By the 1970s, martial arts films (especially kung fu films and Bruce Lee flicks from Hong Kong) had formed a mainstream genre and launched the "kung fu craze" which propelled karate and other Asian martial arts into mass popularity. However, mainstream Western audiences at the time generally did not distinguish between different Asian martial arts such as karate, kung fu and tae kwon do.
Karate experienced an explosion of popularity in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to such movies as The Karate Kid. Karate's popularity has declined since the 1990s due to competition from other martial arts like Taekwondo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and MMA.
One of the major criticism of martial arts teaching in the United States, is the common practice in American of teaching primarily for profit, at the expense of good quality self-defense instruction. These are often mocked as McDojos.
