So I was thinking back to when I was a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. One thing I remember from television and films, especially older ones, was that people seemed to punch each other in the face a lot. They would seem to get into a disagreement resulting in a pow in the kisser over nearly anything. Or at the very least there would be an implied threat of “why I oughta…” And more often than not, instead of someone going to the hospital or requiring any more medical attention than a piece of steak to the eye, they would be back to being friends in the next scene?
So were people more likely to throw a quick fist back in the day or was it just a media convention?
And diid the convention of settling disputes with your fists lessen as a larger percentage of people became larger and stronger due to diet, exercise and performance enhancing drugs and could now actually inflict some real damage on each other?
It’s an excellent question. It does seem that fist to the face beatdowns were a staple of manly fiction, and one on one fighting over just about anything was described as a de riguer part of life in many non-fictional autobiographies.
But is it true? Real life has never been quite like the fictional wild west. I think small communities of early America took one on one violence between members very seriously and people would got smacked would often seek re-dress in the courts. Old time court ledgers are loaded with cases where people are seeking punishment via fines or jail time for people who attacked or molested them. It was hardly perceived as “just good fun” type behavior.
Dick Cavett had a column at nytimes.com about that. He wrote, to the affect, that as a kid he watched a John Wayne movie and the next day, imitating the movie, he slugged a friend in the jaw and broke some bones in his hand.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they did because the only “martial art” that was around was boxing and quite possibly first-timers would emulate what they saw, even if (or particularly if) they had no training. The entertainment industry picking this up as the standard makes sense since you can’t assume that they were any better at portraying real-world fighting technique in the 30s-50s than they do today. They just use their imagination–which is based on whatever frame of reference they have, which would have been boxing.
But I would imagine that people who fought regularly probably wouldn’t hit for the face just because they don’t want to hurt themselves. The face is a hard and jagged surface.
In case you have never been punched in the face, it results in the recipient being stunned and disoriented, especially when unexpected. It may hurt the deliverer’s hand a bit, but it will win the fight if followed up properly. It is a huge advantage against an inexperienced opponent.
My admittedly uninformed impression was that it was a lower-middle working class thing, especially in late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigrant classes. The Irish had an infamous reputation as brawlers, rightly or wrongly. Perhaps many first generation immigrants came from cultures in which physical punishment- getting slapped, punched, kicked, beaten with sticks or even whipped- was not uncommon.
In a lot of movies of the '30s, a guy might threaten to punch someone in the face, and sometimes followed through; today he’d just do it, without the threat.
It also wasn’t unusual to spank his misbehaving girlfriend/wife, or at least threaten to do it.
It reminds me of Gary Cooper in Mr Deeds Goes To Town. IIRC he ends up punching all sorts of people when he realizes he’s being made fun of.
Punching people out is a lot more dangerous now. A band I was in fifteen years ago eventually broke up after our singer, while on vacation, got in a bar fight and ended up doing nearly a year of jail. However much an insult or slight may merit it, you may still have to pay a heavy price for lashing out. He was traveling out of state at the time, and perhaps that was why the locals didn’t want to believe him. Knowing the guy, he was absolutely not a bully or hardass, but I have no doubt he could take care of himself if called upon to do so. I’m sure the other guy started it, but that didn’t matter.
I’m sure fifty years ago, it often happened that most onlookers would be grateful that a local jerk got a pasting, and nothing would happen to the guy who got the better of him.
I don’t think there’s a lot of doubt that men used to get into fistfights a lot more routinely than they do now. My father used to tell me stories about co-workers who were particularly good at settling disputes with their fists - he wasn’t one of them but had a lot of friends who did. It was quite unremarkable in his day. Today, I never hear about grown men, men with jobs and stuff, going mano-y-mano. It just doesn’t happen. I can’t imagine doing it myself. If one of my co-workers socked someone else in the melon I’d think they had lost their mind.
There’s a pretty fair amount of anecdotal and literary evidence that fighting was much more common in the past as well.
As to WHY, I think it’s a combiation of things, but mostly just that you’re much likelier to get in deep trouble now. 100 years ago if a guy hauled off and punched some other guy, it was likely nothing would come of it. Today, if one guy punches another, there will usually be consequences.
Work in the trades for a while you’ll get to see one or two guys get punched in the face.
Overall it is assault and it is taken far more serious these days than in the past. If the person getting punched decides to call the police and/or a lawyer there will be consequences.
My uncle a general contractor has resolved many disputes by punching people in the face. He’s also gotten a few assault charges. He still firmly believes punching people is a good solution to some problems. His reputation is out there and people don’t mess with him and respect him. I’ve been on a few job sites of my own where people upon learning my last name completely change their tune dealing with me.
I’ve never really considered punching anyone(as an adult) and no one has managed to punch me though a few have considered it.
Funny, I came in here to make this exact point, which I’ve made before, that illustrates how violence on a scale that would call for immediate slam-dunk assault charges to be filed today, was just a boys-will-be-boys kinda thing a few decades earlier.
Not all girls. Based on what I’ve seen in my kids public schools it’s pretty uncommon for white and Hispanic girls to go at it, but back girls were getting into horrendously violent individual and group fights with each other all the time.
In my home town, my father had a reputation as a vicious street fighter; he was notorious in high school (back in the 1920s) for fighting and once went after the football coach with a piece of pipe because the man slapped my father’s younger brother. That same brother had a similar reputation. As a kid in our home town I heard endless stories about their fighting exploits and the people telling me those stories always put some sort of humorous or good nature spin on them. Often enough, the men telling the stories had had fights with either my father or his brother or both. And, often enough, my father and his brother were on good, friendly terms with the men who told me the stories. So based on that limited experience I guess I have to believe that fighting was much more common then than now and that grudges generally died out immediately the fight was finished. Of course, hearing those stories made me feel I had to live up to the family tradition. Unfortunately for me, I lacked my father and uncle’s size, strength, and fighting ability. It took far too long for me to realize that whatever else I might be, a fighter I wasn’t.