That World Cup Opening Ceremony Was Not Meaningless
Game of Our Lives is the best podcast to cover the World Cup.
In his latest podcast, David Goldblatt just pointed out the right way to see that strange Opening Ceremony. He urges us to compare it to the opening of the Sochi Olympic Ceremony. We can remember that a stadium was built just for the opening and closing and they enacted a decade-by-decade pageant of Russian history.
For the World Cup, we have Robbie Williams singing his own songs for about 15 minutes. Most commentators dismissed it as meaningless. Goldblatt rightly says “the smell of normalization is in our nostrils.” Russia is presenting itself as a country you can deal with. (I write my own analysis and reaction below.)
He also covers the FIFA Congress and then talks about South America and Globalization with Tim Vickery, a Goldblatt-level journalist. Did you know that Peru ran out of Panini stickers?
Shireen Ahmed talks about how the Arab and Muslim community are following the World Cup. Her podcast, Burn it All Down is worth subscribing to throughout all sports seasons.
Tony Karon provides commentary throughout.
Challenge Accepted:
Let me follow Goldblatt’s advice. I have written elsewhere about how sporting events are glorified. I argue that the World Cup and the Olympics benefits from centuries of learning how to glorify moments. I also give reasons why a sporting contest is well-poised for glory.
I remember the Sochi Olympics Opening Ceremony quite well. The message was that Russia will now define itself. If they want to be nostalgic about the Soviet period, even under Stalin, they will be. This ability to glorify its past runs parallel to an assertion that Russia will glorify itself now.
This image celebrates hammers, sickles, World War Two commemorative statues, and old-fashioned Soviet media. Note that some of the headlines are in a Cyrillic-shaped English. “Hurry Up” and “Work Hard” are seen here. The past is presented as a school of virtue. And it is presented in English everyone can read.
FIFA has historically had much more toned-down opening ceremonies compared to the Olympics. The Olympics have made stronger claims about the impact of their event. Brazil’s opening ceremony for their World Cup was a tawdry mini-concert with Pitbull and Jennifer Lopez and a Brazilian model whose name I will not even look up. Rio’s Opening and Closing were much grander and much more Brazilian. So maybe this traditional “get on with the football” is a stronger explanation for the empty Robbie Williamsness of this opening.
Russia had the option of a much more assertive opening. FIFA is still trying to claim that promoting soccer promotes the world. Sepp Blatter attempted to move FIFA into the moral space that the Olympics claim. Blatter often stated that his goal was the Nobel Peace Prize. Barney Ronay recently pointed out that Sepp Blatter “made the messianic football-Jesus-godfather shtick work.” Blatter could baldfacedly declare that organizing mega-events and distributing a lot of money to lower-income Football Associations was making the world a better place. Russia could have declared itself a force for justice and peace. Instead, we got a presentation of Russia as a predictable place where, if they say there will be a soccer tournament, that is what you will get.
((I mentioned Sepp Blatter’s presentation of FIFA as a world saviour. Warning. These parentheses contain a FIFA-is-not-good rant:
Blatter’s FIFA spent $29 million dollars on United Passions a movie about FIFA’s Executive Committee. This will appear on lists of worst film ever until the end of film.
Current President of FIFA Gianni Infantino has a budget that proves Women’s Football is still an afterthought. There is a pie chart for the Qatar World Cup but not for the France Women’s World Cup. A line item shows that France is projected to have a $131 revenue. Another line item allocate $19 million for “Women’s Development”. FIFA’s media release on the budget does not mention women once.
Please think about these three figures. Each year, FIFA spends less on the promotion of Women’s Football than it did on a movie showing Sepp Blatter jockeying to be elected head of FIFA. Keep in mind that the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada was a massive public relations gain during a critical time for FIFA. More Americans watched the Final Match with the US versus Japan than any other soccer match.
Due to length, I will not here go into the ethics of hypocrisy, which is more complex than it may sound. Maybe it is good that we sometimes announce values we aren’t prepared to match.
If FIFA makes you angry, please know that it is just another corporation and all large companies we work for and buy do more of this than FIFA. If you hate FIFA, you aren’t going to like capitalism. Back to the ceremony.))
Putin’s decision to have a normal opening ceremony also sent a signal that it will be okay to watch the World Cup. A lot of people needed to hear this. There were fewer tickets sold in Britain for the World Cup then there were for the European Championship. Of course, the European Championship featured hundreds of Russian hooligans, dressed and trained forfighting, and rushing suburban England fans. Russia’s sports minister refused to see a problem. This was a way to get back at the boorish behavior of English fans. This was childish pushback but it sent a message. Putin will look more powerful if none of this is seen in Russia during the cup.
Do We Exit, Tease, Edify, or Glorify the World Cup?
Here are how reasonable people can respond to the World Cup.
Exit: There are plausible arguments that we should boycott FIFA and the Men’s World Cup, which is FIFA’s primary source of money and authority. I am still considering this option. (If you skipped the parentheses above, read them to see why.) There is no ethical imperative to watch soccer. Once you are watching though, there is an ethical imperative to tell the truth about it. You can tease the game, put out edifying stories, or glorify actors and events.
Tease: The other plausible ethical stance towards the Cup is an ironic one, which I write about here very generally and here in relation to Tottenham Hotspur. Here, I will just describe the ironic as emotionally engaged but aware that this engagement is not something that we should expect others to share. The opening ceremony and the awkward handshakes between world leaders are occasions for pointing out that the world is shaped by fallible people. We can also hold up the sort of corporate self-serving and the persistence of sexism anytime. We can love and satirize the game without any hypocrisy. But we can’t always stay here. Where there is beauty and virtue, we should say so.
Edify: Fans should also see sport as a frame that fictionally presents character, vice, and virtue. Irony is a healthy understanding that the pitch does not reveal the players or the nations that are represented there. But we don’t just stand and sneer. We can use these occasions to tell stories that ought to be told. Virtue and irony can seem to be in tension but we cannot just pick one. We know too much.
Glorify: We are wondering now what stories will arise in Russia. Messi or Neymar could become as gods. The potential for glory is there. The country that wins will know glory for a short while and then have a memory of it. Great matches and great teams are also glorified in memory.
Fans have the option of embracing and telling stories they choose. We should tell the story of what it takes to be a Saudi player being beaten 5–0 by the host team. Finishing those last few minutes can’t be easy. There is a lot of virtue there and it gets skipped too often by our media. Virtue isn’t always found in victory or “at the top”. I am on the fence with glory. I am subject to attempts to glorify the event and the players. We seem to link glory too strongly with winning.
Our questions: Do we take down this glory? Do we stand and sneer and apply the irony? Or do we attempt to export the glory to players from Africa and Asia? Do we attempt to export this glory to Women’s leagues and the Women’s World Cup? Can we change the way we now glorify the game? Can we make glorification ethically beneficial? Or is glory one of the problems?
The answers to these questions may be a matter of personal style. As I watch, I am trying to figure out if there are reasons to accept or reject any of these approaches.
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