When did we all go meta? As a culture, we’re all worrying about the presentation of the thing rather than the thing itself. I don’t know if this is new; I’m too young. But it seems very strange to me.
Maybe I just know of bunch of examples recently, and only the cocktail had me feeling its effects, so maybe I overrate the strength of this phenomenon. But, here are the examples that provoked my interest: Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, some reality TV show, and retail anthropology. Each of these examples is from completely different realms of our culture, so I think they illustrate the ubiquity of this phenomenon.
Take the Bhutto assassination first. Of the newscasts I saw of the event—I saw quite a bit but I’m not some sort of genius about this—the first reaction was, “What does this mean for US policy?”, which is a substantive, understandable question to ask, but then, the second was, “What does this mean for the US presidential race?” with the focus being on who would benefit most. One particular incident within the story shows what I mean best: naturally, each of the candidates had to put out their reactions to the assassination, and media advisor David Axelrod handled Obama’s. Axelrod’s argument was basically that the war on Iraq distracted from Pakistan policy, and so Clinton was in some ways responsible for the failure of Pakistan policy that led to Bhutto’s death (massive paraphrase here). The immediate reaction of the assorted pundits was to proclaim that it hadn’t “resonated” and that Zbigniew Brzezinki should have delivered the argument.
So note what’s happening here. The focus here was not on the argument, but on how the argument played, and moreover, who would’ve best pitched said argument. It was a discussion over the theatrics of the reaction to a very important event. It was not a discussion over the event itself, or even whether Axelrod’s interpretation of the event was a worthy or valid one. Instead, it was what people were likely to think about the event. And there’s no necessary link with how an argument is perceived and how true the argument is (throw in clichéd Galileo example, right here; for a more modern flavor, George W. Bush’s existence as important human being). The two important things, Bhutto’s death and the correct interpretation of its meaning, were lost for where the actor should have stood to deliver his oration.
Again, arguments about an actor’s placement on the stage underlay the second example, which is the reality show advertisement. Don’t rely on me to reproduce the title, but I can reproduce the pitch: help millionaires find love! Which should be a winner of a show, seeing as it combines America’s two favorite themes: money, and fucking (uh, I mean love—the matchmaker says to one of the male millionaires, “You should know that one of my rules is no sex”, which prompts a crushed shock on the part of the millionaires). What the matchmaker appears to do is not only select the woman that’s appropriate for the millionaire—with some criteria as, intelligent, but also, not a gold digger—but also present the millionaires in an attractive package. The most hilarious example was the matchmaker trying to get a pudgy, bearded, stumpy millionaire to dress in one of those leather-jacket and deafeningly loud shirt combinations, but the most revealing moment was when she, the matchmaker, found a stripper pole in her male client’s house, and basically got him to move it because it looked awful. It did, obviously, but there was no point about the type of dude who gets a stripper pole installed in his home is probably facing some real, non-cosmetic issues blocking his way to love (which is the stated aim of the show) other than the mere presence of a stripper pole. Of course, this is merely me surmising on the last point, but since it fit into the broader pattern of the show, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable a leap.
Cosmetics, appearances control retail. Anyone who’s walked by any Abercrombie and Fitch anywhere has immediately suffered ear damage from the pulsating music playing within. Obviously this is part of the image of Abercrombie. But so many more details other than that have been thought about and controlled: the placement of the mannequins, where the jeans are placed (in the back, because people come to buy jeans, so that that way, you walk to the back and are tempted by all the other goods in the store), and so on and so forth. These moves are less about the product itself than how we present the product.
Certainly the presentation of a product, or anything for that matter, is important. I won’t show up to a job interview anytime soon in ripped jeans and a dirty shirt. Or, in the case of, say, stores, the presentation of making your product accessible and good-looking is similarly worthwhile. But it seems that, too often, the energy devoted to the presentation starves the content of the product; certainly, years from now, I won’t care about how effective Axelrod’s presentation was, and will care about what our foreign policy ended up being.
But I think we’re convinced of our self-worth already. There’s a good reason “Be Yourself” is the most common, most clichéd advice people give to guys struggling to land dates. It’s meant to be reassuring, sure, but it’s also meant to indicate that you’re a wonderful human being already! If you just change the packaging a little bit, you too (with your essence unchanged) will enjoy your rewards. What’s so wrong about this idea are the small truths it contains.
We are affected by these tactics subconsciously: going meta, worrying about the presentation, is a clandestine attack. So it can be worthwhile to worry about how we come across and what would be the best way to win friends and influence people. But, as with so many things in life, it’s a question of degree. We plan, we strategize, we live in our conscious. Because of that, the rational forms a big part of our life, and so we must be prepared to make our arguments to the rational, rather than the irrational, parts of our selves. Otherwise we’ll all be rehearsing how to stand on stage, and not what we mean to say.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Saviors
Sports fans, including myself, have a tendency to think of coaches as saviors; so, when I heard that Scott Skiles had been fired on Christmas Eve, I rejoiced to see the removal of a fallen idol, presuming that a new, better one would replace him. One game in—too early to judge, of course—the results won’t necessitate building a new statue near the Jordan one outside the United Center, but I’m still confident that it was the right thing to do.
The Bulls’ slow start is probably mostly attributable to the poor play of nearly everyone on the team, but that includes Skiles himself, who refuses to set either a constant or good rotation, and since it’s a lot easier to replace a coach than a player (or else Ben Wallace would be updating his resume on Monster.com), the move was made.
Skiles isn’t the only coaching savior to find rough roads on the way to canonization: Bobby Petrino left the NFL before his first season even finished (he found it a lot easier when he was coaching Brian Brohm); Billy Gillispie is presiding over a mediocre season in Kentucky (Acie Law IV certainly helped a lot); and so on and so forth. For every great coach, there’s a great player (or several) along with him or her.
But it seems a little too flip to suggest that it’s always the players’ responsibility over the coaches’, as I’m sure we can all think of examples of coaches reviving dormant teams, or coaches providing the extra little spark, or whatever. So they clearly have some effect. But perhaps not a savior-like effect. After all, we can see so many examples of the opposite, so it seems pretty smart to bet against a savior with any given coach.
I was listening to the radio last Sunday, while the Bills were playing the Giants, and the announcer—he was very bad; it took him five minutes to say the score and quarter—bleated out a point about how Dick Jauron was coaching well, seeing as the Bills were ranked 20th in offense and 20th in defense, and that he was “putting his players in a position to make plays.” Now, if we move beyond the simple stupidity of his statement—if he’s putting his players in a position to make plays, why are their statistical rankings, the measurement of whether or not they’re making plays, so bad?—there’s something more interesting here, which is that a team that seems like it should be doing so poorly is in the chase for a playoff spot. It’s a God-in-the-gaps explanation: we have something unexplained, so it must be the coach. Of course, there are a ton of other explanations (luck, special teams, inadequacy of statistics, the league-wide mediocrity in the NFL, and so on), but the first explanation that leapt to the mind of the announcer was to praise the coach.
The reason that the coach is the one who is recognized disproportionately is the same reason CEOs, Presidents and other various moguls are recognized. It’s a question of heuristics. The world is complicated, too complicated to explain. Our methods of describing it will always fall short, whether statistical or literary. There will always be a gap for a God to fill in.
Successful entities are like unsuccessful ones in that our methods for describing them lack completeness. There’s an intangible at work; to invoke a cliché, the sum is more than its parts combined. People always say that as a complement, but in truth, that’s a statement that should be deeply worrying, because it means that our explanatory methods are woefully inadequate. The constant used to balance the equation out is invariably the leader, whose ‘will to win’ or ‘determination’ or what have you is said to pervade the organization and propel it to victory. The most highly public leader, then, is imbued with the qualities we imagine are important to the organization’s success, thus explaining the problem away, for the moment (i.e., as long as the winning/profits/prosperity lasts).
