Further to yesterdays post about the recent Lars Andersen video, which prompted so many comments both here and elsewhere, I would like to add a few things to amplify my rather hurriedly written post last night. Firstly there is the question of why should we care? I am very busy at the moment, so why do I feel impelled to respond to this in such detail? Several of the correspondents in the comments below yesterday’s post are distinguished scholars of archery history. Why also do they feel the need to chip in? After all we could all be accused of being mean-spirited about this poor chap and his efforts, although I stress that I am impressed at the skills he has – I just don’t regard them as authentic historical skills. That really is the main reason so many feel the need to comment about this. The video makes claims about historical practice that are not quite true. There would be no problem with the video if it wasn’t filled with so much misinformation and false claims. It would just be a video about a very talented chap who has perfected a number of clever trick shots at short range, employing a unique personal style. However he lays claim to other territory; he asserts original discovery and original research. He professes that he has unlocked secrets of ancient archery. That is what has ruffled feathers – for these claims are false. Historical archers are a tiny, mostly nerdy (in a good way) percentage of the population. Mounted archers, from whom most of the basic ideas for his techniques and practices are borrowed, are an even tinier subset. For most, myself included, historical archery is a passion, not a pastime nor a recreation, but a life-force driving, all-consuming passion. For most of the time we go about our obscure business unnoticed by the general populace but when a video like this goes viral on the internet, we feel grossly misrepresented. He takes things that are long established, standard practice in mounted archery clubs throughout the world – shooting moving targets (swinging targets, zip-line targets, thrown Frisbee-style targets) ; shooting while walking, running or jumping – and claims them as his own. This is how mounted archers practice when not on their horses. It’s the plagiarism we object to. As I wrote yesterday, I’m all in favour of people trying these things, I’m not against them, I simply challenge the notion that they are hitherto undiscovered. Similarly the carriage of arrows in the hand (either draw- or bow-hand). As I noted in yesterday’s post, it is not a newly discovered idea by Mr Andersen, it is established mounted archery practice. It is what we do and so we are a little put out when he claims it for his own. That is why there is a pushback against this video. He is, as I have written previously, a remarkable talent in terms of his speed and sighting ability. In the comments to the post below this, Stefan Bartels made what I thought was a very insightful remark. He wrote, “Hopefully, this video will bring Lars Andersen into contact with a lot of informed and well-meaning archers, and if he absorbs knowledge as readily as he has developed his skill, we aint seen nothin yet!” I couldn’t agree more! This man really is a talent; he just hasn’t been exposed to the right teachers. He has been seduced by the challenge of getting a faster and faster rate of shooting at the expense of developing an authentic historical form. I would suggest that if you are not doing it correctly, you are not doing it faster, you are doing something else but it is not historical archery, so do not claim that it is. The counter argument is ‘well he hits the target’ but my own personal prejudice is ‘if it isn’t beautiful, it doesn’t count’. The ‘art’ in martial arts is a real thing and at the higher levels there is a grace and form and elegance of movement in which the true master excels and in which there is great beauty. I went to the Cirque du Soleil the other day. There was an act with a bicycle in which the artiste did astonishingly dangerous and clever things. I did not for a moment think that this was the norm for how people bicycled in the 20th century but I did marvel at how clever it was. It was, also, extraordinarily beautiful – it had that perfection of form that I believe great circus art and great martial art have in common. I do not yet see that art in Mr Andersens work but believe that it is there to be unlocked.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 03:57:46 +0000
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