Was It Not Always This Way?

Riffing on Bob McKenzie’s recent piece on dangerous hits in hockey, Tom Benjamin writes,

McKenzie does miss a key point when he wonders why this type of hit has become so accepted in the game. It is not because the game has become more about hitting and “finishing the check”. It is because the game has become more about winning. Nothing else matters. Players are expected to do absolutely everything they can to win. We expect it. We demand it. We snicker if a good guy cheats and gets away with it. The only unacceptable behaviour is losing. When winning is the only thing, there is no room for things like fair play, sportsmanship, or respect for the safety of opponents.

For the most part, I agree. As I’ve noted before, most hockey fans find it hard to appreciate their team when they lose. However, I do question Tom’s assumption that the game has only recently become a “win at all costs” affair. When another reader asked if hadn’t always been this way, Tom had this to say:

No. At one time we had the quaint idea that it was not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game. The change was gradual, but I think it was Vince Lombardi who really put the nail in the coffin and made winning the only thing. Partly it does come from the teams and athletes because winning means so much more money these days, but fans have changed too. We have no patience or empathy for losers. No excuse is acceptable. We’ll forgive almost any behaviour from winners.

It was not always this way. Most fans in my generation grew up making excuses for losers. Today we reject reasons as excuses and exorciate the unsuccessful.

Except that’s not exactly true. Take this news story about a BC minor league hockey audience, for example. The research of Stacy Lorenz also inspires some doubt about Tom’s assertion.

Maybe I’m just cynical, but the more I read about the way hockey used, the less I am willing to believe that there were ever “good old days.” Perhaps the books give us a skewed, one-sided perspective. I suspect, though, that we’re just more obvious with our dirty play—that players simply don’t care about hiding their “win at all costs” approach to the game any more. Which brings us back to the fans, because why should the players care about sportsmanship if we don’t?

Poor Things with Nothing to Hide

Secrets
by W.H. Auden

That we are always glad
When the Ugly Princess, parting the bushes
To find out why the woodcutter’s children are happy,
Disturbs a hornets’ nest, that we feel no pity
When the informer is trapped by the gang in a steam-room,
That we howl with joy
When the short-sighted Professor of Icelandic
Pronounces the Greek inscription
A Runic riddle which he then translates:

Denouncing by proxy our commonest fault as our worst;
That, waiting in his room for a friend,
We start so soon to turn over his letters,
That with such assurance we repeat as our own
Another’s story, that, dear me, how often
We kiss in order to tell,
Defines precisely what we mean by love:—
To share a secret.

The joke, which we seldom see, is on us;
For only true hearts know how little it matters
What the secret is they keep:
An old, a new, a blue, a borrowed something,
Anything will do for children
Made in God’s image and therefore
Not like the others, not like our dear dumb friends
Who, poor things, have nothing to hide,
Not, thank God, like our Father either
From whom no secrets are hid.

1949

Judging in Order Not to be Judged

I have a bad habit of introducing myself to new writers poorly: instead of beginning with their best, most subtle works, I pick up their most obvious, most didactic books. Why? Who knows. It’s probably a personal failing, a natural leaning towards the obvious.

My latest victim is David Adams Richards—a Canadian author whose book Hockey Dreams has been on my “To Read” list for the past several months. But do I start with that? Heavens, no. I don’t even pick up one of his critically acclaimed novels. Instead, I happen upon his latest effort, God Is. My Search for Faith in a Secular World, in a local Chapters, and buy it without a second thought.

I’m not far in, but I thought that this opening passage was worth sharing. The rest of the book could be a wash, but this section is well worth remembering.

A woman who recently started to read my books has asked me if I am a Christian. Strange how hard a question this is. If I say that I am not, the entire social fabric of my upbringing, of my parents’ and grandparents’ teachings and instructions, and the world and church in which I came to manhood, would make me a liar. But if I say I am a Christian, and a practicing Catholic, it very well might elicit a pre-conceived notion of what means, which in itself is giving into a convenient falsehood.

So I could say that I am a Christian but not like those other Christians, or that I am a Catholic, but not like some of those other Catholics. So already, I have hedged my bets and placed a stiff tariff on my own answer in order to be polite. It would be judging others, as I was afraid this very nice young woman would judge me. It would be judging in order not to be judged, to not willingly disclose who I am. (page 3)

These are words I hope to remember, often.

Synecdoche, New York

“So, what in the world was going on in Synecdoche, New York movie?”

Chances are, you’ve never asked this question. I haven’t really been asking it either, but I woke up the other morning with its answer in my head. Don’t ask me why—I can’t even remember when I saw the film (it was months ago).

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Synecdoche, New York is the latest movie from writer Charlie Kaufman (who also gave us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, among others). Kaufman generally spotlights the bizarre in his movies (sometimes in a very disturbing fashion), and Synecdoche is no exception. In a nutshell, it tells the story of Caden, a critically acclaimed playwright/director who embarks on the ambitious project of recreating his life as a large-scale play in a New York warehouse.

As he commences work, it quickly becomes clear that this play won’t be hitting any stage any time soon. Its scope is ever-expanding, adding characters everywhere. Caden even hires an actor to portray him as director. (Later on, this actor hires another actor to portray him playing Caden the director. Catch that?)

In the midst of his efforts to get a handle on his play, Caden is forced to watch his family and friends leave and then hate him, and eventually die. Old and lonely, Caden switches spots with one of his actors—suddenly finding himself living his life on cue. As the movie ends, Caden is walking through his gigantic set, which has been suddenly transformed into a post-apocalyptic world, and ends up dying on cue as well, sitting next to a lone woman on a bench.

So, what’s the point of this story?

Death is a central theme in this movie. From the beginning, Caden is obsessed with death: not in a morbid fascination kind of way, but in a “I’m really concerned that I might be dying and really don’t want to” kind of way. He’s a hypochondriac, religiously visiting doctors and checking his stool to see if it’s normal. And then, suddenly, he embarks upon his big play.

But this isn’t mere artistic nonsense. Caden the director spends large amounts of time (and, it seems, an inexhaustible amount of money) re-creating his life for the purpose of creating some distance. You see, he likes the director’s role: it’s something he can control, a position from which he can sit back and treat life as an observer. And so it is that the scope of his play is ever-growing. It’s not enough to be the director: he has to be the director directing the director who’s directing the play.

Caden doesn’t really deal with significant events in his life. Instead, he recreates them in his play, dealing with them by not dealing with them. Up until the end, when he finds himself living on cue, spiraling towards death, fading to gray as he succumbs to the inevitable command: “Die.”

Persian Business Practices

This “Herodotian” gem was just too, well, something to keep to myself.

[The Persians] are accustomed to deliberating on the most serious business while they are drunk, and whatever decision they reach in these sessions, it is proposed to them again the next day by the host in whose house they had deliberated the night before. Then, if the decision still pleases them when they are sober, they act on it; if not, they give it up. Conversely, whatever provisional decisions they consider while sober, they reconsider when they are drunk. (1.133, Landmark Herodotus edition)