This is not exactly untrue, as I’ve covered above, but it still leaves something to be desired. A leader leads a system of some sort, an institution: whether it’s a team, an army, a corporation, a country, whatever, he is nominally responsible for the daily affairs of a large group of people in theory dedicated to a common purpose.
The leader is merely the most powerful person in the system, but he or she does not have absolute power (even the most totalitarian systems have not figured out omnipotence), but limited power. The network of people is intended to maximize, to project a combined power, which must, to be worthwhile to assemble, be greater in sum than its individual parts. Therefore, the combination of the individual parts must be greater than the worth of the leader. The leader is less important than the people he leads. The leader can only put people “in a position to make plays.” Insofar as he does a good job, the leader’s a good one; insofar as he does a bad one (see: anyone invading Russia), the leader’s a bad leader.
That’s why it’s especially important to realize these days, when we’re seduced by visions of coaches leading players to glory and Presidents restoring prosperity in the United States, that our leaders are only as good as we are.
The Bulls’ slow start is probably mostly attributable to the poor play of nearly everyone on the team, but that includes Skiles himself, who refuses to set either a constant or good rotation, and since it’s a lot easier to replace a coach than a player (or else Ben Wallace would be updating his resume on Monster.com), the move was made.
Skiles isn’t the only coaching savior to find rough roads on the way to canonization: Bobby Petrino left the NFL before his first season even finished (he found it a lot easier when he was coaching Brian Brohm); Billy Gillispie is presiding over a mediocre season in Kentucky (Acie Law IV certainly helped a lot); and so on and so forth. For every great coach, there’s a great player (or several) along with him or her.
But it seems a little too flip to suggest that it’s always the players’ responsibility over the coaches’, as I’m sure we can all think of examples of coaches reviving dormant teams, or coaches providing the extra little spark, or whatever. So they clearly have some effect. But perhaps not a savior-like effect. After all, we can see so many examples of the opposite, so it seems pretty smart to bet against a savior with any given coach.
I was listening to the radio last Sunday, while the Bills were playing the Giants, and the announcer—he was very bad; it took him five minutes to say the score and quarter—bleated out a point about how Dick Jauron was coaching well, seeing as the Bills were ranked 20th in offense and 20th in defense, and that he was “putting his players in a position to make plays.” Now, if we move beyond the simple stupidity of his statement—if he’s putting his players in a position to make plays, why are their statistical rankings, the measurement of whether or not they’re making plays, so bad?—there’s something more interesting here, which is that a team that seems like it should be doing so poorly is in the chase for a playoff spot. It’s a God-in-the-gaps explanation: we have something unexplained, so it must be the coach. Of course, there are a ton of other explanations (luck, special teams, inadequacy of statistics, the league-wide mediocrity in the NFL, and so on), but the first explanation that leapt to the mind of the announcer was to praise the coach.
The reason that the coach is the one who is recognized disproportionately is the same reason CEOs, Presidents and other various moguls are recognized. It’s a question of heuristics. The world is complicated, too complicated to explain. Our methods of describing it will always fall short, whether statistical or literary. There will always be a gap for a God to fill in.
Successful entities are like unsuccessful ones in that our methods for describing them lack completeness. There’s an intangible at work; to invoke a cliché, the sum is more than its parts combined. People always say that as a complement, but in truth, that’s a statement that should be deeply worrying, because it means that our explanatory methods are woefully inadequate. The constant used to balance the equation out is invariably the leader, whose ‘will to win’ or ‘determination’ or what have you is said to pervade the organization and propel it to victory. The most highly public leader, then, is imbued with the qualities we imagine are important to the organization’s success, thus explaining the problem away, for the moment (i.e., as long as the winning/profits/prosperity lasts).
This is not exactly untrue, as I’ve covered above, but it still leaves something to be desired. A leader leads a system of some sort, an institution: whether it’s a team, an army, a corporation, a country, whatever, he is nominally responsible for the daily affairs of a large group of people in theory dedicated to a common purpose.
The leader is merely the most powerful person in the system, but he or she does not have absolute power (even the most totalitarian systems have not figured out omnipotence), but limited power. The network of people is intended to maximize, to project a combined power, which must, to be worthwhile to assemble, be greater in sum than its individual parts. Therefore, the combination of the individual parts must be greater than the worth of the leader. The leader is less important than the people he leads. The leader can only put people “in a position to make plays.” Insofar as he does a good job, the leader’s a good one; insofar as he does a bad one (see: anyone invading Russia), the leader’s a bad leader.
That’s why it’s especially important to realize these days, when we’re seduced by visions of coaches leading players to glory and Presidents restoring prosperity in the United States, that our leaders are only as good as we are.
Monday, December 10, 2007
The End, Or Rather The Beginning Once Again
I’m back home.
It’s strange how much I feel reintegrated into life already. I’ve had a few cultural shock moments of re-assimilation: I forgot how to lock my cell phone’s keypad after turning it on for the first time in months today, and, while on JetBlue’s flight today, I marveled at the size of the cans of soda—they seemed impossibly generous—until I realized that they were standard size and France’s size were the smaller ones. Nevertheless, I’ve reintegrated: one of the first things I did upon coming back was to go to the gym, which I haven’t done for months. But there I was in the regiments of exercisers on my regimen.
Home is instantly familiar, and once I felt the sting of cold on my cheeks, I knew that I was home, if only temporarily, and if only one of them (one of the great things about college is the acquisition of multiple homes, so that you can experience that wonderful feeling of return, the feeling that everything has an order and you’re part of it, several times a year). But being home meant I was gone from Paris, which for me rests as a kind of waystation, a convalescence home or something—it’s tough to think of it either as a home or a vacation spot, what with the time that I’ve spent on it and vice versa.
****
My trip to get here ended up being mercifully easy, but I must say that I was worried about it. I had decided to go to the airport on the 6:00 AM RER train at the latest, but to shoot for the 5:45 AM train as an ambitious goal.
My worries were these: besides the normal anxieties of flight and travel, I also did not have an alarm clock, which, given the fact that I’d missed a finals and had to pull a Blanche du Bois (you know, depending on the kindness of others), haunted me. So when I woke up at 2:33 AM in the morning with pains and chills, I was unable to go back to sleep, with these two conflicts pressuring my mind: how badly am I sick, and will I make my flight? Everything was answered well, and it seems silly now—I certainly feel silly remembering my earnest attempts to self-diagnose—but I was wracking myself with worry; I felt as if I were a desperate searcher pushing through my mind searching for some lost article.
As I left Paris, dark still hanging on, all that turned to melancholy, the full reality which I had been anticipating for a week at least, that I was leaving and that it would be a while before I could come back. I immediately set to plotting my return—how? when? for what ostensible reason (because the real reason would always be to reclaim what I was relinquishing: to have no task but enjoying myself for months on end)?—and rejecting it as a unique moment in my life and in the historical moment.
The fortune that I had, in coming at this moment in the first year of Sarkozy’s term, is immeasurable. The turbulence that jostles France is a change in the winds. People are uncertain about their direction, and some want to orient towards the US—look at the number of students who want to work in the US after all—and all this is at the same moment that I saw myself orienting more towards the French direction, of less work and more enjoyment of life.
Hell, you can even see it in their airports. Charles de Gaulle’s security was laid-back, which after the British and American editions, seems impossibly contradictory. I didn’t take off my shoes for their metal detector. I didn’t see that giant transparent barrel, that trophy, that displays all the confiscated contraband, as if too-large toothpaste containers are going to destroy the West.
