Friday, June 26, 2015

Sporting, a new look

When it comes to news, the agenda of a newspaper may well be to aid and abet Abbott, lengthen the time Shorten spends in Opposition or go into total denial over Di Natale but it still has to report rolling earthquakes in Nepal. One thing it never misses is covering the major sporting events.

Many newspaper readers turn straight to the sports pages, located at the back. The page three girl may finally have left but the form guide never will.

We've already seen how popular sports are in magazines. The sporting industry is well represented in trade journals and such a pivotal human activity that it attracts numerous studies and reports.

I don't know if you ever watched Sliders. This was a good show for as long as it stayed with the central premise of accidentally sliding into different dimensions,  which show Earth as it would have been if key events had been altered. It might have been done with cheesy jump cuts and functionally good actors but it was the ideas being played out that was interesting.

All of this is by way of preamble - since I don't expect those with refined tastes to brave these tepid waters - to mention one episode in particular where, for some reason, art was celebrated instead of sport. The finer arts were first and foremost and other pursuits relegated to a smaller interest and fervour, including sport.

This is how important sport is to us as a culture and a society, that it can be considered foremost. The ep wrapped things up in the alotted time and found a way to do it but what I took from it was the central premise; to imagine a world not dominated by sport and see the difference, it becomes apparent that this is our reality.

I straddle the worlds, the geek who got his photo with Stan the Man and the farmboy athlete so I'm not rooting for either side.

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