I indulged in the spectacle of the Super Bowl a couple of months back. It is, after all, an American tradition. Some things I noticed made me laugh, but this quote from the winning quarterback was just hilarious:
“Four years ago, who ever thought this would be happening?” said Brees, the game’s Most Valuable Player. “Eight-five percent of the city was under water. People were evacuating to places all over the country. We just all looked at one another and said, ‘We are going to rebuild together. We are going to lean on each other.’ That’s what we’ve done the last four years, and this is the culmination of that belief.”
[+|Boston.com]
The quarterback, Drew Brees, somehow managed to tie in New Orleans’ awful city design and subsequent epic failure of a flood into a football game. I’m wondering how many of the folks who lived in FEMA trailers for months really cared that much about a football game being played a few states over.
This melodrama sports culture is a symptom of dysfunction within our society. People eat up garbage like this because where we lack adventure in our own lives, we need to create it. Since we’re not very creative as couch potatoes, it’s a lot easier to watch someone else’s creation and then indulge in the media blitz after, of all things, a bunch of guys in tights throwing a pigskin around.
As a result, we can project any fantasy of ours into…football, House MD, video games, you name it. The symbols change, but they were empty to begin with; merely relatable templates of characters, or avatars, we can use to fill in the blanks. In the process, we find something unproductive to do rather than actually create something.
Rather than stop at the melodrama of the Super Bowl, a couple of decades ago someone came up with the idea of fantasy sports. So now there’s a fantasy on top of the fantasy: sports can represent anything to you, especially if your team wins. But now we can break that fantasy down further, to the individual player level. Sort of a “SIM”sports, where you build your own team and play General Manager, like a live-action video game. It’s a wonder fans haven’t revolted and demanded more games per week out of the athletes, not so they can view more games, but so they can get more stats more quickly.
It brings to mind Philip K. Dick short stories, many of which were centered around a human population which preferred to be distracted by trivial games than deal with a barely livable land mass. As long as basic survival needs are met, he seemed to argue, humans will do whatever they can to avoid the real world.
There are still many who would prefer the real world; we don’t need to be as cynical as Dick. But as long as there are millions of us able to get our hands on Macs, cell phones, and fast food, the irony is that observing our attempt at shutting out reality helps us define the reality of our species in another way – namely, the many are not qualified to lead. Human behavior is fatalistic and selfish as soon as most can imagine themselves with no responsibility. Fantasy sports and the glitzy light show surrounding major sporting events are just two examples.
Great story–I see a parallel when I hear people speaking about a sports team as though they are a member; “We need to get our secondary tightened up” or We kicked their ass.”
For me, I will watch a few minutes of it for the big ones, mostly because it will be a topic for even normal folks so I like to at least be able to discuss the basics.
In general though, NOTHING in sports or entertainment is worth my time as the activities of these morons and thugs do not affect me. Now when discussing the morons and thugs in DC—–now THAT is a different story!
Good blog topic. Vicarious participation isn’t really participating. Vicarious allegiance to a collective of no real importance seems silly. Sports media is like video games for boys ages 15 to 65 or so. They could have been making their civilization and themselves better instead.
“People eat up garbage like this because where we lack adventure in our own lives, we need to create it,” really hits the nail on the head. I see this all the time in how interviewers on television are constantly asking people how various events made them feel. This lack of participation, in anything close to what people who go out and accomplish things have done, means that the average TV viewer has no way of relating to them; in a way, the market demands the annoying “how did you feel” questions.
Kent S also makes a very good point about people speaking like they’re a member of the team with “we” comments; it drives me crazy, too. One interesting twist, though: in my area (southern Ohio), high school football is almost as important as professional football, much to the bafflement of people visiting from elsewhere. These “outsiders” often look down on this behavior as provincial and silly, but I think it’s actually quite a bit healthier than fervently following professional games, since it encourages some level of local culture, and the “we” comments are a bit more accurate, especially if they’re coming from parents of players. High school football can be overdone just like anything else, but it’s certainly less over-commercialized than pro.
Passion. There is no greater tool to distract the White Man.
Go to any porn site, ANY. You will find categories based on your preference. Each one will correspond to a real-world strategy of the PTB to herd the masses into passionate distraction: Voyeurism, Inter-racial, Gay, Sodomy, Violence (BSDM). It is progressing – behold reality TV, etc.
Mike
If you look at it from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to support you team even if you’re not technically a member. You’re part of the society that produced these sportsmen, therefore you should be proud if they win. There’s nothing wrong with a non-player cheering his team, the problem lies in the assumptions regarding what makes a team ‘your team’. And even if you don’t identify yourself with the team that you support, you can make better use of your time by working on things that you do identify yourself with.