I'm forwarding the following article as an addendum to the recent FWk debate on sports vs. war and advertising, where some FWers opined that sports would somehow "replace" wars. Rather, they are (ab)used to make war propaganda (not only since Hitler's 1936 Olympics in Berlin..).
Chris ________http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=12753________ That's entertainment Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange 02.04.02 - The Super Bowl, played yesterday (a week later than originally scheduled, due to September 11), is notable among major American sporting events as well as major American pop culture events for the extent to which it has always warmly embraced America's wars. Beyond the usual martial metaphors of the game itself (avoiding the blitz by throwing the long bomb from a shotgun formation while the offensive line kills them in the trenches), the National Football League's premier game has gone out of its way in the past to promote and glorify the nation's military. The 1991 Super Bowl, played in the opening days of the Gulf War, used its pre-game and halftime ceremonies (and assorted other festivities) to plant wet fat kisses on the war that was at that very moment massacring hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, with a few dozen Americans lost. (The real toll came later -- illness and suicide among U.S. soldiers, disease and privation among Iraq's families.) And yesterday brought more of the same. From Fox TV's repeated camera shots of U.S. troops watching the game from Kandahar (at 4 a.m. local time?), to Budweiser ads with the Clydesdale horses bowing to the Statue of Liberty, patriotism and warfare and corporate branding were very much considered interchangeable, all part of a spectacle suffused with smarmy jingoistic bullshit. Even the Irish rock band U2 -- whose lead singer, Bono, was fresh from hanging out with the world's corporate and political elite at the World Economic Forum in New York -- was in the spirit. U2 first rose to fame off a breakthrough album in the early '80s called "War" -- the band, born of a country plagued by war and terrorism, was against it, and later songs like "Bullet the Blue Sky" specifically ripped U.S. military adventurism and its impact on poor countries. Yesterday, Bono finished the band's short halftime show with the inevitable tribute to 9-11 victims, literally wrapping himself in the American flag, as though honoring 9-11's dead -- many of whom weren't Americans -- somehow required solidarity with the U.S. flag and with the waging of yet another war, or three, or five. Permanent war, reduced to emotional spectacle and a brandable moment. The Super Bowl is the premier annual spectacle not just in professional football, but in the world of advertising. A 60-second TV ad during the game is the priciest air time in the world, costing more than the GNP of some of the world's smaller countries. Ad agencies and trade publications buzz for weeks with anticipation over the wildest, flashiest, most expensive commercials of the year, which the world's biggest companies unveil during The Game to the estimated 130 million people that are watching in the U.S. alone. [...] George Bush is free, of course, to say ridiculous and nonsensical things, even when they piss off allies and commit soldiers to battle; heck, it's what he does best. That, too, is entertainment. But spending $3,200,000 of our tax dollars on Super Bowl propaganda is neither entertaining nor appropriate. Oh, and the game? The Patriots won. Go figure.
