I was watching CBC's Hockey Night In Canada this past Saturday night, for those of you not familiar with this show, it's aired every Saturday night of the NHL season across Canada to appease the masses of frothing hockey fans bored to their limits with the bitter realities of Canadian winters.
When i turned the television on and flipped to the desired channel there was some elaborate ceremony for a player who years ago was the captain of the team honoring him. The ceremony seemed to drag on and on and as it did so it seemed more and more ridiculous and unnecessary. It got me thinking that there is an inordinate amount of these types of things before professional hockey games across the country every season, many of them imbued with a message of patriotism and hometown pride, as if the hockey game itself wasn't enough to get all the fans gushing about how great hockey is and how great Canada is for having invented and harbored such a sport, and of course how much better the Canadian hockey players are than the Europeans
After thinking about this for some time and remembering how i had read something about the impact professional sport has on appeasing and distracting the masses it became extremely obvious that these distractions are indeed just that, even if not on purpose they do a really good job at getting people thinking about how many goals a top player has or in the case of the city of Toronto; why the Maple Leafs suck so bad this season, and have sucked consistently for 41 years now.
Not only are do pro sports serve as a sedative, they also act as a forum to express the greatness of a given country. I mentioned earlier giving a Canadian example. I'll never forget the scene of the NFL's Ladainian Tomlinson galloping onto the field fiercely wielding an American Flag, a scene which was used in the prelude to one channels NFL broadcasts this season. I haven't even mentioned the fighter jets that fly over the stadium at the beginning of the super bowl, the military personnel that are seemingly honored every game of the season, and the national anthems that are played at the beginning of every sporting event in the continent. Just wait until the NFL gets European players, then they'll have to hire some severely misled commentator like Don Cherry to rant and rave about how great all the American football players are in comparison to their wimpy European brethren. But they'll put him on a 10 second delay just to ensure they can edit anything overtly racist that spews from his mouth.
I actually like professional sports a lot, i watch the NFL and the NHL regularly and have a favorite team in each league. But the more i watch the more i realize how these sports have been exploited by advertising and political agendas and have in a lot of ways just acted as one of the extended arms of societies most powerful. I'll still watch sports but maybe i'll be a little more cautious then i was before, I'm definitely a little more jaded although that's not saying much. Maybe being a fan of the Leafs and watching most of their games each year I've been able to see how the mystique of a sports team can engulf a city even though they are possibly the worst run franchise in North American pro sports, them and the N.Y Knicks.
Anyway i propose removing the anthem from all sporting events, unless your willing to play the anthem of every players country, which would take hours in the NHL. Bottom line is think about what you see when your watching TV in general but pay close attention to sports broadcasts and you'll see what I'm talking about. Or you won't, maybe I'm just too delusional, too idealistic, and too caught up in the freshness of my youth that my mind is caught up in a near psychotic state. But somehow i doubt that.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Deceptive Reality
A few weeks ago i was writing a paper about the media maniplation of crime and how it creates a reality of crime that is far from realistic. In the process of writing this paper i started thinking about how the media not only control percpetions about crime, but they also control perception in regards to just about anything that we ourselves aren't directly involved or have had first hand experience with.
Specifically regarding global issues, what the media tell us about what's happening overseas creates a false reality. I guess the overall point i came to was that the media have the power to control the way we think about the world around us, it creates realities that are built on lies. This is actually a really scary thought. If the majority of people living in media saturated societies have a false perception of reality they're really powerless in terms of affecting any real change amongst their own governments let alone taking a stand against what their governments are doing in various parts of the world
I think this sort of media control creates almost a worldwide benevolence. I'm still working my way through Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" and in it she explains a number of ecenomic, social, and political catasrophes that have happened all over the world. Often times these disasters have come as a direct result of western involvement and manipulation. Of course back home we think nothing of these things. The media tells us that some corrupt dictator has lost his mind and started systematically eliminating those in opposition to him. What they don't tell us is that our own governments are backing this dictator because he has and will continue to implement ecenomic policies that are favourbale to our capitalist elites.
I'm sure many people would feel moved to do something about this if they had been told the truth, but we're almost always lied to and we're certainly never told the full truth. Through a plethora of reading that i've done over the past 5 years or so it's become increasingly obvious that there is some infinite inescapable evil that is living and thriving under our noses. I'm not saying that everything i've read is 100% credible, even if half of what i've read is true it's still deeply unsettling. We're letting people get away with murdering millions of innocent people, that kind of evil can't hide, we just don't like looking at it.
Lion of Judah have a song that really relates to what i'm saying:
Specifically regarding global issues, what the media tell us about what's happening overseas creates a false reality. I guess the overall point i came to was that the media have the power to control the way we think about the world around us, it creates realities that are built on lies. This is actually a really scary thought. If the majority of people living in media saturated societies have a false perception of reality they're really powerless in terms of affecting any real change amongst their own governments let alone taking a stand against what their governments are doing in various parts of the world
I think this sort of media control creates almost a worldwide benevolence. I'm still working my way through Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" and in it she explains a number of ecenomic, social, and political catasrophes that have happened all over the world. Often times these disasters have come as a direct result of western involvement and manipulation. Of course back home we think nothing of these things. The media tells us that some corrupt dictator has lost his mind and started systematically eliminating those in opposition to him. What they don't tell us is that our own governments are backing this dictator because he has and will continue to implement ecenomic policies that are favourbale to our capitalist elites.
I'm sure many people would feel moved to do something about this if they had been told the truth, but we're almost always lied to and we're certainly never told the full truth. Through a plethora of reading that i've done over the past 5 years or so it's become increasingly obvious that there is some infinite inescapable evil that is living and thriving under our noses. I'm not saying that everything i've read is 100% credible, even if half of what i've read is true it's still deeply unsettling. We're letting people get away with murdering millions of innocent people, that kind of evil can't hide, we just don't like looking at it.
Lion of Judah have a song that really relates to what i'm saying:
Licking Evil
seen so many people swallowed by lies
so content to embrace what's wrong accepted lies,
just gone along afraid to look through another's eyes
in the heart of the right men
in the heart of the white men
lies a piece of the devil
hold the world in your hand
divide the 'filth' from the men
the good disappear into quicksand
threat to your machine marks the end
in the heart of the right men
in the heart of the white men
lies a piece of the devil
don't become me
DEVIL
DEVIL
DEVIL
DEVIL
don't become me
don't become me
don't become me
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