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Barbaric Sport: A Global Plague
Marc Perelman pulls no punches in this succinct and searing broadside, assailing the recent form of barbarism that is the global sporting event. Forget the Olympics and consider, under Perelman 's guidance, the ledger of inequities maintained by such supposedly harmless games: They have provided a smokescreen for the forcible removal of undesirables; aided governments in the pursuit of racist agendas; affirmed the hypocrisy of drug-testing in an industry where doping is more an imperative than an aberration; and developed the pornographic hybrid that Perelman dubs sporn, a further twist in our corrupt obsession with the body.
Drawing examples from the modern history of the international sporting event, Perelman argues that today 's colosseums, upheld as examples of health, have become the steamroller for a decadent age fixated on competition, fame and elitism.
Drawing examples from the modern history of the international sporting event, Perelman argues that today 's colosseums, upheld as examples of health, have become the steamroller for a decadent age fixated on competition, fame and elitism.
134 pages, Paperback
First published June 19, 2012
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September 24, 2012
One of the several great strengths of this challenging small (in size, not ideas) book is its reminder of just how ordinary so much ‘critical’ evaluation of sport has become, and more to the point just how constricting is the scholarship we often see as ‘critical’. This is, in around 130 pages, a demolition job – not of play, not of physical activity, not of exercise, not of movement, but of the corporatized, business oriented, commodifed behemoth that is global sport. At one stage Perelman observes that “intellectual and academics rallied round [sport], very often adopting an openly populist posture (‘The people are there, let’s be there too’)” (p 113), noting that this rallying round happened because we (academics) were “unable to discern in sport one of the great totalitarian systems of modern times”: I found myself recoiling in the manner of a revisionist scholar (those of us whose opening statement is usually a form of ‘it’s not that simple’), that this is not the way it is for all of us – but I fear he is right. As an academic analyst of sport, as one who makes a living out of studying it, I am it seems expected to like it. In the 12 years that I have been employed as an academic sport analyst I cannot think of the number of times I have been asked “what’s your sport”, but I always enjoy the almost guaranteed shock (or at least discomfort or perplexity) on the questioner’s face when I say I don’t have one and don’t particularly like sport; I study it because it is important, in the same way as I pay attention to the crisis of financial capitalism, global warming and Tory education policy – because they are important economically, socially, culturally or politically.
The challenge and sense of being unsettled by this book came from two principle sources. The first was the reminder of the extent to which I internalised a very specific British cultural studies view of cultural politics that is defined by a particular form of Gramscian analysis, of a constant, almost Manichean, distinction and struggle between wars of position and wars of movement where in bad times (we seem to have been in bad times for most of the last 40 years) we need to accept the constant vying for spaces of resistance that typify wars of position. In these bad times, the best we can hope for with a war of position, as the oppressed struggle against ‘power’ by finding spaces to claim as their own and to act out oppositional moments. Perelman demands that we step beyond that resigned sense of being satisfied with ‘resistance through rituals’ (to steal a phrase from one of the early texts of this form of analysis) to consider sport’s current power as it is woven through the globalised neo-liberal order and consider what we might need to do to launch a war of movement that annihilates sport in its regulated, corporate, commodified, disciplined form: that is, to annihilate sport as what it has become.
The second source of my sense of being unsettled (in my work) came from the reminder of what this book builds on – the eclectic, disruptive Marxism of the Quel Corps cluster of French analysts of the mid to late 1970s. Although he explicitly cites this group, the text that weaves its way through this essay, for me, is Jean-Marie Brohm’s late ‘70s (in English at least) Sport, A Prison of Measured Time, perhaps the most important of the 1970s Marxist critiques of sport taking as it does a labour process view of sports participation. In my reading there is a sense that Perelman has revisited Brohm and in some respects revised, reviewed, updated and modified by extending or rejecting key elements of his argument to apply this mode of thinking to the early 21st century with its spectacles of finance capitalism, neo-liberal social relations and display. This is not to say this is simply a restatement of Brohm’s case, it most certainly is not, but Brohm’s work (in my reading at least) provides the launching pad for this piece.
