The Super Bowl and the Fall of Empire

As a red-blooded American, I’m born and bred to gorge on the Spectacle. The Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA Championships, the World Cup, the Oscars, the Elections, what have you. Those magnified-far-beyond-human-proportion overblown events that depend on millions whooping and hollerin’ and always end with a winner and loser. If your choice wins, it’s out to the streets to shout in exultation and bond instantly with drunken strangers. If they lose, there’s a different kind of drunken riot. In either case, you yourself have done nothing to merit the joy or depression beyond turned on the TV or spent a year’s savings to buy a live ticket. 

 

Of course, it does no good to analyze this intellectually, as the whole show hits far below the belt. Takes our instinctive need to belong, however superficial our temporary tribe, our urge to win against life’s beating us down—or feel like we’ve won without actually being on the field or the stage or the platform—and the unmistakeable dopamime giant rush swept up in the roar of groups of humans—from the five in your living room to the 50 in the bar to the thousands at the event itself when the announcer yells “GOAALLLL!!!! Or there’s the last-second 3-pointer or final touchdown rush or Oscar announcement, what have you. 

 

I get it. I’ve enjoyed it. I can remember some moments like the Warrior’s or Giant’s victories at Yancey’s Bar and the hour of honking horns from passing cars. It’s quite a rush! It’s one way to entirely lose your sense of separate self and be swept up in the giant surge of humanity. 

 

But these days, it doesn’t feel so fun. All the waste and extravagance of big money, the assault on the senses with the commercials brainwashing us to buy, buy, buy!!!!, the giant screens magnifying everything to Behometh proportions. Of course, it’s impossible to think rationally or reflectively when the dopamine hormonal rush comes like a tidal wave and in terms of the way it takes over our body and mind, there’s not much difference between the Super Bowl and the Nuremberg Rally. 

 

Of course, the modern-day gladiators crashing into each other as they struggle to cross the 0 yard line doesn’t have the ideological horror behind it. But there is something close to the Roman gladiator spectacles and given that the Roman Empire started to crumble with its obsession to conquer and feast on blood both in the battlefield and in the arena, it’s not a happy association with our moment in history. 

 

I’ve often felt that I would enjoy the Oscars more if it was held in an elementary school auditorium and would love to see the Warrior’s play in a high school gym. The same hormonal excitement could be possible without the giant screens and $2000 to $6000 plus Super Bowl ticket prices. I guess I’m questioning the whole genre of spectacle and wondering about its effect on our psyche. Everything has to be loud, fast, ginormous, violent or sexual to attract out attention, which means we live in the basement of the brain designed for danger alerts. The number of Social Media likes and hits has to be 6 digits to be considered worthwhile. (Though, as one of the college professor characters in the TV Series The Chair noted, by today’s standards, Jesus was a total loser. Only had 12 followers.)

Me, I prefer the small jazz club, the Zen meditation hall, the music room in the school or Orff workshop in the multi-purpose room. Powerful places where miracles unfold, graced by intimacy and some measure of silence and quiet in company with a small group of human beings whose names you can come to know. A place to slowly open the heart, to ascend to the higher ranges of thinking, to connect with the warm touch of fellow human beings. Such places are not welcomed by the giant machinery of the State and as such, can be either dismissed by the culture or ignored or left alone to become genuine seeds of resistance. 

 

And sometimes it begins simply by choosing not to watch the Super Bowl.