Indecent Acts In a Public Place Excerpt from the Introduction by Domhnaill M'Grath

Why is it that artists, musicians and writers deserve more attention and financial support than single mothers, rape victims, the homeless, natives or political refugees? Why must we hear what Pierre Berton, Margaret Atwood and Bruce Cockburn have to say on subjects they know so little about?

High art is said to liberate, to broaden, to open the mind. But does art and literature and music not abound with political apologists, sexist fantasies, racist stereotypes and self-indulgence'? Even when it is self-aware and politically correct does it speak to anyone except the converted? High culture, left or right, mainstream or avant garde, historical or post-modern, is exclusionary, cliquish. It gives what it has to give to those already believing or ready to be converted from one sect to another.

Is sport any less corrupt, any less pompous and self-inflated'? As in high culture noble ends are similarly attributed to sport, such as the triumph of the human spirit. Of course there is much evidence to say that sport is more concerned with the triumph of the will; to win, to beat and humiliate your opponents, to promote masculinity and violence.

The ambiguities of morality and meaning in sport are no different from those found in other forms of culture including high art. All forms of culture are in some ways complicit with the structures of power as well as being areas of contestation.

Indecent Acts In a Public Place Excerpt from the Awash in Bodily Fluids

Why do baseball players spit? Are their mouths dry from excess exertion? Hardly. Seldom a physically demanding game, professional baseball boasts more players in their thirties and forties than any other sport. When the only dirt to be found at a ball park consists primarily of four squares the size of your living room rug surrounded by a field of green synthetic carpet, then spitting is not the result of too much grit in the teeth. (Although the dusty, gritty, playing fields of sandlot baseball - along with the sedentary habit of chewing tobacco - may account for why this particular form of the ritual emerged.)

The baseball player who digs in at the plate, spits in dirt already saturated with various bodily fluids, and then rubs the spittled dirt on his hands to help him keep a grip on things, enacts a ritual that binds him to the fraternity of athletes. < br > < br > He is like the young tough who loiters on thestreet corner similarly fertilizing the ground. Young Rambo's spitting is an outward display of his toughness, a reprehensible act, the committing of which ritually makes him a part of the gang and demonstrates that membership. Like the sacrilegious Mediterranean blood brotherhood ritual once used for Mafia initiation. There, the image of a saint, after being smeared with the blood of a new Mafioso, was burnt. Male bonding is always a messy business.

Despite the fact that sports teams are organized along totemic lines - as Blue Jays, Bears, etc. - and are thus in themselves collectives, the athletic brotherhood is a fraternity of athletes as a whole. Witness from a sport where spitting is not a prominent feature (although one-finger nose blowing is, exemplifying that it is not the specific activity but the ritual which persists) the exchange of sweat-soaked jerseys between two teams of soccer players at the end of an international match.

Playing sports is something more than just a group of men engaging in a particular activity. It is to enlist in the athletic fraternity, which, as in the street gang or any case of men banding together, empowers its individual members to transgress a number of social norms.

Indecent Acts In a Public Place Excerpt from the Playing Dumb

Gangs have been identified as a sort of community that develops among adolescents, who, denied access to adult society, create their own rites of passage. Membership in gangs has come to be characterized by an increase in median age that points to a perpetual denial of adult life for many youth, or their inability to either find or accept it. While this occurs in the rarefied world of professional sporting teams as well, a more important reason why a group of adults retains the gang characteristics of, say, a junior hockey team composed of 16-18-year-olds, is because it is a means of resistance to the organizational nature of pro teams.

The organizational model for the owner selling sexuality and fantasy is not that of the lone pimp on the street corner, but the corporate structure of organized crime. The owners in professional sports have the same relationship to the team as that of a syndicate to the gang. The syndicate, characterized as a large, hierarchical and bureaucratic business, attempts to impose its authority on the spontaneous and nebulous power structure of the gang by controlling the markets and jobs associated with particular areas of crime.