Perelman draws on a wide group of ideas – there is a little Freud, a lot of Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer, more than a little Marcuse (he becomes quite important towards the end), a bit of Bloch and through it all I detect a residual Trotskyism (I may be wrong here, this is based almost entirely on a general sense of the text and several turns of phrase) – to range across a set of the central issues in contemporary sport. There are the vital points that doping is not aberrant but essential to high performance sport (Paul Dimeo makes a similar argument that doping is inherent in the logic of competitive sport), that sport is widely used to find ways to incorporate young people into their expected social roles (witness the emphasis on sport as a way to combat ‘anti-social’ behaviour), that the global reach of sport has contributed to a standardised global aesthetic of movement, that the stadium is a space that exists only for enhancement of spectacle that requires us to turn our backs on our social contexts and environment separating sport from the public space of the city. In short, this is broad sweeping attack on the image, shape, organisation and thing that is contemporary corporate élite performance sport and with that on all sport, given that corporate sport has defined what sport means.
The very breadth of the attack and the rejection of this thing that has come to dominate our view of sport and with it a denigration of other kinds of non-regulated movement (things that the corporate world cannot control and therefore cannot sell and profit from) means that there is much to disagree with. Perelman’s assumption through-out that the Olympics represents the apotheosis of corporate sport is unlikely to resonate with English language readers – who in the UK are more likely to focus on association football or in North America are more likely to emphasise local forms of sport; from an Anglo-phone perspective he seems to overstate the significance of the Olympics and its marginal sports. Leaving aside these national distinctions (as both differences and tastes) his highlighting of the 1936 Berlin and 1980 Moscow Olympics and the 1978 Men’s Football World Cup (in Argentina) as “outstanding for the determining socio-political place occupied by sport” (p 4) is correct as is his critique of the Beijing Olympics as legitimating Chinese “bureaucratic capitalism” (a term that hints as that residual Trotskyism, noting that I may be wrong in that); what he fails to do here, though, is highlight the place of the second LA Olympics (1984) as a vital moment in the corporatization of the Olympics and therefore, given his view of that spectacle as the marker of all that is wrong with sport. Given his critique of academic analyses of sport as “eager endorsement” (p 113) of sport, it is surprising that he has not commented on those academic analyses of the Olympics that make this point about their corporatization in LA and then just press on as if this is at best a good thing or at worst something we have to be resigned to accept.
He has little time for reformism, for the idea that we can, through an entryist strategy, reclaim sport for the people from its corporate élite. Sport is, for Perelman, the leading edge of and potent weapon in neoliberal globalisation (shades of Rupert Murdoch here, with his argument that sport is the “battering ram” for gaining access to new media markets). He argues that “sport … constitutes a model in miniature of capitalism, or rather the reduction of capitalism to its most powerful vector” which he sees as “the flash and glitter of the instantaneous, the violence of unfettered, untamed enterprise, the grandeur of the impoverished”. (p 77) It is hard not to admit that he has got a point, and he is vigorous in his argument that sport is beyond redemption.
This is a demanding book, not in that it is difficult to read but in that it comes from well outside the conventional terms of modern and postmodern analyses of sport – the title certainly raised some eyebrows and prompted defensive/offended inquiries from some of my workmates. Not only is it demanding, there is much to disagree with, much to agree with and even more to muse on – such is the wonder of the essay as a form; many of the points he makes are recognisable even if the specific piece of evidence could be contested. And finally, the 20 Theses on sport that he concludes with are sharp and incisive as is the notion of a ‘sporting mode of production’ that means “the development of a new mode of production for a new type of merchandise, namely, top-class athletes” (p 77). All in all, much as we as scholars of sport may find this difficult to swallow, much as we may want to pass over it, we will, I think, be foolish to ignore it and narrow minded if we don’t take it seriously, even if it is to disagree – it demands our engagement.
The challenge and sense of being unsettled by this book came from two principle sources. The first was the reminder of the extent to which I internalised a very specific British cultural studies view of cultural politics that is defined by a particular form of Gramscian analysis, of a constant, almost Manichean, distinction and struggle between wars of position and wars of movement where in bad times (we seem to have been in bad times for most of the last 40 years) we need to accept the constant vying for spaces of resistance that typify wars of position. In these bad times, the best we can hope for with a war of position, as the oppressed struggle against ‘power’ by finding spaces to claim as their own and to act out oppositional moments. Perelman demands that we step beyond that resigned sense of being satisfied with ‘resistance through rituals’ (to steal a phrase from one of the early texts of this form of analysis) to consider sport’s current power as it is woven through the globalised neo-liberal order and consider what we might need to do to launch a war of movement that annihilates sport in its regulated, corporate, commodified, disciplined form: that is, to annihilate sport as what it has become.
