There is only so much you can learn about a foreign country from sampling its indigenous spa-resort treatments and gamely chewing on whatever disgusting insects serve as the native version of a Snickers bar. To really get to know the character of, say, China or the Philippines, you have to beat up some of the locals with a stick.
This, at least, is the premise behind a growing genre of reality shows that combine travel with martial arts. FitTV’s Deadly Arts, which debuted several years ago, provides the basic template for the genre, but the martial-arts expert that show is built around is an elegant, soft-spoken woman from Canada—and where are the metaphorical implications in that? To achieve its full potential, the genre needed loud, brash, muscle-bound Americans at its helm.
History Channel’s Human Weapon, starring former pro football player Bill Duff and actor/cage fighter Jason Chambers, was first out of the gate with the new formula, but the one that takes it to its logical conclusion is Discovery Channel’s Fight Quest. Not only are its two co-hosts palpably dudelier than their Human Weapon counterparts, but one of them, 25-year-old Doug Anderson, is also an Army veteran who, according to his official show bio, served “one intense and highly decorated year in war-torn Iraq” and earned nine medals for his service there.
According to a survey conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, our interest in Baghdad grudge matches has greatly diminished. In the first 10 weeks of 2007, cable news networks devoted 24 percent of their coverage to Iraq; in the same time period this year, just 1 percent of their coverage has been war-related. In contrast, our interest in watching American cage fighters take on lethal foreigners remains strong. And of course it’s obvious why: Shows like Fight Quest are everything the Iraq war isn’t.
When Anderson and his co-host, professional MMA fighter Jimmy Smith, deploy to some exotic locale halfway around the globe, they don’t get bogged down there for years—they’re in and out in less than a week! And while they lack John Rambo’s ability to destroy entire armies in a few minutes of battle, they do their part to reaffirm a sense of superior American firepower.
In the Fight Quest universe, it’s the Americans who are the underdogs. Plunked down in unfamiliar surroundings, with only a few days to master esoteric fighting styles before going up against local experts whose entire lives seem to revolve around breaking things with their foreheads, they always manage to land a few good blows and sometimes even walk away with a victory.
Perhaps even more comforting to the American psyche than the martial prowess on display, however, is the sense of cross-cultural camaraderie Fight Quest conveys. Enamored with bone-crushing violence, but also quite personable, Anderson and Smith are kidney-punching, bear-hugging metaphors for America—sure, they want to kick your ass, but they totally want to be friends with you, too, dude. Indeed, as they engage in their training, they display a lunkheaded deference to their teachers that stops just shy of Jackass irreverence: Any time a kung-fu master so much as scratches his ear or utters a word of broken English, Anderson and Smith respond with vigorous flurries of head-bows and prayer-hands.
They’re also suitably game to experience whatever rituals and customs the locals
throw at them, whether that be eating balut—a meaty, feathery duck fetus still ensconced in its shell—or lying on a platform while a shaman splatters them with the blood of a freshly killed chicken. And while their embrace of the more spiritual aspects of their training seems superficial at best, their desire to connect with their hosts, to earn their respect and their friendship and participate however briefly in their cultures, seems genuine.
Initially, the local masters often greet these American interlopers with reserve and skepticism; by the end of each episode, however, they take them into the fold. No matter how fierce, the battles end with smiles, hugs, gift exchange and fond farewells—apparently, brutal hand-to-hand combat is the true key to international harmony. Had we gone into Iraq with knives and sticks instead of smart bombs and F-16s, one imagines, the Shiites would be our spiritual brothers now, the Sunnis our best friends forever, and we would already be out of that country and on our way to trade punches of diplomacy with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il.