Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2014-06-12 06:40 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2014-06-12 06:40 pm
[ SECRET POST #2718 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2718 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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[Mayim Bialik]
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[Pacific Rim]
Notes:
Might be another 12 am day. Response time will be slow, sorry.
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 016 secrets from Secret Submission Post #388.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - this is getting spammy now ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: playing with balls
Yeah, a lot of the institutions in sports are massively fucked. FIFA and the IOC are completely and totally corrupt, the NCAA is a shit, and the politics around stadium funding are scandalous. It's absolutely true. But the reason that those situations are allowed to sustain themselves is because sports hugely matter to a lot of people. And they don't matter for no reason. It is not wrong that they matter. It's not, like, an arbitrary choice. People who like sports are not basically idiots, any more than people who like any other form of entertainment are idiots. They like them because they're likable and because they embed themselves into our lives and take on meaning and become associated with communities and causes and because we build relationships with them. And that's not arbitrary and not meaningless. That's why there's so much money in it, for the same reason there's money in the movie industry or the video game industry, because a lot of people really like it.
I mean, your whole argument there about how professional sports are a cancer relies on the assumption that they are worthless. If you take away that assumption, a lot of what you're saying in that last paragraph can be reduced to people acting like they do about anything they care about. The reason people keep bringing up the counterexample of video games to you is because the two situations are more or less analogous; the only difference is that you're refusing point-blank to acknowledge the validity of one.
Re: playing with balls
I firmly believe pro sports are worthless, yes, because of their distorting effect on society. And just look how much money is sunk into it compared to other forms of entertainment or even education (which is absolutely more important than sports).
I do believe we need art. That's my whole point. Art is necessary. Sports... well, exercise is important. Spending money to watch other people exercise? Getting paid to exercise? How is that at all equivalent to watching someone act? To listen to someone tell a story? So much of our culture comes from storytelling and expression, which has evolved over time. The only cultural value sports has has has been indirect, and often with unintended side effects.
Re: playing with balls
(Anonymous) 2014-06-13 12:23 am (UTC)(link)To someone who likes sport it is. I often hear people who like football say it is an art and it tells a story. It is referred to as 'the beautiful game'. People talked of way the spanish played at the last world cup as 'beautiful'.
I can't argue that because I don't like football, but I do absolutely love gymnastics. To me, gymnastics is art. I feel the same way when I watch a gymnastics perform a perfect switch split ring or stick a double layout as I do when I look at a beautiful painting. I feel the same way watching an amazingly performed floor routine as I do when someone tells me a good story. I look at the deepness of it, how the moves flowed together, how they took on the character, in the same was as one analyses an actor's performance. And I believe people do the same in football and other sports.
Why would it be less of a story to you just because it is just physically actions? Oh. because you don't like it, that's why.
Re: playing with balls
Re: playing with balls
I'm not trying to tear down movies or video games, I absolutely agree that they're worthwhile. I'm saying that most of the claims that you want to make about video games or movies can be made, with only a few changes, about sports, and that most of the arguments against sports that you're making could be made against video games if you started with the presupposition that video games are worthless, the way you start from the presupposition that video games are worthless. If someone wrote a long thing saying that video games were worthless because they couldn't see how fiddling with a stick to make a little man on the screen do something was art, what would you say to them?
Sports is not storytelling, no. But there are stories contained within sports, and more to the point, there are moments of transcendent beauty. You may not see them but they are there. And even when that transcendent beauty is not present, sports still provide entertainment. You may not see why they're entertaining but you have to accept that they are. But for some reason you're unable to accept that other people find things entertaining that you do not.
Let me be clear here, I may say some other things, but at bottom, I am defending sports not because they provide exercise but because they're beautiful and worthwhile to watch. It may not be storytelling or creative expression but that's not the only place that beauty or meaning can come from. That's absolutely cultural value. The accumulation of history and the stories that emerge from the game and the stories that surround it and the interplay between culture and individual and play on field is absolutely cultural value.
Do we spend too much money on sports? Maybe, but you could argue that we spend too much money on movies or video games as well. Should we spend less money on it, probably. But the reason that we spend so much money is because people get so much joy out of it and care so much about it, which is not in itself ridiculous.
Like, I get it, you do not personally enjoy sports, and you don't understand why people do, but can you at least accept that some people have different tastes and appreciate different things from you?
Sports are beautiful. They're surprising, they have personality, they have physical beauty within them, they have moments of shock and beauty and joy and the whole run of human emotion. That is, I think, all the justification they need.
Re: playing with balls
Except this is wholly subjective. All I see are a bunch of guys slamming into each other. So don't sit there and lecture me about how people have different tastes from me just because I say pro sports has no value, because I'm well aware that my view is subjective (and also a minority) -- but if my negative view is subjective, then so is your positive one.
