It's easy to remember “The Karate Kid” wrong.
Forty years after its release, the film has been memed and boiled down to a series of catchphrases: “Wax on, wax off. Beginner's luck. Sweep your feet!”
Daniel wants to win, and that's the cleverest thing about the movie, what sets it apart from the sappy morality tales with which it's often confused.
And the plot pretty much fits one of the staleest blockbuster movie templates, filed away in your mind as a clichéd product of the time: the bullied nerd at heart brawls with the cantankerous jock and wins.
Macho Macchio
But that's not how The Karate Kid plays out. Daniel LaRusso, played by aspiring actor Ralph Macchio, is never portrayed as a wimp or a douchebag. From the very beginning, driving across the country with his widowed mother (Randee Heller), Daniel is a tough New Jersey transplant who is gritty, athletic and charming. He attracts the interest of Ali (“I in!”), an attractive California girl played with confident grace by Elisabeth Shue.
Ali is the school's showbiz star, but Daniel doesn't run from her or let his first crush on her slip away. He gets into trouble with the kids at the Cobra Kai dojo when their leader, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), Ali's ex-boyfriend, starts pushing her around.
Ali is no withered flower, but he clearly needs a champion, and Daniel is the only one brave enough to volunteer. At this point, one might expect him to take a bad beating, but he puts up a good fight.
In other words, the showdown is set up not as a showdown between two ideals of masculinity — the good, demure lover versus the evil alpha male — but rather as a showdown between noble and corrupt versions of one kind of man: the red-blooded American man.
Brutal reality
Daniel is a better guy than Johnny, but he has to face the harsh reality that Johnny is simply stronger. He's bigger, stronger, and better trained. This movie is about the harsh realities of being a man and how Daniel deals with them.
At first, he's scared. After a few punches, Daniel sulks and cowers in the school hallways, desperately trying to escape the facts of his situation. If you ask what kind of wimp Daniel becomes, it's not a sensitive bookworm but a bitter loner who broods about the unfairness of life and plots a twisted form of revenge; not Bastian Bax from The Neverending Tale, but Dostoyevsky's raging underground dweller.
Instead, of course, Daniel meets Miyagi Shigeyoshi from Okinawa, who is, predictably, brain-dead. Racial Criticism This year in America, Mr. Miyagi Decreased As Perverse Stereotypes “An eternal foreigner who exists to serve the white people around him.”
Embodying Dignity
Nonsense. Miyagi is a multi-layered tragic hero, and the best thing about this film is how patiently, even reverently, it gets to the heart of his story.
The central moment in The Karate Kid isn't the final tournament but a late-night drinking session in which Mr. Miyagi reveals that while he loyally fought for America, his wife and young son died in President Franklin Roosevelt's Japanese internment camps.
The film once again employs a poignant subterfuge: the audience thinks they are watching a story about a fatherless son, when in fact it is also a story about a fatherless son.
And indeed, the film does address race and class, but not in the plodding, self-righteous way that will satisfy film scholars. If Pat Morita's broken English has a hint of kabuki melodrama to it, the effect is a wholly recognizable portrayal of a character every American has met and loved: a first-generation immigrant who brought old customs to his new country like a gift.
Sometimes it's a tough road to acceptance for these people. For Miyagi, it's not just the atrocities of war, but also the drunk fools who sometimes jeer and squint at him. He's even been the target of microaggressions: “Miyagi, not Miyaji.” No one seems to get it right.
Miyagi shames his opponents not by sulkingly asserting his dignity, but by boldly embodying it no matter the situation. And that's the glorious secret he conveys in every lesson he teaches Daniel: When they attack you, when they boss you around, when they yell at you, when they fight dirty and want to take you to your knees, you just stand up. And you take a breath and refuse to be taken down.
Will to win
If Daniel could make it that far, his friends say, he's already won. Ali made it clear he was a woman he would never let go, promising to “come home early” if Daniel was knocked out in the first round. Even Mr. Miyagi assured Daniel that “it doesn't matter if you win or lose.”
They're right to say it. But Daniel wants to win. And that's the cleverest thing about the movie, what sets it apart from the sappy morality tales it's mixed up with. There's truth to the idea that being good is a victory in itself, but what's really been repeated is the idea that all the world needs is to be kinder to good people.
Daniel knows that will never happen. That means he can't just be nice. Daniel has to be strong. Miyagi knows that, but he has no choice but to let Daniel say it. And so the movie ends. Instead of showing Daniel holding the trophy, the next shot shows a silent close-up on the teacher's face. Daniel has said everything he needed to say.
This essay was originally Rejoice forever Substack.
