I have decided that Strikeforce color commentator Pat Miletich stinks. For you non-mixed martial arts fans out there, Miletich is a former UFC champion and he has a martial arts school that's actually really good. My bone is not with his fighting or his teaching, but with his commentary in MMA events.
In particular, watching Strikeforce Challengers 13, several times he opined it was a bad idea for fighters with top control on the ground to attempt submissions because of the likelihood of losing top control. He suggested, apparently quite sincerely, that the best way to win is to grind out a victory using wrestling lay-and-pray techniques . . . which is a big "ugh" for me. Wrestling in MMA is probably the perfect defensive art. Good takedowns, takedown defense, reversals and escapes, it allows a fighter to decide if the fight is going to go to the ground and if it's going to stay there. Being able to control position is one of the keys to victory in MMA. I grasp that. Wrestling is, and should be, a part of MMA.
I also grasp that MMA needs scoring criteria and it is reasonable that one of those scoring criteria should be who "dominates" the fight. Often, particularly with defensive fighters, like wrestlers vs. Brazilian jiu jitsu fighters, nothing much will happen. Both wrestling and BJJ basically teach fighters how to stop the action from progressing. Given this reality, at least some fights are going to end with the fighters basically holding onto each other for fifteen minutes as two defensive grapplers refuse to do anything, waiting for the other fighter to make the move that will never come. No one is going to be really pleased with those kinds of fights, but they happen. So you're going to need to come up with a scoring mechanism and dominance is it . . . and as the rules currently stand, being on top is "domination". So when very little happens in a fight, the guy who stayed on top longest wins.
I think this is a problem in a couple of different ways. First, it's boring. MMA fights are entertainment. Boring fights should be avoided whenever possible. While it's true that every sport is going to have boring events now and then, it's wrong, I feel, to encourage athletes to be dull.
Second, it's bad self-defense. One of the reason MMA is so popular is the notion that these guys really are the best unarmed fighters in the world. That MMA fighters, with their skill at so many talents, are the guys you least want to meet in a dark alley at night. That MMA would work in a fight. Lay-and-pray tactics hurt that idea. In a real fight, finishing it quickly is of great importance. If you're engaged in violence in the real world, it's because something is tragically wrong (dismissing as irrelevant those situations where guys brawl for fun), because you're fighting for your life. Laying on the ground for five minutes trying to smother your opponent is a pretty stupid idea when at any moment some of his pals might come by and stomp your guts out. Sure, a cop might also come by and save your ass, but do you really want to take that chance? Also, in grappling where you're not doing very much, desperation starts to set in. If, while grappling, you keep moving, you radically reduce the odds of your opponent deciding to start the really dirty techniques that make ground fighting on the street so mind bogglingly dangerous. For the less bloody minded out there, I'm talking primarily about eye gouges, but also fish hooks, head butts, throat grabs and groin pulls. If you're moving from position to position, it's harder for a person to visualize and execute the brutal moves not to mention a submission, by defeating your opponent or going very substantially in that direction (sure, a person COULD fight with a broken arm, but most won't and even if they do, uh, they've got a broken arm) makes it impossible or almost impossible for them to pull anything off. So, in a self-defense situation, pretty much the last thing you want to do is lay on top of your opponent while they figure out how to gouge out your eyes or hope one of their friends comes along.
So, when a wrestler wins by top control, they're gaming the rules in such a way that breaks the idea that MMA is good for self-defense. This idea is pretty important for the popularity of MMA. The decline in interest in boxing in the US is attributable in large part for the lack of faith Americans have in the "utility" of boxing as a self-defense art. Vulnerable to kicks and grappling, boxing is seen as a kind of "partial art". MMA, I feel, better fits the ethos that combat sports should be self-defense oriented, that what happens in the ring or cage should be useful "on the street".
Gaming the rules to grind out a boring victory, then, is bad for MMA generally. (The way to fix the problem is to recognize, in grappling in MMA, position is neutral. While I can be occasionally frustrated at the defensiveness of BJJ fighters (when it slips into "doing nothing"), the truth is that they can win from the bottom. That they want to be on the bottom. Yes, the top position is good for ground-and-pound, but the bottom position is good for submissions. Indeed, there is hardly a single submission in MMA from heel hook to guillotine choke that isn't best finished with your back to the ground. It's sort of silly, I think, to say that the guy on top, in MMA, is somehow "winning". How can putting yourself in the position to be submitted be considered winning just because you might launch a couple of leverage-less punches? By recognizing that a top position is not inherently superior, you could get rid of most lay-and-pray fighting techniques. I think this would be for the best.)
Additionally, from an MMA-rules based point of view, saying that you shouldn't try for submissions because you'll lose top position isn't particularly good tactics. While some fighters ought to lay-and-pray, in order to win a fight, they should do that only if they don't have a good submissions game. Submissions end fights. Lay-and-pray grinding means giving your opponent additional opportunities for them to win the fight. Many a good wrestler has lost because, rather than submitting their opponent, they've tried to grind out a victory and found themselves in a triangle armbar. Yeah, they were really winning until they lost.
To top it all off, it's a disservice to pretty much the only reason color commentators in MMA shows exist - to give new fans an idea of what the hell is going on and to clarify complex action. When Miletich opines on what he thinks the fighters ought to do rather than describe what they are doing in the midst of a fight, he's not being real useful to anyone. At that point, he might as well shut the fuck up.
Which is the whole point of this: he should shut the fuck up. What he's advocating is bad for MMA. No one wants to see boring lay-and-pray grinding victories. What he's advocating isn't necessarily good advice -- a submission, ending a fight, means you win. Maybe that's worth giving up top control for a bit. And by trying to coach the fighters rather than commenting on the fight, in the sense of describing the action to make it more comprehensible to the audience who isn't right there at ringside with three monitors viewing the action from different angles with people pointing out where subtle action is going on, he's voiding the warranty for why he should be on the show at all. I like it when an MMA pro is right there to talk us through the action, and I don't mind if they have opinions -- my favorite in this regard is Bas Rutten from when he was doing commentary for Pride FC -- it's just that if they're criticizing the strategy of the fighters rather than explaining it, why do they exist at all?
