Pen-Elayne on the Web

Imagine It's Not In You

Apparently Dinotopia the series has been cancelled. I thought the miniseries was pleasant enough but I'm not weeping for the loss of the weekly program, which was almost a textbook example of how to more or less completely ignore a concept with tons of potential and very popular source material in favor of gosh-wow CGI, assuming nobody cared about anything resembling an interesting story as long as they could look at the kewl dinosaurs. Obviously Disney was wrong. I might have cared, except the couple of episodes I caught were fairly predictable and ultimately disappointing. One of them dealt with the visiting/trapped/whatever Scott family introducing the notion of competitive sport (in this instance, a boxing match) to a self-contained society that had never felt the need for same. Now, they could really have done things with this, examining why a civilization feels it might need sporting events, or why it has made the decision to forgo them. No such luck; it was pretty much all about how the Dinotopia (no, Skippy didn't coin that!) community publicly looked down on their noses at boxing but secretly started wagering and buying tickets to the grand event (which was some sort of stupid confrontation between a Scott son and a henchman of their extremely cookie-cutter villain, who looks like Xena if she'd been played as completely wooden, but I digress).

So since they weren't going to examine it, I thought I might as well ask myself (and therefore you): Are there any nations on Earth which do not engage in sporting events? Given the number of countries participating in the Olympics I'd estimate the number at close to zero, but if anyone knows of a good example I'm all ears. I'm curious as to what a no-interest-in-sports society would be like, because I'm pretty damn sure it wouldn't resemble the print ads with which ESPN has currently saturated the subways. These ads consist of five slogans, all beginning with "Without sports..." and designed, I guess, to make one believe that a non-sports-interested place would resemble a gulag or something. The slogans are:

"Without sports, there'd only be gum." (picture of a baseball card) - This struck me as not too objectionable. My brothers were into baseball cards. But honestly, if you need collectibles there are comic books, coins, stamps, all sorts of things that would more than make up for the lack of sports cards in this imaginary world. And Topps could always convert its business to crank out flash cards or non-sports trading cards (yes, they do exist).

"Without sports, they'd just be dancers." (picture of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders) - Do I need to comment? Would I be allowed to call myself a cultural feminist if I didn't? :) Yes, cheerleading takes a lot of skill and athleticism, but dancing does too, plus it's artistic communication so it kinda rates higher in my book than booty-shaking alone. Cheerleaders don't need to be "just" dancers, if they really hanker to show off T&A they can always be pole dancers or Solid Gold dancers or Fly Girls or whatever is currently in vogue.

"Without sports, weekends would be weekdays." (picture of child, from the shoulders down, foot on a soccer ball) - This makes no sense to me at all, since sports are played all the time on weeknights, even on ESPN. And even if they are talking about the stuff they don't televise like local kids' soccer games, the kids go to practice during the week after school. So no, sports aren't what differentiates weekends from weekdays any more, not even close.

"Without sports, who would we follow?" (picture of some very stately and powerful-looking WNBA players, probably members of the New York Liberty team) and "Without sports, would anyone believe in miracles?" (shot of 1969 Mets) - I should think spiritual folks would object to these implications on religious grounds alone. Time was when we followed religious figures; nowadays of course we "follow" every sort of celebrity, from royals and politicians to movie and pop stars to people appearing on reality shows and Jerry Springer. But the miracle thing... I just shook my head at that. Even some of us who don't necessarily follow a fixed and organized religion tend to believe in "every-day miracles" that have zip-nada-zilch to do with sports.

So, all of ESPN's ad questions being countered, what would a world without sports be like? Less profitable for the corporations urging us to "just do it" and reminding us that "it's in you," I'd warrant. Probably a shifting of testosterone towards other endeavors, which might be a bad thing - but possibly less of an atmosphere that promotes "win at all costs" propaganda, so that might be a good thing. No Olympic thrills, which would bum me out since I generally like the Olympics, but maybe less pressure on kids to screw with the natural growth of their bodies in order to achieve "perfection." And maybe an emphasis on cooperative games rather than confrontational competition. That'd be cool, and I'm sure it's in me somewhere.