Issue No. 596
Culture
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25 - 31 July 2002 Issue No. 596 Culture |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Plain Talk
The World Cup has long been over though for some reason certain impressions have lingered until now, slowly pushing their way to the tip of my scribbling pen. Being a football enthusiast I watched almost all the matches together with the rise and fall of national teams.
Thinking about the competition, the at times beautiful, at times unpredictable play, I began to be aware of something else, the flag- waving patriotism manifested by the spectators. It was impressive, though at moments frightening, to see crowds of Japanese and Korean supporters, wearing the same colour shirts, chanting the same songs. It was like a religious rite and I felt sorry for the teams who had the bad luck to be playing against them.
The question that lingered in my mind is how patriotism might be better demonstrated. Is football, or any other sporting event for that matter, the right arena to demonstrate patriotism?
The World Cup was certainly a collective display of emotion, and at such a pitch it was intimidating. Yet such mad, hysterical, unbridled expressions of national, patriotic feelings are to my mind a last resort in an increasingly globalised world.
John Walsh, a writer whom I always look forward to reading -- he has a column in the Independent Review -- wrote that patriotism is a "slippery customer" and that opinions have always been divided between its good and bad effects. He quotes Bernard Shaw as saying that patriotism is "a recipe for international conflict". Mrs Gaskell warned against "that kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations," while Dr Johnson declared patriotism was "the last refuge of the scoundrel".
The world has suffered enormously from distorted kinds of patriotism. Hitler's concept of patriotism was to insist on the racial superiority of Germans. Here I would like to quote a sane definition of patriotism, given by Richard Aldington, the poet and biographer of T E Lawrence. He had this to say: "Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill."
What surprises me is how countries with a long history and deeply rooted traditions are beginning to question and search for their identity just like an emergent nation that has just achieved independence. The World Cup was one demonstration of this phenomenon. The football matches brought out traits of character hitherto unsuspected.
The English, for instance, are not as a rule known for public demonstrations of their feelings. They have always, in John Walsh's words, "shied away from emotional extremism. But in a very few years they have started to behave collectively like Ruritanian peasants when the king's coach rolls into view". Watching the English spectators during the England/Germany match, waving the flag of St George, I could not help but question the old concept of the cold, emotionally reserved English.
The Japanese were another eye-opener. Our concept of the unfeeling, mask-faced Japanese was completely blown apart. The way they were hugging each other and embracing strangers, their enthusiasm, laughter and shouting reflected a sense of national glory, and a love of country. It seems that patriotism, as evoked during the matches, was all about pride, not "just pride in your country and her national icons but a pride in yourself, blown up, through events, on a huge, sentimental, national scale".
The question is does patriotism emerge only on such occasions? Is it like something we keep secure in a locked chest, to take out only on certain occasions and then put back in its box? Does this sense of collective urging and striving and motivation show itself only during football matches? Or are the matches simply a means of discovering that patriotism is ever existing inside us, waiting for an opportunity to be expressed?
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