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
MMA Live with Chael Sonnen . . .
. . . made me realize Sonnen's an idiot and loser scum. The first sign was that his jacket didn't fit him. He has, apparently, gained some weight over the holiday season, shall we say, and didn't buy a new jacket. Normally, I don't notice (or care) about that kind of thing, but this is national television. Still, okay, that's not it.
The next bit was when he called San Luis Obispo "San Louis Obiscopo". I was, "Dude, really?" It was embarrassing.
But the big this is that I don't like it when my intelligence is insulted. After losing to Anderson Silva, Sonnen's piss test came back hot. He got caught taking steroids. At an appeals hearing, he said he pissed hot because he was undergoing testosterone replacement therapy and he claimed that he told some doctor that he was undergoing TRT . . .
Well, no. Like everywhere, California has laws concerning professional sports. There is a specific form that an athlete has to disclose by a specific date that includes all drugs that they're taking. This is, indeed, part of any urine analysis. They need to know what's in your body that might effect the drug screenings. On that form, the only form that counts in this regard, Sonnen was not forthcoming. And as with all things legal, ignorance is not an excuse. It doesn't matter if Sonnen thought he'd fulfilled his obligations by telling a doctor on the California State Athletic Commission. What matters is the form. Hell, it's not even a silly, frivolous rule. Since a copy of that form is what gets sent along with the urine sample for screening, since that's the form that the lab doing the screening actually sees and informs their decision about what tests to do and what biases to take, you can't even say that it's just meaningless bureaucracy.
Unless you're Chael Sonnen. Rather than show some respect and admitting there was a bureaucratic hassle, that he just didn't file the proper paperwork at the proper time, and it won't happen, again, he decided, instead, to repeat a bunch of lies and blame the CSAC. His ego is so fragile that rather than saving face, he repeated a lie.
It isn't even a particularly good lie. He's a professional athlete. He should have had his testosterone checked well before the pre-fight piss test. Because the CSAC's rules say that testosterone replacement therapy can't be used to exceed specific (and reasonably high) values. Regardless of whether the testosterone was legally obtained, he was still over the legal limit of testosterone for purposes of being roided up. Controlling his medication to fit inside the legal limit is his responsibility and, regardless of other issues, he failed. Not the CSAC but Chael Sonnen. He wouldn't have been in this bind at all if he'd been responsible about his drug use.
So, fuck that guy. I don't like mincing, mealy-mouthed braggarts who can't pronounce the words they use and whose suits don't fit right.
The next bit was when he called San Luis Obispo "San Louis Obiscopo". I was, "Dude, really?" It was embarrassing.
But the big this is that I don't like it when my intelligence is insulted. After losing to Anderson Silva, Sonnen's piss test came back hot. He got caught taking steroids. At an appeals hearing, he said he pissed hot because he was undergoing testosterone replacement therapy and he claimed that he told some doctor that he was undergoing TRT . . .
Well, no. Like everywhere, California has laws concerning professional sports. There is a specific form that an athlete has to disclose by a specific date that includes all drugs that they're taking. This is, indeed, part of any urine analysis. They need to know what's in your body that might effect the drug screenings. On that form, the only form that counts in this regard, Sonnen was not forthcoming. And as with all things legal, ignorance is not an excuse. It doesn't matter if Sonnen thought he'd fulfilled his obligations by telling a doctor on the California State Athletic Commission. What matters is the form. Hell, it's not even a silly, frivolous rule. Since a copy of that form is what gets sent along with the urine sample for screening, since that's the form that the lab doing the screening actually sees and informs their decision about what tests to do and what biases to take, you can't even say that it's just meaningless bureaucracy.
Unless you're Chael Sonnen. Rather than show some respect and admitting there was a bureaucratic hassle, that he just didn't file the proper paperwork at the proper time, and it won't happen, again, he decided, instead, to repeat a bunch of lies and blame the CSAC. His ego is so fragile that rather than saving face, he repeated a lie.
It isn't even a particularly good lie. He's a professional athlete. He should have had his testosterone checked well before the pre-fight piss test. Because the CSAC's rules say that testosterone replacement therapy can't be used to exceed specific (and reasonably high) values. Regardless of whether the testosterone was legally obtained, he was still over the legal limit of testosterone for purposes of being roided up. Controlling his medication to fit inside the legal limit is his responsibility and, regardless of other issues, he failed. Not the CSAC but Chael Sonnen. He wouldn't have been in this bind at all if he'd been responsible about his drug use.
So, fuck that guy. I don't like mincing, mealy-mouthed braggarts who can't pronounce the words they use and whose suits don't fit right.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Split Second and driving games in general
I really should love driving games. I love cars and I love driving. And with Split Second, I certainly love blowing up the landscape and destroying my enemies. But I've never finished a driving game. I've never even gotten close. Which I would say is "weird" because I seem to have about average twitch, which one might infer would mean that I can finish the average game, or at least get close to finishing the average game. But the truth is that some kinds of video games are niche games and consistently demand more from players until players of average ability are left far, far behind. Driving games, which hale back to simulationist games trying to create a perfect vehicular physics and then to statistically model professional race car drivers . . . which they have now succeeded at pretty adeptly. However, as a result, the people who are "into" driving games are pretty dedicated.
Some of the problem, for me, is the fine motion involved. Modern controllers are fairly delicate but their range of motion is tiny. Theoretically, you can turn the steering of the little video car to various degrees, but for me? When charged with adrenalin, functionally my fine motion is "turning as hard as I can", "accelerating as hard as I can" and "braking as hard as I can". I'm jamming the buttons and hitting the stick. The games, uniformly in my experience, are about fine control and delicate maneuvering -- something I find utterly impossible with the actual PS3 controller. And, of course, is quite a bit different than how I normally drive. Delicate control is pretty second nature in a car because, y'know, otherwise you die.