The second source of my sense of being unsettled (in my work) came from the reminder of what this book builds on – the eclectic, disruptive Marxism of the Quel Corps cluster of French analysts of the mid to late 1970s. Although he explicitly cites this group, the text that weaves its way through this essay, for me, is Jean-Marie Brohm’s late ‘70s (in English at least) Sport, A Prison of Measured Time, perhaps the most important of the 1970s Marxist critiques of sport taking as it does a labour process view of sports participation. In my reading there is a sense that Perelman has revisited Brohm and in some respects revised, reviewed, updated and modified by extending or rejecting key elements of his argument to apply this mode of thinking to the early 21st century with its spectacles of finance capitalism, neo-liberal social relations and display. This is not to say this is simply a restatement of Brohm’s case, it most certainly is not, but Brohm’s work (in my reading at least) provides the launching pad for this piece.
Perelman draws on a wide group of ideas – there is a little Freud, a lot of Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer, more than a little Marcuse (he becomes quite important towards the end), a bit of Bloch and through it all I detect a residual Trotskyism (I may be wrong here, this is based almost entirely on a general sense of the text and several turns of phrase) – to range across a set of the central issues in contemporary sport. There are the vital points that doping is not aberrant but essential to high performance sport (Paul Dimeo makes a similar argument that doping is inherent in the logic of competitive sport), that sport is widely used to find ways to incorporate young people into their expected social roles (witness the emphasis on sport as a way to combat ‘anti-social’ behaviour), that the global reach of sport has contributed to a standardised global aesthetic of movement, that the stadium is a space that exists only for enhancement of spectacle that requires us to turn our backs on our social contexts and environment separating sport from the public space of the city. In short, this is broad sweeping attack on the image, shape, organisation and thing that is contemporary corporate élite performance sport and with that on all sport, given that corporate sport has defined what sport means.
The very breadth of the attack and the rejection of this thing that has come to dominate our view of sport and with it a denigration of other kinds of non-regulated movement (things that the corporate world cannot control and therefore cannot sell and profit from) means that there is much to disagree with. Perelman’s assumption through-out that the Olympics represents the apotheosis of corporate sport is unlikely to resonate with English language readers – who in the UK are more likely to focus on association football or in North America are more likely to emphasise local forms of sport; from an Anglo-phone perspective he seems to overstate the significance of the Olympics and its marginal sports. Leaving aside these national distinctions (as both differences and tastes) his highlighting of the 1936 Berlin and 1980 Moscow Olympics and the 1978 Men’s Football World Cup (in Argentina) as “outstanding for the determining socio-political place occupied by sport” (p 4) is correct as is his critique of the Beijing Olympics as legitimating Chinese “bureaucratic capitalism” (a term that hints as that residual Trotskyism, noting that I may be wrong in that); what he fails to do here, though, is highlight the place of the second LA Olympics (1984) as a vital moment in the corporatization of the Olympics and therefore, given his view of that spectacle as the marker of all that is wrong with sport. Given his critique of academic analyses of sport as “eager endorsement” (p 113) of sport, it is surprising that he has not commented on those academic analyses of the Olympics that make this point about their corporatization in LA and then just press on as if this is at best a good thing or at worst something we have to be resigned to accept.
He has little time for reformism, for the idea that we can, through an entryist strategy, reclaim sport for the people from its corporate élite. Sport is, for Perelman, the leading edge of and potent weapon in neoliberal globalisation (shades of Rupert Murdoch here, with his argument that sport is the “battering ram” for gaining access to new media markets). He argues that “sport … constitutes a model in miniature of capitalism, or rather the reduction of capitalism to its most powerful vector” which he sees as “the flash and glitter of the instantaneous, the violence of unfettered, untamed enterprise, the grandeur of the impoverished”. (p 77) It is hard not to admit that he has got a point, and he is vigorous in his argument that sport is beyond redemption.
This is a demanding book, not in that it is difficult to read but in that it comes from well outside the conventional terms of modern and postmodern analyses of sport – the title certainly raised some eyebrows and prompted defensive/offended inquiries from some of my workmates. Not only is it demanding, there is much to disagree with, much to agree with and even more to muse on – such is the wonder of the essay as a form; many of the points he makes are recognisable even if the specific piece of evidence could be contested. And finally, the 20 Theses on sport that he concludes with are sharp and incisive as is the notion of a ‘sporting mode of production’ that means “the development of a new mode of production for a new type of merchandise, namely, top-class athletes” (p 77). All in all, much as we as scholars of sport may find this difficult to swallow, much as we may want to pass over it, we will, I think, be foolish to ignore it and narrow minded if we don’t take it seriously, even if it is to disagree – it demands our engagement.
