Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Sports The Dead and Us
Posted by Charles Mudede on Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 11:28 AM
Yesterday, I proposed that one reason why Lizzy Burns found it possible to replace Mary Burns, her dead sister, as Engel's lover is that the relationship the dead had with the living was much closer then than it is now.
In [their] world, the ghost of Mary Burns could actually live within her sister. And so, sleeping with Engels had nothing to do with Lizzy but the ghost "creeping between the lines."
To this theory, PC declared:
Absolutely nothing to do with ghosts or the other CM mumbo jumbo.
The reason why I made this proposal had nothing to do with pure air. The inspiration of the thought came from the historical transformation of a particular American sport, lacrosse.
Today, we the game exists in the context of a competition. In the past, however, the game was more theatrical than competitive. The Native American tribes that played lacrosse organized it in this way: on one side, the living; on the other, the dead. And the though the living did their best to win, put on a great show, the dead won every time. In short, the game was played to appease the unknown but powerfully felt forces of dead.
As time passed and cultures changed, the relationship with the dead also changed. The sport was transformed to meet these changes. The dead were removed as opponents, and it became a competition of the living against the living. 
Why this modification in the first place? Why wasn't the theatrical element preserved, transferred from one reality to the next? Because it made no sense to us, the moderns (we have not always been modern), the humanists, the worldly types. And our sports and entertainments do not exist in isolation but reflect dominant economic and cultural tendencies.
An example: Last Friday, the cover of USA Today had a story about how NFL teams are looking for players with more versatility. They want footballers who can switch roles during a play. This new necessity has much to do with the fact that the original type of footballer does not reflect the worker in the current society but one in an older order dominated by the factory model, the Fordist world of mass production. Like the Footballer, the factory worker of that time specialized in one thing and did that one thing his whole life. That kind of work, or specialization, is now fast vanishing in our society and what we find more and more are workers who do several jobs, not only through a lifetime but also in a single day. Indeed, Marx's dream of a communist utopia is USA today.
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
The current transformation happening in football corresponds with the transformation happening in the economic life or realities of our society—an economic life that weirdly corresponds to Marx's idea of communism. (By the way, this passage by Marx is famous because it's one of the few times he attempted to describe what life under communism would be like.) So, because the moderns relationship with death was different from than the one experienced by the inventors of lacrosse, the meaning of the sport was transformed to fit the existing or prevailing realities. Death is not a stable thing.
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Lacrosse was not, not, not played "between the living and the dead". That doesn't even make any sense. It originated as part of a religious ritual and cultural expression (not unlike the Mesoamerican ball game), yes, but the teams were both live people, and yes, they were competitive.
You might be more witty and accurate than the commenters, Charles (and I bet you are), but when you write in a way that's easily perceived as aggrandizing and know-it-all (not saying you are!), you're fueling the creeper attacks.
Golob does a great job at being informative so that most people understand he's brainier than they are. But when he does it, you imagine him with a charming smile, a t-shirt and jeans -- approachable and friendly.
In other words, Charles, save us the reality of how stupid we really are. Thanks.
Bravo, Charles, and keep it up!
That era, interestingly, closely corresponds with the heyday of factory production in the U.S.
But hey, nice try.
Fortunately, there's a treatment for this disorder: college.
Lacrosse - losing team sacrificed.
Football - broken bones and no steroids.
Footballers (aka soccer) - bleeding fans and players.
Ruggers (rugby) - there is nothing like a scrum in the almost freezing mud as the leaves cover over your bleeding body, IMHO.
Well, that's my opinion from playing them.
And the most likely reason for what's-her-name's sister to take what's-her-name's place is that she would otherwise have been cast penniless into the street.
Why do they even publish Mudede? Wait- don't answer that, Dan- I'm pretty sure I don't want to hear it.
We have a mondern relationship with the dead it's called zombies, I think.
Seems to be the same to me.
But I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express once when I went to Disneyland.
If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the rooms and on the stair,
Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato’s ghost
Or Aristotle’s skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.
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