Monsters, Superheroes, and Martial Artists

At a certain age, dinosaurs become a very big deal and it's worth understanding why. Children are tiny, fragile, and have very little control of their daily lives. Dinosaurs were huge, powerful, and dominated the world. Children like dinosaurs because the power fantasy eases the burden of their vulnerability. If a child can pretend to be something big and scary, they don't have to be afraid of things that are big and scary. They can feel strong and, as a result, feel brave enough to explore the world around them. The love of dinosaurs and other monsters tends to go hand in hand with the increased independence of toddler-hood.

As children get older, they begin to understand stories, and their power fantasies tend to evolve from being monsters and dinosaurs to being superheroes. This is a headache for many parents and early educators as dinosaur play tends to involve mostly roaring, while superhero play often leads to punching and to casting classmates as "the bad guy." I have known teachers who responded to these challenges by issuing outright bans on superhero play in their classrooms, some going so far as to forbid children from even discussing superheroes. This is a shame. I’ve never seen it succeed in eliminating superhero play, but it does mean that children view such play as something to do in secret from their teachers. As a result, these teachers lose the opportunity to engage with children about these themes that are so compelling. By issuing an outright ban on the game, adults forfeit the opportunity to guide the play or discuss the ethical underpinnings of being a hero.

Children are drawn to martial arts for the same reasons they’re drawn to superheroes. Martial artists seem powerful and many martial arts purport to teach moral lessons along with physical skills. Martial arts also offer children a chance to indulge in the sort of rough and tumble play that is so often restricted in other settings. Those two factors, the theatrical power fantasy and the rough and tumble reality, are the predominant drives for children’s interest and participation in martial arts.

How a child’s power fantasies influence their martial arts career varies a great deal depending on the martial art they practice. Children tend to relate differently to striking than grappling.

The distinction between hugging and tackling is a purely adult invention. Toddlers will hug each other, lose their recently learned sense of balance, fall to the ground, roll around on the ground laughing until someone’s head is squished, and the squished child will cry. Once they’ve stopped crying, they’ll probably do the whole thing over again. That’s the primordial play that grows into grappling martial arts.

Striking is different. If you watch children punch and kick, you can see the activity divided into two broad categories. Children will often punch and kick the air, or inanimate objects, often mimicking the flamboyant flourishes they’ve seen from television and film choreography. This tends to be a happy form of make-believe, part of the same line of power fantasies that had them roaring like a T-Rex. When children actually hit other children, it’s typically out of anger or fear. Neither the child getting hit nor the child hitting will be smiling.

Teaching a child to grapple is largely a process of layering technical skill on top of their preexisting rough and tumble play habits. Children tend to see it as play and it tends to be fairly safe. To teach a child a striking system presents more challenges. Getting hit causes injury. Getting hit in the head is bad for the brain. The medical/ethical ramifications of allowing children to box are quite serious but, even if those concerns didn’t exist, the process of understanding the difference between someone who anti-socially hits/hurts and a sparring partner who hits/hurts but is ultimately a friend…that’s a daunting task. It asks a lot of the emotional maturity of participants.

There are of course martial arts that practice a lot of striking in the air, or on targets, but don’t have students hitting each other, or practice striking lightly against heavily padded sparring partners. That can go a long way toward eliminating the stress and pain that’s part of what makes something like boxing a hard sell, but it comes with its own set of problems. Striking the air, no matter how expertly practiced, sits firmly in the category of make-believe play. It can provide excellent exercise. It can be beautiful to watch. It fails to teach lessons about the reality of violence. Whether or not that’s a problem depends on what the child, and their parents, hope to get out of martial arts. It also depends on what the instructor has promised to teach.

When a child starts a martial art, they may not consciously know what they want from the activity. It is the responsibility of ethical instructors to clearly tell them what they will be getting. If the art is beautiful athletic play, and it is marketed as such, that’s fine. If the martial art makes claims about its fighting effectiveness or relevance to self-defense, then the rough and tumble realities of fighting need to be addressed. Otherwise the instructor is doing their students a dangerous disservice. A martial art that involves sparring and competition will give its practitioners an opportunity to learn how tough they are, and also how vulnerable they are. Without that, people often fall into the trap of believing fantasies about their own competence.

Superheroes use their physical abilities to help people. It’s easy for martial artists to fall into that fantasy: imagining that they will save someone from an aggressor or put a bully in their place through physical force. A person who has not experienced the hardships of actually fighting can become overeager for conflict, either because they see themselves as a fantastical hero or because they know on some level that their abilities are a fantasy and bluster in overcompensation.

Ironically, people who fight for fun in the gym are unlikely to seek out fights in the street, while being simultaneously more capable fighters than those who don’t spar regularly. Besides developing physical skills, sparring also involves losing a lot. That means that, by the time people get good enough to win regularly, they tend to have a healthy sense of their own mortality and empathy for those less experienced.

It isn’t necessary for children to give up their love of superheroes as they grow, but it is healthy for them to distinguish between the appeal of their fantasies and the complex realities of the world. Superheroes can still be inspiring metaphors and moral guideposts.

In comic books, superheroes sometimes find villains engaging in evil acts, but just as often the villains attack the heroes directly and innocent bystanders are caught in the crossfire. This is a useful metaphor for real world violence. Sometimes people engage in criminal activity and fighting can be a tool to oppose that, but a lot of fighting, particularly among young men, is a result of insecurity. People fighting to prove how tough they are because they’re genuinely unsure. A trained martial artist might be able to deter a criminal, but it’s important to realize that someone who struts and crows about their abilities is likely to provoke challengers. A person who knows how tough they are, and just as importantly the limits of their toughness, doesn’t need to seek out altercations to prove themselves. They don’t need to puff themselves up to assert their dominance. Their martial art becomes their secret identity. Something they can draw on in times of need, but not always obvious to the world.

Training doesn’t magically make good people but, in the best case scenario: martial arts training can forge people who are physically capable, self-assured, humble, and kind. People capable of stepping up when necessary, but wise enough not to flaunt their abilities or seek unnecessary conflicts. Superheroes.