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Andrew Lindemann Malone's Internet Playpen |
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Super Bowl XXXIII (Bowlcott)On the evening of the game (January 31, 1999), I sent this: As I sit here watching this dog of a Super Bowl game nuzzle up to the shrubbery of the American public, I wonder to myself, "How good would a game have to be to justify the hype that surrounds this mostly forgettable contest?" Because, you see, normally on Sundays during the football season I watch football, but I also make food and do the crossword and read the columns of various people who have insulted me (Johnathan Yardley and Dave Barry). In other words, I lead something approaching a life in addition to watching gridiron clashes. But this game has been endlessly analyzed and debated, hashed and rehashed, and surrounded by so much extraneous entertainment (which I decline to watch on principle, except I might have gone to Dennis Rodman's party had I been in Miami Beach) that it would have to be truly exceptional in every way to act as anything approaching the centerpiece of the media edifice built up around it. So I made a short checklist of the ways that constitute "every" way:
But, you say, even though this would be a truly kick-ass football game, how could it stand up to the hyping efforts of LaDennis, the slathering attention of SportsCenter, the semi-capable musicianship of Cher, Stevie Wonder (actually, he's fully capable), Gloria Estefan and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and seven (count 'em, seven) hours of pregame that I spent watching college basketball? When a football game comes on during a drab Sunday afternoon, I watch it or don't watch it as I see fit. Sometimes they're sacking Brett Favre, and I watch it; sometimes, Jerome "The Bus" Bettis is reminding me why he's the only running back named after a form of public transportation, and I watch it; sometimes, Jerry Glanville is teaching me new ways to abuse the English language, and I watch in horror. But this football game is more than a game nowadays. It's an obligation. We live in the most media-rrific nation in the world, so much so that one of our major exports is our culture and its attendant hype in all its forms. If all this hype points towards the Super Bowl, we are being un-American if we choose to avoid it and, let's say, watch college basketball (which I would if I could, believe me). It's like noting that "The Magnificent Seven" is a direct ripoff of "The Seven Samurai." You just don't do it if you want to also be a patriot, a heroic beacon of Americanism in an increasingly anti-American world. Still: I'm not watching the Super Bowl next year. (The only way I would is if the Detroit Lions were playing, which is why I feel safe in not qualifying that statement.) The actual game almost always merits very little comment; on any other given Sunday, I would fit it into my consciousness between trying to think of a seven-letter word for "precedes" and going to Giant to pick up half-price ketchup before it's all gone. I normally watch NFL on Sundays if "That 70s Show" isn't holding my attention and I can't think of anything better to do than to sit still. And I urge you not to watch the Super Bowl next year, either. Because, after all, whatever you call it, whatever shiny packaging you put around it, whatever copywriter you hire to describe its merits, and whatever caterwauling songsters you draft to liven up its prescribed dull moments, when you open up the box, it's always full of the emperor's new clothing. And I can stand being called un-American if it means I won't be as bored as I am right now.
