Watching Sport

Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion

Stephen Mumford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136660160
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy

Do we watch sport for pure dumb entertainment? While some people might do so, Stephen Mumford argues that it can be watched in other ways. Sport can be both a subject of high aesthetic values and a valid source for our moral education. The philosophy of sport has tended to focus on participation, but this book instead examines the philosophical issues around watching sport. Far from being a passive experience, we can all shape the way that we see sport.

Delving into parallels with art and theatre, this book outlines the aesthetic qualities of sport from the incidental beauty of a well-executed football pass to the enshrined artistic interpretation in performed sports such as ice-skating and gymnastics. It is argued that the purist literally sees sport in a different way from the partisan, thus the aesthetic perception of the purist can be validated. The book moves on to examine the moral lessons that are to be learned from watching sport, depicting it as a contest of virtues. The morality of sport is demonstrated to be continuous with, rather than separate from, the morality in wider life, and so each can inform the other. Watching sport is then recognized as a focus of profound emotional experiences. Collective emotion is particularly considered alongside the nature of allegiance. Finally, Mumford considers why we care about sport at all.

Addressing universal themes, this book will appeal to a broad audience across philosophical disciplines and sports studies.

1 The starting line

Our subject of investigation is watching sport, and the investigation will be a philosophical one. Before we can embark on that in any great detail there are two basic questions we must answer. First, what do we mean by watching and, second, what do we mean by sport?

Although the concern of this book is watching sport, we do not mean only watching sport, as opposed to listening to it or perceiving it in other ways. ‘Watching’ is intended as a general term that encapsulates any such sport spectatorship. We do not, for instance, want to exclude the blind from enjoying the experience of an observing sports fan. Many blind people like to attend sports events, sometimes listening to a specially detailed commentary. There is much excitement to be gained in doing so, which is borne out by the fact that sighted people also like to listen to sport on the radio. Sometimes it can seem an even more exciting experience over the radio as the commentary paints a picture verbally and builds the suspense. Any such person still counts as a sports-watcher in this book.

Apart from the special case of radio commentary, however, the experience of watching sport clearly is enhanced by the presence of sound. Sounds can be just as important as sights in forming an exciting and memorable sporting experience. Sometimes it is the noise of the crowd that intensifies one’s experience, as will be discussed later (Chapter 12). It is through hearing that one comes to know of the excitement of others watching the same spectacle. The crowd also add their own atmosphere, through applause, firecrackers, chants and songs. Sometimes it is the playing of sport itself that one hears. One may hear the players calling to each other; hear their feet pounding the turf or track; or sometimes hear even their gasps for breath as they stretch the capacity of their lungs. Some sports are noisier than others, as I found when I attended my first speedway meet. The roar of the motorcycle engines was the most memorable feature of the night. Horse racing provides a special experience of sound, with the rumble of horses’ hooves on grass getting closer and closer, and then passing with a Doppler effect. Setting aside commentary, therefore, there is every reason to appreciate the sounds produced in sport.

More than sight and sound should be included in our investigation, however. Non-participants can enjoy sport using any kind of sensation. Smell and touch can also play a role. The smell of the grass, freshly cut and watered, is one of the delights of a new football season. Many athletes use muscle rub with a strong ‘smell of sport’ that reaches the spectators. And touch is also part of the aesthetic of sport, ranging from the cold air on one’s face to the grip one holds on the crush barrier in front. Taste seems one of the least utilised of the senses in watching sport. Certainly there are tastes that we associate with sport - the beer, popcorn and hot dogs sold at the stadium - but these are not intrinsic to sport. They are rather more to do with the consumer experience that has grown around sport and they can be experienced just as much at the cinema. One is not tasting the sport, whereas one may see it, hear it and, if one is physically located in a sporting venue, smell it and feel it. Nevertheless, those who enjoy watching sport may do so at least partly because of the accompanying tastes of the catering provision.

Watching should be understood broadly to mean observation through any sense faculty, therefore, but we also need to say something about the mode of watching, for there are different ways that we can choose to watch sport. Some prefer to attend the sporting event live and in person while others may be content with watching the TV transmission. Radio has already been mentioned as an option. Others may have a more casual engagement. An edited highlights package may provide a shorter and condensed version of sport that could satisfy the less seriously engaged if not the purist. One might even follow at a greater distance, through newspaper or internet reports. These different modes of watching can no doubt be further subdivided. Among those who attend games at the venue, there is more variety. Some fans stand behind the goal, squashed together with other like-minded supporters. They may enjoy the experience of being part of a crowd, speaking with one voice, as much as being there to study the game. Some fans drink alcohol before or during these games and might not remember too much about them. By way of contrast, there are others who prefer to study the game from a side view, deep in concentration and not wanting to miss a minute of play. Still, others gather in corporate hospitality facilities, perhaps again with alcohol on offer, and watch from indoors, behind plate glass. Watching sport may be part of work-related networking where the conversation is the key thing, sport merely forming a common interest around which people of business gather. All such enjoyment of sport should be within the scope of this study, from the fanatic to the casual viewer.