In my doldrums in the airports—isn’t it ironic that no matter how much of the circus they bring in for their captive audience, the captives can’t help but be bored?—I ended up reflecting on all the things I had seen and done, and a procession of images marched through my mind: pastries from patisseries, a child begging her mom for candy then eating it before they even leave the store, two children leaning out over the quai watching for the oncoming train goaded on by their dad who leaned with them only to dash back as a joke confusing his children, the saliva that floods the mouth at the mere sight of a dessert crepe, walking through the city late in the night when no one but myself walks with a serene cathedral silence, the vivid orange streaks of clouds as the sun sets, but also the bad things too, the strikes, the homeless reposing in each and every metro station, the disenfranchised youth, the indifferent bureaucracy, and on and on and on until it all blurs together into some impression, part concrete image but mostly a feeling of contentment. And that was when I knew that that was the end of all that, and that another part of my life was set to begin. My first decade ended and my second one has begun, which I guess makes me almost some sort of adult or something like that (not to be wishy-washy about my characterizations).
So thanks everyone for reading during this trip, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
It’s strange how much I feel reintegrated into life already. I’ve had a few cultural shock moments of re-assimilation: I forgot how to lock my cell phone’s keypad after turning it on for the first time in months today, and, while on JetBlue’s flight today, I marveled at the size of the cans of soda—they seemed impossibly generous—until I realized that they were standard size and France’s size were the smaller ones. Nevertheless, I’ve reintegrated: one of the first things I did upon coming back was to go to the gym, which I haven’t done for months. But there I was in the regiments of exercisers on my regimen.
Home is instantly familiar, and once I felt the sting of cold on my cheeks, I knew that I was home, if only temporarily, and if only one of them (one of the great things about college is the acquisition of multiple homes, so that you can experience that wonderful feeling of return, the feeling that everything has an order and you’re part of it, several times a year). But being home meant I was gone from Paris, which for me rests as a kind of waystation, a convalescence home or something—it’s tough to think of it either as a home or a vacation spot, what with the time that I’ve spent on it and vice versa.
****
My trip to get here ended up being mercifully easy, but I must say that I was worried about it. I had decided to go to the airport on the 6:00 AM RER train at the latest, but to shoot for the 5:45 AM train as an ambitious goal.
My worries were these: besides the normal anxieties of flight and travel, I also did not have an alarm clock, which, given the fact that I’d missed a finals and had to pull a Blanche du Bois (you know, depending on the kindness of others), haunted me. So when I woke up at 2:33 AM in the morning with pains and chills, I was unable to go back to sleep, with these two conflicts pressuring my mind: how badly am I sick, and will I make my flight? Everything was answered well, and it seems silly now—I certainly feel silly remembering my earnest attempts to self-diagnose—but I was wracking myself with worry; I felt as if I were a desperate searcher pushing through my mind searching for some lost article.
As I left Paris, dark still hanging on, all that turned to melancholy, the full reality which I had been anticipating for a week at least, that I was leaving and that it would be a while before I could come back. I immediately set to plotting my return—how? when? for what ostensible reason (because the real reason would always be to reclaim what I was relinquishing: to have no task but enjoying myself for months on end)?—and rejecting it as a unique moment in my life and in the historical moment.
The fortune that I had, in coming at this moment in the first year of Sarkozy’s term, is immeasurable. The turbulence that jostles France is a change in the winds. People are uncertain about their direction, and some want to orient towards the US—look at the number of students who want to work in the US after all—and all this is at the same moment that I saw myself orienting more towards the French direction, of less work and more enjoyment of life.
Hell, you can even see it in their airports. Charles de Gaulle’s security was laid-back, which after the British and American editions, seems impossibly contradictory. I didn’t take off my shoes for their metal detector. I didn’t see that giant transparent barrel, that trophy, that displays all the confiscated contraband, as if too-large toothpaste containers are going to destroy the West.
In my doldrums in the airports—isn’t it ironic that no matter how much of the circus they bring in for their captive audience, the captives can’t help but be bored?—I ended up reflecting on all the things I had seen and done, and a procession of images marched through my mind: pastries from patisseries, a child begging her mom for candy then eating it before they even leave the store, two children leaning out over the quai watching for the oncoming train goaded on by their dad who leaned with them only to dash back as a joke confusing his children, the saliva that floods the mouth at the mere sight of a dessert crepe, walking through the city late in the night when no one but myself walks with a serene cathedral silence, the vivid orange streaks of clouds as the sun sets, but also the bad things too, the strikes, the homeless reposing in each and every metro station, the disenfranchised youth, the indifferent bureaucracy, and on and on and on until it all blurs together into some impression, part concrete image but mostly a feeling of contentment. And that was when I knew that that was the end of all that, and that another part of my life was set to begin. My first decade ended and my second one has begun, which I guess makes me almost some sort of adult or something like that (not to be wishy-washy about my characterizations).
So thanks everyone for reading during this trip, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Lucky and Ebullition
I got lucky today, after getting horrendously unlucky.
My sole final was scheduled for 9:30 AM, which is the same time that the class has been scheduled for the entire quarter. I have rarely been late. So of course, the one time I have to be late—and no mere fifteen minutes, these—has to be today, and I have to wake up at 10:27 AM. As for excuses—they can only be described as such—my alarm clock didn’t function, or I slept through it. I don’t think the latter is true, because this alarm is loud, intense. It’s impossible to do that, I think. So I can’t explain it.
However, I got lucky. I got to take the test after class, after spending only fifteen minutes on it (I arrived at 10:45). It went about as fine as could be expected.
****
After that debacle, our Paris and Politics class went to Ile St. Denis, a banlieue in the north of Paris. We went there to speak to a group called Ebullition, an association whose name means “bubbling forth from beneath,” which connotes the solutions coming up from a bottom-up sprit.
They say necessity is the mother of invention, and it may be true in this case. The bottom-up spirit is lacking in France, and its emergence here may be the consequence of a lack of investment by other French sources, necessitating action from the community.
An example from my boss, Roxanne, for my media internship shows what I mean. The Rue Daguerre in the 14th, where she lives, is a narrow street lined by shops. It is a typical medieval-type street with a lot of foot traffic and outdoor interactions. It is the type of street which makes Paris great. Except for this instance. Typically, many streets of this type get Christmas decorations of some sort—the Rue Mouffetard, which I wrote about a week ago, is a beautiful example—and the Rue Daguerre usually does, except for this particular Christmas. For whatever reason, the president of the business association decided no one wanted the lights and that they were too expensive, so they weren’t put up.
But Roxanne went around to each of the shop owners and asked if they’d each be willing to put up some money, and the mairie of the arrondisement (think alderman) decided he’d be willing to meet them halfway, and so it looked like it might happen (I don’t know whether it did or not), but during the course of this quest, some French woman apparently said, “Why are you wasting your time like this? What do you want it for?” as if she was against individuals actively taking a care in their community.
You see it in the strikes, too. They seem like bottom-up activity, but they aren’t attempts to solve things for themselves, but instead are usually attempts to petition the state to solve their problems for them. Not to say this is necessarily all wrong, but civic life is about more than citizens and the state; it’s about citizens, civic institutions and the state.
Anyway, Ebullition is so bottom-up that they decided to take over the local government. Their former President, whom we met, is now the deputy mayor, and apparently the mayor also has ties with them. Furthermore, in Ile-St. Denis, there’s a citizen’s list, one unaffiliated with any of the major parties.
Their efforts are certainly needed in the community. There are a lot of great examples of modernist architecture—some of the best-looking high-rises I’ve ever seen—in Ile-St. Denis, and also some nice smaller houses, but the atmosphere reminds me of Buffalo or Rochester or another Rust Belt community in the United States, except with some French twists.
For example, in Rochester, we’ve been declaring Rochester Renaissance 2010 (or some variation of those three words) since I’ve been in high school, if not longer. Anytime you have to declare a rebirth is bad, because it means you’ve been dead in between. Similarly, if you have to focus on tomorrow, it’s usually because today isn’t great. There was a huge sign, bigger than most billboards, in a bright baby blue, stretched across a large building, declaring that “Tomorrow, We Will Be Connected” in reference to the new tramway line being built in 2009 (I think).
