How 'The Karate Kid' Ruined The Modern World
I think The Karate Kid ruined the modern world.
Not just that movie, but all of the movies like it (you certainly can't let the Rocky sequels escape blame). Basically any movie with a training montage.
You know what I'm talking about; the main character is very bad at something, then there is a sequence in the middle of the film set to upbeat music that shows him practicing. When it's done, he's an expert.
When I am fired as the Editor of Cracked and run out of ideas for penis-based horror novels, I want to write this up as a self-help book, probably titled Fuck The Karate Kid: Why Life is So Much Harder Than We Think, by Dr. David Wong. I also have to become a doctor at some point.
It seems so obvious that it actually feels insulting to point it out. But it's not obvious. Every adult I know--or at least the ones who are depressed--continually suffers from something like sticker shock (that is, when you go shopping for something for the first time and are shocked to find it costs way, way more than you thought). Only it's with effort. It's Effort Shock.
We have a vague idea in our head of the "price" of certain accomplishments, how difficult it should be to get a degree, or succeed at a job, or stay in shape, or raise a kid, or build a house. And that vague idea is almost always catastrophically wrong.
Accomplishing worthwhile things isn't just a little harder than people think; it's 10 or 20 times harder. Like losing weight. You make yourself miserable for six months and find yourself down a whopping four pounds. Let yourself go at a single all-you-can-eat buffet and you've gained it all back.
So, people bail on diets. Not just because they're harder than they expected, but because they're so much harder it seems unfair, almost criminally unjust. You can't shake the bitter thought that, "This amount of effort should result in me looking like a panty model."
It applies to everything. America is full of frustrated, broken, baffled people because so many of us think, "If I work this hard, this many hours a week, I should have (a great job, a nice house, a nice car, etc). I don't have that thing, therefore something has corrupted the system and kept me from getting what I deserve, and that something must be (the government, illegal immigrants, my wife, my boss, my bad luck, etc)."
I really think Effort Shock has been one of the major drivers of world events. Think about the whole economic collapse and the bad credit bubble. You can imagine millions of working types saying, "All right, I have NO free time. I work every day, all day. I come home and take care of the kids. We live in a tiny house, with two shitty cars. And we are still deeper in debt every single month." So they borrow and buy on credit because they have this unspoken assumption that, dammit, the universe will surely right itself at some point and the amount of money we should have been making all along (according to our level of effort) will come raining down.
All of it comes back to having those massively skewed expectations of the world. Even the people you think of as pessimists, they got their pessimism by continually seeing the world fail to live up to their expectations, which only happened because their expectations were grossly inaccurate in the first place.
You know that TV show where Gordon Ramsay tours various failing restaurants and swears at the owners until everything is fine again? Every episode is a great example. They all involve some haggard restaurant owner, a half a million dollars in debt, looking exhausted into the camera and saying, "How can we be losing money? I work 90 hours a week!"
The world demands more. So, so much more. How have we gotten to adulthood and failed to realize this? Why would our expectations of the world be so off? I blame the montages. Five breezy minutes, from sucking at karate to being great at karate, from morbid obesity to trim, from geeky girl to prom queen, from terrible garage band to awesome rock band.
In the real world, the winners of the All Valley Karate Championship in The Karate Kid would be the kids who had been at it since they were in elementary school. The kids who act like douchebags because their parents made them skip video games and days out with their friends and birthday parties so they could practice, practice, practice. And that's just what it takes to get "pretty good" at it. Want to know how long it takes to become an expert at something? About 10,000 hours, according to research.
That's practicing two hours a day, every day, for almost 14 years.
Don't let me act like I'm some kind of guru here, either. I write boner jokes for a living now, but I'm three years removed from looking at the Classifieds and seriously considering making ends meet with night jobs that would have had me cleaning toilets.
I walked out of college at 22 thinking I was going to be king of the world within a few years. Ten years later I had failed at one career, then failed at another, tried to go back to school twice, accumulated $15,000 in credit card debt, and was working at a job where I was one promotion above high school kids.
