How We Watch
I'm beginning to think that my love of football is closely related to my love of narrative. I think my mum will understand this. For the last few days, I have been, as I mentioned, watching two games at a time (they need to be played at the same time so that the second game is not thrown based on the result of the first.) My mum, not having two tvs in the same room (shame) watches one after the other. She always lets me know which one she is watching so that when I text her I don't give anything away about the game she isn't watching. Point being, she doesn't like to know what happens in the game - the fouls, the bad calls, the blood, or, of course, the result - before she's seen it. I'm the same. Why, though?
One thing I've noticed about how Americans watch footie (and, more on this later, since this is pretty interesting - to me, at least, and possibly to Ais) is that they really care about statistics. I imagine that this filters in from other games. I have a theory that baseball watchers are really up on their stats. (Any baseball watchers around? What about basketball?) The ESPN guys are forever putting up stats in the corner of the screen. This is how they watch: they want to predict the result based on numbers set beforehand. This is how I watch: I argue how the temperament of a player (Totti's famous temper) or the psychology of a team/nation (England's messianic complex), combined with strategy (why why why sub a midfielder for an attacker when you're already one down?! WHY?!) and conditions will affect the outcome.
Like my mum, I don't want to know the end before I see it. Unlike my mum, I don't believe in replays: there's no point, for me, watching a game that isn't live, because all my yelling at the tv will have no effect whatsoever. Perhaps this means that my mum is even more devoted to the narrative than I am (which is, frankly, surprising; this is my familial territory!); I am also very invested in the interactive (read: screaming) aspect of the game.
Because there is narrative in footie, I think. I mean, we ascribe it, and it has no conventional structure to speak of; not one found in lit theory, anyway. But I think there's an argument to be made that it creates its own structure; maybe we can't call it narrative structure, but some sort of "viewing" structure, some sort of structure of consumption, that involves our ascribed narrative. It's temporal, certainly, in the way music is temporal (I'm thinking about Schopenhauer here) and it has, the way plays and Bollywood films have, intermissions. It's like improv; you don't know who'll play the best game. (Interesting, too: improv-ers refer to performing sketches as playing games.) There's some sort of non-Aristotelian narrative thing going on, too; or, several that can be ascribed. Just as there are arguments to be made about the number of stories that we tell (three, or seven, depending on who you ask) there are perhaps a finite amount of stories to tell through the narrative structure that is footie: the underdog-beating-the-champs-at-the-88th-minute story, the champs-take-all-as-usual story (boring), the champs-score-underdog-equalizes story... this could go on for awhile, but you get the drift.
Anyway, I think I've got off the point a bit. Maybe it's not about how footie lends itself to narrative structure, but that the way we consume footie is similar to the way we consume movies or books; we are invested in characters (players), we are invested in plots (larger stories of teams and standings), we dis the bad guys (Argentinians), and we don't look at the last page before we've read the first 89 minutes.
This is all kind of mish-mashy and not terribly well thought out - I may be grasping at straws, but maybe I'm not. What do y'all think? (Those of you who didn't stop reading after I started on about the world cup, anyway.)
One thing I've noticed about how Americans watch footie (and, more on this later, since this is pretty interesting - to me, at least, and possibly to Ais) is that they really care about statistics. I imagine that this filters in from other games. I have a theory that baseball watchers are really up on their stats. (Any baseball watchers around? What about basketball?) The ESPN guys are forever putting up stats in the corner of the screen. This is how they watch: they want to predict the result based on numbers set beforehand. This is how I watch: I argue how the temperament of a player (Totti's famous temper) or the psychology of a team/nation (England's messianic complex), combined with strategy (why why why sub a midfielder for an attacker when you're already one down?! WHY?!) and conditions will affect the outcome.
Like my mum, I don't want to know the end before I see it. Unlike my mum, I don't believe in replays: there's no point, for me, watching a game that isn't live, because all my yelling at the tv will have no effect whatsoever. Perhaps this means that my mum is even more devoted to the narrative than I am (which is, frankly, surprising; this is my familial territory!); I am also very invested in the interactive (read: screaming) aspect of the game.
Because there is narrative in footie, I think. I mean, we ascribe it, and it has no conventional structure to speak of; not one found in lit theory, anyway. But I think there's an argument to be made that it creates its own structure; maybe we can't call it narrative structure, but some sort of "viewing" structure, some sort of structure of consumption, that involves our ascribed narrative. It's temporal, certainly, in the way music is temporal (I'm thinking about Schopenhauer here) and it has, the way plays and Bollywood films have, intermissions. It's like improv; you don't know who'll play the best game. (Interesting, too: improv-ers refer to performing sketches as playing games.) There's some sort of non-Aristotelian narrative thing going on, too; or, several that can be ascribed. Just as there are arguments to be made about the number of stories that we tell (three, or seven, depending on who you ask) there are perhaps a finite amount of stories to tell through the narrative structure that is footie: the underdog-beating-the-champs-at-the-88th-minute story, the champs-take-all-as-usual story (boring), the champs-score-underdog-equalizes story... this could go on for awhile, but you get the drift.
Anyway, I think I've got off the point a bit. Maybe it's not about how footie lends itself to narrative structure, but that the way we consume footie is similar to the way we consume movies or books; we are invested in characters (players), we are invested in plots (larger stories of teams and standings), we dis the bad guys (Argentinians), and we don't look at the last page before we've read the first 89 minutes.
This is all kind of mish-mashy and not terribly well thought out - I may be grasping at straws, but maybe I'm not. What do y'all think? (Those of you who didn't stop reading after I started on about the world cup, anyway.)
posted by j | 3:35 PM
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