So, Split Second went from "the best game ever made" into "holy shit, this is hard" in a couple of hours. I've had similar experiences with other driving games. Regardless of the reason, driving games, even arcade driving games, are extremely unforgiving, usually possessing nothing like difficulty settings or adaptive play. The pressure of the game is mere to make your opponents much, much better than you are (and, usually, to have them focus on destroying you while, more or less, leaving each other alone). It makes them, as a group, almost unplayable by anyone but the extremely dedicated.
Or, y'know, maybe people who buy $150 controllers to make the experience more natural and realistic. Maybe playing a game like that with a steering wheel is useful. But for the time being, well, I enjoyed the experience of Split Second insofar as I played it. I would have liked to have been able to play more of it, but the parts I did play were just crazy fun.
Some of the problem, for me, is the fine motion involved. Modern controllers are fairly delicate but their range of motion is tiny. Theoretically, you can turn the steering of the little video car to various degrees, but for me? When charged with adrenalin, functionally my fine motion is "turning as hard as I can", "accelerating as hard as I can" and "braking as hard as I can". I'm jamming the buttons and hitting the stick. The games, uniformly in my experience, are about fine control and delicate maneuvering -- something I find utterly impossible with the actual PS3 controller. And, of course, is quite a bit different than how I normally drive. Delicate control is pretty second nature in a car because, y'know, otherwise you die.
So, Split Second went from "the best game ever made" into "holy shit, this is hard" in a couple of hours. I've had similar experiences with other driving games. Regardless of the reason, driving games, even arcade driving games, are extremely unforgiving, usually possessing nothing like difficulty settings or adaptive play. The pressure of the game is mere to make your opponents much, much better than you are (and, usually, to have them focus on destroying you while, more or less, leaving each other alone). It makes them, as a group, almost unplayable by anyone but the extremely dedicated.
Or, y'know, maybe people who buy $150 controllers to make the experience more natural and realistic. Maybe playing a game like that with a steering wheel is useful. But for the time being, well, I enjoyed the experience of Split Second insofar as I played it. I would have liked to have been able to play more of it, but the parts I did play were just crazy fun.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Joan Crawford vs. Charlize Theron
This article isn't specifically about the two actresses -- in art, there isn't a lot of versus, or at least I don't think there should be. This article is more about me and my reaction to actresses. In particular, I generally have greater regard for actresses before, say, the seventies than I do modern actresses in a way that I don't feel about modern actors. I don't hesitate to say that Russell Crowe is the equal, as an actor, as, say, Humphrey Bogart. I do, however, hesitate to say Charlize Theron is the equal to Joan Crawford. I realized the reason why, or at least part of the reason, while watching Crawford's The Damned Don't Cry -- the difference is Aeon Flux.
In particular, Joan Crawford never made Aeon Flux, whereas it one of the defining roles of Charlize Theron's career. There's a big generality here, too, and that's the important difference -- Joan Crawford never has the opportunity to be in Aeon Flux.
Looking at Theron's acting abilities, I don't think it's far to say she's an inferior actress to Crawford. And, certainly, not every movie Crawford did was a masterpiece . . . but in every movie Crawford was in, the quality of her acting mattered. Whereas, Charlize Theron and other actresses like her in this regard (notably Angelina Jolie) are in dismal action movies -- movies that no amount of acting skill can meaningfully improve. Theron's skill as an actress was simply irrelevant to the quality of Aeon Flux, much in the same way it's difficult to imagine Ed Norton being able to improve, say, Schwartzenegger's Last Action Hero.
Nowadays, marque actresses are capable of sabotaging their acting careers with awful movies -- but there is another difference, here, that we must acknowledge. Male actors can become stars through action movies. Female actors become stars because of their acting and then make terrible action movies. So what happens is . . . we see Girl, Interrupted and go, "Wow, Jolie can act" and then Jolie makes Tomb Raider and we wince. Whereas, with actors, we often see Mad Max and then, when watching The Year of Living Dangerously, we go, "Oh, maybe Mel Gibson can act."
But, for actor who has built their career on nuanced performances (a category that includes almost all actresses), an action movie is a sucker's bet. Most action movies make their stars look at least slightly and quite often very ridiculous and there's nothing that an actor's ability can do about it. Not only can you see it in Theron or Jolie's career, you can see it with Nick Cage's career. I admire the man's dedication to geekery and if you go back to the early days of his career (you know, everything before Leaving Las Vegas), he's a fine actor. He still is a fine actor -- he plays every ridiculous comic book action role he's been in with the same straight intensity that he brings to his more "serious" projects. It's just that with most of them, it doesn't matter. No amount of acting skill could save Ghost Rider. No amount of acting skill could save National Treasure. They're inherently absurd roles and they make him look inherently absurd. He's been in so many silly movies at this point, it's hard to remember Adaption or Leaving Las Vegas.
This is worse for women, because of sexism. To which I've fallen prey again. It's good that actresses are able to get the same sort of lousy action movies that have built men's careers for decades. But when comparing past actresses to current ones, I've allowed those bad movies to influence me past the point of reason because of the sexism inherent in living in a world dominated by men.
In particular, Joan Crawford never made Aeon Flux, whereas it one of the defining roles of Charlize Theron's career. There's a big generality here, too, and that's the important difference -- Joan Crawford never has the opportunity to be in Aeon Flux.
Looking at Theron's acting abilities, I don't think it's far to say she's an inferior actress to Crawford. And, certainly, not every movie Crawford did was a masterpiece . . . but in every movie Crawford was in, the quality of her acting mattered. Whereas, Charlize Theron and other actresses like her in this regard (notably Angelina Jolie) are in dismal action movies -- movies that no amount of acting skill can meaningfully improve. Theron's skill as an actress was simply irrelevant to the quality of Aeon Flux, much in the same way it's difficult to imagine Ed Norton being able to improve, say, Schwartzenegger's Last Action Hero.