The syndicate uses violence as a means of controlling the gang. Football, to take one case in point, has become notorious for the grueling and at times sadistic regimen established by coaches. It takes the violence of the gang (occurring in territorial disputes or as a part of the autonomous code that establishes internal relationships) that is only one facet of its existence, and magnifies it, making it its essential feature. Violence is used as a means to initiate players into a system where the individual is forced to submerge his personality and critical intelligence, adhering himself solely to the group and its aims under the leadership of the coach. (Making the sports team the perfect corporate enterprise.) This process is one that the athlete must accede to, at least on the face of things, if he hopes to accrue the financial and other benefits arising from being an athlete.

Indecent Acts In a Public Place Excerpt from the The Sporting Gaze

The sports fan is usually under attack from all quarters. His intense interest in sport is seen as an abrogation of family and other responsibilities and as an escape into a fantasy world.

Watching sports, however, is no more a lack of participation in 'life' than any of the other forms of involvement with the world that most would see as being open to them. It's no less 'real' because of its fantastic nature and, in fact, is a more intense form of (non)involvement than that recognizably possible in such things as politics, community, and family.

The sporting gaze - that hypnotic integration into a world of heroes and myth - shows the fan's willingness to make dream life a part of the everyday world, and that that which is not boring will captivate him. It is not through political representation that the individual (though still separate from 'the action' to a degree) can, by his weekly cheering and booing, punish those he disapproves of or see a form of rough justice or immediate change imposed. It is through sports, not politics, that the individual finds a philosophical medium to discuss things that are relevant to his day to day life; things such as manhood, failure, and dealing with arbitrary authority. Sports is a vehicle through which he can express himself intellectually, emotionally and engagingly, and hence feel a daily bond with his fellows who do likewise (and who are in the majority) that he will not feel with his neighbours in a bedroom suburb or with a family only accessible by a long journey. Sports does not 'make up' for what is lacking in other parts of a person's life. It generates pleasure for what it is and is chosen above the others because of what they are not.

Watching sports is making a choice for that which is simple but allows for any amount of intellectual involvement desired, that is dramatic, mythic, emotionally involving, active and fun. It is 'vicarious living' that overpowers 'life,' the symbolism that can simply overcome all others. Rather than criticizing the sports fan for 'turning away from life,' then, the logical criticism would be that if he derives so much pleasure from sports, he shouldn't seek to make it more intoxicating or to make the rest of the world more like it.

Indecent Acts In a Public Place Excerpt from the Brute Strength

The athlete's body is one of the primary commodities in the business of sport. As an actual entity it is bought, sold and traded between teams. But it is sold to the public as well, as reified image of something scarce and exclusive, the physical incarnation of certain virtues. As such, the athlete's body has become purchasable - for those willing to undertake the necessary regimen - as a compensation for the nondemocratic nature of modern sports. To own an athletic body is to attain a substitute for what pro sports denies its spectators: the joy of participation and the sensuality of movement. This is fundamentally different from the Greek ideal, which represented accessibility, participation and, pleasure.

As feminism has filtered down to a popular level, the male - confronted with a form of athletic participation based on the sexual in both the narrowest and the broadest senses (i.e., the qualities associated with the male in a particular historical division) - has found it acceptable to express his desire for sensuality by such actions as condemning the aggressive values of male athletics and an increased personal participation.

In order for the athlete to retain his specialized function as model of body image, some changes have begun to occur. The athlete's body is increasingly hidden by plastic and synthetic uniforms to disguise his decrepit physical, condition (and masculine nature) in order to present itself as an image (partially feminine) of health and vigour. Athletes promote participation and speak out against drugs and alcohol while efforts are made to curtail such male excesses as hockey violence.

In the same vein, females (now participating to a greater degree as well) increasingly work to establish women's professional sports along the same lines as those for men. This means that they too can have specialized athletic models as they seek to attain some of the 'masculine' qualities (e.g., physical power) denied them.

Memberships at gyms, sports equipment, books and a variety of other commodities are profitable business items. Even simple activities (like 'catch' in the park) that can be engaged in by all, and done only for the urge to participate in some form of physical activity, become commodity-intensive. Expensive shoes, gym suits and other paraphernalia become necessary items. Their marketing has required pro sports to change as it has in order to protect its role in the colonization of the body.