I've already talked a little about "playing the victim" in my previous post about Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso and their interactions (particularly in S1 and S2). But now I want to talk about playing the victim to game the system.
I want to clarify that in my previous post when I said "playing the victim," I didn't mean that Johnny or Daniel were trying to manipulate anything. They genuinely thought of themselves as victims of the other's misdeeds and that their responding actions were justified. It was all a matter of perspective, and that's one of my favorite things about this show. Is that I can sit in almost any character's perspective and just get them. They might be making dumb decisions, but I know (and better yet I understand) why they're making them. In some cases, I couldn't even argue that I wouldn't have done the same.
In this post, however, when I say "playing the victim," I mean actively manipulating or lying about events to make it seem like your opponent is the unreasonable aggressor. In order to game the system. Kreese and Hawk both show their ability, in fact their mastery, at playing the victim. Hawk gets Kreese Kai out of hot water with the principal by playing Sam's anger against her. He gamed the school. Kreese ordered a restraining order against Amanda after she assaulted him (whether he goaded her into that is up to the viewer). He gamed the entire county.
I do find it interesting that we see this similarity in strategy during the season that sets up Kreese's backstory as similar to Hawk's. They both got bullied. Then they got fed up. They got trained up. And they got betrayed by that trainer.
And honestly, I was surprised by their ability to spin the narrative. That wasn't a tactic I would expect from them. Underhanded? Yes. Portraying themselves as weaker? I would have lost money on that bet.
On that note, let's take a look at their opponents. Neither Sam nor Amanda knew how to handle this development. Like Johnny and Daniel, they both viewed their opponents' actions as direct attacks on them while completely discounting their own actions against them. But, in this case, Hawk and Kreese are reporting their opponents' misdeeds to a higher authority. And, here's the part that caught me off-guard, both Sam and Amanda were unable to recognize how the narrative is being spun against them. They played right into Hawk's and Kreese's hands.
And I'm honestly really surprised? I'm not saying the LaRussos are socialites or anything, but they do hit up the country club. I would have thought the schmoozy rich people would be better at, well, schmoozing. Like we've seen the LaRussos in multiple occasions pull sneaky business plays, whether for the car lot or for Miyagi-Do.
I suppose they've never been painted the aggressor before? I just expected them to be fluent in weaponizing public opinion, or at the very least, noticing when that's happening to them.