Nowadays, marque actresses are capable of sabotaging their acting careers with awful movies -- but there is another difference, here, that we must acknowledge. Male actors can become stars through action movies. Female actors become stars because of their acting and then make terrible action movies. So what happens is . . . we see Girl, Interrupted and go, "Wow, Jolie can act" and then Jolie makes Tomb Raider and we wince. Whereas, with actors, we often see Mad Max and then, when watching The Year of Living Dangerously, we go, "Oh, maybe Mel Gibson can act."
But, for actor who has built their career on nuanced performances (a category that includes almost all actresses), an action movie is a sucker's bet. Most action movies make their stars look at least slightly and quite often very ridiculous and there's nothing that an actor's ability can do about it. Not only can you see it in Theron or Jolie's career, you can see it with Nick Cage's career. I admire the man's dedication to geekery and if you go back to the early days of his career (you know, everything before Leaving Las Vegas), he's a fine actor. He still is a fine actor -- he plays every ridiculous comic book action role he's been in with the same straight intensity that he brings to his more "serious" projects. It's just that with most of them, it doesn't matter. No amount of acting skill could save Ghost Rider. No amount of acting skill could save National Treasure. They're inherently absurd roles and they make him look inherently absurd. He's been in so many silly movies at this point, it's hard to remember Adaption or Leaving Las Vegas.
This is worse for women, because of sexism. To which I've fallen prey again. It's good that actresses are able to get the same sort of lousy action movies that have built men's careers for decades. But when comparing past actresses to current ones, I've allowed those bad movies to influence me past the point of reason because of the sexism inherent in living in a world dominated by men.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
MMA vs Football is like the circus vs. grad school
I was reading this article by a fella named Luke Thomas about MMA's status as spectacle more than a sport. I developed some comments.
The UFC, fairly publicly, looks to pro wrestling as its business model. People read a lot more into that than the UFC intends. Both have publicly viewed TV shows to capture public attention and then you have big pay-per-view events to capture dollars, both aggressively market their fighters. That's where the similarity ends, but when anyone learns that the UFC is modeled off of "pro wrestling" they start to think the kind of sports entertainment of the WWE.
In Japan, the connection is even closer. One of the early MMA promotions, Pancrase, was started by Japanese pro wrestlers who wondered who would actually win if they were to fight with wrestling-style rules. Several legendary MMA fighters -- Masakatsu Funaki, Ken Shamrock, Minoru Suzuki -- came from the Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Group before they were MMA fighters. Pro wrestling and MMA have a lot of overlap. That's just a fact.
There's a lot of history there, too. In very short, even legitimate sports fights trace themselves back to circus hucksters in fighting sideshows and those circus hucksters became the first fight promoters. With wrestling, since wrestling is sort of dull to watch, they had to spice it up and eventually it got to where it is today. With boxing, well, it is exciting and they never got rid of the legitimate competition . . . but they kept the circus sideshow promotion style.
Other professional sports developed from academic traditions arising in the 19th century. The one line history here is that in the 19th century, rich people were getting fat and weak so they introduced athletics into school curriculum. All the big non-combat professional sports in the US -- baseball, football, basketball, tennis and even ice hockey -- arise out of school curriculum. While schools do have one combat sport, wrestling, freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling are not viable sports for a professional business model (a trait shared by many other academic athletics contests, of course).
So, what I see is that you have professional sports arising from two different places. One of those places is colleges and private schools in the late 19th century and the other is, quite literally, circuses. This leads me to believe that there is an elephant in the room and that elephant's name is "class". Most professional sports are conceptually "high class". Combat sports are the entertainment of low class peons.
Which is where this animosity about fighting sports comes from. People will say it's because of the brutality . . . which I think is a very interesting term. The sport is disliked because the intent of the sport is violent, whereas the injuries in football -- which is an injury prone sport, you hardly finish a pro or even college game without someone being taken off in a stretcher -- or, for heaven's sake, skiing are considered not as significant because they lack that idea of brutality.
I find myself thinking that the concept of brutality, itself, is invested with tremendous class significance. I could talk, historically, about brutality, but I won't. I'll just bring up that no one thinks it brutal for people to hire other people to do jobs that are physically hazardous, from mining to meat packing. The most dangerous job in America is lumberjack. Most jobs could be made much, much safer than they are, but that would cost money . . . I think that cold assessment of money that condemns a large number of people, every year, to agonizing injuries or death is incredibly brutal. Far more brutal than two guys who, basically, love their jobs going out and hitting each other. Sure, they might get injured, but that's true in many, many jobs. It's true in many, many past times and many, many sports.
So I find that condemning a sport as brutal not based on the injuries that people get performing the sport but, instead, on the idea that the sport is a fighting sport is a kind of witty argument used to cover up classism. The problem isn't that it's brutal, but that it's close class . . . it's vulgar. Which puts it in a piece of the way the rich and powerful have always viewed the poor and weak -- we speak wrong, our music is noise, our art is ugly, nothing we can do is right. Even though, to our ears, our speech is poetry, our music reveals our hearts and our art glorious. No, no, it's wrong because it doesn't conform to the standards set by rich people and learned in academic environments. Rock, country and rap will never be classical music, in the same way fighting sports aren't "pure sports" but a vulgar spectacle.
It's simply not about whether MMA is or is not a sport. It's that MMA isn't the kind of sport the "right people" do, it isn't a sport by rich people for rich people, it doesn't hail from a safe academic tradition, it doesn't abide by their rules of what is "proper". It abides by a different logic, the logic of people who see evidence all around that life is a struggle and sometimes fighting is necessary. Fighting sports come from people who don't have presumptions of safety and security.