The lack of tramway lines in the banlieue are a general problem, because there are so few that they are essentially disconnected. Because they are disconnected, residents must first go to center city Paris to get to most other banlieue. The consequence of this is that it is harder to support general stores or other types of businesses.
This was certainly reflected in Ile-St. Denis. I saw four types of businesses: hair care (one store), a discount cell phone store (another one), a tabac, and several restaurants. Of the restaurants, almost all were ethnic—there was one Italian place and one Greek place—and most bore very ethically evocative names, ex. “La Medina.” The restaurants were mostly of the fast-food variety, and they took great care to emphasize their formules.
The people dressed in the hip-hop fashions, and a high proportion of them were young people. They were of many different colors and races, and seemed very multicultural. In fact, one incident demonstrated their multiculturalism best of all: as we were walking back from Ebullition’s building, a group of kids passed by us. We were speaking English, and one of the guys asks one of the girls, “Oh you speak English” while reaching out and grabbing her arm, and, when he was rebuffed, he continued all in the same breath, “Fuck you.” His friends laughed.
As for the meeting itself, we came to appreciate the problems faced by the banlieue: the lack of investment, the difficult relations with the government, the language barriers for immigrants. The women whom we met, who were in high positions in the association, often disagreed with one another in a spirit of friendly debate. One thing, however, was clear: Sarkozy was not a popular figure. Everyone was against his DNA testing provision in the recent immigration bill, and strongly so. One of the most grimly funny moments was when our professor asked about the new Marshall Plan for the banlieue, about what they thought about it. The reply: “Well, we don’t trust it very much, because there have been Marshall Plans for the banlieue for a decade or so.” Which is the same kind of stuff you hear from politicians all the time—oh yeah, we’ll do it, we’ll do it—and it rarely gets done the way it needs to, so sometimes the situation just needs to bubble up.
****
Sarkozy’s position, however, is not one I envy. Not that I necessarily approve of his policies—his immigration policies, in particular, pander relentlessly to the far right—but whomever was placed in his position would have found it difficult. I think the problems that France faces in the year 2007 are similar to the United States’ in 1993 when Bill Clinton took office.
What was the bind Clinton faced? “It’s the economy, stupid” was his rallying cry, and Sarkozy’s appeals have been in large part about remedying the economy. Well, the economy faces (and faced, in the US) this problem: there is a deficit whose size is concerning, yet, at the same time, there is widespread unemployment and underinvestment in poverty-stricken areas. As economics would have it, this is a catch-22, as deficit spending is supposed to be about curing the last two problems, except it’s not and there’s an untenable deficit there. So there’s a problem, a conundrum that must be solved.
What’s interesting is that in both cases, the wishes of the financial elites have been served. I think Sarkozy has largely chosen that direction out of inclination, whereas Clinton needed to do so at least partially politically—after all, the Perot voters worried him. That is, after all, the source of James Carville’s hilarious quotation (you know, back before he was a rampant political hack for CNN): “I used to want to come back as the Pope. Now I want to come back as the bond market, so then I could scare everyone.” (undoubtedly paraphrased).
And think about it, who is going to win? Rationally speaking, a group of rich people who are probably in close constant contact with government elites is going to beat out a disorganized group, of which many can’t speak the language very well. One of the perpetual problems of democracies is how to effectively represent the interests of the de facto disenfranchised, and it’s unfortunate that the poor of the banlieue only seem to attract attention when they riot.
My sole final was scheduled for 9:30 AM, which is the same time that the class has been scheduled for the entire quarter. I have rarely been late. So of course, the one time I have to be late—and no mere fifteen minutes, these—has to be today, and I have to wake up at 10:27 AM. As for excuses—they can only be described as such—my alarm clock didn’t function, or I slept through it. I don’t think the latter is true, because this alarm is loud, intense. It’s impossible to do that, I think. So I can’t explain it.
However, I got lucky. I got to take the test after class, after spending only fifteen minutes on it (I arrived at 10:45). It went about as fine as could be expected.
****
After that debacle, our Paris and Politics class went to Ile St. Denis, a banlieue in the north of Paris. We went there to speak to a group called Ebullition, an association whose name means “bubbling forth from beneath,” which connotes the solutions coming up from a bottom-up sprit.
They say necessity is the mother of invention, and it may be true in this case. The bottom-up spirit is lacking in France, and its emergence here may be the consequence of a lack of investment by other French sources, necessitating action from the community.
An example from my boss, Roxanne, for my media internship shows what I mean. The Rue Daguerre in the 14th, where she lives, is a narrow street lined by shops. It is a typical medieval-type street with a lot of foot traffic and outdoor interactions. It is the type of street which makes Paris great. Except for this instance. Typically, many streets of this type get Christmas decorations of some sort—the Rue Mouffetard, which I wrote about a week ago, is a beautiful example—and the Rue Daguerre usually does, except for this particular Christmas. For whatever reason, the president of the business association decided no one wanted the lights and that they were too expensive, so they weren’t put up.
But Roxanne went around to each of the shop owners and asked if they’d each be willing to put up some money, and the mairie of the arrondisement (think alderman) decided he’d be willing to meet them halfway, and so it looked like it might happen (I don’t know whether it did or not), but during the course of this quest, some French woman apparently said, “Why are you wasting your time like this? What do you want it for?” as if she was against individuals actively taking a care in their community.
You see it in the strikes, too. They seem like bottom-up activity, but they aren’t attempts to solve things for themselves, but instead are usually attempts to petition the state to solve their problems for them. Not to say this is necessarily all wrong, but civic life is about more than citizens and the state; it’s about citizens, civic institutions and the state.
Anyway, Ebullition is so bottom-up that they decided to take over the local government. Their former President, whom we met, is now the deputy mayor, and apparently the mayor also has ties with them. Furthermore, in Ile-St. Denis, there’s a citizen’s list, one unaffiliated with any of the major parties.
Their efforts are certainly needed in the community. There are a lot of great examples of modernist architecture—some of the best-looking high-rises I’ve ever seen—in Ile-St. Denis, and also some nice smaller houses, but the atmosphere reminds me of Buffalo or Rochester or another Rust Belt community in the United States, except with some French twists.
For example, in Rochester, we’ve been declaring Rochester Renaissance 2010 (or some variation of those three words) since I’ve been in high school, if not longer. Anytime you have to declare a rebirth is bad, because it means you’ve been dead in between. Similarly, if you have to focus on tomorrow, it’s usually because today isn’t great. There was a huge sign, bigger than most billboards, in a bright baby blue, stretched across a large building, declaring that “Tomorrow, We Will Be Connected” in reference to the new tramway line being built in 2009 (I think).
The lack of tramway lines in the banlieue are a general problem, because there are so few that they are essentially disconnected. Because they are disconnected, residents must first go to center city Paris to get to most other banlieue. The consequence of this is that it is harder to support general stores or other types of businesses.
This was certainly reflected in Ile-St. Denis. I saw four types of businesses: hair care (one store), a discount cell phone store (another one), a tabac, and several restaurants. Of the restaurants, almost all were ethnic—there was one Italian place and one Greek place—and most bore very ethically evocative names, ex. “La Medina.” The restaurants were mostly of the fast-food variety, and they took great care to emphasize their formules.
The people dressed in the hip-hop fashions, and a high proportion of them were young people. They were of many different colors and races, and seemed very multicultural. In fact, one incident demonstrated their multiculturalism best of all: as we were walking back from Ebullition’s building, a group of kids passed by us. We were speaking English, and one of the guys asks one of the girls, “Oh you speak English” while reaching out and grabbing her arm, and, when he was rebuffed, he continued all in the same breath, “Fuck you.” His friends laughed.
