Pirates vs. Ninjas

The ‘webspinna battle’ was an interesting investigation for me because besides my weeklong stint in karate and the first two seasons of Power Rangers; the extent of my knowledge of martial arts is very limited. I enjoyed having to think critically about being a ninja. Our subject was ‘pirates vs. ninjas’ a popular nerd meme that I was also not very familiar with. So like most things that I am unfamiliar with my first resource was Wikipedia where I found out that “ninja supporters hold the position that a ninja would win over a pirate because of their superior mental and physical capabilities, as well as usage of gadgets such as nunchaku and shuriken. Those who support the pirates argue that a pirate’s use of both sword and gun would ensure their victory in battle”. The article later goes on to point out that the fight is pointless due to that fact that there are no recorded conflicts between pirates and ninjas.

When exploring DJ Spooky’s “Hypnotext” I decided to explore the different words that I felt like applied to this assignment I started with Virus, then the word The Idiot then lastly Alias. It was in the latter that I found something that I felt applied to the battle assignment. “Identity, both nodal and distributed, is key”. Nodal refers to the nodes in our brains, which ultimately make up our personality. What this line meant to me is that is that identity is one part what we really are, and one part what we choose to share or ‘distribute’.

After researching a few YouTube videos built around this theme of pirates vs. ninjas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-7vT4GSodk or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJdve7GNuE) I realized that there was little I could do to overcome my lack of relationship with the meme, so I decided to take a satirical take on the ninja pirate conflict. In my mind it was pretty logical that a ninja would win in a battle, I will not delve into my justifications so as to avoid veering off course, but I thought what if I were to paint ninjas as these goofy absentminded beings instead of the intelligent highly trained assassins that they really are. This decision allowed me to concentrate on parts of my identity that were real and ‘distribute’ them in a way that was a new persona. So I referred to pop culture mediums that I can relate to, namely Chris Farley’s “Beverly Hills Ninja”, “Kung Pow” and “Napoleon Dynamite”.

As I sought out all these clips I was reminded of “The Ecstasy of Influence” where it says ‘Invention it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void but out of chaos’. This clearly explains my process because all of these quotes and lines cam flooding to my head and I kept looking for more and more and trying to find a smooth mix for them to mesh together. None of these quotes or ideas where originally my invention (nor where they their own original ideas), but the molding of all these media forms into a new persona was mine. Chris Farley’s, Jared Hess’s and Steve Oedekerk’s satires served as a formula for my own satire on the pirate ninja conflict. That doesn’t belittle my art nor theirs.

The performance of the piece was exciting to say the least, the raw energy of standing in front of your peers as you try to represent, and with costume, embody a new being was trying to say the least. I chose to abandon the chair and to perform standing because I figured that my character wouldn’t be a static zombie staring mindlessly into the screen. I feel like this helped with my overall experience. Good assignment.

Ronin
Punches
Karate
Not Built By Ninjas
Kung Pow
Kung Fu Fighting
Go Ninja
Ninjaness