There is, however, a less obvious sense in which there are different ways of watching sport. The expert sees a different game from the novice, and the aesthete sees a different game from the partisan. There may be a thought that these are mere clichés that should not be taken literally. For the expert, novice, aesthete and partisan may all be watching the same TV transmission and, one would think, it is obviously correct to say that they saw the same game. But one of the arguments of this book is that watching means more than just having light hit one’s retina, hearing means more than air vibrations moving one’s ear drum, and so on. There’s more to seeing than meets the eye, as Norwood Russell Hanson argued (1958: ch. 1). Watching is something one does: the mind is active in it, I will claim, and there are thus different ways in which two people can look at the same thing. Two viewers with the same retinal image may not see the same.One taking an aesthetic attitude to sport may ‘see a different game’ to the committed fan, for instance, even though they observe the same event. These will be philosophical and theoretical claims, but the example of watching sport provides an exemplary illustration of them.

Another aspect to this same issue, also relevant to sport, is the idea that one learns how to watch. The first time I attended an ice hockey game, I couldn’t see where the puck was. It seemed too small and moved too fast. As soon as I thought I saw it, it had shot off elsewhere and my eyes had to search afresh. I saw a lot of the players in that game (and heard a lot of organ music) but I saw little of the small black contested object. I nevertheless watched a few more games and gradually found it easier and easier to see where it was. I spoke to a more experienced fan (a Canadian, and Canadians really know their hockey) who explained how one learns to see the puck. One anticipates where it will go. I was too slow, playing catch up, but the experienced fan stays one step ahead. While I was searching for it, it had already left the place I was getting to. The experienced fan, on the other hand, is looking at the place where the puck will be before it even gets there. The players’ movements act as a first indicator for them. But they also understand the trajectory of the puck and the way it can sweep around the boards behind the goals. They are able to anticipate and get it wrong less frequently than I did. They have a degree of experience and expertise that I had not yet acquired. Similarly with other sports, one can learn how to see. In football, it is easy to follow the ball, but the experienced football fan has already moved beyond that. Instead, they see how the play develops, watching the movements of players and reading their intentions. The novice knows little of the tactics. They may only follow the ball. The expert, however, understands that all the really interesting action is occurring away from the ball, in the formations and movements of the players. That is where the game is really won and lost, for control of the territory of the pitch brings control of the ball and that is what produces goals.

The more experienced one is at watching sport, it thus seems, the more one sees in the sport. Our novice and expert attend the same event, let us assume, and perhaps sit side-by-side with virtually the same view on play. But one sees so much more than the other and this is not, of course, a comment on the state of their eyesight.

Much more will be said about watching as we proceed but, in similar fashion, we also need an initial grasp of what is meant by sport. This book will be more about watching than about sport. An account will be given, for instance, that allows us to distinguish aesthetic from partisan ways of watching. But no detailed theory will be offered of what sport itself consists in. Something should nevertheless be said, albeit only briefly, on what sport is assumed to be. We are aided in this by the account of games given by Suits (2005). Sport is not the same thing as playing a game, though all sports are also games. Not all games are sports, however, as backgammon and tiddlywinks clearly demonstrate; and chess probably also, though more contentiously. If we understand what a game is, then we will have gone some way, though not all the way, to understanding what a sport is.

Suits takes up Wittgenstein’s (1953: ŧ66) challenge to find a definition of game. Wittgenstein asked us to look rather than assume that there is something in common to everything called a game (other than, of course, merely that every such thing is called a game). There is nothing in common, concludes Wittgenstein, and proceeds from there to offer an anti-essentialist, family resemblance account of games. An inference seems often to be then drawn that nothing has an essence and many or all of our concepts are family resemblance concepts. But we will not go into the question here of just how many concepts are family resemblance concepts. Instead, Suits takes up Wittgenstein’s challenge afresh to find some commonality among all the many different things called games. Running races, golf and backgammon, among others, are considered and Suits does succeed in finding something in common. What he then offers us is a definition of what it is to play a game, which is that it is

to engage in an activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by the rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity.

(Suits 2005: 48-9)

There is a simpler and more casual way of summing this up: ‘playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles’ (Suits 2005: 55).

