8. Archery
Has anyone seen me doing this somewhere before?
There are some things on my list of stuff I’ve never done that I was surprised by and archery was one of them. I forget so much. People I don’t even recognise approach me all the time to reminisce on fun nights we’ve allegedly spent together. All to say, maybe I fucking have done archery??? Because it is very much the sort of thing I’ve always wanted to do. I was the kind of child that would steal an adult’s bathrobe and then stand between two trees pretending to be a wizard for hours. Most people my age have seen Lord of the Rings more times than is useful which is 90 percent archery, 10 percent meaningful hobbit looks. Gotham Archery, where I went for my introductory lesson, is very aware of their clientele’s likely interest in elves.
It is also a place that clearly caters to children. There were about 20-30 of them lined up in the main hall taking turns shooting at a fairly close target, and a few adults shooting at some much further away ones in a corner. We beginners were taken to an even smaller space with even closer targets than the ones for children, accompanied by a giant man named Travis.
“Ohhhh, five people for a lesson, sounds real fun,” a blonde twelve-year-old boy sneered at Travis as we walked by. He was not acknowledged by his hero.
Actually, there were only three of us, because two people ditched. It was me and a couple on a date. I’m sure it was very boring for Travis, but he took it super seriously because if he didn’t someone would definitely get shot with a projectile.
“When I say bows down, bows go on the wall. When I say retrieve, you may all go to retrieve,” he recited drill sergeant-style. Then he demonstrated how we had to pick the arrows one by one from the target. Being shot was hardly the only peril. You could bend over into your quiver wrong, bump into somebody, yank your arrow out too fast. Sharp sticks are no joke. Travis certainly wasn’t laughing.
But when it came time to choose our bows, he presented the two options as either the long bow “for your elves, fantasy shows, etcetera” or the compound bow which he characterised as “what you’d see on The Walking Dead.” Well, I’ve been obsessed with The Walking Dead for about six weeks now and still going strong. I did not argue that the most famous bow on the series is a crossbow, I just went with the compound. Travis knows his audience.
A compound bow is what most would recognise as a hunting bow and it is capable of delivering many more pounds of impact than the person wielding it could alone. When he first handed it me, I couldn’t even pull the string back because someone with crazy strong arms had wound it so tight. After it was loosened, and he showed us how to notch our arrows, he mimed drawing your hand in a “C” shape back to your chin and mouth. This was difficult for me spacially, I kept thinking my thumb was in line with my lips, but was really twisting it somewhere around my neck. There were lots of little details like that to remember, like dropping your left shoulder, keeping a slight bend in your elbow, letting fly within a second or two or drawing back, where to look through the sight, and probably a million more details he didn’t get into. We all had to wait until everyone had shot their last arrows before it was “bows down” and time to retrieve, and I was always last. The couple was in perfect tandem, one with a long bow, one with a compound, waiting patiently as I tried to remember which way was up for my thumb. I wanted to take my time with each shot, but it was sort of the point that you shouldn’t.
As we improved, Travis introduced a few games.
“Zombies are closing in, you’re all here looking for weapons because this is the apocalypse and you can’t find ammo,” he explained.
This is pretty much the exact reason people use arrows on Walking Dead, but it’s still funny to hear someone who teaches archery for a living acknowledge the convoluted circumstances where it’d be useful. He went on to explain each ring of the target’s color, from black outer rings to yellow center, represented a certain number of zombies, and if we got high enough as a group, we win.
“But if you hit the barcode,” he added, pointing at the small printed group of lines in one corner, “That’s an explosion and you win automatically.”
The girl with the compound bow went full hog on trying to hit that barcode, not winning a single individual zombie point as I and her boyfriend diligently plugged away. At the end, we were all dead because of our low score, but I admired her big swing. Unfortunately, in the event of a real emergency, our group would fall apart because we had no cohesive strategy.
Compared to using a gun, the fantasy of defending yourself with a bow and arrow is quite twee. I’ve thought a lot about violence. Most of us think about violence a lot, I’d be willing to bet. Maybe what we don’t think about as easily is how violence is built into the maintenance of our world in a way that doesn’t require picking up a weapon for the vast majority of people. Because of how fantasies of violence can escalate into action and how they are used to manipulate some people and harm others, I don’t want to say anything that could be interpreted as positive about them. This is more of a neutral statement, which is that most daydreams about battling off zombies with arrows, or guns, are obviously about control. It’s very simple. It’s very divorced from reality, particularly the reality of how my presence on this planet, on this land, and through the payment of my taxes, creates real violence in someone else’s life in tangible and horrific ways while I physically do nothing of note. And this automated, cog-like violence is something sickening and almost impossible to process in a way watching TV battles could clearly never be, and so the latter becomes a way to channel all that rage and sorrow into something very goofy and meaningless.
As a writer, I’ve seen every quote, comment, and concept about how important art and storytelling is, but most mainstream versions of both tend to lend credence to how things already are, rather than imagining a better future. I’m attracted to shows/books/films about the apocalypse for a lot of reasons, with schlocky entertainment being the primary one. They also, out of necessity, tend to get a bit more imaginative and take less for granted than many other types of tales. The old world is gone, what will the new one be? And yet, they’re often riddled with so many of the same problems. Why is Rick Grimes advocating for broken windows policing when there’s a herd of zombies at the gates? I hope because someone didn’t finish reading the Wikipedia article on the subject before shoe horning it into an episode, but I’m sure it’s much more sinister than that.
The other thing that bothers me about the narrative of art’s benevolence, is that the catharsis we get out of a piece of art, high brow or low brow, can feel like we’ve done something. If the protagonist has done good, we are a hero. If the antagonist is redeemed, so are we. The end. Bedtime.
Media consumption and archery are two completely acceptable hobbies, however, and I can now say that both have brought me joy. And I do know we have power through collective work to change structural forms of violence. It’s a generational undertaking, making it difficult to understand the measurable results of one’s actions today. You may never know if you made a difference, nor will anyone else know. It won’t be watched on screen or talked about and it won’t make a dynamic visual set piece. Still, I do think it is a winning strategy.
After the session was over, we were able to take down our targets to bring home. I rolled mine up, feeling the puncture holes all across the back. I’ve already misplaced it, but I don’t think I’m going to forget it.
Both Geena Davis and Brie Larson are extremely passionate about archery, apparently, and you can’t argue with the results (arms that look like powerful snakes).
Davis made it to the semifinals for the US Olympics Archery team in 2000 when she was 41.
This is eight minutes of every Legolas shot.
If you’re interested, Gotham Archery was a great place to be introduced to the sport and they have locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn.