OCTOBER 2024
Almost as soon as I’d finished getting An Ultrakey for Dione ready for the big bookstore in the cloud, I was almost literally struck down by a bout of sciatica. I think it might have been my back complaining about the end of summer and the start of the cooler, even wetter weather. Or maybe it was triggered by my attempts to rip out all of that strange weed that looks a bit like clover and was trying to strangle my tomatoes and geraniums in the roof garden. Who knows?
“How’s the back?” my wife asked one morning as I disappeared discreetly into the bedroom and hurled myself to the floor in pain after making the foolish mistake of trying to move quickly before ten o’clock.
I wanted to say: “Like a knife in the back!” But the truth is, I haven’t ever been knifed in the back. But I have been punched in the face, and as I lay on the floor pondering how to convert my horizontal orientation to a vertical one – otherwise known as standing up – I was reminded of what I think could now be described as a movie and TV “trope” which has annoyed me ever since I first saw it employed.
For me, it started with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There’s a scene near the end where I think Harrison Ford is more or less sitting on top of a guy who is lying on the ground (like I was in the bedroom, except that I hadn’t been ripping out hearts that particular morning). Indy proceeds to punch the bad guy in the face over and over again. His young sidekick, Short Round, watches and copies, smashing his own little fist into the face of an appropriately sized “bad kid”. Over and over again. Like someone cheerfully tenderising a steak with a mallet. I think it was supposed to be funny. And this was 1984, so I can’t even blame Tarantino for the weird idea of equating sadism with humour!
Not so long ago, I noticed the fledgling cliché again in Orange is the New Black, the heroine, temporarily converted into a homicidal psychopath, pummelling a pathetic fellow inmate until she was too tired to carry on. And even more recently, in a Spanish TV series, I was disappointed to see the father of an abducted girl carry out a similar, rabid assault on some dude who wasn’t even a suspect. The idea seems to be that it’s just something people do when they’re really pissed off!
I have several problems with this, aside from whether or not it’s either acceptable or likely behaviour for normal human beings. First, the face is not a juicy piece of fruit – it’s a particularly boney part of the anatomy, providing quite useful protection for our eyes among other things. So, when someone punches another person’s face with their bare fist, it rarely makes that satisfying hammer-smashing- watermelon sound that – like the click of a well-hit golf ball – might almost make you want to have a go yourself. In fact, I’ve only ever heard that sound once, in a pub in Sheffield, the fist presumably making a clean contact with the target’s ample cheek on that particular occasion.
Second, during all that not-quite-so-noisy punching, you’re quite likely to break bones in your own knuckles (it even happens to boxers over time, despite the gloves) or your thumb if your aim is poor or you’re not a trained boxer or martial artist, or at least cut your knuckles on the victim’s teeth. That’s why the old bare-knuckle fighters generally favoured body punches according to those in the know. In fact, I’d give most ordinary would-be pummellers a single, full-blooded punch before they shriek: “Shit! My fucking hand!”
Third, people being punched in the face tend to cover themselves with their own hands and arms, rather than lying there staring up in the air as if they’re sunbathing. It’s instinctive, like putting your hands on your head when something bad happens – but more useful! And, unless you hit them in the right place, people being punched in the face don’t tend to conveniently pass out any more than I do when the back really hurts. Which is just as well, if you think about it.
Returning to my own personal experience, I was kicked in the face a few times when I used to practise martial arts, and a roundhouse kick to the cheek can produce that nice meaty slap, but in “real life” I once took a punch to the cheekbone that was hard enough for it to knock the contact lens clean out of the adjacent eye, and the accompanying sound was more of a forgettable clonk! Later in that same encounter, I found myself pinned to the ground by another (most definitely bad!) guy who insisted on punching me repeatedly in the same cheek bone! More clonking! Fortunately, I declined to stare up at the night sky with my arms by my sides, and he couldn’t deliver full-blooded blows. I hope he hurt his hand a bit just the same, because when I managed to get to my feet (having succeeded in not passing out), my blind, robotic counterpunches failed to find their mark as I waited in vain for someone to call it a “draw”.
Conclusion: In my book(s), punching people repeatedly when they’re already down is not something the good guys do, even on a bad day. And that android head in An Ultrakey for Dione doesn’t count, okay?
PS – To find out what an ultrakey is, I guess you’ll have to read the book!