As for the meeting itself, we came to appreciate the problems faced by the banlieue: the lack of investment, the difficult relations with the government, the language barriers for immigrants. The women whom we met, who were in high positions in the association, often disagreed with one another in a spirit of friendly debate. One thing, however, was clear: Sarkozy was not a popular figure. Everyone was against his DNA testing provision in the recent immigration bill, and strongly so. One of the most grimly funny moments was when our professor asked about the new Marshall Plan for the banlieue, about what they thought about it. The reply: “Well, we don’t trust it very much, because there have been Marshall Plans for the banlieue for a decade or so.” Which is the same kind of stuff you hear from politicians all the time—oh yeah, we’ll do it, we’ll do it—and it rarely gets done the way it needs to, so sometimes the situation just needs to bubble up.
****
Sarkozy’s position, however, is not one I envy. Not that I necessarily approve of his policies—his immigration policies, in particular, pander relentlessly to the far right—but whomever was placed in his position would have found it difficult. I think the problems that France faces in the year 2007 are similar to the United States’ in 1993 when Bill Clinton took office.
What was the bind Clinton faced? “It’s the economy, stupid” was his rallying cry, and Sarkozy’s appeals have been in large part about remedying the economy. Well, the economy faces (and faced, in the US) this problem: there is a deficit whose size is concerning, yet, at the same time, there is widespread unemployment and underinvestment in poverty-stricken areas. As economics would have it, this is a catch-22, as deficit spending is supposed to be about curing the last two problems, except it’s not and there’s an untenable deficit there. So there’s a problem, a conundrum that must be solved.
What’s interesting is that in both cases, the wishes of the financial elites have been served. I think Sarkozy has largely chosen that direction out of inclination, whereas Clinton needed to do so at least partially politically—after all, the Perot voters worried him. That is, after all, the source of James Carville’s hilarious quotation (you know, back before he was a rampant political hack for CNN): “I used to want to come back as the Pope. Now I want to come back as the bond market, so then I could scare everyone.” (undoubtedly paraphrased).
And think about it, who is going to win? Rationally speaking, a group of rich people who are probably in close constant contact with government elites is going to beat out a disorganized group, of which many can’t speak the language very well. One of the perpetual problems of democracies is how to effectively represent the interests of the de facto disenfranchised, and it’s unfortunate that the poor of the banlieue only seem to attract attention when they riot.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Apocalypse
That’s right, never thought it would happen in my years at Stanford: we beat Cal AND USC. In the same year, no less. Jim Harbaugh is officially amazing; no questions asked or answered.
I may or may not have stayed up ‘till 4:30 in the morning for the final result, and it was all worth it. Good job, team.
****
Outside of my little corner of the college football universe, the Apocalypse has descended on the BCS system. Actually this is a hyperbolic lie. In reality, we’ve seen several such situations in the past few years: dare I enumerate? I do. Ask Auburn, LSU, USC or Michigan (well, back when the system was screwing them) how they feel about the assertion that this year is the final offense against decency and good sense. The BCS is a building built out of shoddy materials: it keeps on rotting further and further, and there are some spectacular cracks and breakages, but the whole structure somehow, improbably endured despite its too-soon dilapidation. It needs a fix-up; that much is for sure.
This is obvious to most who follow the game and even most who don’t really follow the game that much either, so most of the debate now is marked by polemics of the “WHY WON’T THEY CHANGE? ISN’T IT OBVIOUS?” variety. The assumption of the polemics is true, but they assume that change is a much easier thing to achieve than it really is.
Right now, if you surveyed experts on any number of issues, you could find huge numbers of petty stupid inefficiencies and grand blunders whose solutions are relatively obvious: Besides the BCS, you’ve also got the War on Drugs, payroll taxes, the DMV, plastic bags (seriously!), voting, high fructose corn syrup and on and on and on. We’ve got our share of intractable problems in the world—hate, race relations and another infinite list—but sometimes it seems as if we could pull ourselves forward if only we had the will. That is the implication of those polemics at least.
The problem is that in any given system for it to survive long enough to be utterly exposed, must also serve someone’s interests, such that they would actively work against its disappearance or reform. So it is with the BCS: the contracts with the bowls and the university presidents have interests in keeping it around. Sure, it’s easy to say that the general welfare would be improved by casting it aside, but the problem is making the power structure’s grip on the system untenable.
One of the distinctive features of the present is that as the number of institutions multiplies in scope and complexity, so too does the number of people with vested interests, and their positions in society becomes progressively more obscure and hard to reach by ordinary means. Like, I bet you didn’t know that there was a powerful plastic bag lobby, huh? Behind most of these really dumb policies is some obscure retail group. And how are we supposed to redress our wrongs with them? No wonder some people have an obsession with the Trilateral Commission; they’ve got the wrong target but the right idea.
****
I broke down. I went to McDonald’s. I haven’t had really, really good junky fries in a while. I apologize. I wish I could justify it in terms of an anthropological exploration or something—I mean, I can as I’m going to write about it as you can see with a quick glance down the page—but I mean, it’s McDonald’s. I didn’t even go for the free WiFi.
The MacDo’s (as they are referred to by the French) are well-patronized; it isn’t uncommon to see a phalanx of French kids, all toting huge bags traveling down the street. Profit-wise, I bet they’ve got a pretty good thing going.
But their interiors are curiously antiquated. Most of them look like holdouts from the 80’s—some of their menus are hand-lettered without electronic backing lights. Furthermore, the lines are really, really slow, and the tellers really patient—one guy talked on his cell phone for two minutes straight before actually, you know, ordering.
****
It’s started to rain the past few days. The rain falls heavy and seems to dampen your entire body. The wind blew, today, from south to north, so that when I walked back with my dinner, I had to walk against the gusts of wind. It rained so much that my paper bag became sodden and wet, so much so that my drink fell through the bag when it became too weak.
I have this to reassure me: it’s no Rochester, NY winter, and thank god.
I may or may not have stayed up ‘till 4:30 in the morning for the final result, and it was all worth it. Good job, team.
****
Outside of my little corner of the college football universe, the Apocalypse has descended on the BCS system. Actually this is a hyperbolic lie. In reality, we’ve seen several such situations in the past few years: dare I enumerate? I do. Ask Auburn, LSU, USC or Michigan (well, back when the system was screwing them) how they feel about the assertion that this year is the final offense against decency and good sense. The BCS is a building built out of shoddy materials: it keeps on rotting further and further, and there are some spectacular cracks and breakages, but the whole structure somehow, improbably endured despite its too-soon dilapidation. It needs a fix-up; that much is for sure.
This is obvious to most who follow the game and even most who don’t really follow the game that much either, so most of the debate now is marked by polemics of the “WHY WON’T THEY CHANGE? ISN’T IT OBVIOUS?” variety. The assumption of the polemics is true, but they assume that change is a much easier thing to achieve than it really is.
Right now, if you surveyed experts on any number of issues, you could find huge numbers of petty stupid inefficiencies and grand blunders whose solutions are relatively obvious: Besides the BCS, you’ve also got the War on Drugs, payroll taxes, the DMV, plastic bags (seriously!), voting, high fructose corn syrup and on and on and on. We’ve got our share of intractable problems in the world—hate, race relations and another infinite list—but sometimes it seems as if we could pull ourselves forward if only we had the will. That is the implication of those polemics at least.
The problem is that in any given system for it to survive long enough to be utterly exposed, must also serve someone’s interests, such that they would actively work against its disappearance or reform. So it is with the BCS: the contracts with the bowls and the university presidents have interests in keeping it around. Sure, it’s easy to say that the general welfare would be improved by casting it aside, but the problem is making the power structure’s grip on the system untenable.
