[Reader-list] Noam Chomsky vs the World Cup

[Isaac souweine]

Hi all:

Please follow this link to read my attempt to rationalize a month of soccer
obsession.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_isaac_so_060706_noam_chomsky_vs_the_.htm

Text also pasted below.

Cheers,
Isaac

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Noam Chomsky vs. The World Cup

by Isaac Souweine

Noam Chomsky killed my World Cup buzz. For three weeks, everything had
proceeded to plan. Announcers shouted GOALA!, bars opened before noon,
strikers hit heart-stopping goals
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE1LAl8IYe0&search=argentina%20goal>into the
upper 90. Then, days before a climactic European powers final, came a
Netflix night with Manufacturing Consent, the 1992 Chomsky biopic. And two
hours into the flick came a Chomskian
riff<http://www.zmag.org/Chomsky/mc/mc-script-5.html>on professional
sports left my Cup world in tatters.

"*Sports*" began Chomsky with a smirk that was suddenly really annoying, is
" *another crucial example of the indoctrination system*." Already the man
was inching onto sacred ground. "*Sports offers people something to pay
attention to that's of no importance*". Now on sacred ground and preparing
to defile it. In fact, sports are " *training in irrational jingoism*".
Pants unzipped, defilement in progress.

Relax, you say; 'tis nothing more than compensation for getting picked last
on his Zionist youth<http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/chomsky/chomsky/2/8.html>soccer
team. Maybe so, but having sports fandom trashed by an intellectual
idol as Cup fever surged was still a serious bummer. The problem wasn't that
my pastime might be vapid and regressive. The problem was that my
sports-enabled communion with the culture industry was under attack. Heed
Chomsky's sports bashing and I would be just like any other Frankfurt-school
Marxist <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_school> elitist - shouting
slogans about the rise of the underclass while turning my nose up at their
alienated viewing habits.

By the end of the film, I knew I had no choice. About NY Times coverage of
East Timorese massacres <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199910--.htm>, let
Noam control the ball. But when it came to the Cup, I would try to dictate
play. No matter that my opponent's discipline-changing linguistic theory,
superbly researched anarchist diatribes and enigmatic low-key delivery make
him one of the world's few intellectual super-pimps. If the US could blank
Britain fifty-six years ago; if Cameroon could beat Italy in Milan in '90;
well, you get the point.

My first runs looked to exploit Chomsky's weakest link: the equation of
sports with jingoism. I have argued
elsewhere<http://www.opednews.com/souweine_081704_Olympics.htm>that
sports are deeply integrated into the violent international order. The
problem, however, with strict sports-equals-jingoism reductionism, is that
while sports simulate and even stimulate violent nationalism, they also
sublimate it by channeling the nation-state's favorite
urges-competitiveness, aggression, and belligerence toward outsiders-into a
rule-based game with systems for limiting violence and encouraging respect.
Of course, sometimes sublimation fails, in which case you have hooliganism
or Brian McBride's face gushing
blood<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlGHw4S7IMc&search=italy%20elbow>.
But this is not the failing of the sport as much as it is the victory for
the dark sides of humanity, which wage darker victories in other quarters.

At their best, sports and sports fandom even ameliorate human nastiness. At
one level, this occurs through the discourse of sportsmanship. Players
desperate for victory still kick the ball out of bounds when an opponent is
down and exchange jerseys after the match. At a deeper level, however,
soccer especially diminishes small-mindedness through a universal language
of achievement. Goals, crosses, headers and saves create a vocabulary
that transcends
language <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcGKgi4h7CA&search=goal%20soccer>and
culture. Once equipped with this common tongue, ethnocentrism of any
kind is hard to maintain, for excellence so clearly transcends any
restricted social grouping.

Feeling that at I had at least created a dangerous chance in Chomsky's box,
I decided to pursue his rather unsporting claim that sports "offer people
something to pay attention to that's of no importance". To do so I first had
to withstand the inevitable Frankfurt school set piece: capitalist democracy
is not just about forcing people to sell their labor in the market; it is
about propaganda systems that generate uninformed, apathetic consumers
distracted from their potential for self-determination. Distracted by, among
other things, ninety minutes of soccer viewing, plus an equal or greater
amount of prep and debrief time, multiplied by three to twelve beers and
seventeen commercials.

In hopes of imposing *my*
quality<http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=371467&cc=5901>in
return, I replied to the sports-fandom-is-time-wasted volley with a
low-culture counter. Like the critical
theorists<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/>upon
whose work he builds, Chomsky interrogates the role of mass culture in
co-opting the lower classes. This is fair enough, to a point. But if low
culture can be politicized, it also deserves the same aesthetic protection
afforded the high culture of the bourgeoisie.

Freed of low-culture bias, the World Cup reveals itself as a rich artifact
of global culture. Like all sport, it generates a rich aesthetic by using
formal rules as a platform for physical improvisation. Dance-like sporting
exhibitions are further enhanced by character development and narrative
tension in a theater whose outcome is by definition unknown. Add in a
devotional audience-performer relationship, an extremely limited engagement
and the ability to view the show in a bar and you get basically the coolest
art-form known to man.

Nor is soccer's status as capitalist low-culture simply an aesthetic
liability. When one billion people follow an art form, quality in every area
actually tends to be high. Monetary and fame rewards bring the world's most
gifted performers. Fan connoisseurship is taken to heights at once neurotic
and sublime. And on flat screen, the media borg chips in with unmatched
production values, especially in HD. All of which sounds way better than
season tickets to the Met.

Like the Mexico-thrashing US side in '02, I was now ready for the big
Allemagne: the Cup's role in the dreaded "indoctrination system". The
challenge was obvious. The current world cup is expected to generate $1
billion in advertising
revenue<http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/06/12/1677445.htm>.
That's $1 billion worth of sexualized, falsely aspirational consumerist
schlock. Or, as Chomsky might put it, $1 billion worth of bad ideas about
what human beings should value.

Unfortunately, just like the tired English, the outclassed Brazilians, and
the overachieving German hosts, I knew the final push was beyond me. Maybe
my defense was strong enough to shelter the purer forms of sport played by
amateurs, (though even that seems
unsure<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/business/17pursuits.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>).
But an event worth billions to host-country capitalists and billions more to
FIFA and the rather
nasty<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0616-03.htm>sporting
goods industry just had too many folks I wouldn't want at my party.

Knowing victory was out of reach, I decided to try to salvage a tie. In New
York City, all World Cup games are shown on *Telemundo*, a Spanish channel
that features commercials I don't understand and a halftime shows so lacking
in big media shine that even the cleavage showing girls seem wholesome.
Since an ebullient Spanish commentator beats Marcelo Balboa any day of the
week, Channel 47 is really the perfect back door out of the indoctrination
big top. When you can't beat them straight, I figured, keep the score
knotted; once you get to penalty kicks, even Noam Chomsky is vulnerable.

Isaac Souweine is a software producer and occasional freelance writer living
in New York City.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060710/e472a42c/attachment.html