3 Responses to “Podcast #02: Violence and the Spectacle of Sports”

1. Bilal Hashmi Posted: Nov 19th, 2007 at 12:22 pm

   1 Jason, I wanted to let you know that your podcast on violence inspired by sporting events was both timely and interesting. George Orwell has famously written of “serious sport” as “war minus the shooting.” The examples you provide are all worth pondering over in light of what just transpired in Italy last week. I’m probably the least qualified person to comment on the world of sports, but I do wonder if the “mob mentality” you mention could be collapsed into a more specific framework of competitive nationalisms. This is perhaps a reductionist gesture, but I’d imagine that the sort of violence you’ve described would be significantly reduced, say, in a transnational soccer league, where any given team has members from different parts of the world. Bilal Reply to this comment.

2. Jason Kim Posted: Nov 20th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

   2 Author Comment Thanks for the comment Bilal! I’m not sure if a transnational team would cut it - since if you look at Serie A and the other European soccer leagues, many of those players aren’t from that country or city. We have a similar thing occurring in the NBA, NHL, and NFL in North America, where countries and nation-states aren’t represented, but rather cities are. And I should also be quick to add all the examples I gave were non-North American, but there have been several cases of violence by fans, though not at the level as you see in Europe. I think this might be due to a cultural difference, as we don’t have our equivalent of “soccer hooligans” here - single, unemployed and young men who take up their soccer team as their primary identity/affiliation. Reply to this comment.

3. pingback: Posted: Jul 27th, 2008 at 12:28 am

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