(I might also so they're also pretty terrifying sports because they constantly remind the rich and powerful what will happen if "they" fight "us". That the working class finds it really easy to find an endless stream of tough guys, that the violence upon which their society depends is not done by themselves, but by proxies in the working class who are much, much better at it than they'll ever be.)
The UFC, fairly publicly, looks to pro wrestling as its business model. People read a lot more into that than the UFC intends. Both have publicly viewed TV shows to capture public attention and then you have big pay-per-view events to capture dollars, both aggressively market their fighters. That's where the similarity ends, but when anyone learns that the UFC is modeled off of "pro wrestling" they start to think the kind of sports entertainment of the WWE.
In Japan, the connection is even closer. One of the early MMA promotions, Pancrase, was started by Japanese pro wrestlers who wondered who would actually win if they were to fight with wrestling-style rules. Several legendary MMA fighters -- Masakatsu Funaki, Ken Shamrock, Minoru Suzuki -- came from the Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Group before they were MMA fighters. Pro wrestling and MMA have a lot of overlap. That's just a fact.
There's a lot of history there, too. In very short, even legitimate sports fights trace themselves back to circus hucksters in fighting sideshows and those circus hucksters became the first fight promoters. With wrestling, since wrestling is sort of dull to watch, they had to spice it up and eventually it got to where it is today. With boxing, well, it is exciting and they never got rid of the legitimate competition . . . but they kept the circus sideshow promotion style.
Other professional sports developed from academic traditions arising in the 19th century. The one line history here is that in the 19th century, rich people were getting fat and weak so they introduced athletics into school curriculum. All the big non-combat professional sports in the US -- baseball, football, basketball, tennis and even ice hockey -- arise out of school curriculum. While schools do have one combat sport, wrestling, freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling are not viable sports for a professional business model (a trait shared by many other academic athletics contests, of course).
So, what I see is that you have professional sports arising from two different places. One of those places is colleges and private schools in the late 19th century and the other is, quite literally, circuses. This leads me to believe that there is an elephant in the room and that elephant's name is "class". Most professional sports are conceptually "high class". Combat sports are the entertainment of low class peons.
Which is where this animosity about fighting sports comes from. People will say it's because of the brutality . . . which I think is a very interesting term. The sport is disliked because the intent of the sport is violent, whereas the injuries in football -- which is an injury prone sport, you hardly finish a pro or even college game without someone being taken off in a stretcher -- or, for heaven's sake, skiing are considered not as significant because they lack that idea of brutality.
I find myself thinking that the concept of brutality, itself, is invested with tremendous class significance. I could talk, historically, about brutality, but I won't. I'll just bring up that no one thinks it brutal for people to hire other people to do jobs that are physically hazardous, from mining to meat packing. The most dangerous job in America is lumberjack. Most jobs could be made much, much safer than they are, but that would cost money . . . I think that cold assessment of money that condemns a large number of people, every year, to agonizing injuries or death is incredibly brutal. Far more brutal than two guys who, basically, love their jobs going out and hitting each other. Sure, they might get injured, but that's true in many, many jobs. It's true in many, many past times and many, many sports.
So I find that condemning a sport as brutal not based on the injuries that people get performing the sport but, instead, on the idea that the sport is a fighting sport is a kind of witty argument used to cover up classism. The problem isn't that it's brutal, but that it's close class . . . it's vulgar. Which puts it in a piece of the way the rich and powerful have always viewed the poor and weak -- we speak wrong, our music is noise, our art is ugly, nothing we can do is right. Even though, to our ears, our speech is poetry, our music reveals our hearts and our art glorious. No, no, it's wrong because it doesn't conform to the standards set by rich people and learned in academic environments. Rock, country and rap will never be classical music, in the same way fighting sports aren't "pure sports" but a vulgar spectacle.
It's simply not about whether MMA is or is not a sport. It's that MMA isn't the kind of sport the "right people" do, it isn't a sport by rich people for rich people, it doesn't hail from a safe academic tradition, it doesn't abide by their rules of what is "proper". It abides by a different logic, the logic of people who see evidence all around that life is a struggle and sometimes fighting is necessary. Fighting sports come from people who don't have presumptions of safety and security.
(I might also so they're also pretty terrifying sports because they constantly remind the rich and powerful what will happen if "they" fight "us". That the working class finds it really easy to find an endless stream of tough guys, that the violence upon which their society depends is not done by themselves, but by proxies in the working class who are much, much better at it than they'll ever be.)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The Smashing Machine is a racist piece of emotionally manipulative garbage
The Smashing Machine was one of the first documentaries about mixed martial arts, being a slice of life from one of the earlier fighters in MMA, Mark Kerr. Kerr was a multi-time winner of UFC tournaments and was one of the early stars of MMA. At one time, he could make a credible case for being the toughest guy in the world. The movie is critically acclaimed, I guess because critics like blatant emotional manipulation and racism.
I understand that MMA isn't for everyone. They find it brutal, ugly, whatever. And there is a certain element of brutality in it, particularly in the UFC early days and in vale tudo competitions (which is MMA's mean older brother, a Brazilian style-vs-style competition with minimal rules even). But the movie never makes an argument in any sense of the word. It never says, "MMA and vale tudo are brutal sports where people get injured". What the movie did do is . . . every time it showed an MMA competition it played music straight from a horror movie -- a jangling, discordant music. The movie further manipulated the fighting scenes to be high contrast and oversaturated, creating a harsh and ugly glare to everything -- like in the Matrix movies when they scene is set in an official building with that green light washing everything out. Actual MMA events, on the other hand, look nothing like what you see in the movie. There is no discordant music, there is no lurid lighting. Yet, the documentary takes the stand that it's merely presenting the information with neutrality (there are no voice overs, no interviewers, nothing to make a person think they're not witnessing these things straight out of life) when, instead, it's being highly manipulative, using colors and sounds designed to sway judgment in a particular direction. And I find that dishonest.
