An interesting cultural angle from Michael Jennings, writing about the European Football contest for Ubersportingpundit, re the fact that, now, all the big countries (England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy) are out of it:
Meanwhile, the tournament sponsors and advertisers will be unhappy. Most of the population of Europe come from countries that are out of the tournament. Most of the star players commonly used in advertising are headed for the beaches of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, Hollywood will be happy. This kind of tournament eats into cinema admissions quite badly, but now people will once again be going to the movies.
And this posting by David Carr is quite funny too. Did you know that before he became a sit-down comedian David Carr used to be a stand-up one?
Warning: this post stretches the meaning of the "culture", but: see above.
I had to put these pictures somewhere, and the truth is that it is a whole lot easier sticking pictures up at your own blog than anywhere else. None of that do you actually want pictures?, how big shall I make them?, how do you centre them? nonsense.
I suppose I could pass these things off as pictures of where I blog, of the sort that are buzzing about the blogosphere just now. Thus:
Okay, so there's the computer screen on the lower right, and above there's lots of gunk too brightly light by the, you know, lights, and on the left, that would be …? A TV set perhaps? But what story does it tell? Let us look closer.
Yikes on a bike.
That was the actually decisive moment. Lara c Flintoff b Hoggard 0. At that point it was all over. So, I know you want to know how it all finished. Well basically, this was what happened:
… which meant the following:
Note the brightness of the lettering, and the strangely disturbing, even nihilistic black background. These images capture the profoundly evanescent nature of media imagery in our modern technological society, both in the obsolescence of the technology being used, and in the fundamental emphemerality of the message being conveyed. Plus, the Windies got a right stuffing.
Well there goes the opening game of the Rugby World Cup. Australia 24 Argentina 8. Not a classic. But it will not surprise Brian's Culture Blog readers that Wendell Sailor scored the opening try of the tournament. Not that any of you care, you Pommy-loving Pansy Poofders.
Is it just me or are sports tournament opening ceremonies getting more and more of a pain? It probably is just me, but I found this one especially dire. Working on my computer to take some of the pain out of it, I thought for a brief moment that I saw a burning swastika out of the corner of my eye, but it was just some Aboriginal figure, burning symbolically, or something. The Australians are apparently still at the Bogus Dancing Natives Stage of their relationship with their original locals.
In general, the thing reminded me of the rubbish that briefly went on inside our Dome on millenium night. Remember The Dome? The show was indeed dazzling, i.e. it had lots of colours and costumes and arsing about by huge gangs of people marching this way and that, and overweight women singing, but so what? It was a huge relief when ageing blokes in normal suits appeared, to make short and forgettable speeches about the forthcoming tournament that actually had something to do with the forthcoming tournament. I ought to watch Grumpy Old Men tonight (BBC2 – no link that makes sense and you don't have to search through for ten minutes – bloody internet), which is not the Matthau/Lemon movie, but a "documentary" of grumpy old Moaning Heads moaning grumpily about speed bumps, designer labels the internet, etc., but I'll be out.
My new digital radio continues to delight, so I switched the TV sound down (off if any music was involved) and listened instead to Arthur Schnabel playing Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto (I now realise I already possess this on CD but no matter), one of Rob Cowan's morning picks for Radio 3. It was followed by William Schuman's Third Symphony (not to be confused with Robert Schumann's Third Symphony). Cowan chose the early Bernstein New York Phil CBS (now Sony) recording, which sounded beefier and more effective than the later DGG remake by the same team that I have. It's a splendid piece and it quite cheered me up.
Have a nice weekend.
The Philosophical Cowboy (link not working properly - scroll down to Sept 30 7.16pm), gearing up for the Rugby World Cup, likes this stuff.
With respect, as people say when they are about to say something completely lacking in respect hence the need to shake some verbal respect on with a verbal bottle of pseudo-respect, I … don't like it as much as The PhC does.
