The way people suddenly get passionate about shot-put, shows us that humans are hungry for meaning…
Ok, I admit I’ve got the Olympics bug. It’s kinda like Christmas. It’s like every year I’m like, you know what, I don’t think I’ll bother this year. But then it rolls around, and everyone is talking about it, and you literally can’t escape it on the TV, and the bug gets you.
I realised it had me as I was sitting in the waiting room at the GP this morning, watching Australia play England in field hockey.
Now normally, I couldn’t care less about field hockey. I don’t know the rules, I’ve never played it, and I don’t even know anyone who’s played it.
But throw green and gold uniform on one of the teams and suddenly I’m hooked. Suddenly I care a great deal about the outcome of the match, and whether the Australian half-forward has fully recovered from his knee reconstruction.
And that’s what the Olympics offers – the chance to become deeply invested in sports that you actually think are just a bit silly. I don’t want to name names but I’m looking at you race-walking.
None of it makes any sense unless you think about sport as an artistic endeavour.
And I would actually say that sport is the highest form of art. And I’m not just saying that as a former sportsman who resents being dragged along to the theatre. Sport has everything you want from art.
First up, it has aesthetic form. The captain of the US Olympic gymnastics team recently suggested that the men should perform shirtless in order to attract more interest in the sport. I reckon the idea will get up. You have to admit that they are remarkable human specimens.
(The female athletes at the Olympics are also remarkable specimens but I’m not allowed to talk about that. Not since the beach volleyball finals in London.)
There is also incredible demonstrations of grace and movement. I challenge anyone to watch Lionel Messi cut through 5 defenders and nail one from just inside the box, and tell me its not beautiful. Or what about Brett Deledio riding on the shoulders of his opponents and taking a spectacular grab?
Beeyuudeful.
There’s also all the drama and intrigue of a Greek tragedy. The strategy, the match-ups. The seasons going from strength to strength or collapsing in a heap.
Now you might say that these things can be a bit hard to get a handle on unless you’re intimately involved in the sport. But that’s true of any art-form. The few times I’ve seen ballet, it’s just looked like a few toffs flopping about. But I’m sure that if I had a more nuanced understanding of the art form, I would get a lot more out of it.
In fact, that’s pretty much the role of commentators. To help draw out the drama and intrigue that we might be missing. It’s probably what a lot of art forms lack. Ballet needs live commentary.
“Popovic is going to have to dig deep here to pull off that splitty-leg thingy, and the trainers have been saying the knee is fully recovered from the Paris season. But oh nope, he’s nailed it. A true champion.”
What’s more, a lot of that drama comes from the unscripted nature of sport. It’s totally improvised and live. Most art forms follow a tight script. Not sport. Anything can happen. That’s what makes it exciting.
One of the big criticisms of sport is that it doesn’t mean anything. That you can’t compare it to Shakespeare or Samuel Beckett for the way it helps us understand our unique role in the cosmos.
But I think this misunderstands the nature of meaning.
Meaning isn’t something we receive. It’s something we give.
Take me and the men’s hockey heat. The Aussie uniforms effectively transformed a meaningless event (for me), into something rich with meaning. Suddenly, my whole sense of who I was a person – my sense of national pride and the way I thought we looked in the eyes of the world – was riding on the result.
Sport is the perfect vehicle for this process of assigning meaning – precisely because it doesn’t try to take on any meaning. It never pretends to be anything other than sport.
It becomes a blank slate for us to lay whatever stories we want on to it.
And we want those stories. Our lives need to have meaning. And so we’re out there looking for things to get invested in. How many people actually give a toss about men’s hockey? How many Collingwood fans actually live in Collingwood?
I think there’s a big sign-post here to the happy life. Humans need to have meaning. If you want to be happy, you need to have a sense of meaning. How you get that is up to you. If it comes from barracking for the Magpies or from helping run an orphanage in Cambodia, up to you. I’m not going to judge.
But if you’re going to tell me that art should tell you what its meaning is, not just leave it up to us to lay whatever we want on it, then I would say that you’re a fascist. Stop telling me what to believe. But I might also point out that a lot of modern art has gone in that direction anyway.
“It’s a small red dot on a large white canvas… What does it mean?”
“Whatever you want mean Jon, whatever you want it to mean.”
“Oh. Righto… C’arn the Tigers!”
The Olympics is a great spectacle of meaning. And for a brief period of time, the whole world is looking in the same direction. That direction might be towards a bunch of sports no one cares about, but there’s some sort of power in that collective focus.
… if only we could harness it for good.
Oh, and all of the arts budget should be given to sport.
What does the Olympics ‘mean’ to you?
Alisha says
Good luck messying with the art budget , you have a stack of queens that will take you down! Olympics is a time of culture and unity. Such joy and love for people stories and spirit. The journey to the dream!
Jenni Radke says
Alisha … ‘a stack of queens’?? Oh please! Do you think art lovers are all homosexual!? Both the sport and arts worlds have participants of all types … oddly enough like the real world! Been married for 38 years … and I’d love to see a tenth of the sports budget ( and the adulation) on the Arts. All the crap psychology of ‘live to follow your passion’, ‘dream it and it will happen, the money will come’ is B.S. … ask any artist/actor/musician /writer in Australia!