Suits’s account can stand a little further explanation. The state of affairs one aims to bring about in sport is what he calls its prelusory goal. The aim in golf – its prelusory goal – is to get one’s ball in the hole and in running races it is to cross the finishing line first. It is possible to achieve such a prelusory goal without playing the game (prelusory means pre-game). One could simply lift, carry and place the ball in the hole, or one could cut across the infield to be first at the finishing tape. But to achieve the prelusory goal in this way is to not play the game, quite literally. To make the activity of playing a game possible, one must adopt a lusory attitude towards the prelusory goal. The lusory attitude is a game-playing attitude, though Suits does not define it that way (for that would lead to his definition of game being circular). Rather, the lusory attitude is to accept rules without which there could be no such activity (of game playing). Instead, therefore, of carrying the ball to the hole, the golfer accepts the rule that they have to hit the ball towards the hole with a stick – at least a golf club–which is a relatively inefficient means of achieving the prelusory goal. Similarly, the race runner accepts a rule that they cannot cut across the infield. These rules are not accepted because they assist in the achievement of the prelusory goals: they are actually obstacles to such achievement. But without the lusory means towards the goals, there could not be activities such as golf, race running and backgammon. The rules are constitutive of the game, for one cannot be playing the game unless one accepts them. One might do something similar to a game, as when a policeman runs to catch a robber, but he is not playing a game as he is not adopting a lusory attitude in his running.

There are many possible objections to the definition of game offered by Suits, and in his book he tries to answer them, but as our own aim is not Suits’s scholarship, we need not detail every twist and turn. It suffices to say that the definition of game that Suits provides will be provisionally accepted. But where does that get us with respect to sport, a subject about which Suits says surprisingly little? It seems that we need some further account, on top of the definition of game, that explains why some games are sport and some are not. Association football (soccer, for Americans) is clearly a sport while tiddlywinks is not. What’s the difference?

The difference between games that are sport and ‘mere’ games is not, I suggest, a philosophical one. It is not that there is a philosophically interesting, objective property that belongs to one and not the other. The difference is, on my account, explicable more sociologically than philosophically. This explains why the definition of sport does not get any greater treatment in this book, for it is not primarily a philosophical issue. As Reid has said, ‘sport is a human construction. Play may be natural, even common to humans and animals, but sport only has existed and only will exist as long as we choose to make it so’ (Reid 2010: 115). Sports tend to be more obviously physical than games, requiring strength, fitness and agility, but not always so. Darts is usually classed as a sport even though some of its players are not enormously fit, while skipping is ‘only’ a game even though to do it well one needs to be fit and agile. Instead of seeking such a distinguishing feature, I favour an institutional theory of sport: one that matches the institutional theory of art that will be developed later in the book (Chapter 4). According to an institutional theory of sport, sport is a status that is bestowed by various social institutions upon certain forms of practice. Those institutions grew up around those practices–running, jumping, ball playing and so on–first organising them and then taking authority over them. There are individual governing bodies for each sport but also some overarching bodies such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The relevant institutions consist in more than just governing bodies, however. The media, athletes and their agents, political bodies and so on all have a role to play in determining which forms of practice deserve the status of sport. The IOC is an especially powerful body, however, in that they are able to grant the status of Olympic sport on certain games. Athletics is thus a core part of the Olympics and thus of sport, as are swimming and gymnastics. But BMX biking, for instance, began as fun: a pastime, leisure. Only once a game was made out of it–racing over a course–did it become a possible sport, and its practitioners, no doubt, thought of it as a sport from the outset. Eventually, others were persuaded to take it seriously. The IOC gave it the ultimate stamp of approval when it was made an Olympic sport for 2008 in Beijing. By contrast, tiddlywinks has never been close to approval as a sport. It has much in common with some of the things that are sports. Like darts and pistol shooting, it involves aiming projectiles at targets. Some of the participants may see it as sport but it has not been given the IOC approval. The rules of tiddlywinks are yet to receive a universal codification, though it’s more serious than you might think: there are two rival associations with their own codes. But many people play it without any knowledge of either of these. A common code is not, however, suggested as either a necessary or sufficient condition for recognition as a sport: rugby has two different codes. But codification is a sign of having a governing body, which is the sort of thing more likely to lead to recognition as a sport.