January 6, 2023
I understand that this book is in the form of an essay, but it isn’t a good essay either. There is very little redeemable about it and what might be is lost in the author’s superfluous and self-aggrandising prose.
It reads as if it’s been written by an A-Level Philosophy student with an ego, who has swallowed a thesaurus and promised revenge on everyone who ever picked him last in sport.
There are undoubtedly interesting topics covered in this book, but the author did not do them justice.
For what it is worth, I really don’t enjoy giving negative reviews.
It reads as if it’s been written by an A-Level Philosophy student with an ego, who has swallowed a thesaurus and promised revenge on everyone who ever picked him last in sport.
There are undoubtedly interesting topics covered in this book, but the author did not do them justice.
For what it is worth, I really don’t enjoy giving negative reviews.
February 2, 2021
My main issue with this book is that it fails to explain or theorize for that matter why or how people, states, publics, athletes, and other institutions in specific contexts have appropriated sport metaphors or policies or have engaged in sport (politics). It continuously lambasts the use of sport by Nazi Germany or communist China, but why is sport equally attractive to Latin American democracies? In addition, it rather superficially links modern sport to capitalist globalization. Other sport sociologists like Richard Giullianotti, John Horne, Alan Tomlinson etc. have done a much better job in exploring the entanglements between competitive sport and commercialism. The book touches upon the evident tensions between global sport and nationalism but actually stops at pointing this out again and again rather than analyzing it. Anyway, an interesting litany against sport but lacking substance beyond citing Horkheimer.
November 23, 2017
Demostrar que el principal rasgo del deporte es su carácter totalitario - bárbaro y que éste constituye la base tanto de la infraestructura (economía, instituciones...) como de la superestructura (ideología, cultura...) de la sociedad mundial contemporánea.
April 18, 2018
Marc Perelman provides a different analysis of the history of world sports in Barbaric Sports. Perlman criticizes sports events like the Olympics with its ideology and it continuous effect on human culture and world events. The author examines the various influences that sports globalization had on the sports themselves as well as on human culture, as well as the future of games. While it is clear that Perelman does like sports, Marc Perelman does an excellent job providing a thoughtful, to the point and in-depth analysis of the world of sports today.
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June 22, 2014Published in English translation during the feverish run-up to the 2012 Olympics (a fever to which I, as much as anyone, succumbed), but equally topical in 2014 given the controversies over the current Brazilian and future Qatar football World Cups, as the title indicates this book, by a French writer and architect, is not a balanced discussion of sport's cultural role but rather a polemical denunciation of 'the conjunction of all the most detestable phenomena to be found in society'. Although relatively short, it is written very much in the mode of continental critical theory and thus is a quite dense and challenging read, depending on how easily one is able to digest sentences such as: '[t]he stadium is a matter of real surfaces with fixed boundaries, screens like surfaces, detached from reality, but from a reality that asserts itself even in the screen and as a screen'. The following extract presents the central argument (however, one that is considerably developed, if not at times merely repeated - although that may be my failure to recognise nuances of development):
"...sport performs an apologetic function for the dominant mode of production and the system, in which it is not simply a mechanism or geartrain but central to the machine. Sport helps stabilize the current system through mass identification with champions...and the resulting depoliticization, by rationalizing massive myths (such as that of healthy competition between individuals), constantly stressing the natural hierarchy of strength and weakness, reproducing social inequalities under cover of a pseudo-equality between participants, constituting what amounts to a compact social-ideological and practical lobby, and setting up what can only be called a production line of selection, training, competition, performance, records, etc. Sport has become the new opium of the people, more alienating than religion because it suggests the scintillating dream of a promotion for the individual, holds out the prospect of a parallel hierarchy. The element of 'protest' against daily reality that even religion...still retained is stifled by the infinite corrosive power of sport, draining mass consciousness of all liberating and emancipatory energy."
