The Triforce Of Art: The Big Game
The Robot Gospel, Part 01111
Sports is the opposite of art.
I don’t know what the purpose of making that statement is, but it feels like it needs to be said. It’s not a value judgement — there is no reason to fight over which is “better,” sports or art. Someone can like both — there are a lot of people that like both. I’m not one of those maniacs, though. I just believe they’re different — they offer something different — and I felt like I needed an angle to approach this edition/issue/newsletter from.
Sports is external; Art is internal. What Sport builds to is Competition; Art builds to Exhibition. Sport is meant to determine a winner; Art is meant to communicate something.
Sports can bring people together, but it’s under the auspices of Us versus Them. There is teamwork and coming together, but it’s in service of being in opposition to another group of people. It’s about status, and and any other storylines that people try to assign to it are trying to sell you something — trying to appeal to that innate part hidden in our lizard brain that searches for story and for meaning.
Art is trying to bring something out from inside the artist’s head, and transfer it into someone else. It brings people together in a more intimate way. There’s no one way, nor right way to do it. However, once something leaves an artist’s mind and it is observed, the meaning isn’t always crystal clear. It may or may not be the fault of the artist, and you never know what’s going to work out or not.
With Sports, someone can be the best, but just be unlucky and get defeated. The odds could have been in their favor, but they just couldn’t pull it out. And even so, a win is a win. The only thing that matters isn’t who is better or more skilled, it’s who wins1.
A fundamental similarity, though, is Play.
Play is experimenting. Trying to figure things out. Some may see it as unique to children — that when you get older and more mature, you either no longer have time for play, or no longer have a need for it. You can actually do things in your life because you have the agency and control over it.
Do you remember playing with toys and imagining scenarios and talking aloud as different characters? Did you pretend with your friends that you were superheroes or were in school or piloting some kind of huge vehicle that to adult observers looked like that slide/monkey-bar playground contraption?
And then you either started playing games or sports at recess, or you’d just talk to your friends. You weren’t supposed to play pretend anymore2. It was now about what you could physically do in a sport, or about what television you watched or gossip you knew. Trying to make each other laugh or choreograph a dance, or something.
Play is meant to create an environment where you can try things to see if they work before taking them out into the real world. I guess the outgrowth of that would be targeting your play toward something and then it becoming Practice or Rehearsal. Trying to improve your performance by repeating something over and over again. Honing a skill. Perfecting an action.
Then you can start to test the limits of what you believe you are capable of. You build-on and expand the scope of your abilities. Once you’ve grasped the fundamentals, you can start to play again and see if boundaries can be pushed or manipulated. If there are rules you can get away with breaking, or ways to skirt around them while still maintaining the integrity of that boarder.
Play has no inherent stakes. Winning or losing, success or failure — those don’t really have set, determined consequences or results as an outcome of play.
As such, amateurs play, while professionals compete. Play (since it’s something that children do) is seen as more pure. It’s the love of the game. It’s more authentic. There’s suffering — blood, sweat, and tears3 — because you aren’t getting paid. You aren’t famous. You’re putting it all on the line — leaving it all out on the field — in rhetorical hopes of getting called up to the majors.
You pay your dues, then get the Pay Day.
Of course, this viewpoint was advanced mostly by people who already had money in the first place, and therefore had the leisure time to devote to sports. You also need space to play sports — a field, a court — it’s all real estate. You also need to buy specialized equipment.
The Olympics initially only allowed amateurs to compete, because it was seen as low class if you made money from playing sports. If it was your job to play sports, then you obviously didn’t have wealth — and who wants to hang out with those people? Sweaty brutes with rough hands and stained clothing.
The fact that so many connoisseurs of sport have fought to keep collegiate athletes from getting any sort of compensation beyond scholarships or the so-called Education that they are supposedly receiving, is baffling to me because I’m not a sport-o. All the while, the educational institutions and coaches of those athletes certainly are making money. Shit, even high school football in Texas rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every year. And now that sports gambling — or “Daily Fantasy” if you’re looking for legal terminology loopholes — is practically legal throughout the US on your damn phone, just about everyone can make money from these sports.
Art isn’t as severe a case, but people like their artists to have also paid their dues. To have fought their way up from nothing and suffered and bled for their art. It’s more authentic that way. It means more if they don’t sell-out. Or at least it used to...
But art is expensive as well. Equipment. Supplies. Education. You have any idea how many people that came from money and Nepo Babies are out there that are in entertainment4? It’s disconcerting, but given the public’s greater acceptance of celebrity, dynasties, and oligarchies, I can’t say I’m not surprised.
Consensus and popular acceptance is one of the team aspects that has sprouted up in the flower bed of Art. Toxic fandom. Gamer Gate, review bombing, and other misogynistic and racist factions seeking to create a Them and Us out of the open arms of Art.
All Art isn’t for everyone. Sometimes it’s for no one except the person that’s created it. It can crumble under its own weight of tchotchkes and kitchen sinks that are piled on, trying to appeal to a critical mass audience. But is it up to an artist to be as entertaining as possible5, or is that where the line of authenticity lies?
I’ll get into that next time.
-bcp
Perhaps why gambling is so intricately linked to sports?
Except for us drama dorks!
Although there is no crying in baseball, I’ve heard.
Don’t look it up, unless you want to ruin your day.
This email it too long! Make sure you click the link to see a video I couldn’t get to embed.