in Nepal to highlight the people in that area. That could definitely go into its own noir setting. It'lll be fun to play with.

pattaya.jpg

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14 minutes ago, WaltZinkPhotography said:

Thank you! It's amongst my favorites, also. I find it important to make sure I have a second camera with a long lens to capture the corner shots. Then there's this one from Pattaya. I genuinely have a sense of dumb luck to get a photo like this. 

Next will be my portrait series in the Everest region in Nepal to highlight the people in that area. That could definitely go into its own noir setting. It'lll be fun to play with.

pattaya.jpg

So beautifully Noir. Figure isolated in a morally ambiguous environment, illuminated. Also, so Blade Runneresque. Love.

 

Blade Runner Noir photography.jpg

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Dana Hoey, an artist who I've had some preliminary discussion with before posting this, added this great comment on the possibilities of Muay Noir, bringing up Hong Kong Noir which is also a powerful inspiration source.

performativity.PNG

If I'm not mistaken, the glorification of the hitman (maybe apexing with Meville's Le Samouraï) had a significant impact on the cultural figure of the Nakleng (gangster) in Thai culture, as cited in the Peter Vail article above (nakbun). Hong Kong cinema has exactly the quotational aspect of the hyper-cool. That's a super important point in the Muay Thai of Thailand. There is always the sense that masculinity is being performed, and that the qualities are being embodied and acted out. In the history of Noir, from Bogart on, masculinity is stylized. I think that makes another good argument why the stylization of Noir photography fits with Muay Thai portrayals. It encases stylization withing stylization, making it at home. Does Noir complicate, or produce an inordinate layer between the viewer and the Muay Thai subject? Or, does it act as a prism to clarify and focus the eye on those effort at "cool".

I remember listening to Karuhat Sor. Supawan, a legend of the Golden Age, and a fighter who embodied cool, talk with Chatchai Sasakul, a WBC Champion, and also a fighter of the Golden Age. He was complaining that the Thai fighters of today no longer have charisma. Charisma was an essential component of the great fighting portrayals of the 1990s in Thailand. For him, and Chatchai who agreed, it simply was missing from contemporary Thai fighting. So, in some sense, as we add the Noir layer to Muay Thai photography we may be capturing the last bit of starlight, a vital aspect of the art, that already has dimmed in Time.

 

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There is the pragmatic element of shooting fighting at all, which is that its usually low lighting with no flash allowed - that kind of begs for noir!  I am not all that experienced with fight photography and I really enjoy yours, Kevin, and Walt yours too.  The coolness factor is interesting (this is a general remark so pardon me for not quoting); it is interesting how it dovetails with hyper-elegant masculinity.  In Woo films, the love story between Chow Yun Fat and his criminal adversary is this kind of elite level of masculinity, where one is not afraid to be "feminine" (big quotes there), insofar is one has love for another man.  Most fighting exhibits that kind of dark love between opponents that the layperson does not understand, seeing only aggression unless they actually pay attention to the hug afterwards if it occurs.  Sorry if I am going off-piste, but curious to read more about the coolness and charisma factor; is there a way to understand it as partially "female"?  Does pink (e.g. pink shorts) have a feminine association in Thailand so that wearing pink gear exhibits the highest level of masculinity in taking the risk of being feminine?  Love that Karuhat and Chatchai both mention it - both are remarkable stars.  And what is charisma but a sense of one's own iconic nature?  To be photogenic, to be glowing so that you never escape peoples' eyes or memories...  this is quintessentially noir by your definition although there are other sorts of lines of thinking (beauty for one) that threaten to crowd into the discourse.  

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In a bizarre bit of Noir crossing, before director Martin Scorsese had produced his first hit, he approached Philip K. Dick for the rights to his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a year after it was published. Raging Bull would be made in 1980, Blade Runner in 1982. source

a bit of noir.PNG

Was he seeing Dick's work as a Noir film back in 1969? Godard had made the ground breaking Noir sci-fi film Alphaville in 1965. Trailer below:

 

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3 hours ago, threeoaks said:

Sorry if I am going off-piste, but curious to read more about the coolness and charisma factor; is there a way to understand it as partially "female"? 