I felt like I was working myself to death. Year after year. And even then, so many things had to break my way to get what I have now. A company happened to get sold to the right people, a guy happened to quit his job. Another dude died. If those dominoes hadn't fallen in just the right way, instead of Editor of Cracked I'd be behind the counter at Denny's, getting wrestled to the ground by cops because I don't actually work there. Before this happened to come along I had lost hope and lowered my expectations over and over and over and nothing that had happened in my life up to that point prepared me for it. Nobody told me how hard this was going to be.
All I had was fucking Karate Kid.
Anyway. I know what will make us feel better:
David Wong is the Senior Editor of Cracked.com and the author of the critically-acclaimed horror novel John Dies at the End, available in hardcover everywhere except the 72 countries in which it has been rightfully banned.
this article has jack schit to do with karate kid.
ReplySo by this logic, I should be an expert at going to college by now.
ReplyCan you say...
ReplyOccupy Wall Street?
I get what this article is saying. It's all about misplaced optimism too. In school we're taught that if we work hard and get good grades we can be come president. Well there have only been 44 presidents, and weigh that against the population 300million, not counting the populations of the past. A more accurate statement would be if you work hard, get good grades, go to college, become involved with law, become a mayor/congressman/senator/whatever, accquire lots of connections, etc. etc. etc, and you can (might) become president. IT's a long shot, but at least it's a more realistic version than blind optimism.
ReplyDon't get me wrong, I'm all for encouraging children, but we need to be more realistic about it. We can't go around telling kids that they can be anything they want anymore because the economy simply can't sustain it. There's no law saying a child CAN'T be a journalist or lawyer, but those jobs are not in demand so the chances of succeeding are extremley slim.
Wow, okay... the office of President of the United States has only existed for somewhere around 230 years, give or take a decade. Taking into account that a Presidential term is four years, and that quite a few past Presidents served more than one full term while others didn't (FDR alone was President for 12 years, whereas JFK didn't quite make it through one, for instance). Historically speaking, having 44 different rulers over the course of 230 years is almost unheard-of.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, I don't. What I am saying is that your example is really, really bad.
If I wanted a sermon, I would be in church.
ReplyNah.
ReplyWell, I'm 41 and still trying to make it as a writer. Surely, practising it for 37 years has got to count for something.
Replymadeleine l'engle's book "a wrinkle in time" was rejected 26 times before it was published. she was interviewed and was asked if "success" had changed her life. her response was that success was easy, it was finding a way to live in the midst of apparent failure that was supremely difficult. it would have been nice for her if there was a montage after the 15th or 16th rejection that showed her handing out drafts of her book and then skipping to the 27th publisher miraculously, and missing out on the next 10 rejections. but that didn't happen. it was 15 years later.
Replyi completely agree with your article. montages that make things appear to transform the hero in a shortened period of time are easy to buy into and somehow believe for yourself. back in the old days, we would call those "fairy tales."
gladwell's book "the outliers" is a difficult read. on the one hand, it appears to say that one's lot in life is determined almost completely by circumstances that one has no control over, and OTOH, it is pretty clear that getting to the point where you are prepared for the circumstance when it comes is simple, honest hard work. when you finish that book you can either be inspired or depressed as hell.
On the upside, after years of working your ass off, the slightest bump "up" feels like an accomplishment. Mostly because things are "finally moving in the right direction."
ReplyTill life walks up, says "No you don't, bitch." and knocks you back down.
I think what Karate Kid failed to note was that you also got to know the right people to train you. I doubt if Manny Pacquiao will be a great boxer if he didn't meet Freddie Roach (BTW: he looks awfully like Adam Savage).
ReplyMan, I have lived this story, except about twice as bad, and no happy ending.
ReplyI hate Will Smith for reamaking this film and putting his stupid kid in it. Everything hes done since freh prince has sucked a large sweaty penis. I guess MIB was ok. Now, since I can't have my own montage, insteadgetting in shape or trying to do well in school im gonna go massturbate. f**k YOU RALPH MACCHIO!
