Recently, I've become fascinating by the lens through which we watch sporting events. By lens, I mean all the social-cultural meanings that color (in a pre-determining sort of way) how we come to understand whatever athletes and events we witness upon on the field of play.
This lens topic came to mind when I assigned these three readings for my ENGL 102 classes:
"The Malice at the Palace: an oral history of the scariest moment of NBA history" by Jonathan Abrams.
"A Fighter Abroad" (about the early 1800s black boxer, Tom Molineaux) by Brian Phillips.
"Knicks' Jeremy Lin holds a mirror up to America" by Bill Plaschke.
A common thread through these three articles - as I see it - is the way in which predetermined social-cultural meanings frame our viewing of sporting moments.
Of course, Jeremy Lin is the most recent of the three stories. Let's start there. When Lin was making his splash with the Knicks last year, I remember noticing how difficult it was folks in the hoops world to simply talk about Lin without having to always reference his status as an Asian-American (e.g. "He's good - for an Asian-American"; "He's athletic - for an Asian-American"; "He's outgoing - for an Asian-American," etc.). Even Lin's nicknames we were trapped with racial residue (except for the played-out "Linsanity"); heck, Dave Zirin held a contest to create with the best Lin nickname that didn't reference his racial status.
It seems that we don't watch Jeremy Lin (at least in 2012), in as much as we watch Jeremy-Lin-as-Asian-basketball-player. We evaluate him as such. We interpret his movements as such. That "as-Asian-basketball-player" frame is always lurking in our consciousness.
The Malice at the Palace events are similar to the Lin problem in that the brawl was marked by the racial frame of the players' blackness (plus - don't forget - the fearful perceptions of the "thugishness" or of the gangsta style of many black players in the NBA many people had then). This lens effect on the Malice at the Palace is well-documented from what I've read and heard. We all know that the NBA dress code was a direct consequence of the fight. So I'm not going to pretend that I have anything particularly insightful to say here. Just that we didn't watch a fight qua fight, but rather we watched a fight involving our perception of overpaid black men, who looked like gangsters, beating up fans (so says the perception - and the racially-marked fear).
Which brings me to Tom Molineaux. A freed slave, perhaps. An irresistible narrative. Phillips treads carefully through the legend and stray bits of fact to construct the story of an athlete, cheated by those who hated his skin color. Molineaux's narrative is of a man who first triumphs, then is tragically robbed of his triumph, only to become a victim of self-destruction.
Again, Molineaux is an athlete whom we can't see for the lens before our own eyes. Marked by blackness (and American-ness for the English!), Molineaux cannot escape the effect his racial status has upon in a racist world. For example, I find this portrait (attributed) to Molineaux to be utterly despicable, yet fascinating:
To exaggerated effect, Molineaux's skin is excessively darkened; his countenance and mannerisms are made animal-like (beastly, fang-like teeth); his eyes are only white glints - the white cravat's contrast with the portrait's dark tones only emphasizes Molineaux's otherness from the white world even more. The narrative for viewing Molineaux the boxer is determined here.
Phillips, quizzically, claims that modern sport begins with the Molineaux story. I want to claim I understand this obervation. But I don't yet. I think he might be getting at the global inter-penetration of the sporting world with its attendant connections to modern social and cultural crisis, and Molineaux's story being the generative seed of this nexus. But I also think it has something to do with our lens, and sport's way of engaging them, even while we think we have progressed beyond their dirtiness.