Pink is definitely not a female color, at least not traditionally in the sense that we read it, boy/girl, but maybe it has some sense of flair. The Muay Femeu panache of elite starts like Samart, Karuhat and other very artful type fighters does carry with it I think some sense of the feminine, but maybe in the way that the artist, or the aristocrat has feminine overtones. With some elements of hyper-masculinity you can get transgressions into the feminine, for instance Hair Metal rock bands with scarves and mascara. I think the sense is that "I have so much masculinity, I have plenty to spare, and I'm not emasculated by these markers. The great, artful Muay Femeu masters of the age had something of that, like the singer or the movie star (as Samart was all 3). But, I'm not sure how much of that fits into Noir. I mean, Bogart definitely is counter-punctual to femininity in almost every way. Maybe as Noir became quotational we get closer to concepts of "cool" and its enactment, which then brings us more in the real of actress, pushed to the extreme maybe the masculinity of K-Pop boy bands?

John Woo's intimacy between men, maybe there is something subversive to the Classic Noir structure, the way that opponents mirror and complete each other. It maybe partakes in that same sense that I had that the "opponent" holds the role of the femme fatale in the Noir universe. The alluring, and destructive other.

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3 hours ago, threeoaks said:

There is the pragmatic element of shooting fighting at all, which is that its usually low lighting with no flash allowed - that kind of begs for noir! 

I agree, the lighting sometimes provides great contrast and figure cut-outs. Plus some of the images we have inherited from boxing's past have that same figure cut-out that feels very Noir.  Again, we have the hero, cut out/off from the world, illuminated by light.

Film Noir Boxing Ali.jpg

 

Cut out Noir.jpg

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Rembrandt Light and the Metaphysics of Plotinus

At least for me personally, there is an even historically older influence in the selection of Film Noir aesthetics, and even their root of German Expressionist film, and that is the very light directed painting of the Renaissance, maybe most typified by Rembrandt:

 

Rembradt Noir lighting.jpg

 

And then in one of the most terribly beautiful paintings ever, Velazquez:

velasquez noir.jpg

Juan de Pareja (1606–1670) 1650

 

Fpr me, what is exquisite about these depictions is that the characters themselves do not contain their own light. It is as if, and in many paintings of this style, the light plucks them out from the darkness. The luminosity gives liberty or Being. This parallels the philosophy of the neo-Platonist Plotinus, who influenced the Philosophy of the day. It was Plotinus's argument that a thing only had Being (substance, reality) to the degree that it caught the light. The "light" was the illumination of the One, which shined on all things, and brought all things into Being. Not to get very esoteric, but the notion is that catching more of the light gave you substance. Turning into Being, gave you more reality. This framework is what I see in this form of lighting figures. You find this sort of theory more dynamically expressed in the 17th century philosopher Spinoza. 

This is where it gets more interesting, for me. Homeric descriptions, especially in the Iliad, had a somewhat Noir-ish capacity to cut-out figures of action in the world. The heroes of the epics were often reduced, or captured in the very actionability of their selves. They gained a certain reality through their ability to act. When they acted heroically this sometimes would be reflected in descriptions of their shine, their radiance, which in some sense communicated that they were catching or showing a bit of their divinity. The glinting of their selves. I think in this sense the western heroic epic holds the philosophy of Plotinus's glinting of Being (theorized centuries later). The warrior "catching light", and in that sense rising above the mortal and the mundane. I believe in some way Noir aesthetic captures of fighters, or Muay Thai, even as they partake in the aesthetics that derive from Rembrandt, communicates this transmutation, and Plontinus' argument that the more light you catch, the greater Being you have. In Homer, the hope of heroes was not only to "win", but to be sung by poets (thereby gaining a kind of immortality), catching more light in a sense. There is also the Spinozist expansion of Plotinus which is that the greater your ability to act, to move, dimensionally, the greater Being (or Reality) you had. In some ways the fighter, in the ring, is acting out some of the most primordial and essential metaphysical acts, and you could argue that a light and shadow dominant aesthetic like Noir is ideal for capturing and expressing that.

I'm thinking something of these things for instance, in photos like this, where you can see the coming into Being, catching more "light" becoming extracted from the darkness.

Dieselnoi.jpg

 

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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

 

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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.

 

 

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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

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Another photo edit by Emma (origin)

Emma Noir.jpg

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?

 

 

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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.

The Work.jpg

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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.

 

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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.