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesDude. WTF? Did you even read the article?
The movie was quite good. No, not classic but watchable. The fights scenes are much better and faster.
speaking of will smith and karate kid, i was in subway the other day and i told the lady i wanted purple onions on my roast beef then after she was done and the sandwich was bagged up i changed my mind and asked her to pick them off and i was like f**k you RALPH MACCHIO!
seriously this is like the third article ive replied to one of your comments just to call you an illiterate moron. i hope you f**king die Ballsdeepinass. Your stupidity knows no bounds.
You could work 10,000 hours at physics and never be Einstein, but you could be an expert in physics.
ReplyThere's a difference between an expert and being very successful though. To become mega-rich you have to be born:
(1) IN THE RIGHT PLACE
Congratulations to most of you, being born in America is already beating the odds (about 22:1). If you are born in Sudan or Somalia? You can be the hardest working guy there and still be desperately poor and fighting for your life.
(2) TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE
If your parents are poor, then you are overwhelmingly more likely to remain stuck in poverty. So much of moving up the social ladder, even in America, is reliant on who you know and where you went to school. It's not just the physically or verbally abusive parents either. Parents who have to work 2 jobs a piece can't spend time reading to their kids or at parent-teacher conferences, and they don't have connections at top universities.
(3) AT THE RIGHT TIME
You know why guys like Gates and Carnegie became insanely rich? They were born at exactly the right time. Gates happened to live a bike ride away from one of the first serious computers at Washington University, and got in on the ground floor of computing. Carnegie was buddies with Pennsylvania Railroad's corrupt boss, allowing him to amass enough capital to get onto the business of steel production just as the Bessemer process made it extraordinarily profitable. No one is going to be able to make the kind of money they did, doing the things they did.
Sometimes, being poor is sort of an advantage, makes you more hungry and makes your biography more awesome. Just ask Manny Pacquiao.
Well this is the most depressing possible thing to read for a college freshman.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesor, you know, rather than being horrified, you could just get inspiration to work harder
Dude, that means you still have "the chance", I graduated college like ten freakin years ago. I'm just going to sit here in silence.
read malcolm gladwell's, "the outliers." it will put napoleon hill's "think and grow rich" in perspective. ultimately you have to grow comfortable with the process...if you wait for the destination, you're life's gonna suck.
I get your point but Karate Kid is the wrong movie to complain about. Why? Because that movie is quite realistic compared to most other movies with training montages. Daniel didn’t become an expert in any way and didn’t beat the crap out of the entire dojo. All he did was winning a tournament and he was winning by points. He won because his opponents underestimated him. He won because all he had to do is touch the opponent, not really “hit” (watch the fights again, he barely touches the opponent's clothes). He won because the opposing trainer ordered his student to injure Daniel on purpose instead of beating him regularily. The movie makes it clear that Daniel would still get handed his ass to him in a real street fight. Heck, the entire purpose of participating in that tournament was to “save you from two months of beating” because Miyagi bargained that nobody was allowed to touch Daniel until the tournament.
ReplyYes, most movies with training montages turn the protagonist into a killing machine that goes from 0 to 100% in a couple of weeks, but Karate Kid wasn’t one of them.
Dear Dude, you're missing the point... and Karate Kid is certainly a miracle montage movie, have you ever met anyone that knows karate? Even getting to the level of "just touching and not hitting" to win a tournament takes like 10 years of no skipping practice. It's..... a lie, and we got it drilled into our subconscious, now I'm gonna a go get myself some wax-on wax-off practice. Cheers.
hyperbole aside, well said.
Reply"...'I don't have that thing, therefore something has corrupted the system and kept me from getting what I deserve'..."
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replies"All of it comes back to having those massively skewed expectations of the world..."
