Orwell never visited America. I think if he’d attended a baseball game he’d have modified his views. Even in the 30’s and 40’s, there was nowhere near the level of fanatical hatred that soccer arouses.
And nowadays, you can go to a game with the visitors’ cap on, and no one gives you any trouble (and yes, I’ve done this).
Drawing a comparison between NFL games and international football just exposes your ignorance.
It would be interesting to hear him expand on this theme if he were to witness today’s industrialization of sports like American football where the NFL - National Football League - requires a constant influx of new players from the nation’s colleges and universities as players might manage to play the better part of a decade before being invalided off the field.
This isn't one of Orwell's best essays but is interesting none the less.
He glosses over a key argument which is the replacement of rural bloodsports by urban organised games and the way that the staging of these big sporting events resembles the life and death struggles of Rome's Coliseum.
Modern day sports have risen to prominence on the back of industrialisation and capitalisation. He satirises the arousing of the passions in these kind of events with the "Two Minutes Hate" in his 1984.
It's worthwhile exploring Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" which picks up some of Orwell's themes and carries them further.
Interesting article, but the concept that sport was not political in Rome or Byzantium is a fantasy. The chariot factions were every bit as crazy as football ultras, and when they rioted sometimes even Emperors had to humble themselves, or alternatively send in the troops and had the mob slaughtered.
Orwell never visited America. I think if he’d attended a baseball game he’d have modified his views. Even in the 30’s and 40’s, there was nowhere near the level of fanatical hatred that soccer arouses.
And nowadays, you can go to a game with the visitors’ cap on, and no one gives you any trouble (and yes, I’ve done this).
Drawing a comparison between NFL games and international football just exposes your ignorance.
It would be interesting to hear him expand on this theme if he were to witness today’s industrialization of sports like American football where the NFL - National Football League - requires a constant influx of new players from the nation’s colleges and universities as players might manage to play the better part of a decade before being invalided off the field.
This isn't one of Orwell's best essays but is interesting none the less.
He glosses over a key argument which is the replacement of rural bloodsports by urban organised games and the way that the staging of these big sporting events resembles the life and death struggles of Rome's Coliseum.
Modern day sports have risen to prominence on the back of industrialisation and capitalisation. He satirises the arousing of the passions in these kind of events with the "Two Minutes Hate" in his 1984.
It's worthwhile exploring Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" which picks up some of Orwell's themes and carries them further.
Interesting article, but the concept that sport was not political in Rome or Byzantium is a fantasy. The chariot factions were every bit as crazy as football ultras, and when they rioted sometimes even Emperors had to humble themselves, or alternatively send in the troops and had the mob slaughtered.