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu Lord 2K - Muay Noir.jpg

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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.

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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.

Film Noir critics.PNG

 

on an alternate reading of the same history, "Paint it Black: The Family Tree of Film Noir"

Film Noir as social dark.PNG

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    • Some of my thoughts on the weigh-in change, and how it reflects back onto deeper aspects of how Thailand's Muay Thai is fought, in this Reddit thread: Recently announced. This should produce much bigger weight differences in the ring, move towards even more power and forward aggression combination fighting, and the diminishment of skilled (femeu) fighting (the longtime hallmark of Thailand's art and sport), and should favor farang who are larger bodied and often more versed in Western style day-before, deeper cut weight drops. It also seems like it will put a greater burden on small kaimuay and provincial fighters, as they would have to come to Bangkok the day before a fight, increasing fight expenses when often its hard to even break even on fights (perhaps there will be some support?). For the longest time day-of weigh-ins were the standard of legit matchup Thai trad fighting. Silently this change could have long lasting effects. and As I mention above (here) there are some aspects about Thai traditional scoring that also keep deep weight cutting in check (these are things people are also trying to change to a more Western style). Thais can cut the way that they do, same day, in part because of how the sport is fought and judged. You just can't cut too deep and still win. Also, Thai trad weight cutting is very different. It's not about making huge plunges close to the fight. It's incrementally getting closer to the weight, with its own science and knowledge. and It's a National PAT (SAT) rule change. It's supposed to cover all Muay Thai, part of a "Grassroots to International" effort. Entertainment Muay Thai was already headed there, or there, so this most dramatically effects traditional stadium Muay Thai in Bangkok I imagine, and major trad promotions. Enforcement of rules in Thailand is quite varied, so I imagine it pragmatically has little to do with trad fighting in the provinces (?) unless a part of the new gov outreach there. (just guessing). Have no idea what it means for fighting in tourist centers like Phuket or Chiang Mai. and Some of deep weight cutting was constrained by two things in trad day-of fighting. The first was because you were fighting later that day you were really limited in how far you could effectively go...but the second hidden aspect is that because trad scoring aesthetics have of a lot of subtle by important aspects to them (ie, they aren't entirely about "points" or "damage" but involve things like "ruup" [posture] and balance), you couldn't really go into the ring very depleted...your ruup and just your substance as a fighter would be down-scored. This was even more reinforced by Thai narrative scoring aesthetics (which a lot of Westerners get upset about). If you FADE in a fight you are penalized, because the fight has an arc to it. You have to be strong in round 4 or you just won't win. This, combined with the same day weigh-in, created a natural barrier for how low you could go. You have to have stamina. You can't artificially pad your lead with early rounds point wins, and coast in the 4th. One of things people don't realize is that if you chop away at the narrative scoring structure (the new rules start heading in this direction), and at trad scoring aesthetics AND add deeper weight cuts, this produces a huge swing which could be dangerous. They are mixing Thai and Western protocols and also Thai and Western fighting aesthetics in ways that I think haven't been completely thought about. Thai practices developed over many decades within their own sport. and Longtime Thais have a very precise understanding of how to cut weight in the trad scene, day-of weigh-in, trad scoring aesthetics. Western weight cutting, and weight cutting competition trends will start to seep in. This is pretty dangerous in my view, because knowledge of how to do the deeper cuts will communicate itself very unevenly. Already there is a lot of pseudo "Sports Science" stuff floating around Thailand, often via lightly qualified farang who offer themselves as advisors or coaches. Lots of Thais will end up having partial or just plain mis- information about how to cut in a Western fashion. Add in the common use of diuretics which amplifies issues. The Western cut is very different than the Thai cut. And mixing the two, or moving back and forth between them could be dangerous. Doing a Thai cut with a Water loading cut or a sodium loading cut, or deep Albolene sweat, who knows what can happen. At least IVs (which are very popular in Thailand) are plentiful, but still, there is danger here. Once pieces of information start entering the culture they can become a game of telephone. Spread this out over an entire sport and its asking for risks. and I suspect that one of the main reasons for this is actually economic...that is as Thailand's labor pool for fighters shrinks its harder to fill the many cards. This rule change means that a wider group of fighters are