A personal question... Do you remember the Super Bowl at the time of Gulf War One?
It was purposely designed, with many glances toward Leni Riefenstahl, as a kind of electronic Nuremberg rally. I am not saying that the people who go to or watch the superbowl are fascists. I am just recognizing the type of propaganda we see day in and day out.... You should watch Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" sometime. You will see that often, many of the patriotic presentations we get during sports use Riefensthal's propaganda techniques and strategies.
Furthermore, I don't think that it is either controversial, nor is it "over the top" to say that sports "rehearses" extreme jingoism or "rallying around the flag". I believe this is true from High School sports to professional sports. The more meaningless the sports rivalry the more it rehearses the "meaningful" jingoism of war fever.
Further, "hedging my bets" was in the contexts of a historical comparison. It was Marvin who wrote:
Quote: "....sports has replaced religion as the modern opiate of the masses. Most people have a much more intense attachment to their home teams than to their home churches, and sports has become both the preferred means of escape from the stresses of work and family responsibilities, and of identification with the larger community - transcending the boundries of class, gender, race, religion, political affiliation, etc.
If anything this is "over the top". I was responding to point out that some how sports has become "the opiate of the masses." If anything it is the "amphetamine" of the masses. Or to quote Karl Marx directly "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people." In no way can sports be said to be the "sigh of the oppressed" or the "heart of the heartless world". At times it is represents the cruelty that comes from a heartless world. All team sports has a tendency toward soccer hooliganism.
But my point, and the reason for "hedging my bets" was to counter Marvin's absurd notion that "sports" is a "substitute" for religion. I wanted to point out that, for anyone who studies ancient societies, it is very hard to determine when sports as a civic function can be separated from religion as a civic function. Today, it might be possible to say that in some ways that "nationalism" is a substitute "religion," and therefore, the "rehearsal" of jingoism that goes on when we rally to our team is a little like a "ritual" of nationalism. But I would not stretch the analogy. (This is not "hedging my bets," by the way. I am simply trying to find ways to justify Marvin's original "modern sports is like religion" equation.)
Further, I am not saying that all sports at all times is a rehearsal for jingoism, but in our mass society, from high school on up, we go to these little "pep" rallies where we are "required" to cheer, for no particular reason, just because it is "our team," and we invent qualities that "our" team is supposed to have that makes "our" team superior to "their" team, and ost of those "qualities" of superiority/inferiority are simply false, All of that seems to me be a rehearsal for jingoism and the kind of jingoism that is supposed to ease our way into war.
Jerry Monaco
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