I find it dishonest because American MMA is reasonably safe. It's safer than boxing, it's safer than pro wrestling, it's safer than football, it's safer than ice hockey, it's safer than surfing, it's safer than skydiving. If the movie was against MMA and presented an argument, I might disagree with it but that's all. It didn't even emphasize the ugliness -- the blood and wounds -- it manipulated the images to make them more horrible than they, in fact, were. Instead of presenting an argument, it's just manipulates emotions, instead.
The movie also showed, or seemed to show, that all MMA fighters were living miserable lives, even though they mostly only interview two of them -- Mark Kerr and Mark "the Hammer" Coleman, another early MMA fighter.
It is my understanding that most pro fighters really love their job. Like artists, you never have a lack of people who are willing to fight professionally. No matter how poorly you pay them or how poorly you treat them, the fighters will always show up. I understand that people might think that fighters loving what they do is not sufficient to allow it in society. People love heroin, after all, and any one of a number of self-destructive activities that we don't allow people to engage in. I grasp that. But, in general, like artists and other exploited professions, the people in those professions love them. However, you can't really context that the fighters don't love to fight. Almost all of them really, really do.
In The Smashing Machine, even victory brings no pleasure. Mark Coleman, after winning the first Pride FC Grand Prix, is shown with the bent around his waist, in his dressing room looking sad. Was that sadness or . . . er, physical exhaustion, since Coleman had just fought three fights in one night. But even in victory, there was no pleasure, just unending pain and suffering. Again, it is my understanding that professional fighters love their work. While it is certainly emotional for them, well, that's part of why they like it. Yet, the movie takes pains to show that there is simply no joy in these men, ground down by their miserable lives.
The movie also touched on Kerr's drug problems. Somewhere along the line, he picked up a morphine habit. The movie attempts to place this entirely on the brutality of MMA. After a fight, Kerr would need something to help him with the pain. Except . . . content-wise, well, Kerr never says that. And, indeed, it sorta seems like his junkie alcoholic girlfriend might be part of his problem with drugs. But the un-subtle subtext of the movie is happy to lay that on the feet of MMA, too.
Even with the brutality and injuries, there's a lot of manipulation. Near the end, when Kerr is knocked out of the Pride FC Grand Prix, the movie treats a stitch on his chin like it's some sort of major operation, taking a long time and causing considerable pain and stress. The truth is, four stitches in your chin is something that's handled in a couple of minutes. I've been stitched. It's no big deal. It isn't some grueling affair. But, hey, the movie can't wait to just rub it in, again, to the discordant sounds of their nightmare soundtrack that MMA is a horrible, ugly, brutal thing where there is no joy.
But that wasn't the worst. The worst is the depiction of the Japanese.
The movie takes place during Kerr's stint in the Pride FC, a Japanese MMA promotion. The Japanese are also filmed in the oversaturated, grainy style of the film and what is emphasized is their, well, inscrutability. The Japanese promoters come off as inscrutable Orientals. It is hard for me to emphasize how strongly I feel that, and Adrienne agrees (and indeed pointed it out to me). The way they're filmed also makes them seem ugly. The naked racism is pretty shocking. The inscrutable, ugly Orientals with their wily ways taking advantage of a clean cut American kid. I don't know that it was intentional, but someone should have gone, "Guys, are we really comfortable portraying Japanese people as ugly and inscrutable?"
I'm certainly not saying that you couldn't criticize Pride FC. Almost all sports organizations are shady and take advantage of athletes; fight organizations more than most. I've heard MMA professionals say that Pride treated its fighters "like cattle". But, again, the film wasn't about facts. It made no arguments. It just showed a bunch of green tinted, ugly Orientals manipulating what should have been, and would have been without their nasty interference, a clean cut all-American boy. It abjured facts for nasty, hateful images and if there was any bearing to fact, it was entirely a coincidence.
I mean, wow, I don't know the last time I saw a movie this manipulative. Without coming out against MMA, it depicts it as a place of literal horror that leads to lasting injuries, drug abuse and systematic humiliation. While doing so, it paints the Japanese with the brush of racist caricature. It's a pretty nasty piece of work. Fuck this movie.
I understand that MMA isn't for everyone. They find it brutal, ugly, whatever. And there is a certain element of brutality in it, particularly in the UFC early days and in vale tudo competitions (which is MMA's mean older brother, a Brazilian style-vs-style competition with minimal rules even). But the movie never makes an argument in any sense of the word. It never says, "MMA and vale tudo are brutal sports where people get injured". What the movie did do is . . . every time it showed an MMA competition it played music straight from a horror movie -- a jangling, discordant music. The movie further manipulated the fighting scenes to be high contrast and oversaturated, creating a harsh and ugly glare to everything -- like in the Matrix movies when they scene is set in an official building with that green light washing everything out. Actual MMA events, on the other hand, look nothing like what you see in the movie. There is no discordant music, there is no lurid lighting. Yet, the documentary takes the stand that it's merely presenting the information with neutrality (there are no voice overs, no interviewers, nothing to make a person think they're not witnessing these things straight out of life) when, instead, it's being highly manipulative, using colors and sounds designed to sway judgment in a particular direction. And I find that dishonest.
I find it dishonest because American MMA is reasonably safe. It's safer than boxing, it's safer than pro wrestling, it's safer than football, it's safer than ice hockey, it's safer than surfing, it's safer than skydiving. If the movie was against MMA and presented an argument, I might disagree with it but that's all. It didn't even emphasize the ugliness -- the blood and wounds -- it manipulated the images to make them more horrible than they, in fact, were. Instead of presenting an argument, it's just manipulates emotions, instead.
The movie also showed, or seemed to show, that all MMA fighters were living miserable lives, even though they mostly only interview two of them -- Mark Kerr and Mark "the Hammer" Coleman, another early MMA fighter.
