Heat 2 in the first season of Australian Ninja Warrior. Ninja Warrior belongs to a category of sports such as CrossFit, Mixed Martial Arts and Parkour where the focus is on the acquisition of measurable skills that achieve practical outcomes. Perhaps the reason for the success of the name lies in the fact that we still lack the vocabulary to describe the new frontier of sport that this show represents. Islamic State and the Assassins: reviving fanciful tales of the medieval Orient After Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could anybody take the ninja seriously?Īpparently yes, according to the tremendous viewing figures that Australian Ninja Warrior attracts, although down from its record-breaking premiere season in 2017. Enter the ninja, a figure from feudal Japan who could be reimagined as an unstoppable silent executioner.īy the time Australian Ninja Warrior picked up the ninja name, the ninja figure had already been debased through countless movies and comic books. In the 20th century, the increasing influence of Japanese popular culture, especially through martial-arts movies, meant the West was looking further East for its cold, ruthless killers. The name “assassin” comes from the Arabic name of this order. Instead of straightforward honest chivalric combat, the East has traditionally been held to be a place where poison, secrecy and assassination hold sway.Įighteenth and 19th-century Europe thrilled itself with stories about a Middle-Eastern order of fanatical, drug-addicted, highly trained killers led by a mysterious “Old Man of the Mountain” who dispatched his warriors to secretly dispose of his enemies. The ninja brand name works especially well for exciting interest because it conforms to enduring Western fantasies about the East as a mysterious place where conflict played out according to different rules. All over Australia, viewers glanced across at their sedentary partners munching on Golden Gaytimes and dreamed of being lost in the magnificent chests of Hammer or Vulcan.ĭrawing of the archetypical ninja from a series of sketches (Hokusai manga) by Hokusai. No opening of a shopping mall was complete without them. A thesaurus of dangerous things - Blade, Cheeta, Hunter, Predator etc. Overnight the “gladiators” became household names.Īnd what names they were. It was silliness that Australia took terribly seriously. Here the Roman practice of executing criminals and prisoners of war in theatrical fights to the death was repackaged as a competition in which spandex-clad bodybuilders attempted to knock contestants off greased slopes with padded sticks. Within Australia, the most obvious predecessor to Australian Ninja Warrior was the mid-’90s TV show Gladiators. The Washington Redskins have so far resisted all attempts to change their name. While the Atlanta Braves baseball team did retire their mascots “ Chief Noc-A-Homa” and “Princess Win-A-Lotta”, their continued use of the “tomahawk chop” to celebrate victory has infuriated many. So far, their complaints have achieved little success. It is a move that has become increasingly contentious as many Indigenous activist groups regard the practice as demeaning and trivialising of their customs and beliefs. In promoting the figure of the ninja to sell this series, the show continued a long-standing US practice of borrowing the warrior traditions of other cultures as a way of embellishing sporting activities.įor example, in the US, sporting teams have frequently borrowed names and symbols from Native American culture. Originally produced in Japan under the title Sasuke, after the name of a popular warrior folk hero, the sports entertainment show was rebranded for its US audience as American Ninja Warrior. Jacob Woodhouse in his $20,000 underwear. It is hard to imagine a figure further removed from the ninja than the social media hit of this year’s series, Jacob Woodhouse, a contract administrator and model wearing nothing but solid-gold underwear. Anonymous, he never bothered to develop signature dance moves. He was a creature of the shadows and disguise, not a flood-lit arena of oversized playground equipment. The ancient ninja was a covert operative who specialised in sabotage and assassination. It is a test of grip strength and balance, not Japanese spycraft. Perhaps the greatest surprise is not the extraordinary capacity of the human body to master a seemingly impossible obstacle course, but rather the belief held by the producers that the label “ninja” is the best term to describe the competitors.Ĭontestants compete to finish a series of increasingly difficult physical tasks such as swinging across pools on suspended tyres or scaling the formidable Warped Wall. Australian Ninja Warrior is a TV show that promises constant surprises.
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