publicity

Recently, one of our potential Rogues, Vincent, who wants to be (and could quite possibly be, in all respects excepting temperament) The Mountain, tagged in me an hilarious video on Facebook/YouTube. It featured some celebrity rapper (I couldn’t say whether he is a major or minor one because that is beyond my field of expertise), named “Big Narstie” (at this point, the spelling should be all the hint you need) fighting one of the UK’s own armoured athletes, known as Sophie “The Nutcracker” (no prizes for guessing how that nickname came about).

You can find the full video here. Vincent actually tagged me on it for the comments, which were, as comments usually go, varied and sometimes ignorant.

I thought it was a lighthearted look at what it takes to be a medieval fighter; a sort of juxtaposition comparing lifestyles (and possibly fitness levels) of the stars of today versus the heroes of a bygone era. And of course, Game of Thrones has done a lot to bring those heroes and their skills back into the mainstream limelight. So our historical sport, which is based in fact, has been romanticised and popularised by a work of fiction. Nothing new. And it’s a springboard by which we can expose our sport to those parts of society who are usually more focussed on other things that require little effort.

I’ve done a couple of these little videos as well, in order to improve awareness on platform that is accessible to the public, like this one, with Kevin Minter-Brown, when he was still “Kevlar Kev”at East Coast Radio. He now works as a DJ at Durban Youth Radio. A step up in my opinion.

Anyway, that video was a lot of fun because we didn’t tell any of the station’s staff what we were going to do. We started the “fight” outside the offices, and then took it through the station, into the studio, and knocked over a couple of things on the way. A couple of women screamed. Some people locked themselves in their offices. It was cool and ridiculous at the same time.

About a week later, I did an interview with Kamcilla Pillay, who was with the Daily News, and who is now with the Mercury. That was also good because Josh and I got to do some fighting at Settlers Park in Kloof, and we were able to tell our story. Kamcilla, as the journalist, actually got it all down correctly in the article, which, as those of you who have been covered by the press may testify, is a rare bonus.

Back to the Big Narstie video, though, it made me consider the pros and cons of doing “fun” videos for exposure to the general public. It’s not really an accurate portrayal of how we compete, but it gets people interested. And I think the onus is on us, the fighters, to make the best of the time (FREE time or space or bandwidth) that the various journos and bloggers give us as a platform. Every bit of publicity helps. We just need to ensure that the facts as we present them are accurate. There’s the line.

A couple of weeks ago, we did an interview with a blogger called Fenn, from Geek Warehouse, who attended a fun day that was hosted by DSSC at their training venue, Willow Creek. You can watch the whole thing here. It’s a pretty cool video, and Fenn was super excited about doing it. I could see he was learning new things at a rate of knots, which was great, because I am a lecturer and I get a huge kick out of seeing the learning process happening in people.

In my opinion, it was a fairly accurate representation of the fighters and the venue. There were a couple of factual misrepresentations, which will be noted in the comments. But those are things that Fenn could never have fact-checked, and I think he did a pretty good job on the whole.

The Rogues were there, and another journo, Sandy. She writes for a local magazine, The Crest, and her photographer, Heidi took some really great photographs, from the little I saw. She even managed to make me look good, which is a trick, I’ll tell you! Bron and I met with Sandy later on, and she interviewed us, about our experiences at IMCF in Denmark this year. I’m looking forward to reading the article, which will be out at the end of the month.

But I digress.

Back to publicity: it’s important that we take every advantage and every opportunity, no matter how big or small, no matter how silly or serious, to promote awareness of our sport. This is particularly true in countries with no history of European armoured combat, such as South Africa. Yes, I have mentioned in previous blog posts that Africa did, in fact, have armoured knights. There is historical evidence of that, as offered in those posts. But knights did not live in South Africa during the medieval period, and so when it comes to a cultural heritage perspective, I get a lot of negativity from people who say things like, “that’s not in my culture”. This may be true, but in terms of historical accuracy, neither is boxing, soccer, cricket, rugby, mixed martial arts, kung fu, karate, or any of the equestrian disciplines. They were all brought over from other places.

The theme that ties all of the above together is that they are all sports. And I’ve never come across someone who refused to participate in a sport because it was not in their culture. So, in all of the interviews and publicity that I do for the Rogues and my sport, I am focussing specifically on the fact that medieval combat is an international sport, not an historical re-enactment or a preservation of cultural heritage, which is a very touchy subject in South Africa, and one which I would personally prefer to avoid.

(Sir Stephen, I know this is the way you view it, and I respect your opinion, knowledge and experience; this is not meant to be a correction of your statement).

I think the point of this post is this: use every chance to promote awareness. Big Narstie’s bout with the Nutcracker may be hilarious and silly, but it’s also a good way to show others what we’re about. It gets people from outside of our normal circles interested and asking questions (hopefully), and keen to attend tournaments when they become familiar with the sight of armoured fighters on a poster. Every musician needs fans, every actor needs an audience, and every sport must have its spectators. Let’s grow that aspect, and maybe, someday, we’ll even manage to get funding. Don’t laugh. The last two years on planet Earth have shown us that anything is possible!