"And even then, so many things had to break my way to get what I have now. A company happened to get sold to the right people, a guy happened to quit his job. Another dude died. If those dominoes hadn't fallen in just the right way..."
So in the end you're saying none of us work hard enough, and luck trumps effort?
I think it's more like hard work, and knowing how valuable your potential career choice is, so that you can intelligently decide what to do in life. Lets face it, some jobs are so... hard/unwanted/dull/etc that you don't need (much) luck to get into them, just planning and hard work.
Actually you're right. Hard work is important of course, but meeting the right person in the right situation is also important.
Skill and luck are both important. People who rely exclusively on the former or the later will both have problems.
Luck is very important. Of course you can also put yourself into the position to meet the right people. Going out for brews put me in touch with media members, business people and government types, but I had to go to the right places and interact with the right people at the right times.
Actually, if you think about it 10,000 hours to become an "expert" in something is f**k all.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI'd be willing to bet most of us spend at least 2 hours a day watching TV or playing games. Put that time into exercise and you'd be an athlete in no time. To be world champ takes something more.
The REAL problem is that most people NO MATTER HOW HARD THEY WORK will NEVER be an expert in their field. Remember, the "average" IQ is not much higher than "clinical moron".
We are lead to believe, even by this article, that if we work hard enough, we will succeed. The truth is that we won't. If we work REALLY hard, we may be "comfortable", but only a very few become so "successful" that they no longer have to worry about money etc, and they only become that successful by making other people work harder for less.
I think people use the word "Expert" and "Master" interchangeably way too much.
If you spent 10,000 hours trying to improve as an athlete, you'd be an expert. Now, I'm assuming here that you won't come back at me with "Not retards," because that's stupid. And please listen to Ordinarypia; you don't have to be a world champion to be an expert. Ever hear of coaches?
I think you're placing too much stock in IQ.
it's all mental, man. if you think you're losing weight you will. but you can;t just think it, you have to know it.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesRight, I know I'm losing weight while I comment on Cracked in a failed troll attempt. Retard.
Isn't that advice from The Secret?
Wait, do I get that train of thought right?
"You will lose weight if you want it! But you'll actually have to lose weight in order to lose weight."
Why on earth would anyone want to be an expert on anything if it takes that long?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesSorry to ask the rather obvious question but, if you can't be an "expert" without an unreasonably large outlay of time then why not simply become good several other things?
I mean it didn't take you 10,000 hours to drive a car to pass your test did it? Yet presumably most people have managed to get through their lives without causing their car to burst into flame/run over a pedestrian.
In a time such as this a breadth of skills is more frequently required than a depth of them, because, for the most part, the only people you are inevitably able to impress with this "depth" is other experts and even they will not be impressed all that often.
How incredibly short-sighted.
The problem with your assumption that it's better to have a breadth of skills rather than a depth is the idea that someone will actually need someone who knows "just enough" about a wide variety of skills. Well, we have a talent pool for people who don't have much depth but can do a large variety of jobs.... they're called "temps". For the last graphic job we hired for (entry level, $10/hr.) our HR woman refused to even interview anyone without a Bachelor's.
If you don't devote enough time to developing "expert level" at some skill, you're just going to continually lose jobs/promotions/opportunities to people who do. Which is fine, if you don't feel like devoting the necessary time to avoiding that situation. Just don't delude yourself that "Jack Of All Trades" is a viable or desirable position in the 21st century.
Maybe this skewed my perspective, but my dad worked as a mechanic from the age of 15 to 49. By the end of that time, people came from two states away to get him to work on their cars, because they knew he would do it right. There's a garage five miles away with a guy who knows how cars work and can do basic repairs? f**k him, get the master-certified tech with decades of experience. We want this done right.
It doesn't help that I'm a musician now, a field where only "experts" can become professional, but even if I wasn't, I'd consider my life a failure if I never become genuinely good at something.
You seem to have confused "Expert" and "Capable".
I'm capable of playing trumpet. I have not practiced for 10,000 hours, I'm not an expert.