стенка на стенку
09:26 | 10-09-2011 | Culturology, Sport | No Comments
между тем, говорят, как раз сейчас полным ходом идем чемпионат Европы по баскетболу. говорят там даже играют сборные Финляндии, Грузии и России. вот шутка, да?
так вот, про баскетбол — именно этот вид спорта я любил когда-то безумно, и сам постоянно играл. теперь же все иначе, мяч куда интересней на зеленом поле, да и потуги сборных вообще, в любом соревновании, никогда меня не интересовали в принципе (чего только стоят безумцы, подсчитающие коичество наград для отдельно взятых клочков географии).
поэтому мое отношение (а я все же смотрю игры, да) — оно весьма странное и неопределенное. хотя нет, вру — мало того, что очень конкретное, так еще и детально изученное в научной литературе:
Tennis buffs apparently found this match rather dull, for a Wimbledon final, but I was there to watch the spectators, not the players, and I found it fascinating. The match was between the world-famous, top-seed Australian player Lleyton Hewitt, and a virtually unknown Argentine called David Nalbandian, who had never even played at Wimbledon before. The result was a predictably easy victory for the Australian champion, who beat Nalbandian 6–1, 6–3, 6–2.
At the start of the match, all the English spectators were cheering for Nalbandian, clapping and whooping and shouting ‘Come on, David!’ every time he scored a point or even made a good shot (or whatever it’s called in tennis), while Hewitt only got a few token, polite claps. When I asked the English spectators around me why they were supporting the Argentine – particularly given that there was no great love between England and Argentina; indeed, we were at war not so long ago – they explained that nationality was irrelevant, that Nalbandian was the underdog, highly unlikely to win, and therefore obviously deserved their support. They seemed surprised that I should have to ask such a question, and several people even spelt out the rule for me – ‘You always support the underdog.’; ‘You have to support the underdog.’ Their tone suggested that I really should already know this, that it was a fundamental law of nature.
Fine, I thought, good, another ‘rule of Englishness’ in the bag. Feeling rather smug, I watched complacently for a bit, and was just beginning to get bored, and thinking about maybe sloping off in search of an ice-cream, when something strange happened. Hewitt did something particularly good (don’t ask me what, I don’t understand tennis) and the people around me started whooping and cheering and clapping him. ‘Eh?’ I said, ‘Hang on. I thought you were supporting Nalbandian, the underdog? Why are you now cheering for Hewitt?’ The explanations offered by the English spectators were a bit less clear-cut, but the gist was that Hewitt was, after all, playing exceptionally well, and that everyone had been cheering for Nalbandian, because he was the underdog, which meant that poor Hewitt, despite playing brilliantly, was getting little or no support and encouragement from the crowd, which seemed rather unfair, so they felt sorry for him, out there all alone with everyone cheering his opponent, so they were cheering for him to redress the balance a bit. In other words, Hewitt, the overdog (is that a word? never mind – you know what I mean), had somehow become the underdog, the one who deserved their support.
For a while, that is. I was now alert, shaken out of my complacency, and paying close attention to the behaviour of the spectators, so when the cheering for Hewitt dwindled, and the spectators began giving all their support to Nalbandian again, I was ready with my questions: ‘Now what? Why aren’t you cheering for Hewitt any more? Is he not playing so well?’ No, apparently he was playing even better. And that was the point. Hewitt was now clearly heading for an easy win. Nalbandian was struggling, was going to be ‘slaughtered’, had absolutely no chance – so obviously it was only fair to give him all the noisy vocal encouragement and praise, and only clap politely for the all-conquering overdog Hewitt.