available for any particular match. Matchmakers are less constrained. Also, it happens to serve folding larger-bodied Westerners into the trad market...ie, they can fight much smaller Thais. This helps with the labor market some (more fighters to choose from), and also helps with Soft Power (selling the sport abroad). More Westerners fighting, and more Western winners (probably more Westerner belt holders as well). It really addresses in the short term several pragmatic issues, and it seems like its a government ambition to kind of codify all of Muay Thai, so that it can export the sport more readily, which is unfortunate because much of the sport's uniqueness and ultimate marketability in a deeper sense, relies on its uncodified, un-rationalized nature. I also am not sure if it just leads to everyone then using the same weight cutting practices, as for instance happens in Internationalized sports, because as I have mentioned in other comments, Thai cuts are very different than Western cuts, and the way that knowledge and practices disseminate in Thailand really is uneven. It's much more likely that Westerners will just hold a significant advantage, as will big Westernized or Western-informed Thai gyms (who already have large political advantages in the sport), and the smaller gyms and provincial fighters will not be able to play the same weight cutting game, and may even be led into dangerous hybrid or misinformed practices.
    • Well, the PAT announced 24-30 hr weigh-in, a huge change the sport. Get ready for tons of weight bullying (including bigger farang fighting small Thais in trad stadium fights). Basically for all practical reasons all weight classes have been expanded. This is in part in relationship to the labor crisis mentioned above, the capacity to draw from a wider range of fighters to fill cards. Trad Muay Thai will likely have greater skill disparities (shrinking talent pools) and now more massive size differences, as well as drawing in more farang who will become part of this solution. This will also likely mean more farang stadium/promotion belts in trad fighting. Of course laws in Thailand are unevenly forced, so there could be major hiccups in implementation, including a significant problem that fighters now have to come to Bangkok the day before, which means even greater costs to fight...which could ALSO shrink the fighter pool. Already many gyms, small kaimuay, have difficulty even breaking even in Bangkok fighting expenses. Will outlying fighters be able to regularly afford to come to fight in Bangkok, especially in a scene that favors the political power of major Bangkok gyms (they can't dependably recoup their expense by betting on their fighters).  These changes could have a massive stylistic impact on Thailand's trad Muay Thai over time, as it gives even more advantage to size and power. Saenchai was famous for his criticism of the loss of femeu fighting after he left the trad stadium scene, because large-bodied power clinch fighters (who he had some trouble with) had become the gambler's favorite. With the even greater increase in size differential now, and the influence of more smashing and clashing fighting styles of Entertainment Muay Thai, it stands to reason that power will become even more effective over femeu skill than ever before. In the Golden Age there were fairly substantial size differences, but the technical skill level of fighters was such - and the trad artful scoring bias in favor of - that small fighters like Karuhat and many others could handle 2 or more weight class (in the ring) differences. This high level of the art just really is missing in this era, and scoring biases are shifting toward the power aesthetic. Trad Muay Thai may become much more combo-heavy smashy with the big man coming out on top. 
    • Some notes on the predividual (from Simondon), from a side conversation I've been having, specifically about how Philosophies of Immanence, because they tend to flatten causation, have lost the sense of debt or respect to that which has made you. One of the interesting questions in the ethical dimension, once we move away from representationalist thinking, is our relationship to causation.   In Spinoza there is a certain implicit reverence for that to which you are immanent to. That which gave "birth" to you and your individuation. The "crystal" would be reverent to the superstaturated solution and the germ (and I guess, the beaker). This is an ancient thought.   Once we introduce concepts of novelness, and its valorization, along with notions of various breaks and revolutions, this sense of reverence is diminished, if not outright eliminated. "I" (or whatever superject of what I am doing) am novel, I break from from that which I come from. Every "new" thing is a revolution, of a kind. No longer is a new thing an expression of its preindividual, in the ethical/moral sense.   Sometimes there are turns, like in DnG, where there is a sort of vitalism of a sacred. I'm not an expression of a particular preindividual, but rather an expression of Becoming..a becoming that is forever being held back by what has already become. And perhaps there is some value in this spiritualization. It's in Hegel for sure. But, what is missing, I believe, is the respect for one's actual preindividual, the very things that materially and historically made "you" (however qualified)...   