There need be no key difference, therefore, between a sport and mere games. It is more that the former are endorsed by certain central institutions. Sport is thus an institutional notion, to be understood sociologically. There is a useful distinction in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish that recognises this. Sport is reserved for organised, professional and elite games. Practised in a less organised and amateur way, similar activities would be called idætt/idrett/idrott, which might be translated into English as recreation. Hence, when I jog in the park, or play an informal game of football with friends–without a referee or timekeeper -I could be thought of as participating merely in recreation, under the jurisdiction of no governing body. When my game is officially recognised and controlled by the relevant institutions, I am doing sport. In English, however, sport clearly has a much broader sense than it does in Danish. The jog or the football kick-about would most likely still be classed as sport, despite the lack of official jurisdiction. How so? On the institutional theory, the answer is that one is participating in a type of practice–running and footballing–that has had the status of sport bestowed upon it. One is participating in a type of activity that counts as sport, even if that particular token of the type–the individual park game–has not had the status bestowed upon it directly.

As already mentioned, it will be argued later that we should have an institutional theory of art. If we have both an institutional theory of sport and an institutional theory of art, what distinguishes them? Might an essentialist about both sport and art rejoin that there must be some intrinsic differences between the two forms of practice, for the institutions that surround those practices are structurally isomorphic (or at least they could be in principle) and thus there is no principled difference between them? Such an argument does not prove that either sport or art has an essence. Instead it might be the case that the difference between the institutions of art and sport is to be explained historically. The institutions of art were those that grew around certain forms of practice, such as painting and sculpture. The institutions of sport were those that grew around other forms of practice: running, jumping, swimming and shooting. There may have been factors that united these groups of practice. Painting and sculpture could be used for representation, for instance, or for creativity, while running and jumping involved physical strength and prowess. But the development of those institutions has led to practices classified as art and as sport that have little in common with the original exemplars out of which the institutions grew. Much art is now non-representational, and some sports do not now require what might be thought of as physical fitness.

These preliminaries established, or at least stated, we can now introduce the argument of the rest of the book. The focus will be on three main reasons for watching sport. They are aesthetic, ethically educative and emotional. But, it will be argued, there are different ways in which sport can be watched and people may watch sport for different reasons. Purists are distinguished from partisans, where the former watch sport for more aesthetic and intellectual reasons while the motivation of the partisan is more emotional and victory-seeking. The aesthetics of sport will be examined and it will be argued that there are many legitimate sporting aesthetic categories. This raises the question of how sport relates to art, and how the watching of sport for aesthetic reasons compares to art appreciation. It will be argued that sport is not art but that this is not because they have incompatible essences. Rather, institutional theories of both art and sport will be favoured. Art and sport are both made by our social practices, with the two domains having differing historical ancestries. Some disanalogies between art and sport have been alleged, however. While there is an aesthetic of sport, it is alleged that it is never its principal aim. And while sport contains drama, it is said never to be the same as the artistic drama of the stage and screen. But both of these disanalogies will be dismissed and thus the aesthetics of art and sport brought closer together.

A major claim of the book will then be made in Chapter 7. Different people can see the same sporting event in different ways. A purist and a partisan, for instance, or even two opposed partisans, can look at the same game but see it differently. This is more than a matter of simply holding different beliefs about what one sees. Perception is something that occurs with the mediation of thought, not separate from it. The idea that there is a distinctive aesthetic way of seeing, for instance, is defended, whereas the partisan will have what we can call a competitive way of seeing the same sporting event.

The emphasis will then shift from aesthetics to ethics but not without first noting the close connection between these two families of value. Ethical values can to a degree determine aesthetic values such that if a work of art contains a moral flaw then that can also be an aesthetic flaw of it. Although such a claim is well established in the philosophy of art, it will be argued that sport gives a perfect exemplification of it. Sporting aesthetics can be either lessened by ethical flaws, such as cheating, or enhanced by ethical virtues.

This leads us to consider the ethical questions of sport more directly. The watching of sport, it is claimed, can provide us with knowledge of the virtues and vices in operation. To lay the groundwork for this, we first must establish that the morality of sport is continuous with the morality of wider life, rather than distinct from it. This done, we can then move on to consider more specifically how sport provides its viewers with these moral insights. Support is given to the so-called moral laboratory thesis. Sport can be understood as providing contests of virtue, where the various virtues and vices clash in a genuine competition. Fiction also provides examples of such clashes but its results are contrived. Those of sport are real. The understanding of virtue and vice is defended as a means...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Watching Sport
• Ethics and Sport
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The starting line
• 2 Partisans and purists
• 3 Aesthetics in sport
• 4 What is art?
• 5 The principal aim
• 6 Real and imagined drama
• 7 Purism and the aesthetic perception
• 8 Ethics and aesthetics
• 9 Ethics in sport and life
• 10 Contests of virtue
• 11 Should athletes be role models?
• 12 Collective emotion
• 13 Allegiance and identity
• 14 Why do we care?
• References
• Index