Sports are embedded in our daily lives; whether we like it or not and almost everyone has played a sport in his or her life. To some, watching or playing sports is a pastime; however, to others sports is what makes the person what he or she is. This supports the notion that different people receive different pleasure from watching and playing sports. So, what really is sports? Can we really say that sports is only achieving the highest score or is it the way someone plays or is it something personal? I think that scholarship has been too caught up in defining what constitutes sports that they forget that sports is subjective. One cannot define it with a couple of words because it means a lot of things to a lot of people. Director Steve James, however, shows us what sports really is, in Hoop Dreams, without the constraints of scholarship.
Hoop Dreams is a documentary about two inner-city Chicago high school kids, William Gates and Arthur Agee, that are pursuing their dreams of playing professional basketball. The reason this film shows what constitutes sports, is because it puts sports centerstage with everything that it is. So what really is sports? As seen in Hoop Dreams, it is the combination of dreams, beauty, tradition, rivalry, opinion, anger, love, sadness, happiness, athleticism, intelligence, grace, discipline, and good and bad luck; to name a few. Scholarship tends to objective sports by trying to define it but it is made up of people with dreams and personalities that add flavor to the mix. To say that an athlete came out of poverty and violence makes the athlete even better because he or she conquered those obstacles. Scholarship does not include this aspect of sports because it tries to put together a universal category that encompass everyone but fails.
David T. Schwartz's essay, John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Sport, shows a critique of the type of scholarship that has been caught up trying to objectively define what sports is. Schwartz's critique of Mill's theory brings some valuable work because it proves that sports cannot be easily compared to another activity, in this case art, to define it. According to Schwartz, there is a difference between aesthetic value in sport and art. His essay helps support the idea that sports is unique and cannot be defined as easily as scholarship assume. Some scholarship tries to claim that sports can be seen as producing the most aesthetic value. However, that does not constitute what sports is, as Schwartz points out because there are factors, for instance that are in basketball, as improvisation, that are not found in art. So, to assume that what defines sports is a difference of higher and lower pleasures is wrong because comparing something that gives higher pleasure as art to sports would not do any justice to sports.
David Foster Wallace's essay, Roger Federer as Religious Experience, is an interpretation of sports that is somewhat similar to what sports really is," [a] bloody near-religious experience." Though, some would argue that this really does not define what sports is, it is a good start because it shows that something as sports cannot be simply defined by precise language. Sports has many meanings and is it depends on the person perceiving the sport. For instance, the pleasure one feels when one watches two random soccer teams play a match is different from when one watches their favorite soccer team play their rival. There is a sense of a personal relationship between each sport that cannot be described by anyone else. So, to have a clear definition is complicated.
The best part of Hoop Dreams is that it also describes sports as not only pleasure but as an ends to survival. Gates and Agee desire to play in the NBA because that would provide a way out of the "ghetto." If one adds this idea to describe sports, then one transcends the definition of sports because it is no longer pleasure but survival. These kids want to provide for their families and they believe that they can do so by making it to the NBA. Their dreams are to play professional basketball to provide the basic necessities for their families. To them, the sport of basketball is not a hobby but the tool for their survival.
Hey David,
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed your post! It hits more in my community of stories that you'd hear from people growing up from where I'm from. A lot of youth see sports as a way out and to be their means of survival. There is a TV show named, "Survival's Remorse". It is about a young man who plays basketball and goes pro from the "ghetto" and is the bread-winner in the nuclear family. It is a lot of pressure mentally on a young person but it a growing up experience in knowing how to maintain a household when you start working on building your own family. When sports is removed from the arena of arete and pleasure and made it a means of living, it creates a power dynamics in employee/employer.