But, hey, I hope you all are enjoying it Lindemann
The next day, my man Robert Kahn fired back to the list with: Personally, I cannot force myself to be as narrow-minded as some and call everyone who refuses to watch the SB a traitorous Commie pig-swine. However, one must, as a cosmopolitan, well-rounded student of the world, understand that a culture that is truly "American" does exist, and the Superbowl is an essential ingredient in its present form (there, I used its correctly). Therefore, it seems ludicrous to turn your back on the Superbowl without also turning your back on America itself, on its traditions and subtraditions, its culture buried within a veritable game of inches. The very fact that the timeouts and John Madden's obsessive-compulsive circling of butts even exists is rooted in the fertile soil of American social history. Where else could a beer company get to advertise itself with amphibians, lizards, some guy named August, and a roll of toilet paper if not in the most liberated country known to man? Yeah, the Brits don't have timeouts but that is because they have no inherent creativity (historical note: think Puritans) and therefore would only be selling tooth whitener and some sort of snooty riding britches. No the game wasn't exciting, but I have to fault individual efforts and not the society as a whole. If, for example, Eugene Robinson of the Falcons had gone around asking opposing players for sexual favors during as opposed to before the game, I firmly believe that the game itself would have been more "enjoyable". One has to remember that most football games can get pretty boring if you are only watching for the superficial attributes of the game like score and not the individual intricacies that actually create the game. [I have heard this is also true of the other "sport" known as football, but, personally, if people didn't occasionally set off smoke bombs and riot I would have no idea that there was actually something going on] However, there are plenty of other sporting events that get way too much hype for some people (I'm thinking of golf, personally) and create good matches, like last year's NBA Championships. I hate professional basketball, yet I watched with bated breath as my good buddy Mike drained the final shot. Therefore, if you or anyone you know plans to boycott the Superbowl next year you will not only be missing out on being a working cog in the wheel of American culture, you will be obstructing the American way of life for future generations. Perhaps as time goes by the Superbowl will lose its cultural influence and something more to the liking of some of the people on this list like poetry slams or "Detroit-a-thon", will intensify in people's minds, in which case we should all join in on those bandwagons as they go by. See you and your poor meter at the Silverdome. Robert P.S. If I offended anyone too bad. America: Love it or leave it, bub. Also, we don't need any of you Cowboys fans neither.
I made a rebuttal: Ach. Such a surfeit of replies to all after such a long and blissful period without such ruckus amongst the ranks. I will try to be short and sweet about this: I have no problem with American culture, per se. American culture has given us such beautiful things as the movie "Speed," the writer David Foster Wallace, and the Plymouth Prowler, to name but the first three that assaulted my head in an orgy of hand-raising when I asked my brain "Who wants to represent America?" But one must remember that American culture has also given us a bunch of total duds, like the movie "Speed 2," the writer Clive Cussler, and the Plymouth Breeze. One can turn one's back on certain products of American culture, in other words, without turning one's back on American culture itself. And one can note that certain sporting events are overhyped without damning all sports. Robert and I have enjoyed numerous extremely boring sporting events on the television together. I have no problem with extremely boring sporting events. But usually they are not packaged and glitzed and spruced up beyond mankind's ability to truly comprehend in this manner. Why, even the redoubtable John Madden was astonished at the display of naked celebratory capitalism that now surrounds this game. Perhaps if Eugene Robinson had displayed his off-the-field talents a bit more during the course of the game, it would have made this game into something truly worthy of the hype. As it was, he himself sucked, and didn't ask anyone about it. I have had a correspondence going with someone not on this list about the spectacle that is attached to football nowadays, which started loooong before this Super Bowl. Now, some of this spectacle is pretty fun, like when the guy had to throw a pass through a giant Nokia cellular phone at the Sugar Bowl. But most of it is pretty useless and distracts from the game itself, e.g. KISS ARMY!!!!!! Let the game be boring as hell or interesting on its own merits, is all I ask. Because I am getting pretty damn tired of being told, cajoled, and ultimately just short of coerced to be interested in something that so rarely is interesting in the slightest. I am a sports fan, irrational as that pursuit may be. I can discriminate between bad games and good when they are presented to me. I only ask for the chance to do so. And if next year's Super Bowl is not interesting (i.e., does not feature a spectacular performer of the M. Jordan type who is a joy to watch, or does not feature the Detroit Lions, which is pretty damn likely) then I am going to make the decision for myself, my status as a cog in the capitalist machine be damned. And I urge you all not to be cowed by the assault of propaganda about "the greatest day in sports" either. It is an American spectacle, this, to all the particulars: it could only have been created in this country. But that doesn't mean we have to like it. Or accept it at its word. And there weren't even any silly-looking plays like there always seem to be in college football Lindemann
But everyone knows I can't stay made for long at any corporate hypefest.
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All this tasty writing ©2002-8 by Andrew Lindemann Malone. All rights reserved. |