More fun with dated topic: identity politics in sports

Saw a powerful documentary last night called "Thrilla in Manilla". It could almost be seen as having a misleading title because the movie spends so much time on the whole 8 year history of the personal rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier that preceded the famous 1975 boxing match. This was the last of the three between them.

It really challenged my view of, among other things, Ali, who has always been the closest thing to a hero.

The story justly focuses on the POV from the Frazier camp. Basically Ali, after being publicly supported by Frazier during the 3 and 1/2 years of his being banned from Boxing for refusing the Vietnam war, demeaning and racial attacks against Frazier to promote each fight they had, calling Frazier ugly, dumb a gorilla, and uncle tom.

Most of you probably have a familiarity with the very complex context in which the action occurred. Ali was very aware of his influence as a black figure in the US. Other than Paul Robeson and a handful of others, no other famous African American before him was ever so assertive as a realized individual--Ali was also more famous than all of them. The levels racism that persisted well into the seventies are an intrinsic part of Ali's and, as this documentary shows, Frasier's experience. The tragedy suggested in this documentary is that Joe Frasier was unjustly identified with the old white slave owning and segregationist establishment.

In the middle of this racially charged feud between the two fighters...is class, which is pervasive in many narratives in our culture, but always on the basis of "culture" rather than real economics. It was Ali, who had a relatively privileged upbringing in Louisville Kentucky. Frasier was the working class guy from the deep south. A man, who as heavy weight champion of the world from 1967-to 1973, still found himself rejected at public places when visiting family back in SC.

Another hegemony to defeat...

...hyperbole aside, there is another underdog that has reminded the consciousness. The people of the world who are fat and do not have any beauty in the classical sense of the world.

this morning a popular TV show was brought to my attention by the somewhat lame but very important (for artists, community activists and to small businesses) Lawrence.com

It's the British version of American Idol. Even if you haven't even stumbled upon one episode (like myself in a bar), you know what it is.

Evidently a recent episode of "Britain's Got Talent" auditioning before a crowd of tens of thousands Susan Boyle, a fat forty seven year old Scottish woman with thick eyebrows. The Camera editing made sure to capture the snooty confounded reactions on the faces of the conventionally beautiful audience when Ms. Boyle answered in the interview with the three judges that her dream is to be a singer. Then, once she started singing, the crowd roared in pleasure. At the end of the song (fuck it, click here. She's a more than competent singer), the crowd and the judges each gave lots of praise to her. Most of it strikes me as condescending. But the blond female judge gave an interesting statement acknowledging that everyone in the audience was "against her" and did not expect such a wonderful performance.

People love the underdog, and the line between condescension and genuine unassuming empathy gets quite blurry. The way Boyle responded was extremely classy. It's hard not to wonder whether she shares my same lack of concern for cosmetic stigmas--which is certainly something that can be characterized as a social adaptation of sorts. She either genuinely sees her physical body and self as beautiful and/or she doesn't give a fuck about what others think. But the underdog love is something to be exploited. She must be conscious of it by now.

One Pollyanna speculation is that sooner or later after more fat and classically ugly people gain exposure for their talents, maybe spectators won't be so obsessed with what a person looks like(other than maybe pornography and modeling)--or even better, allow the natural embrace in themselves of fat people. Speaking for myself: some women as overweight as Susan Boyle do turn me on. But in this situation, where Susan Boyle is still being written about and about to make an album, meet celebs, etc., there is nothing redeeming in this story. The people who watch this shit are either patting themselves on the back for their positive reactions to Boyle's very good voice, immersing themselves in a mental masturbatory orgy of schadenfreude irony, or are very fat and ugly themselves. If this woman were an amazing singer to me, like Nina Simone or Karen Dalton, my reaction would have been different. Something like: "wow, regardless of how idiotic the hype is about the collective audience surprise , it's so nice that a singer with that emotional depth can be heard by this big of a mainstream audience". But since she sung the disneyfied song that she did, and when the ears listen her voice does not reach the deepest parts of my viscera, the real story is about how disgusting these people involved in making and watching the show really are.

If you are offended by that statement, you will get no apology. This is not said out of seething anger. A little anger, but not much.

Praise of female beauty amongst females in those ridiculous magazines and other media will continue,and the embrace of exceptional people who happen to be fat may never fully escape the possible condescension charge. Changing the topic slightly, it would be nice to see a near future where these "beauty mongers" are made more aware of how stupid and vacuous they appear in their attention to themselves (their hair, their faces, their nails their skin, etc).

[the opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily the opinions owned by the pubertyless Junior high and high school years of low self esteem]

it must be acknowledged there is one friend of mine, an old fuck buddy, who caters to herself cosmetically--in excess. The other day as we were walking in KC she mentioned that she loves how so many guys she talks to in bars always get stumped in finding out how smart she is. Her narcissism seems to come from a purer and healthier source. The fact that she is friendly with people from all walks of life and seems to also protect my image of her from the usual associations--for instance, it really is hard to see her in a sorority or a beauty pageant or some other awful social institution for girls.

The praising of and the presence of female beauty should never go away. But it seems to count for disproportionately too much to a woman's ego. And it gives heterosexual men like myself a lot of power (which can be great!), but damned if women didn't have their own ideas of beauty that run counter.

Now there is too much empty space

Though the big green lawns are forever sniffed and loved by my person.

The fly in the bottle syndrome adjacent plastic to glass

There is a difficulty in writing about the recent past. The portal of the Spanish language probably has something to do with it. It feels like a year as past since being in Lawrence despite how quickly time went by --feel hesitant referring to "time" like that, as if it were a subjectivity on equal footing with an individual human-- and there is the same old inertia felt. Meeting women is just as difficult as it has been for the last three out of five years or so. Or it is made difficult by my unwillingness to engage in social situations where the risk of boring conversations is not eliminated. Already there are too many good friends with whom valued time is spent.

It did not take long to dive back into reading about the political affairs of my home country. It's exciting, terrifying and frustrating as always. Luck is felt if a poem every other day can be written--even if it's just a fragment. It usually is.

Reading list: one of the most recent university texts on Colonial Post Colonial Literature. It's an anthology of English language short stories. England, the Caribbean, India-Pakistan, Canada, Ireland Australia, New Zealand and former African colonies are all represented. There is more difficulty in understanding some of these stories than expected. It is usually due to rich indigenous religious traditions that are evoked or represented. The question arises: maybe some more history is needed on some of "these people" (to be said with a slight KS-MO Oakie drawl) before going any further?

This goes against my general feeling about how literary narratives should be read. The ignorance of the cultural context in which a story is written can bring about a radical and sometimes more fundamental human interpretation. There is a fear of being trapped in the old identity politics that simply reinforce the legitimacy of racial, ethnic and other worn out dialectics. Still the way that the average human appropriates for him/herself conventional cultural memes, icons, religious and consumerist narratives requires some basic understanding of the culture. As a matter of culture wars debates, it doesn't seem like the multi-culturalists (political if not classical Liberals and other Leftists)have argued their case too well. But that may be more an indication of how segregated and homogeneous most communities in the world are. So many Individuals and images thereof have yet to be born.

The anthology contains a lot of loaded and stupid questions following each story. E.g. stupid as in obvious: "who is the narrator? What is his perspective on the events related to history?"; loaded (also obvious): "What do you think the story is saying about 'progress', machinery, debt and imperialism?". The story in question is about an old cobbler who is talked into buying a more advanced sewing machine that promises to increase output, but the interest on the loan (this is in British occupied India) breaks him.

Then again, it is still remembered how new everything involving literature is to most students.

A Longer stay is wanted

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