Meaning. I fail to see any meaning in chasing a ball (whatever) other than brief entertainment. Some might feel the same about art/film/drama/music/literature. But meaningful artworks can last centuries. Sports stars/achievements are more temporary.
ron goddard says
very good article jonno. brings out the best in people does sport..and sometimes other things. it is a shame that 95% of the russian team couldn’t make it. they have forever been the main contest for usa.
but those that have attended (russians) have shown how good the games could have been. and lets give a big hooray to the refugees team. what a great innovative thing it is. criticised from all quarters refugees can make a modern ‘statement’. we are not self serving dickheads..we are people disenfranchised in our countries by ‘leaders’ who are the real dickheads. anyway many champions arise during such an event. i love the gymastics. cheers. ron .
Tom says
Hey Jon, if you admire the human forms so much, you should start a movement to have the modern games presented the way ancient games were – not just shirtless, but naked.
The people of Australia, (all generations) would be far better off if the money spent on elite sports was spent getting everybody, both the kids and the adults, off their mobiles and onto the sporting field – in active and character-building pursuits.
Rick Eason says
Your postmodern shirt is hanging out John. To slightly misquote St Paul: “If from this life only we derive meaning, we are of all people most miserable.”
Paul Miles says
Well Jon, I can’t tell if this is one of your skilfully crafted and mischievously ambiguous tongue-in
cheek pieces designed just to get a rise out of people? Or whether it’s something you actually believe? The reason I suggest the former is that it’s so full of logical contradictions in which you again and again completely negate what you’ve said only lines earlier.
Even though I don’t give a shit about sport myself – did you write somewhere that the Olympics were on? – I can see your point when you say, “None of it makes any sense unless you think about sport as an artistic endeavour”.
In fact, I think almost any pursuit could be seen in this way. Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, and intensified by the amount of effort you put into understanding it. You even say, “these things can be a bit hard to get a handle on unless you’re intimately involved” and “that’s true of any art-form….if I had a more nuanced understanding of the art form, I would get a lot more out of it”.
Mathematicians and physicists often express a kind of ecstasy about what they describe as a
beautiful equation or theorem. And I would say any number of artists, musicians, writers, architects, builders, sculptors, dancers, and also tradesmen and other people who create things would see aspects of the pursuits they put everything into as an art form. So why not people sporting performances as well?
I can accept that. As long as those inclined allow me in turn my equal appreciation of the arts, mathematicians their perfect equation and so on.
I can even appreciate that for some people your assertion that “sport is the highest form of art”,
and “sport has everything you want from art” is true for those people. And if that’s how they feel, good luck to them.
But then, and completely ignoring the comment about giving all the arts funding to sport, you get onto highly questionable ground with “Meaning isn’t something we receive. It’s something we give.”
It’s actually both. It has to be. Surely appreciation of any “art form” (including sport) is a combination of recognition of established parameters, in combination with the way you experience it, over time and in that particular moment. How then are you appreciating the “art” of your sport, if you don’t have a general understanding of the established objectives (or rules)? You are both appreciating the accepted meaning, and interpreting it from your own point of view. If you have no idea of the rules of how to play Rugby League, or criticise every movement from the point of view of the rules of Badminton, what value is there in your interpretation and commentary, for you or anyone?
“But if you’re going to tell me that art should tell you what its meaning is, not just leave it up to us to lay whatever we want on it, then I would say that you’re a fascist. Stop telling me what to believe.” Grazie, Signor Mussolini, but haven’t you just done exactly that?
I couldn’t agree more with: “Humans need to have meaning. If you want to be happy, you need to have a sense of meaning. How you get that is up to you.”
So, for example, I actually rather enjoy being “dragged along to the theatre” and wish I could afford to have it happen more often. When I was really young I suppose I also shared some of the attitude of your comment about “toffs flopping about” at the ballet. I had no idea what was going on. But if you get to learn over many years about the finer points of the athleticism, the skill of the movements, the adaptation of the choreography to the music and the blending of many different aspects of artistic set, lighting, dance, music, gesture etc into what Richard Wagner termed a Gesamtkunstwerk (a complete work of art), then a really thrilling experience is just as achievable in your “toffs flopping about” at ballet, as your rugger buggers managing to place an elliptical piece of inflated pigskin over a certain line.
In fact, it’s the beauty of creation in putting all the best elements together – in music, theatre,
literature, film, no matter almost what art form – that all at their best have the ability to emotionally transport and inspire those individuals who experience it like nothing else. Even, as you say, in sport.
That’s what meaning is.
Finally, if art for you suffers due to a lack of live commentary, have a look at this short but very famous comedy recording from the early 1970s by P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) – “New horizons in music appreciation” (featuring Beethoven’s 5th, as you’ve never heard it before). (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0vHpeUO5mw). (And for Alisha’s benefit, like most people who the world over appreciate or contribute to the arts, I’m not gay. Hate to tell you, some sportspeople are though.)