In Contemporary Western Pop Culture
"Dim mak" has become a kind of "camp" pop culture item which is recognized also outside of the genre of Wuxia or kung fu films. For example, in Thomas Pynchon's Novel Vineland, one of the protagonists uses the "Quivering Palm Death Touch", which kills the opponent one year after it is used. In the 1977 series Quincy, M.E., an episode entitled Touch of Death features a martial arts movie star whose mysterious death is found to be a result of a dim mak attack against him, ten days earlier. Dan Brown's novel Inferno sees a character incapacitating a guard by putting pressure on his wrist, explaining the technique as "Dim Mak".
Quentin Tarantino referenced the "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique" in his movie Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004). The 2008 animated Wuxia parody Kung Fu Panda depicts a "Wuxi Finger Hold", in which holding an opponent by one finger produces an enormous shockwave of energy. In The Simpsons episode "When Flanders Failed", Bart repeatedly threatens Lisa with the 'touch of death' to get her to do things for him, after playing an arcade game of the same name and joining a Karate school.
Californian metal band Five Finger Death Punch is supposedly named after this technique.
Read more about this topic: Touch Of Death
Famous quotes containing the words pop culture, contemporary, western, pop and/or culture:
“There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)
“That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is contemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and nights.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“It appeared that he had once represented his tribe at Augusta, and also once at Washington, where he had met some Western chiefs. He had been consulted at Augusta, and gave advice, which he said was followed, respecting the eastern boundary of Maine, as determined by highlands and streams, at the time of the difficulties on that side. He was employed with the surveyors on the line. Also he called on Daniel Webster in Boston, at the time of his Bunker Hill oration.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)