OF THE PEOPLE figures, tables, quotations, etc... are carefull kept and part of the ritual. In most cases the are considered as the aim. Indeed what else could the aim be? If the incentive is to have one's name on a Club board, in a newspaper (oh! climax!) that of a medal or cup was no the target, one would certainly not deliberat mark out a piece of ground and kick the ba run around within a set amount of time. In way, who can look more alienated and "robotised than those athletes or players repeating the same movements within the si amount of space and time. Is he different fr a machine from which maximum productivi is expected (in this case by the manager, audience and himself?
Given this structure and these rules, we can easily see how sport spills over with bourgeo ideology. It might sound superfluous for tho who overlook the whole question by mere brackets (1 am again referring to the article c football, which reads: "the anti-authoritaria of the game [which has been mentioned [though the discipline of the team under the manager is another matter] spills off...), but should not fail to spell out the key concepts inherent to competitive sport and to the ruli class morality.
This morality is all concentrated in the notion of fair play, which leads directly to ti of collaboration of classes. Among the thousands of quotations at hand, we chose what the French director of UNESCO has to say on the subject: "Yes, sport is a noble gar for it is an ethic and an aesthetic, but one wt recruits from all classes and from all peoples and fraternally mixes them together all over world." Pacifist coexistence on the one hand submission to one's superior and to one's wo on the other. The players are involved in a system of hierarchy at all levels: between the ruling and the ruled, between the values sport, an educative leisure activity practised for attributed to different games, between the participants themselves. This training under authority, discipline, hard work and well-dor work is just the useful ideological support But bourgeois themes are certainly at the peak in the spectacle which practically all sporting activities constitute.
Sport does not escape the laws of the to show that football is not a working-class gain market. Industry has found an enormous sou of profit by turning all games into spectacles usable as commodities. The players, the mot of these spectacles, are merely showmen valuable for their exchange value on the mart of sport. The interesting thing is that the bourgeoisie did not content itself by having a kind of spectacle: It turned them into real rituals very often assuming the character of a military parade, if not of a pre-fascist ceremonial. The military bands, the parades the teams, the "awe-striking" national hymn all this display of colours and stirring sounds means much more than mere delight for the eyes and ears. It is just what a patriotic mobilisation is.
This ideological and physical mobilisation and welfare of all, is profit in the framework of provokes a tremendously deep depoliticisatio of the public atmosphere. Added to that you have the newspapers filled with comments, results, competitions (not to mention full colour supplements on the wives of our champions!) which completely dominate ever day life.
These are the broad lines along which the ideology of sport articulates itself. At all time if one wants to talk about and analyse sport, one has to consider the conditions of the birt of modern sport, its relations to precise historical needs which determined its aim and its internal nature.
As a point of fact, it is England which launched its main thrust, and it is interesting note that the French bourgeoisie, which know how to learn from the experiments of other bourgeoisies, is now (roughly since May 68), after recognising what an efficient tool sport has been in keeping youth on the right tracks, theorising on the virtues of sport, and introduces it massively wherever youth is "a bit" out of control.
All this is to suggest that when analysing England's revolutionary backwardness, sport and its effects should be taken into account.
The debate is open...and will be entered we hope Marie-Therese Weal