Pfft. William Tell didn’t use a giant piece of styrofoam. He used an apple. Get back to us after a few boyfriends, Katniss.
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Yeah, this has weirdly “become a thing”…
I say this as an archer (initially olympic style recurve, and now target compound) who kind of focuses on anything archery. The range I practice at has a lot of new people doing lessons, and people ask about the handstand shooting thing all the time. Weird. Somehow a novelty act has become somewhat common knowledge.
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I only wish people that have clearly never read William Tell would stop referencing it. William Tell was forced to shoot an apple placed on his young son’s head. It wasn’t for fun and sport. It was quite serious and fairly horrifying. Perhaps the author of the head-line was thinking of Bugs Bunny.
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That describes to a T William S. Burroughs shooting Joan Volmer, though.
Very few people have read William Tell, I imagine - more likely they have been exposed to it via the Rossini opera, though that is rarely performed and mostly known through its overture (itself mostly known through being the theme song of “The Lone Ranger”).
In the original legend (Tell is a Swiss folk hero of uncertain historicity), he is forced to shoot an apple from his son’s head by the evil Austrian Vogt Gessler with a crossbow for the crime of refusing to bow to the Vogt’s hat. After completing his legendary shot, Gessler notes that Tell has brought two bolts instead of one; when he asks why, Tell replies that the second is for Gessler if the first killed his son. Gessler has him arrested and takes Tell’s son prisoner back with him to Austria. Tell then escapes, races across the countryside just in time to catch Gessler at his own gates and assassinates him.
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I wonder if an increasing international awareness of the World Nomad Games is responsible for that recent popularity, since it seems like a traditional bit of extreme nomad activity that’s been part of the competition for a while, like the horseback riding while on fire… maybe that’ll take off, too.
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I’ve got it! Contortionist archery with underpowered kiddie bows while on fire!!!
BUt in all seriousness, I’ve seen the act popping up numerous times on those “XXX country has talent” type shows, so maybe in part due to that as well?
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