What is saddening is that this is a book that, even if one does not wholly agree with all its conclusions, serves as a useful corrective to the hegemony of the sporting worldview (a worldview that the author argues infects the general view of the world, even for those who do not actively follow sports), but is likely only to be read by those who are already broadly in sympathy with its viewpoint. I came to it as someone who, if not hostile towards sport, was largely indifferent towards it. I had the vague notion that perhaps sport, and more specifically football, might serve as a channelling and sublimation of (predominantly) young men's aggressive tendencies which could otherwise, as in the past, manifest in more terrible ways, the chief of which being, of course, war. However, Perelman maintains that sport rather exacerbates and amplifies such tendencies, and the concomitant nationalism (a kind of ersatz nationalism that is both manufactured by and in tension with the increasing globalisation of sport, a globalisation which in turn, is both engendered by and helps engender the general tendency towards globalisation) and anti-semitism that are a result of directing anger against the 'other'.
The other passing interest I take in sport is, to be blunt, in the attractiveness of athletes. Thus I felt duly reprimanded on being reminded of how athletic beauty can serve as a standard-bearer for totalitarianism, most notably in Leni Riefenstahl's filming of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Further, the author argues that while true works of art can provide a liberation from the oppressiveness of reality through sublimation of the erotic impulse, in sport 'sublimation of the body is a principal characteristic...but it becomes a repressive sublimation because, specifically, the athlete's body is subjected to productivity, to performance, to comprehensive rationalization'. So '[r]eal culture, unlike sport, is based on intellectual emancipation, an endlessly renewed flight of the imagination, a relation to the world not focussed narrowly on a record or performance to be beaten'.
In conclusion, then, even if you do not agree that as the 'steamroller of decadent modernity, sport flattens everything as it passes and becomes the sole project of a society without projects', this is a book which, if you are willing to give it the time, may help you take a more critical attitude towards sport's pervasive influence.
"...sport performs an apologetic function for the dominant mode of production and the system, in which it is not simply a mechanism or geartrain but central to the machine. Sport helps stabilize the current system through mass identification with champions...and the resulting depoliticization, by rationalizing massive myths (such as that of healthy competition between individuals), constantly stressing the natural hierarchy of strength and weakness, reproducing social inequalities under cover of a pseudo-equality between participants, constituting what amounts to a compact social-ideological and practical lobby, and setting up what can only be called a production line of selection, training, competition, performance, records, etc. Sport has become the new opium of the people, more alienating than religion because it suggests the scintillating dream of a promotion for the individual, holds out the prospect of a parallel hierarchy. The element of 'protest' against daily reality that even religion...still retained is stifled by the infinite corrosive power of sport, draining mass consciousness of all liberating and emancipatory energy."
What is saddening is that this is a book that, even if one does not wholly agree with all its conclusions, serves as a useful corrective to the hegemony of the sporting worldview (a worldview that the author argues infects the general view of the world, even for those who do not actively follow sports), but is likely only to be read by those who are already broadly in sympathy with its viewpoint. I came to it as someone who, if not hostile towards sport, was largely indifferent towards it. I had the vague notion that perhaps sport, and more specifically football, might serve as a channelling and sublimation of (predominantly) young men's aggressive tendencies which could otherwise, as in the past, manifest in more terrible ways, the chief of which being, of course, war. However, Perelman maintains that sport rather exacerbates and amplifies such tendencies, and the concomitant nationalism (a kind of ersatz nationalism that is both manufactured by and in tension with the increasing globalisation of sport, a globalisation which in turn, is both engendered by and helps engender the general tendency towards globalisation) and anti-semitism that are a result of directing anger against the 'other'.
The other passing interest I take in sport is, to be blunt, in the attractiveness of athletes. Thus I felt duly reprimanded on being reminded of how athletic beauty can serve as a standard-bearer for totalitarianism, most notably in Leni Riefenstahl's filming of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Further, the author argues that while true works of art can provide a liberation from the oppressiveness of reality through sublimation of the erotic impulse, in sport 'sublimation of the body is a principal characteristic...but it becomes a repressive sublimation because, specifically, the athlete's body is subjected to productivity, to performance, to comprehensive rationalization'. So '[r]eal culture, unlike sport, is based on intellectual emancipation, an endlessly renewed flight of the imagination, a relation to the world not focussed narrowly on a record or performance to be beaten'.
In conclusion, then, even if you do not agree that as the 'steamroller of decadent modernity, sport flattens everything as it passes and becomes the sole project of a society without projects', this is a book which, if you are willing to give it the time, may help you take a more critical attitude towards sport's pervasive influence.
