Humour
The old master shows a wry sense of humor at times. Master Tanaka flashes his katana with a practiced lightning speed to cleanly cut off the visor of Frank's baseball cap, with Frank becoming wide-eyed in frightened surprise. In Kickboxer the lead character of Van Damme is awakened flabbergasted at dawn by a splash of cold water from his master. The Kung Fu movies starring Jackie Chan are probably the most mentionable as containing the most instances of master-disciple frolics. In The Karate Kid, when an arrogant rival misbehaves, Miyagi tells Daniel a story about Okinawa: there was a bull that terrorized everyone, but one fine day there was a feast, when everyone was scared no more. The angry bull became tasty soup.
The Master also keeps an eye on his protégé's less martial and more "romantic" activities. He views them in an indulgent manner, as Mr. Miyagi does in the case of Daniel, as something that is but normal for the protégé's age. But he also takes care, directly or indirectly, to make the disciple remember that the "girl" should not be interfering with and hampering his martial arts training or lessening his commitment to training. Miyagi also displays humor when he explains to Daniel the importance of belts in martial arts: "belt hold up pants."
Read more about this topic: Elderly Martial Arts Master
Famous quotes containing the word humour:
“The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“I wish the English still possessed a shred of the old sense of humour which Puritanism, and dyspepsia, and newspaper reading, and tea-drinking have nearly extinguished.”
—Norman Douglas (1868–1952)
“Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humour is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.”
—Frank Muir (b. 1920)