One of the distinctive features of the present is that as the number of institutions multiplies in scope and complexity, so too does the number of people with vested interests, and their positions in society becomes progressively more obscure and hard to reach by ordinary means. Like, I bet you didn’t know that there was a powerful plastic bag lobby, huh? Behind most of these really dumb policies is some obscure retail group. And how are we supposed to redress our wrongs with them? No wonder some people have an obsession with the Trilateral Commission; they’ve got the wrong target but the right idea.
****
I broke down. I went to McDonald’s. I haven’t had really, really good junky fries in a while. I apologize. I wish I could justify it in terms of an anthropological exploration or something—I mean, I can as I’m going to write about it as you can see with a quick glance down the page—but I mean, it’s McDonald’s. I didn’t even go for the free WiFi.
The MacDo’s (as they are referred to by the French) are well-patronized; it isn’t uncommon to see a phalanx of French kids, all toting huge bags traveling down the street. Profit-wise, I bet they’ve got a pretty good thing going.
But their interiors are curiously antiquated. Most of them look like holdouts from the 80’s—some of their menus are hand-lettered without electronic backing lights. Furthermore, the lines are really, really slow, and the tellers really patient—one guy talked on his cell phone for two minutes straight before actually, you know, ordering.
****
It’s started to rain the past few days. The rain falls heavy and seems to dampen your entire body. The wind blew, today, from south to north, so that when I walked back with my dinner, I had to walk against the gusts of wind. It rained so much that my paper bag became sodden and wet, so much so that my drink fell through the bag when it became too weak.
I have this to reassure me: it’s no Rochester, NY winter, and thank god.
The Soccer Match
When I first started traveling to dinner, vaguely in the direction of Parc des Princes, the home field of Paris Saint-Germain, I noticed how packed the metro cars were: I was heading out to dinner and already the cars were moderately full of pimpled, scarved supporters of PSG. When I finished dinner and went towards Parc des Princes in earnest, the cars this time was full of older college-age students. The cars were clown-car level full, and it was too full to be boisterous.
But a curious thing happened when I sat down for the match. I was sitting in the most expensive publicly available seats (the luxury boxes were between levels, unlike the US, where in terms of sightlines, they are usually awful) thanks to the Bings. I was in the second row from the field halfway between the center line and the goal, which was great, but slightly better than it sounds, as the field is separated from the seats by a metal fence topped by spikes, and sections are separated from one another by a glass barrier, which interfered with the view of the field—when I tried to look right towards the goal, I had to look through the glass, which had a strange disorienting reflective aspect. Fortunately my neighbor moved and I took his seat, which had a perfect view. When I got settled though, I looked around and realized this: the stadium was practically empty.
The “Presidential” section—which was where I was sitting—was full of genteel supporters, who, as it turned out, cheered supportively but not enthusiastically but did not seem particularly engaged. One woman directly in front of me did little beyond chain-smoke cigarettes; due to the wind, the smoke curled up her hair, and while it ascended, it clung insistently as it curled, looking as if a fire burned underneath her deeply matted hair. As the Jumbotron flashed through different spectators—all of whom were boring and do not, unlike the US, quickly realize that they are on Jumbotron—I wondered: where are the hooligans?
A first candidate was in the corner of the ground level. It was a jailed section, by walls. Its supporters were chanting a full half-hour before the match and swaying in unison. They were waving flags—but some were of the three lions. So that ruled out Paris Saint-Germain and ruled in Caen, a town in Normandy, which I figure due to its English connections, has adopted the three lions as its own. So they were not the massive contingent of supporters that I was expecting.
Once the match began, the question disappeared from my mind. The match took precedence. At first, PSG looked overmatched as Caen made several forays into PSG territory, with only some fortunate defense stopping an early goal. I had settled down for the match and assumed that the vocal fanbase decided not to come out for a cold, damp night, with the home team generally mediocre, playing against the mediocre. The question where are the fanatics? faded from my mind.
In the fifteenth minute of the match, the question answered itself. They had been confined somehow. A boom sounded, as if from a cannon, and they rushed in. The first ones through ran as if liberated, waving their arms above their hands in celebration. They rest proceeded in more orderly fashion, but were nevertheless quite fast. They quickly set about to unfurling their various banners that signified the various factions amongst them: “Lutece Falco” (Lutece being an ancient name for the city of France); “Gavroche” (the street urchin who revolts in Les Misérables); “Boulogne Boys” (Boulogne being the suburb near which Parc des Princes is located; its banner had a skull with a top hat between Boulogne and Boys); “Paris Puissance”; “Supra Autres” (I think on this last one; mostly what I remember is the middle of the banner referring to the group as “ultras” which is always otherwise a synonym for crazy reactionary radicals); lastly, one with just a bulldog and “Boulogne.” Other banners were more aspirational and directed towards the players: “Bleed for us like we bleed for you; otherwise…” After they hung their banners, they began chanting and cheering in unison but little by little devolved into their own group’s cheers. Their first cheer, though, was something to see: everyone clapped with their hands above their head and they finished each measure of the chant with arms spread wide, in prayerful supplication.
The fan engagement is the chief difference between watching soccer on TV and watching soccer in person. On TV, the fans sound like white noise, a dull murmuring roar. In person, it is thunder reverberating, awesome in import. When each end of the stadium (excepting the genteel middle) did a call-and-response, the sound itself traveled and collided and almost metamorphosed into a tangible thing right there in their air.
This was in direct rebuke to the US theory of fan management, which holds that the more bells-and-whistles that are present in a stadium, the more enjoyment a fan will have. I’ll tell you this: the stadium was a concrete oval, the seats were two plastic circles, one for the ass and one for the back, without armrest or cup holder, and the food was the equivalent of a 7-11 (no one ate there; in POPB, the food was similarly bad but more people ate outside food; I’m not sure the stadium operators realize what an opportunity they’re missing out on—maybe they should take a pilgrimage to AT&T Park and realize the money they’re missing out on). And it didn’t seem to matter—those fanatics kept on chanting for ninety minutes in forty-five minute chunks.
The crowd—here’s sports commentary cliché numero uno!—energized the players and from then on (well…except…you’ll see…), PSG dominated the game. One of the unfortunate things about soccer, and one of the reasons I think Americans probably won’t embrace the game (along with the biggest reason: we not only aren’t the best, but the best don’t play in US) is that the team that dominates the flow of the game won’t necessarily win, to the point of the game ending in a tie. Now remember when baseball’s All-Star Game ended in a tie? Remember how freaked out everyone was, even though it was a meaningless exhibition game? There you have it—there must be a winner in American sports, none of this both teams played hard nonsense (actually there is a place for the noble loser, but only rarely, and even then, only temporarily).
At any rate, PSG settled into that zone, and it was no one’s fault but their own. Often in soccer, I’ve noticed, the most well set-up plays won’t produce results; the slightest thing goes wrong and—slam!—the door is shut. Junk plays, the ones that appear to have no design whatsoever, tend to be the source of many goals. PSG appeared to be trying for “well-set up play” category, but was falling for a particularly American stereotype.
I would argue in every American school—the best example is from high school, but I know this type in college—there is a genre of person whom I call “Guy Who Knows Soccer.” Now, Guy Who Knows Soccer is painfully aware that soccer is a second-tier sport (if that) in the US, and so he must justify it by showing off all the really cool things from soccer: bicycle kicks, juggling, that move where, instead of dribbling, your legs kind of circle around the ball like electrons around a nucleus (and here I’m painfully aware that I’m displaying my ignorance here), you know, those things that look pretty cool to the uninformed yokels. The thing is, many of these moves—not all—are mostly useless in a game (actually juggling and that ball-orbiting move I’ve seen often), and if done too much, they get the ball stolen, just like And 1 moves can’t be played in an actual game of basketball.
That’s basically what happened to Paris Saint-Germain: they would gain possession of the ball, advance it when unopposed, but once opposed, attempt to fancifully dazzle their way out, with only occasional success. And the thing about soccer is, you have to have a series of successful confrontations (or luck) to score, meaning that the dazzling was a temporary palliative. Oh, they came close: there was the ball played behind the streaking striker; there was the offsides that wasn’t (this provoked high-pitched whistling, the signal of derision). But no goal, because of the nature of the game in general and their game specifically.
