Outside Oberlin
Sports
and Art: Just Two Sides of the Same Coin?
by Channing Joseph
What
are sports really?
A simply-stated
but elusive question. One that I have asked before, and one that
I will likely ask again. It resurfaced most recently for me while
I was conducting an interview with junior tennis-player Laura Koehn,
and our topic of discussion turned to the reason why tennis had
become her game of choice.
She described to me how the fluid aesthetic of tennis
had been one of her initial attractions to the game and how it was
still one of the reasons why she loved it so much. I like
the sounds of the game, the racket hitting the ball, the ball hitting
the net, she said, adding, I try to play pretty.
On hearing this, it occurred to me that with some digging, I could
probably find some fascinating connections between sports and aesthetics,
even sports and art. After all, there are always connections between
any two things if you look deeply enough. Even so, I thought that
the Oberlin public, which tends to be much more interested in art
than in athletics, judging from the plethora of well-attended college
arts events and poorly-attended sporting events, might appreciate
knowing that something it seems to hate sport shares
a compelling commonality with something it loves art.
And of course, I do not mean to cover only the very obvious things
that immediately come to mind, such as those physical activities,
like gymnastics, diving and synchronized swimming, which involve
such grace and beauty that they naturally evoke unthinking comparisons
to art. Nor merely would I want to discuss those athletic events
that involve such high degrees of technical skill, comparable to
the difficulty levels of arts like painting and sculpture, as to
be referred to as arts; for example, the art of archery,
or the art of equestrian.
My point is that even sports like football and basketball cannot
really be removed from notions more commonly associated with beauty
and creativity. Take the sport of football and the art of jazz for
example. Both the members of a football team and the members of
a jazz band must prepare themselves to work together to do what
is best for their respective ultimate goals; in one case, the game,
in another, the music. In both instances, members must be prepared
to jump in at the appropriate time and assert their individualities,
either to make that touchdown and gain team points or to take a
melody in a lovely new direction. In each example, the participants
may have some sort of idea of what they want to achieve e.g.,
a game plan or an intended musical mood but are most often
just improvising their way through the situations that present themselves.
For both, the only reality that matters during a game or a performance
is what is happening in the present moment. There is very little
focus on a sense of past or future, and if there is, victory and
beautiful music are unlikely to result from such a self-conscious
approach.
A similar
comparison can be made using almost any sport that involves interacting
with other people tennis, volleyball, hackey-sack, etc.
and any art form that involves some level of improvisation
acting, dancing, improvised rapping and so on. At some deep structural
level, these sports and art forms are structured in similar ways,
which I think is one of the reasons why tennis-player Laura can
approach her sport in such an aesthetic way.
Also,
both art and sport can be potentially very competitive. Look at
the example of figure-skater Tonya Harding, who attacked her rival
Nancy Kerrigan in order to prevent her from competing. Look at how
ferocious competing freeform rappers can get with each other. Drag
queens, who transform themselves into pieces of art, have gotten
so competitive that their fights have become a dance form.
Moreover,
both art and sport have the ability to deeply affect the emotions.
The ease with which one can be caught up in the emotions of sport
should be obvious to anyone who has been to a well-attended athletic
event. And I would think that few people would honestly say that
they have never been touched by the artistry in a painting or a
song.
Generally,
however, there are simply different cultural expectations for sport
and for art. Art, for instance, is usually created to convey some
type of emotional, social, political, spiritual or philosophical
message. Quite often, nowadays, if it does not seem intended to
convey this type of message, it is said by the many who staunchly
oppose the notion of art for arts sake that this
makes the work somehow invalid or irresponsible. Therefore, it is
my perception that, more often than not, it is considered proper
and appropriate that art in this era should tackle important issues
and should somehow be responsible to communities of people. Art
that fails to do this has lately tended to be disregarded by people
who care about such things. Hence, the popular music of contemporary
boy bands is not often referred to as art, nor is it much respected
by many who call themselves artists. On the other hand,
sport is generally viewed as entertainment, or at the most, an entertaining,
often patriotic exercise in boasting of how much better one citys
team, or one nations team, is better than anothers.
It
is rare that sports events tackle the sorts of hard messages that
artistic endeavors routinely undertake, and athletes, though they
are now often looked upon to be role models for youth, often cause
controversy when they stand up to profess a political stance. Boxing
great Muhammad Ali, for example, was considered a troublemaker for
merely changing his name from Cassius Clay to one more in-line with
his personal beliefs, and started an understandably even greater
whirlwind by conscientiously objecting to the Vietnam War draft.
Yet even when medal-winning runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos
protested institutionalized racism at the 1968 Olympics by lowering
their heads and raising their fists, controversy was stirred to
such a degree that the two men were not only suspended from their
national team, but even received death threats.
It
is thus considered proper and appropriate for sport and sports-figures
to be entertaining and apolitical, just as it is often felt that
true art should be, in some sense, the opposite: thought-provoking
and politically informed.
So
in the end, it is my opinion that sport does seem to share much
in common with art. However, the most interesting thing about the
relationship between the two things lies in the fact that our society
views these two things as completely different entities, though
they may not be so different at all. This difference is maintained
to such an extent by the societal reactions, criticisms and controversies
that result when artists and athletes cross their respective boundaries.
So what is the answer to the question, What are sports really?
Perhaps one possible answer is the stark, Sport is art, art
is sport.
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