This may be the most violent World Cup in recent history. The
average number of yellow and red cards per game is the lowest since 1986,
yet the players are bigger and faster, the fields smaller, hotter and wetter.
As a result, the ball moves faster, there is less space, less midfield play and
coaches like Brazil’s Scolari set out to destroy their opponent’s rhythm
through systematic fouls. The injuries are not worse only because the physical
condition of the athletes is so high and their tolerance for physical abuse
nearly comic. It is clear that FIFA has
told their referees to keep their cards in their pockets and the result has
been shocking injuries (concussions, broken bones, torn ligaments, fractured
vertebrae).
This is also the World Cup in which the FIFA television
producers have delighted in bringing us the violence in ultra slow motion. The
beauty of dribbles, crosses, feints and smooth athleticism is not shown with as
much care and detail as are the kicks in the face, cleats to the knee, stomps
on the ankle and collisions of heads. We are glued to the set as we watch the
violent meeting of sweaty, striving human bodies performing for our benefit.
There are no consequences at home, just a grim pleasure in the money shot of
human pain.
Violence has become such a fundamental element of spectatorship
that we don’t give it much thought, nor consider our own reactions to it. Yet
when a big name goes out with an injury no one can talk about anything else. This
violence exists in visual contrast to and in philosophical concert with the
infantilization and sexualization of World Cup marketing. All over Brazil there
are ads for the World Cup that feature cartoon characters or beautiful people
with their mouths wide open. The mascotization of professional sports lures
children and their parents into a hyper-commercialized arena where events
happen but have no consequence. How are children to react when they see a boot
to the face or a knee in the back? They will take their cues from those around
them. Sadly, no one seems to mind that the fusion of football and MMA and
open-mouthed, infantile, consumerist desire (just don`t bite!) have been hidden
behind a handshake for peace.
Of course, FIFA has no consistency when applying discipline.
Suarez received a four month ban for an impulsive and childish but ultimately
harmless bite whereas Neymar received no further punishment for his deliberate
elbow to Croatia`s Modric, Mautidi received no further punishment for breaking
Onazi`s ankle. Innumerable other instances of ultra-violence have gone
unpunished throughout the tournament.
Many years ago there was more variety in the ways in which
the world watched the Cup. Television producers could choose the cameras and
sequences that they wanted to show and there were more television stands in the
stadiums. I’m not sure when it happened, but now the only narrative of a game
is that which FIFA’s production crew delivers. The cut away to coaches on the sidelines,
the slow motion replays, the camera angles for particular moments of the game,
in short, everything we see and interpret of the game is dictated by a FIFA producer
in a truck. Not only are we “all in one rhythm” in the stadium but on the
outside we are all in a singular televisual sequence. This homogenization
allows FIFA to control completely who represents fans (beautiful women and
carnavalesque men), what sequence of events led to a particular outcome, and
the global interpretation of localized events. This also means we are exposed
to the FIFA porn for as long as we continue to watch.
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| An overpass fell on Neymar, now do you care? |
There is a human desire for the dramatic, beautiful,
terrible and violent that makes this a profitable endeavor. We don’t wake up
after 120 minutes of football with anything but a hangover. The athletes wake
up in traction. And while the degree to which Brazilians have rallied to
Neymar’s bedside is impressive, there has been more outpouring of public sympathy
for the broken vertebrae of a multi-millionaire footballer than for the
families of the people who were killed in an overpass collapse in
Belo Horizonte last week. I was expecting that there would be some questioning,
some insinuation that the World Cup projects were too hastily constructed, with
not enough oversight, with few control mechanisms and that this bridge collapse
would expose the problems of the mega-event business model in which national
and local politicians use the political smokescreen of the event to release
public funds to contract their friends in industry to build over-priced
infrastructure that may or may not serve the long-term needs of the public,
when it doesn’t fall and kill them. This is the deeper pornography of the World
Cup that we should think about as traffic gets rerouted for the semi-final in
Belo Horizonte.
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