Let's be very clear about it from the very outset. This is not one of those mushy posts about some obscure affair or nostalgic outpourings of mine. This is as close as it gets to hardcore theory. Probably because I'm on a no nonsense PhD mode, but also because this raises a few questions about the milieu I live in. Days are just mad. Ask any PhD scholar nearing his/her scholarship deadline but seeing no end to the thesis! I don't wish to sound rude, but I know I am. These are the times when you call an idiot an idiot.
Sporting mega-events have a long history. I guess it goes down to the early days of civilization. Documented history will obviously show some Greek competition that finally took shape of the Olympics, but I suspect it comes from something earlier, more primitive. Hence the involvement of body and bawdy. As man evolved, so did sports. A glimpse of the arena of Computer games and you'll know how cerebral they've become. I can't even install half of them, let alone playing! But the two things that remain constant in games, are the player(s) and the supporters. Even the very cerebral, very solitary ones have their share of supporters. I wonder when and how people decided some will play while the others will watch. I mean, people do a lot of stuff alone or collectively, no body cares. When did sports became spectacle? Is it when some people realized it requires special skills and training to play a game and not everyone has it?
I love Michel Foucault. That man helped me see the power structures inherent in everything. Call me a fanatic or lunatic or whatever you want, I'll still have him on my side. That's exactly his point!
So when some people play and the others watch, there is a clear demarcation, who has agency and who has not. The age-old division between the one who can and the one who can not, those who have it and those who have not. I presume this division is inherent in every sport, every game, every match. There is almost no instance where everyone will play and everyone will win. That's just not the point of any sport. It is, first and foremost the determinant of the victor and the vanquished. Yes, that's just for a time being, but this determining factor is all a game about. Don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning sports. I'm just trying to find out what drives numerous people to engage in a lot of things that may not be part of the game.
Coming back to sporting mega-events, they require something more than just the competition. They require money, they often require involvement of mega-authorities like the State. So here we are, in the 21st century, name a sporting mega-event that does not require the State, the Market and the Media and more often than not, the Religion (that's where the fans belong, for God's sake!) There you go, mega playground of the power. Now if the mega-event happens to be the favorite pass-time of a nation that struggles everyday just to exist, everyone wants a bite of it. Where it is clearly proved that things are not alright, they are not what they should be, mega events like this provides excuse for the mass to feel happy and gives the agencies of power the opportunity to go unchallenged, unquestioned despite their treacheries.
The situation is complicated. On one hand you have the few moments of joy that a battered nation desperately wants to feel (or so they are compelled to think), on the other there are the few skeptics like me, who refuse to believe a nation is more about 11men winning a match and less about 100 people dieing of hunger, lack of treatment or other such issues. Once one of my teachers taught me how internet is not free from any politics, rather it's the new form of politics as it allows detachment and anonymity. Those were early days of internet. It has become bloody complicated these days. I often fail to understand where the boundary of the virtual ends and where reality begins. So when a sporting event of that scale takes place these days, everyone is up there on the net, supporting and cheering their side, expressing their views, abusing the opponents and all that virtuality allows! If it involves nations, make no mistake, nationalism will be on the full swing. It always was.
What motivates the supporters to feel proud for the team? If you delve deep enough, you'll find pieces of broken egos, humiliated faces, frustrated, defeated lives, struggling for the last drop of hope. Someone to tell them, although they are defeated to the core, someone is fighting their fight, in some form. Sporting events, then clearly are more about warfare and less about fun. Any fun, if involved, is that of drawing the first blood and chopping the opponent into thin slices, methodically. Have you ever noticed, the two moments when an individual suddenly realizes (s)he is a citizen, who belongs to a nation and has some rights/duties, are the moments of a war or a national sporting event? That explains why skeptics like me are considered nuisance at such moments. Great teachers suddenly become cynical old fools. Great scholars become sexually frustrated weirdos. When someone is fighting hard to keep ones super blown ego intact, with all his/her unconscious exposed and hanging out there like their dirty lingerie, it is evident that there can be only two sides. Either I'm with you, or I should be impaled and burnt alive, nothing in between. At these moments of nationalist ceremonies, skeptics are the reminder of the Real, the constant disturbance in an otherwise happy, bright picture and hence must be offered to the Gods of fanaticism as sacrifice.
So the battle goes on. From Virtual to real and back to virtual. What you think is all in good fun, may feel absolutely disturbing for someone else. Just like you are entitled to your fun, I'm entitled to my disgust. But my disgust irritates you more than your fun disturbs me. There is no innocent fun, not in this late-capitalist, consumerist world. Power does control everything. One of the great success of the agencies of power at such moments is it overshadows your logic and turns you into what it always wanted you to become, One tin soldier. The moment you abuse the opponent or the skeptic for just being that, you join the army of zombies. In your frantic attempt to annihilate them, you forget, they are exercising the same power of free speech you're so happy about, their argument is equally as important and valid as yours. In our battles of comments and likes and posts and tags we forget, Nation is a virtual category too. So are friends and fans. There are no "real" representatives for you and me. We are what we become, what we choose to become. You see what you choose to see, but that may not be the only version. You do not control this world, it controls you.The sane approach is to accept that. but when was sanity mankind's greatest virtue?
As one national event comes to a super-celebrated end, it gears up for another. The forces that celebrated the 'oh so great' nation, regroups in its fragments. I wished to say, "up your ass, nationalism", but I realize these are the days of multiple subjectivities. The banners will change but the abuses will not, nor will your aspirations to feel like a whole. You stand divided in your humiliations and united in your idiocy. You'll again be happy about some virtual formation that will drain money out of your pocket to make fun of you. And you'll laugh at your humiliation, rejoice, unsuspecting as ever. Skeptics like me will again raise the dirty questions to face more vehement attacks this time, or you'll box us under some virtual category and shut us off your mind. Although you'll know in your mind for certain the glass jar has cracked from top to bottom, but you will not want to see. The friend will again feel bruised, the teacher defeated...