I just summarized about three-quarters of the game right there in those two paragraphs, which says a lot about soccer (similar to baseball; then again I actually enjoy both sports). It was enjoyable, though, watching from so close a view, because the God’s eye view of television, while it allows you to appreciate the maneuvering of the pieces like a general at war, doesn’t allow you to appreciate the visceral timing of the game. If a pass is but a millisecond off, it is picked off. And free balls provoke much more violence than you’d assume—jostling with elbows and shoulders is normal, as is running people over; it’s also normal to see guys just writhing on the field as the game flows on around them; the most extreme behavior was a blatant shove before the ball descended. With so much physical activity comes many opportunities for fouls, which is probably why there are so many whining appeals to the ref: because the ref has the discretion to let them play on, the whine is the source of appeal. But for all this, the game was a stalemate.
The stalemate ended with the rain. It fell in long pointillist streaks. The players, however, seemed relatively unaffected. Until the Paris Saint-Germain goalie kicked off for a goalie kick towards one of his players. The player received the kick, took a step, slipped and fell, like in cartoons with a banana peel. He was unable to get up as a Caen player streaked forward took the ball and ran towards the goal with two steps on the straining Paris Saint-Germain players who followed. Effectively it was a one-on-one situation with the goalie, therefore, which generally doesn’t end well for the goalie; this trend was confirmed as the Caen player scored. Junk plays, like I said.
The whistles returned, and everyone joined in. It sounded like wind whipping through trees on a winter day. It was an eerie sort of derision. It continued for three straight minutes, then abated with a PSG corner kick—there was a brief possibility for atonement—then resumed for another couple of minutes when that was botched.
The PSG players acquired a desperate edge where before they had been show-offy. A few confrontations developed, with one shaved-head player of Caen serving as a particular target as he, the Caen player, tumbled and was sent tumbling throughout the final fifteen of the match. While on offense, the Paris Saint-Germain tried desperate long-bombs without hope of connecting. It was quite incompetent. The derision continued, with whistles becoming mixed with boos. One African player was addressed as a “maghrébin” (a North African) and told to “hurry up”. It was quite nasty. Finally the game ended, after the official end, shaved-head got in another stand-off.
As I walked out of the stadium, painfully aware of my soaked socks, I looked up to see a line of riot police choking off the road and forcing the pedestrians into two narrow channels on the sidewalks. The police were armed with shields, nightsticks (and one had something that looked like a Nerf toy, but I wasn’t about to find out what it shot) and were dressed in helmets, most with covers down but a few with covers up. They stood in a phalanx formation. Their final accessory was their expression, with the sort of baleful intimidation that you can’t teach. There were perhaps fifty of them on the street.
A huge crowd was leaving the stadium, and an unknown signal, a current, passed through the crowd and twenty or so of the fanatics charged in the direction of the police (although perhaps not at the police; I’m not sure) as almost everyone else turned around to watch, a few scrambling up onto concrete steps to get a better few. I was one of the few not to turn around; I kept my head down and got to the side of the crowd.
The metro was full of RATP police, with similarly intimidating expressions, which ordinarily would have been intimidating, but seeing as I had just seen a riot squad straight out of a history textbook of the ‘60s, wasn’t. I mean, how am I supposed to take unarmed guys in neon vests seriously? Or, for that matter, RATP security who are dressed in a jumpsuit? Riddle me that. Well, someone thought the same as me: I saw some kid in a Yankees cap, with the traditional African red, green, yellow, black, arrested to the side.
Then I went home, and here I am.
*****
Before I finish up this, I’d like to single out the Jumbotron/PA operator for further comic abuse. First of all, besides his emphasis on boring people, he was unable to find: a) cute children (one of whom right in front of me was practically begging for it: on a disco song, he was alternating between a John Travolta imitation and general hyperactive jumping hand-waving) or b) hot women. I mean, that’s your bread-and-butter right there if you’re a Jumbotron operator.
His music choices were similarly awful. All I know was a Village People song other than “YMCA” was played, as was “Born in the USA,” which is not a bad song but is an openly patriotic American song, which makes it a strange choice in a French sporting event. I started giggling when I heard the first chords of the song filter through—really? I thought.
When the players were announced, a short clip of them earnestly waving, thumbs-upping or whatever played. It looked like something straight out of the 70’s.
Basically what this proves is whomever works with that section of the stadium has no irony whatsoever, which is a dangerous quality for a semi-public job.
Also it shows huge room for improvement on the part of the Parc des Princes people, which I guess makes sense, seeing as they manage to pack the stadium anyway—who cares about good service when you’ve got 37,181 (they counted) paying customers?
But a curious thing happened when I sat down for the match. I was sitting in the most expensive publicly available seats (the luxury boxes were between levels, unlike the US, where in terms of sightlines, they are usually awful) thanks to the Bings. I was in the second row from the field halfway between the center line and the goal, which was great, but slightly better than it sounds, as the field is separated from the seats by a metal fence topped by spikes, and sections are separated from one another by a glass barrier, which interfered with the view of the field—when I tried to look right towards the goal, I had to look through the glass, which had a strange disorienting reflective aspect. Fortunately my neighbor moved and I took his seat, which had a perfect view. When I got settled though, I looked around and realized this: the stadium was practically empty.
The “Presidential” section—which was where I was sitting—was full of genteel supporters, who, as it turned out, cheered supportively but not enthusiastically but did not seem particularly engaged. One woman directly in front of me did little beyond chain-smoke cigarettes; due to the wind, the smoke curled up her hair, and while it ascended, it clung insistently as it curled, looking as if a fire burned underneath her deeply matted hair. As the Jumbotron flashed through different spectators—all of whom were boring and do not, unlike the US, quickly realize that they are on Jumbotron—I wondered: where are the hooligans?
A first candidate was in the corner of the ground level. It was a jailed section, by walls. Its supporters were chanting a full half-hour before the match and swaying in unison. They were waving flags—but some were of the three lions. So that ruled out Paris Saint-Germain and ruled in Caen, a town in Normandy, which I figure due to its English connections, has adopted the three lions as its own. So they were not the massive contingent of supporters that I was expecting.
Once the match began, the question disappeared from my mind. The match took precedence. At first, PSG looked overmatched as Caen made several forays into PSG territory, with only some fortunate defense stopping an early goal. I had settled down for the match and assumed that the vocal fanbase decided not to come out for a cold, damp night, with the home team generally mediocre, playing against the mediocre. The question where are the fanatics? faded from my mind.
In the fifteenth minute of the match, the question answered itself. They had been confined somehow. A boom sounded, as if from a cannon, and they rushed in. The first ones through ran as if liberated, waving their arms above their hands in celebration. They rest proceeded in more orderly fashion, but were nevertheless quite fast. They quickly set about to unfurling their various banners that signified the various factions amongst them: “Lutece Falco” (Lutece being an ancient name for the city of France); “Gavroche” (the street urchin who revolts in Les Misérables); “Boulogne Boys” (Boulogne being the suburb near which Parc des Princes is located; its banner had a skull with a top hat between Boulogne and Boys); “Paris Puissance”; “Supra Autres” (I think on this last one; mostly what I remember is the middle of the banner referring to the group as “ultras” which is always otherwise a synonym for crazy reactionary radicals); lastly, one with just a bulldog and “Boulogne.” Other banners were more aspirational and directed towards the players: “Bleed for us like we bleed for you; otherwise…” After they hung their banners, they began chanting and cheering in unison but little by little devolved into their own group’s cheers. Their first cheer, though, was something to see: everyone clapped with their hands above their head and they finished each measure of the chant with arms spread wide, in prayerful supplication.