Re: playing with balls
If your argument is just that you don't like sports and you don't think other people should like them, that'd be one thing. But you sure spend a lot of time going over why sports are dumb and totally without value, whereas art is important and intrinsically necessary to human flourishing (which, again, is a view that I agree with). I think there's a tension between that view and the view that the value of art is subjective.
The other part of the problem here is that there's a difference between appreciating something as art and appreciating that something is art. What I mean is that it's one thing that you don't appreciate sports. But it's another thing entirely when someone comes along and says that they do sincerely enjoy sports, and you say that's impossible. Which seems to be your argument. You're rejecting the possibility of someone enjoying sports. You're saying that they have no value because you don't like them. That's what baffles me here, I guess. If you were unable to appreciate the ballet, for instance, would you therefore deny that it had any value? But that's exactly what you're doing with sports.
It's one thing to say that aesthetic appreciation is subjective. And I'm not saying that you have to like sports or see why they're beautiful. But a lot of your argument isn't just that you don't like sports. It's that they should go away entirely, that they're worthless, that no one should like them. I accept that my view of sports is as subjective as yours. But you're making a lot of arguments that look to me like objective or general arguments stemming from that.
Again sorry for deleting my other post.
Re: playing with balls
I mean, where did I say that? I'll grant that I may have said something that could be read that way, but that's most certainly not what I meant.
To be clear: I accept that other people like sports. I don't think they should at this point in time, because I do not support the aggrandization of sports, which I view as harmful to society in a manner and on a scale that other forms of entertainment are not (something that a few people keep ignoring to cling to false equivalences.) I do not view sports as inherently beautiful, and I do not view sports as beneficial to society in anything more than the most superficial way. I do not view sports as anything other than structured play. It's fine for a backyard, but not for multi-million-dollar stadiums, and people need to stop buying into a harmful system.
For what it's worth, I think South Korea's obsession with Starcraft is pretty fucked up too.
Re: playing with balls
(Anonymous) 2014-06-13 12:06 pm (UTC)(link)Re: playing with balls
Like, it's one thing to say that sports are not inherently beautiful; this is obviously subjective. But the idea that sports cannot be beneficial to society in anything more than the most superficial way, or that they are nothing more than structured play - I think that these are claims that have to be treated as objective claims. These are matters of fact. The problem is that all the ways in which sports could be beneficial to society, and all the ways in which sports are something more than structured play, stem from the fact that they are enjoyed in that way, and enjoyed legitimately.
And I think this is the reason why it seems to me like you don't accept that other people like sports. Because you accept it as a fact, but you deny every consequence of the fact. If it's fine for some people to enjoy sports and for others not to enjoy sports, if it's true that there is some beauty that some see in sports even if you can't see it, it should follow from this that it does have value, that it is more than structured play. It is more than structured play because some people treat it as more than structured play. It has value because some people see beauty and meaning in it, in the same way that they see beauty and meaning in whatever form of the arts you care to mention. And you're denying those consequences. That's why I say that you think it's impossible to enjoy sport as a spectator - because you don't grant any legitimacy to it or accept the validity of that enjoyment. It's not subjective if you think that someone else's view is wrong and should be ignored. That's not what subjective means. You may not understand the value, but you can see the value that other people place on it.
And the thing is that you can make the argument that we should care less about sports, and that the system as a whole is harmful, and that we shouldn't spend so much money on multi-million dollar stadiums, without making the argument that it's wholly without value. You can say sports is valued too much without saying it has no value. There are plenty of sports fans who do make those arguments. I'd agree with a lot of it myself. But then there's all this other stuff about how kicking a ball around is useless and pointless and we should tear down all the stadiums, or whatever, and that's a different thing. It's frustrating.
Sorry for late reply and all that!
Re: playing with balls
That said, sports also do a thing most art can't: exercise our bodies, which is essential for health.
I'd also say though that the amount of money we pour into sports should be limited. Dethtoll is absolutely right that they drain resources from other things, some of which are arguably more important to society as a whole. And the enormous discrepancy between money made via sports and that made via art is pretty mind-boggling.
Re: playing with balls
Okay, I mean, obviously, yes, when it comes to something like sharing ideas, that's obviously a way in which books are superior. But in terms of art and cultural value, I think sport can stand for itself. Not just because of the health benefits of exercise but on their own merit.
WRT funding, yeah, I agree it's not good. But at the end of the day that's a consequence of what people in society care about. Sports don't get a lot of money because there's a conspiracy. They get a lot of money because a lot of individual people really, really like sports. From a public funding level, in terms of public education, in terms of stadium funding and stuff like that, I agree that it should be limited.
But you don't have to argue that sports are intrinsically bad and that watching them is dumb to think that.
Re: playing with balls
Sports isn't exercise. It's playing a game where your body is the piece.
Re: playing with balls
Re: playing with balls
Re: playing with balls
Did you just forget that that was a thing? The VAST majority of people who play sports never see a paycheck for it.
Re: playing with balls
(Anonymous) 2014-06-13 10:39 pm (UTC)(link)Re: playing with balls