A martial arts tutorial…kind of. The Curly Shuffle is something you ought not to do ever unless you want to make an ass of yourself.
This is a process of what I can only call “posting up” before a fight: it can involve squaring off your feet, holdings your arms out in an attempt to be intimidating, positioning your feet to get into a something resembling, but not quite, a fighting stance or any combination of the above. This is, in my opinion, the biggest sign of an amateur in combat contra someone who has an idea of what he’s doing. I don’t know if this behavior has a name, but I have taken it upon myself to dub it: The Curly Shuffle, named of course after the antics of one Curly Howard. You know what I mean: Moe smacks Curly, and he’ll, y’know, post up: flapping his arms about and making a grumpy face and standing up tall but ultimately not doing anything to retaliate. As a side note, writing that out is possibly the most pedantic thing I’ve ever done.
Obviously this is exaggerated for slapstick hilarity, but anybody who has been in a public school gym class has seen “real” versions of this: one kid will shove or taunt or otherwise bully another kid, and the victim will open his arms and puff out his chest and try to get the other guy to back down without actually throwing a punch—because throwing a punch will get you disciplined don’tcha know. Or perhaps the young fellow is simply afraid. The goal here is clearly to do a threat display, but maybe it’s just me, it’s always looked kind of silly to me, and instantly reminded me of the Stooge’s antics.
Where does this behavior come from? Personally I think it comes from our simian cousins—gorillas, for example, have elaborate ritualized intimidation displays before they finally start throwing down. Eye contact, chest pounding, teeth baring, the works. What you won’t see is them going from “0-60”—ie, you’re never going to see one gorilla clobbering another out of nowhere…at least not that I’m aware of. Maybe in some ancient primordial past, “posting up” was an affective threat display, but those days are long over. Anybody who knows the signs will, and SHOULD, start clobbering the other guy in the midst of the threat displays, while betraying no emotions of your own.
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