The real art of rugby is the game itself, and all the great photos of it that there are, and before that I daresay the odd painting. The idea that in order to make rugby artistic you have to subject it to abstract expressionism is insulting to rugby, and misses a basic point about art which is that it should be all of a piece. Art should be tight, and consistent, and the connections within it should make sense. The art should grow out of the thing itself, not be slopped on afterwards. This Adidas site makes "art" out of rugby in the manner of a Photoshop dork who thinks he can make his holiday snaps more "artistic" by pressing the Cézanne button. Okay, I'm taking it too seriously, it's only a bit of fun, blah blah, but this does suggest to me a wholly unjustified and unnecessary sense of artistic inferiority on the part of the rugby people.
That famous photo of Fran Cotton with mud all over him on a Lions Tour (that's the only www version of it I could find) is worth this entire Adidas site put together, artistically speaking (never mind rugbily speaking), and then some. No metaphorical violence was done to rugby with that photo. It arose completely naturally out of the game itself.
If those New York idiots who chucked paint about want to enjoy this photo too, and pretend that what they do, or used to do thirty years ago (isn't that nonsense rather passé now?), is being backhandedly referred to by it, fine. It isn't, but they can pretend if they want to. But the real art of rugby and of rugby photography is quite different.
Consider these two photos.
This photo doesn't capture the defining moment of this particular moment, which came a fraction of a moment later. What we see here is Jonah Lomu of New Zealand about to run over the top of Mike Catt of England. But we do not see Lomu actually doing it, although I've seen the exact photo somewhere that does show this.
This next photo, on the other hand, from the same site, does capture the exact moment of this moment, during the same game (NZ v England – World Cup 1995). That was exactly when Lomu got past the wretched Rob Andrew.
There's no need to splash paint about to make stuff like this artistic. Both photos have those blurry and "artistic" backgrounds that you often get in sports photos, if you like that sort of thing. Since it arises naturally out of the regular processes involved in photography (focussing, following the action by swinging the camera around to follow it, etc.), I do like this sort of effect a lot. It's quite unlike how the eye sees things, but that's half the fun.
To be fair to The PhC, he does have one terrific rugby photo up at his new World Cup Rugby site, namely the one of Wendell Sailor (who by the way is my tip for Man of the Tournament). He's the beautifully lit black guy, second row down on the right. Although, it does occur to me that there may also be something artistically contrived about this picture too. But if it is contrived, it's contrived in a good way, in a genuine hero-worshipping way, rather than in a pseudo-art way. It doesn't look as if it was taken during a game, but you never know, what with the floodlights they have for games these days … Maybe it was. Either way, it's dead artistic, I think. (Another argument for sporting floodlights!)
It really helps that the rugby players (like the soccer players) don't wear stupid costumes that drain the pictures of individuality, the way that cricketers and American footballers do. Complicated headgear is particularly damaging in this respect.
After all those Art Deco interminabilities yesterday, just a short posting today to tell you that I recently did a piece on Ubersportingpundit about "When is a sport not a sport?"
My personal beef is against those alleged sports where they have a row of judges deciding who did best not only in such semi-sporting matters as "technical merit", but also, if you please, in "artistic impression". That's not sport. That's bloody art. I'm thinking of ice-skating and formation swimming and diving, but I'm sure there are others. Yeah, dancing. But at least they don't do dancing at the Olympics. Yet.Not only is "artistic impression", sportswise, a crock of four lettered waste matter, so is "technical merit", if it is being indulged in for its own sake, rather than to knock over some stumps, plant a ball on a designated patch of grass, or kick a ball into a rectangle or H, or something along similar lines. There needs to be a place in sport for players who ooze technical merit and who make a huge artistic impression, but this is no fun unless they can come up against cloggers who can scarcely walk and who look like brick, er, waste-houses, but who do the business. There's no romance in sport, if the romance is just a matter of moves, and if non-romance automatically loses you points.
Culture blog material also, I hope you agree, even if expressed in somewhat locker room language.