November 30, 2016
Up front, I must admit to being a person of strange tastes; I read critical theory for fun. I enjoy it because it challenges what is otherwise seen as inevitable, also because it is satisfyingly difficult to understand. In this case, Perelman savagely critiques sport. I have no way to tell what someone who actually enjoys the Olympics and suchlike would make of his relentless polemic, as personally I strongly dislike sport. I have always found sporting endeavours fundamentally uninteresting; they seem to take all the enjoyment out of exercise. This book helpfully articulates various reasons why the predominance of sport also fills me with unease. ‘Appendix One: Twenty Theses on Sport’ is most of use in this respect, to the point that it might have been more powerful as an introduction. As a sample:
I read this book in English translation, but it retains a French feeling. I love the French habit of including ellipses at the end of the occasional sentence for dramatic effect. There isn’t enough dramatic effect in English academic writing. Moreover, I can’t help feeling that in the UK criticising sport is more shockingly heretical than criticising anything else; capitalism, patriotism, the political order. I’d never read any criticism of sport-as-institution before and it was a heady experience. I absorbed this book in short bursts, feeling deliciously subversive. When I really think about it, the dominance of sport in society and its apparent unassailability begin to seem genuinely frightening. Although some points are more effectively conveyed than others, this book has quite an impact.
‘Sport has the function of justifying the established order. [...] This justification flows from sport’s typically optimistic ideology of indefinite, linear progress. [...] Sport everywhere aims to get the masses to acclaim the established socio-political system as a whole.’
’By conning people into identifying with the champions, sport has a depoliticising effect. The champions are the positive heroes of the system: those who by their own efforts and labours have succeeded in climbing the rungs of the social ladder. They justify and reinforce the social hierarchy’.
‘Women are enslaved by the patriarchal structure of capitalist society. As a vector of ruling class ideology, sport reproduces this slavery and provides it with a justification in terms of the 'naturalness' of the individual. Sport aims to get women to be content with subservient function. It institutionalises sex differences.’
I read this book in English translation, but it retains a French feeling. I love the French habit of including ellipses at the end of the occasional sentence for dramatic effect. There isn’t enough dramatic effect in English academic writing. Moreover, I can’t help feeling that in the UK criticising sport is more shockingly heretical than criticising anything else; capitalism, patriotism, the political order. I’d never read any criticism of sport-as-institution before and it was a heady experience. I absorbed this book in short bursts, feeling deliciously subversive. When I really think about it, the dominance of sport in society and its apparent unassailability begin to seem genuinely frightening. Although some points are more effectively conveyed than others, this book has quite an impact.
July 25, 2013
This isn't an invective against sport per se, but against organised sport as a creation of twentieth century globalisation. Here we are shown how the Olympic ideal played into the hands of Nazi Germany, when the 1936 Berlin games allowed them to propagate their ideology and exalt the strengths of the German people. We are shown how international sporting events allow regimes to set up Draconian security measures (surface to air missiles built on London flats anyone?) that can be used against 'undesirable' elements of society; we are shown how the Olymipic charter and the ideals it promotes are actually destructive and dangerous.
Ultimately Perelman views organised sport as being intrinsically linked to capitalist modes of production, and sees it's spread and development as an unchecked imperialism, a system of ideological domination, barbaric in its intent and execution.
You may not be swayed by Perelman's arguments, you may be put off by his obvious distaste for sport in general (I suspect he was the last kid to be picked for the football team at school) but you should read this book anyway. I really love sport, I love cricket and football, I look forward to international sporting events, but this book opened my eyes to the surreptitious nature of one of my favourite pleasures.
Maybe sport is the new opiate for the masses? I'll have to keep my habbit in check...
Ultimately Perelman views organised sport as being intrinsically linked to capitalist modes of production, and sees it's spread and development as an unchecked imperialism, a system of ideological domination, barbaric in its intent and execution.
You may not be swayed by Perelman's arguments, you may be put off by his obvious distaste for sport in general (I suspect he was the last kid to be picked for the football team at school) but you should read this book anyway. I really love sport, I love cricket and football, I look forward to international sporting events, but this book opened my eyes to the surreptitious nature of one of my favourite pleasures.
Maybe sport is the new opiate for the masses? I'll have to keep my habbit in check...
June 23, 2014
This book provides you with a totally different angle of view to watch one of the famous parties all over the world - the Olympic Games. And of course, the author didn't forget another games like World Cup and Premier League etc. With the sharp words in this book, I shared with the author his points of view about Beijing's Olympic Games in 2008. Strangely, I, to a large extent, agree with him. I proposed some points of this kind 4 years ago and surely I won loads of critics about my patriotism. I don't care.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews