That bodybuilders are essentially deformed freaks speaks not only to the deformation of the American dream, but also the physical deformation of the nfl player. It raises the compensatory aspects of someone dedicating themselves to looking like a he-man to the point of caricature. A weightlifting obsession turns leisure into more work — a return to the oldest form of manual labour (picking stuff up and putting it down) — and the result of this new hard work is a body perverted into a form that no upper- or ruling-class figure would ever admire. The weightlifting body is a badge of futility: look how much of my own labour I put into this body, because I have no more productive manifestation of my energies available. Don’t you envy the discipline and pain of my pointless output?
The ideals of elegance, effortlessness, the long, lithe line that so incarnated upper-class style, were stomped upon in the name of the 250-kilo rack squat. True leisure-class Americans tried lifting for a while, but disliked the prole associations and turned to yoga, with its high-minded context, or Pilates, with its aim of creating the classical upper-class physique. Meanwhile, real athletes and wannabes pump that iron. nfl players grow increasingly enormous, their bodies ever more specialized for ever more specialized athletic tasks — the lineman body, the linebacker body, the cornerback body. Americans, not recognizing that their physical role models live in a limited, fantasy universe, emulate what they see on the screen.
Yet none of these are the essence of the tragedy of the nfl. Not the average death age of former players, not the wilful disfigurement of its athletes, the pointless repetition of the same athletic moments, the grinding of all players into certain archetypes, the suppression of black expression, or the inherent invisibility of the reality of the game. The larger tragedy is a loss of truth. In the old days, guys knocked each others’ brains out for a variety of reasons. The famously dreaded black defensive lineman David “Deacon” Jones’s remarks about being baffled by the emergence of black quarterbacks were deemed far too candid. Prior to the existence of black quarterbacks, Jones’s central joy lay in his freedom to legally maim well-paid, good-looking white leaders. With black men providing his theoretical nemesis, Jones was unsure of how hard to hit.
The nfl remains a league virulently in denial. The confrontations of race and violence are now suppressed into a stew of “the will to win” and “the love of the team.” Individualism is punished. More than any other professional league, the nfl has smoothed over the reality of its racial identity, the appeal of its core violence, and the effects of its own management style. This smoothing process has been aimed, knowingly or not, at every possible metaphor that might leak from the edges of corporate control. Rather than the skill or love of sport, the nfl is a non-stop exhibition of force marketing and amazing sports science. All this technique, all this pointless virtuosity, has erased any ragged edge. Football looks only inward at image — a game so slick that no room is left for character or narrative. And without a saga, all that remains is knocking the other guy on his ass and taking his land.
Visit Sportstrotter, The Walrus’s global sports blog, at walrusmagazine.com/blogs.