The fan engagement is the chief difference between watching soccer on TV and watching soccer in person. On TV, the fans sound like white noise, a dull murmuring roar. In person, it is thunder reverberating, awesome in import. When each end of the stadium (excepting the genteel middle) did a call-and-response, the sound itself traveled and collided and almost metamorphosed into a tangible thing right there in their air.
This was in direct rebuke to the US theory of fan management, which holds that the more bells-and-whistles that are present in a stadium, the more enjoyment a fan will have. I’ll tell you this: the stadium was a concrete oval, the seats were two plastic circles, one for the ass and one for the back, without armrest or cup holder, and the food was the equivalent of a 7-11 (no one ate there; in POPB, the food was similarly bad but more people ate outside food; I’m not sure the stadium operators realize what an opportunity they’re missing out on—maybe they should take a pilgrimage to AT&T Park and realize the money they’re missing out on). And it didn’t seem to matter—those fanatics kept on chanting for ninety minutes in forty-five minute chunks.
The crowd—here’s sports commentary cliché numero uno!—energized the players and from then on (well…except…you’ll see…), PSG dominated the game. One of the unfortunate things about soccer, and one of the reasons I think Americans probably won’t embrace the game (along with the biggest reason: we not only aren’t the best, but the best don’t play in US) is that the team that dominates the flow of the game won’t necessarily win, to the point of the game ending in a tie. Now remember when baseball’s All-Star Game ended in a tie? Remember how freaked out everyone was, even though it was a meaningless exhibition game? There you have it—there must be a winner in American sports, none of this both teams played hard nonsense (actually there is a place for the noble loser, but only rarely, and even then, only temporarily).
At any rate, PSG settled into that zone, and it was no one’s fault but their own. Often in soccer, I’ve noticed, the most well set-up plays won’t produce results; the slightest thing goes wrong and—slam!—the door is shut. Junk plays, the ones that appear to have no design whatsoever, tend to be the source of many goals. PSG appeared to be trying for “well-set up play” category, but was falling for a particularly American stereotype.
I would argue in every American school—the best example is from high school, but I know this type in college—there is a genre of person whom I call “Guy Who Knows Soccer.” Now, Guy Who Knows Soccer is painfully aware that soccer is a second-tier sport (if that) in the US, and so he must justify it by showing off all the really cool things from soccer: bicycle kicks, juggling, that move where, instead of dribbling, your legs kind of circle around the ball like electrons around a nucleus (and here I’m painfully aware that I’m displaying my ignorance here), you know, those things that look pretty cool to the uninformed yokels. The thing is, many of these moves—not all—are mostly useless in a game (actually juggling and that ball-orbiting move I’ve seen often), and if done too much, they get the ball stolen, just like And 1 moves can’t be played in an actual game of basketball.
That’s basically what happened to Paris Saint-Germain: they would gain possession of the ball, advance it when unopposed, but once opposed, attempt to fancifully dazzle their way out, with only occasional success. And the thing about soccer is, you have to have a series of successful confrontations (or luck) to score, meaning that the dazzling was a temporary palliative. Oh, they came close: there was the ball played behind the streaking striker; there was the offsides that wasn’t (this provoked high-pitched whistling, the signal of derision). But no goal, because of the nature of the game in general and their game specifically.
I just summarized about three-quarters of the game right there in those two paragraphs, which says a lot about soccer (similar to baseball; then again I actually enjoy both sports). It was enjoyable, though, watching from so close a view, because the God’s eye view of television, while it allows you to appreciate the maneuvering of the pieces like a general at war, doesn’t allow you to appreciate the visceral timing of the game. If a pass is but a millisecond off, it is picked off. And free balls provoke much more violence than you’d assume—jostling with elbows and shoulders is normal, as is running people over; it’s also normal to see guys just writhing on the field as the game flows on around them; the most extreme behavior was a blatant shove before the ball descended. With so much physical activity comes many opportunities for fouls, which is probably why there are so many whining appeals to the ref: because the ref has the discretion to let them play on, the whine is the source of appeal. But for all this, the game was a stalemate.
The stalemate ended with the rain. It fell in long pointillist streaks. The players, however, seemed relatively unaffected. Until the Paris Saint-Germain goalie kicked off for a goalie kick towards one of his players. The player received the kick, took a step, slipped and fell, like in cartoons with a banana peel. He was unable to get up as a Caen player streaked forward took the ball and ran towards the goal with two steps on the straining Paris Saint-Germain players who followed. Effectively it was a one-on-one situation with the goalie, therefore, which generally doesn’t end well for the goalie; this trend was confirmed as the Caen player scored. Junk plays, like I said.
The whistles returned, and everyone joined in. It sounded like wind whipping through trees on a winter day. It was an eerie sort of derision. It continued for three straight minutes, then abated with a PSG corner kick—there was a brief possibility for atonement—then resumed for another couple of minutes when that was botched.
The PSG players acquired a desperate edge where before they had been show-offy. A few confrontations developed, with one shaved-head player of Caen serving as a particular target as he, the Caen player, tumbled and was sent tumbling throughout the final fifteen of the match. While on offense, the Paris Saint-Germain tried desperate long-bombs without hope of connecting. It was quite incompetent. The derision continued, with whistles becoming mixed with boos. One African player was addressed as a “maghrébin” (a North African) and told to “hurry up”. It was quite nasty. Finally the game ended, after the official end, shaved-head got in another stand-off.
As I walked out of the stadium, painfully aware of my soaked socks, I looked up to see a line of riot police choking off the road and forcing the pedestrians into two narrow channels on the sidewalks. The police were armed with shields, nightsticks (and one had something that looked like a Nerf toy, but I wasn’t about to find out what it shot) and were dressed in helmets, most with covers down but a few with covers up. They stood in a phalanx formation. Their final accessory was their expression, with the sort of baleful intimidation that you can’t teach. There were perhaps fifty of them on the street.
A huge crowd was leaving the stadium, and an unknown signal, a current, passed through the crowd and twenty or so of the fanatics charged in the direction of the police (although perhaps not at the police; I’m not sure) as almost everyone else turned around to watch, a few scrambling up onto concrete steps to get a better few. I was one of the few not to turn around; I kept my head down and got to the side of the crowd.
The metro was full of RATP police, with similarly intimidating expressions, which ordinarily would have been intimidating, but seeing as I had just seen a riot squad straight out of a history textbook of the ‘60s, wasn’t. I mean, how am I supposed to take unarmed guys in neon vests seriously? Or, for that matter, RATP security who are dressed in a jumpsuit? Riddle me that. Well, someone thought the same as me: I saw some kid in a Yankees cap, with the traditional African red, green, yellow, black, arrested to the side.
Then I went home, and here I am.
*****
Before I finish up this, I’d like to single out the Jumbotron/PA operator for further comic abuse. First of all, besides his emphasis on boring people, he was unable to find: a) cute children (one of whom right in front of me was practically begging for it: on a disco song, he was alternating between a John Travolta imitation and general hyperactive jumping hand-waving) or b) hot women. I mean, that’s your bread-and-butter right there if you’re a Jumbotron operator.
His music choices were similarly awful. All I know was a Village People song other than “YMCA” was played, as was “Born in the USA,” which is not a bad song but is an openly patriotic American song, which makes it a strange choice in a French sporting event. I started giggling when I heard the first chords of the song filter through—really? I thought.
When the players were announced, a short clip of them earnestly waving, thumbs-upping or whatever played. It looked like something straight out of the 70’s.
Basically what this proves is whomever works with that section of the stadium has no irony whatsoever, which is a dangerous quality for a semi-public job.
Also it shows huge room for improvement on the part of the Parc des Princes people, which I guess makes sense, seeing as they manage to pack the stadium anyway—who cares about good service when you’ve got 37,181 (they counted) paying customers?
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