It is my understanding that most pro fighters really love their job. Like artists, you never have a lack of people who are willing to fight professionally. No matter how poorly you pay them or how poorly you treat them, the fighters will always show up. I understand that people might think that fighters loving what they do is not sufficient to allow it in society. People love heroin, after all, and any one of a number of self-destructive activities that we don't allow people to engage in. I grasp that. But, in general, like artists and other exploited professions, the people in those professions love them. However, you can't really context that the fighters don't love to fight. Almost all of them really, really do.
In The Smashing Machine, even victory brings no pleasure. Mark Coleman, after winning the first Pride FC Grand Prix, is shown with the bent around his waist, in his dressing room looking sad. Was that sadness or . . . er, physical exhaustion, since Coleman had just fought three fights in one night. But even in victory, there was no pleasure, just unending pain and suffering. Again, it is my understanding that professional fighters love their work. While it is certainly emotional for them, well, that's part of why they like it. Yet, the movie takes pains to show that there is simply no joy in these men, ground down by their miserable lives.
The movie also touched on Kerr's drug problems. Somewhere along the line, he picked up a morphine habit. The movie attempts to place this entirely on the brutality of MMA. After a fight, Kerr would need something to help him with the pain. Except . . . content-wise, well, Kerr never says that. And, indeed, it sorta seems like his junkie alcoholic girlfriend might be part of his problem with drugs. But the un-subtle subtext of the movie is happy to lay that on the feet of MMA, too.
Even with the brutality and injuries, there's a lot of manipulation. Near the end, when Kerr is knocked out of the Pride FC Grand Prix, the movie treats a stitch on his chin like it's some sort of major operation, taking a long time and causing considerable pain and stress. The truth is, four stitches in your chin is something that's handled in a couple of minutes. I've been stitched. It's no big deal. It isn't some grueling affair. But, hey, the movie can't wait to just rub it in, again, to the discordant sounds of their nightmare soundtrack that MMA is a horrible, ugly, brutal thing where there is no joy.
But that wasn't the worst. The worst is the depiction of the Japanese.
The movie takes place during Kerr's stint in the Pride FC, a Japanese MMA promotion. The Japanese are also filmed in the oversaturated, grainy style of the film and what is emphasized is their, well, inscrutability. The Japanese promoters come off as inscrutable Orientals. It is hard for me to emphasize how strongly I feel that, and Adrienne agrees (and indeed pointed it out to me). The way they're filmed also makes them seem ugly. The naked racism is pretty shocking. The inscrutable, ugly Orientals with their wily ways taking advantage of a clean cut American kid. I don't know that it was intentional, but someone should have gone, "Guys, are we really comfortable portraying Japanese people as ugly and inscrutable?"
I'm certainly not saying that you couldn't criticize Pride FC. Almost all sports organizations are shady and take advantage of athletes; fight organizations more than most. I've heard MMA professionals say that Pride treated its fighters "like cattle". But, again, the film wasn't about facts. It made no arguments. It just showed a bunch of green tinted, ugly Orientals manipulating what should have been, and would have been without their nasty interference, a clean cut all-American boy. It abjured facts for nasty, hateful images and if there was any bearing to fact, it was entirely a coincidence.
I mean, wow, I don't know the last time I saw a movie this manipulative. Without coming out against MMA, it depicts it as a place of literal horror that leads to lasting injuries, drug abuse and systematic humiliation. While doing so, it paints the Japanese with the brush of racist caricature. It's a pretty nasty piece of work. Fuck this movie.
Bigger, Stronger, Faster -- a movie about steroids
I just watched Bigger, Stronger, Faster which is about steroid use in America. I really liked it. The guy who made the movie, Chris Bell, is an amateur weightlifter who wanted to go pro but never managed to break through.
I've heard the movie is nuanced about steroids. No, that's not it. The movie is mostly pro-steroids -- or pro-choice in regards to steroids. Bell, himself, took steroids briefly but was uncomfortable with the moral issues and stopped . . . but both of his brothers took and continue to take steroids.
The movie lays it out pretty clearly: no drugs are safe, but steroids are amongst the safest there are. Most of what is said by steroids in the press and by the government are lies designed to scare people away from steroids. There is simply no scientific information that makes steroids more dangerous than ibuprofen or vitamin C. Additionally, the benefits for using steroids far and away outweigh the side-effects, generally.
By far and away, the most interesting parts of the movie, for me, were the deconstruction of the idea of "cheating" in the United States. The go-to guy for this, in the movie, is Arnold Schwartzenegger. Here's this guy whose whole career was launched by steroids. Yet, he's also the guy who has repeatedly said that through hard work you can do anything. But I doubt anyone doubts that if Arnold hadn't roided up early and often, he would not been governor of California. No Mr. Universe at 19, no movie career, no movie career, no popularity to sneak in a quick novelty governorship.
The movie also says things I've said about training -- about how high-tech training in the US will, for instance, duplicate the effects of illegal drugs. The case he used was the production of red blood cells. The movie lists four ways to improve your red blood cell count, and thus your endurance: sleeping in a hypobaric chamber, training at the US Olympic training center six thousand feet above sea level, blood doping and taking a drug that just increases your red blood cell count. Two of them are "legal" and two aren't, but they all do the same thing. Clearly, I agree with this and go quite a bit farther.
There is also a great scene where he talks about how drugs are used in other areas to enhance performance. Beta blockers are apparently used by a lot of musicians to stop stage fright. One of the people flat out said that if not for beta blockers they wouldn't be able to perform . . . while also identifying steroids as cheating whereas beta blockers used in auditions is not. Also mentioned was Adderall used by students to study longer and more efficiently . . . which is pretty much exactly what anabolic steroids do for your muscles, they let you work out harder and more efficiently. So, why are steroids bad and Adderall just another thing that's prescribed? Why are steroids different than beta blockers?