I think this is where Spinoza's concept of immanent cause and its ethical traction is really interesting. Yes, he forever seems to be reaching beyond his moment in history into an Eternity, but because we are always coming out of something, expressing something, we have a certain debt to that. Concepts of revolution or valorized novelty really undercut this notion of debt, which is a very old human concept which probably has animated much of human culture.   And, you can see this notion of immanent debt in Ecological thought. It still is there.   The ecosystem is what gave birth to you, you have debt to it. Of course we have this sense with children and parents, echo'd there.   But...as Deleuze (and maybe Simondon?) flatten out causation, the crystal just comes out of metastable soup. It is standing there sui generis. It is forever in folds of becoming and assemblages, to be sure, but I think the sense of hierarchy and debt becomes obscured. We are "progressing" from the "primitive".   This may be a good thing, but I suspect that its not.   I do appreciate how you focus on that you cannot just presume the "individual", and that this points to the preindividual. Yes...but is there not a hierarchy of the preindividual that has been effaced, the loss of an ethos.   I think we get something of this in the notion of the mute and the dumb preindividual, which culminates in the human, thinking, speaking, acting individuation. A certain teleology that is somehow complicit, even in non-teleological pictures.   I think this all can boil down to one question: Do we have debt to what we come from?   ...and, if so, what is the nature of that debt?   I think Philosophies of Immanence kind of struggle with this question, because they have reframed.   ...and some of this is the Cult of the New. 3:01 PM Today at 4:56 AM   Hmmmm yeah. Important to be in the middle ground here I suspect. Enabled by the past, not determined by it. Of course inheritance is rather a big deal in evolutionary thought - the bequest of the lineage, as I often put it. This can be overdone, just as a sense of Progress in evolution can be overdone - sometimes we need to escape our past, sometimes we need to recover it, revere it, re-present it. As always, things must be nuanced, the middle ground must be occupied. 4:56 AM   Yes...but I think there is a sense of debt, or possibly reverence, that is missing. You can have a sense of debt or reverence and NOT be reactive, and bring change. Just as a Native American Indian can have reverence for a deer he kills, a debt. You can kill your past, what you have come from, what you are an expression of...but, in a deep way.   Instead "progress" is seen as breaking from, erasing, denying. Radical departure.   The very concept of "the new" holds this.   this sense of rupture.   And pictures of "Becoming" are often pictures of constant rupture.   new, new, new, new, new, new...   ...with obvious parallels in commodification, iterations of the iphone, etc.   In my view, this means that the debt to the preindividual should be substantive. And the art of creating individuation means the art of creating preindividuals. DnG get some of this with their concept of the BwOs.   They are creating a preindividual.   But the sense of debt is really missing from almost all Immanence Philosophy.   The preindividual becomes something like "soup" or intensities, or molecular bouncings.   Nothing really that you would have debt to. 12:54 PM   Fantasies of rupture and "new" are exactly what bring the shadow in its various avatars with you, unconsciously.     This lack of respect or debt to the preindividual also has vast consequences for some of Simondon's own imaginations. He pictures "trade" or "craft" knowledge as that of a childhood of a kind, and is quite good in this. And...he imagines that it can become synthesized with his abstracted "encyclopedic" knowledge (Hegel, again)...but this would only work, he adds, if the child is added back in...because the child (and childhood apprenticeships) were core to the original craft knowledge. But...you can't just "add children" to the new synthesis, because what made craft knowledge so deep and intense was the very predindividual that created it (the entire social matrix, of Smithing, or hunting, or shepherding)...if you have altered that social matrix, that "preindividual" for knowledge, you have radically altered what can even be known...even though you have supplemented with abstract encyclopedic knowledge. This is something that Muay Thai faces today. The "preindividual" has been lost, and no amount of abstraction, and no about of "teaching children" (without the original preindividual) will result in the same capacities. In short, there is no "progressive" escalation of knowledge. Now, not everything more many things are like a fighting art, Muay Thai...but, the absence of the respect and debt to preindividuality still shows itself across knowledge. There are trends of course trying to harness creativity, many of which amount to kind of trying to workshop preindividuality, horizontal buisness plan and build structures, ways of setting up desks or lounge chairs, its endless. But...you can't really "engineer" knowledge in this way...at least not in the way that you are intending to. The preindividual comes out of the culture in an organic way, when we are attending to the kinds of deeper knowledge efficacies we sometimes reach for.
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