Competing masculinities in the dojo

This first time we watched The Karate Kid (directed by John G. Avildsen in 1984) with our son, who was ten at the time, he thought it was a bit over the top. “It’s not like when you were kids,” he patiently explained. “There aren’t really bullies anymore.” On the face of things, this is a ridiculous idea; evil has not disappeared from the hearts of men thanks to the simple passage of a few decades. But I knew what he meant. My son grew up swaddled in adult supervision, where even ordinary playground smack talk was likely nipped in the bud by hovering adults. The idea that a karate sensei would openly train his students to show “no mercy” both on the mat and in real life without raising a single adult eyebrow does seem far-fetched.

We’ve just spent weeks, however, processing the fact that a very aggressive form of bullying, intimidation, and promises of retaliatory violence helped win a presidential election. So we were primed to watch Cobra Kai, a spin-off Netflix series that reworks the Karate Kid story with exactly these questions in mind.

In the original movie, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), a scrappy working-class Italian kid from New Jersey, moves to LA, where he quickly attracts the ire of the rich-kid bully Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). Johnny is the prized student of the local karate sensei, John Kreese (Martin Kove), who teaches a strike-first, no-mercy style of fighting and approach to life. Daniel is taken under the wing of Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), a Japanese karate master, who agrees to train him in a defense-only style of fighting and philosophy of life. The All-­Valley Karate Championship tournament becomes the final battle scene—not just between Daniel and Johnny but between the styles of masculinity and violence represented by Mr. Miyagi and Sensei Kreese.