Obviously, I'm pretty sympathetic towards this point of view. The view the US has on drugs is pretty crazy . . . and it's crazy all over, too. Steroids is cheating, whereas merely submitting to the tyranny of nature, where some are strong and some are not, is okay? I don't buy that. I've never bought that. Why should anyone? Isn't the function of medical science to improve our health and well-being . . . a necessarily subjective standard?
The idea seems to be "if it's not broke, don't fix it". But that's crazy. It's not that you're not alright with being who you are, it's that there's also nothing wrong with wanting to change and improve yourself. And it's definitely wrong to demand that others behave as you behave -- how much less sensible is it, then, to bow to some arbitrary happenstance of nature?
Additionally, we use technology all the time to change ourselves. That's what medical science does. There are lots of things out there that are just horrible for us -- broken legs are natural, cancer is natural, congestive heart failure is natural, but we don't hesitate to use medical science to stop what is "natural" from occurring in those situations. Likewise, we are all for certain uses of science and technology for improving oneself, things like the extremely high tech diets professional athletes use these days. Oh, sure, it's of dubious if that works, but people are comfortable if it does work (I say it's dubious if it works because in high level sports, some people seriously think that nearly 100% of the athletes use performance enhancing drugs, so all that talk about the efficacy of high-tech nutrition and supplements might be the cover to justify the incredible performance of top level athletes when the truth it is it's mostly steroids, growth hormones and amphetamines). But if you "go too far", you're seen as deviating from "nature" and that's . . . bad? I don't think so and the movie doesn't think so, either, or at least it gives people the choice to decide.
In general, I thought it was a good movie. The narrator was charming in a natural, unpretentious way and he handled the difficult subject with sensitivity, humor and occasionally a little bravery (such as when his mother, in particular, condemned steroids but was then incredibly proud of her son for bench pressing 705 pounds . . . whereas her non-steroided son benched about 170 pounds less). I also more or less agree with Bell, so that helps, of course.
I've heard the movie is nuanced about steroids. No, that's not it. The movie is mostly pro-steroids -- or pro-choice in regards to steroids. Bell, himself, took steroids briefly but was uncomfortable with the moral issues and stopped . . . but both of his brothers took and continue to take steroids.
The movie lays it out pretty clearly: no drugs are safe, but steroids are amongst the safest there are. Most of what is said by steroids in the press and by the government are lies designed to scare people away from steroids. There is simply no scientific information that makes steroids more dangerous than ibuprofen or vitamin C. Additionally, the benefits for using steroids far and away outweigh the side-effects, generally.
By far and away, the most interesting parts of the movie, for me, were the deconstruction of the idea of "cheating" in the United States. The go-to guy for this, in the movie, is Arnold Schwartzenegger. Here's this guy whose whole career was launched by steroids. Yet, he's also the guy who has repeatedly said that through hard work you can do anything. But I doubt anyone doubts that if Arnold hadn't roided up early and often, he would not been governor of California. No Mr. Universe at 19, no movie career, no movie career, no popularity to sneak in a quick novelty governorship.
The movie also says things I've said about training -- about how high-tech training in the US will, for instance, duplicate the effects of illegal drugs. The case he used was the production of red blood cells. The movie lists four ways to improve your red blood cell count, and thus your endurance: sleeping in a hypobaric chamber, training at the US Olympic training center six thousand feet above sea level, blood doping and taking a drug that just increases your red blood cell count. Two of them are "legal" and two aren't, but they all do the same thing. Clearly, I agree with this and go quite a bit farther.
There is also a great scene where he talks about how drugs are used in other areas to enhance performance. Beta blockers are apparently used by a lot of musicians to stop stage fright. One of the people flat out said that if not for beta blockers they wouldn't be able to perform . . . while also identifying steroids as cheating whereas beta blockers used in auditions is not. Also mentioned was Adderall used by students to study longer and more efficiently . . . which is pretty much exactly what anabolic steroids do for your muscles, they let you work out harder and more efficiently. So, why are steroids bad and Adderall just another thing that's prescribed? Why are steroids different than beta blockers?
Obviously, I'm pretty sympathetic towards this point of view. The view the US has on drugs is pretty crazy . . . and it's crazy all over, too. Steroids is cheating, whereas merely submitting to the tyranny of nature, where some are strong and some are not, is okay? I don't buy that. I've never bought that. Why should anyone? Isn't the function of medical science to improve our health and well-being . . . a necessarily subjective standard?
The idea seems to be "if it's not broke, don't fix it". But that's crazy. It's not that you're not alright with being who you are, it's that there's also nothing wrong with wanting to change and improve yourself. And it's definitely wrong to demand that others behave as you behave -- how much less sensible is it, then, to bow to some arbitrary happenstance of nature?
Additionally, we use technology all the time to change ourselves. That's what medical science does. There are lots of things out there that are just horrible for us -- broken legs are natural, cancer is natural, congestive heart failure is natural, but we don't hesitate to use medical science to stop what is "natural" from occurring in those situations. Likewise, we are all for certain uses of science and technology for improving oneself, things like the extremely high tech diets professional athletes use these days. Oh, sure, it's of dubious if that works, but people are comfortable if it does work (I say it's dubious if it works because in high level sports, some people seriously think that nearly 100% of the athletes use performance enhancing drugs, so all that talk about the efficacy of high-tech nutrition and supplements might be the cover to justify the incredible performance of top level athletes when the truth it is it's mostly steroids, growth hormones and amphetamines). But if you "go too far", you're seen as deviating from "nature" and that's . . . bad? I don't think so and the movie doesn't think so, either, or at least it gives people the choice to decide.
In general, I thought it was a good movie. The narrator was charming in a natural, unpretentious way and he handled the difficult subject with sensitivity, humor and occasionally a little bravery (such as when his mother, in particular, condemned steroids but was then incredibly proud of her son for bench pressing 705 pounds . . . whereas her non-steroided son benched about 170 pounds less). I also more or less agree with Bell, so that helps, of course.
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