In ancient Greek there were three words for "word": logos, ethos and mythos: mythos, the word "one should believe", the modern "narrative". It is always based on things Jung called "archetypal phenomena", "collective unconscious"; it is symbolic: a simple signifiant for a multi-layered signifié. This is, of course, not by chance. The false reality must always be simpler, sharper so that we can believe it: good against evil, beauty against the beast, fair against dark. A narrative is, by nature, a magical incantation: it is also a call to the fairy queen to make things happen.
The way we watch tennis is shaped by big companies: the marketing people at IMG, Nike, know their jobs, and when they had the right occasion, they jumped all over it. Perhaps they got the idea from David Foster Wallace and his article, Roger Federer as Religious Experience, a poetic text void of meaning, but probably not. And when Rafael Nadal stepped on the tennis scene – the set, the actors were there.
It started from the logo somebody convinced Rafa to adopt – metamorphosing his illustrious rival in matador and Theseus. It continued with many word plays: the matador's "grace" – la grâce – at the same time “elegance”, but also “blessing”: myths introduce half-gods, blessed with unearthly talent, and we, the believers, are blessed to watch them, him, sacrifice the bull, the Minotaur. On the other side, Rafa’s “animality” was invented, stressed, exploited. Nike's Federer's attire were made to emphasize his manly "grace", Rafa's attires associated with vitality, strength or, later, with the hermaphrodite ugliness of nature.
All the common places were explored: the false oppositions North/South, Nordic/Latin, bourgeois/working class, sophisticated, educated/naive, inane, all as simple as they were untrue. In modern parlance all of this is called NLP. Just like mythos, a "narrative" has to be able to convince, to transform words in reality. It is done with topics, presuppositions and mere choice of words. Words are always with double sense: in 2018, when the narrative was unchallenged by reality, a film in celebration of the myth was prepared: "Stroke of Genius". Once again, the words were hiding in plain sight the half-god, the genius and the sacrifice, the stroke. This archetypal motive was repeated for years in tennis articles creating the myth of a Federer era. Journalists and pundits were perpetuating the myth, writing and speaking about "adoration", "aura", "charisma", even creating new words like "fedal", words fans later de-sanctified, even parodied.
But the bull refused to be sacrificed, so the past had to be redefined to give a meaning to the resilience of "evil": convergence of surfaces, which suddenly all play like slow clay, was -- and still remains -- the main explanation. The "opposition of style" was another, with the presupposition that the "elegant style" was not made for the new, clay-like tennis. What was "beautiful" had to be changed: suddenly, a big serve became more attractive than a rally. Pete Sampras' "boring style" became the "sublime" Roger Federer's tennis. Age, finally: even the most illustrious men are mortal, nature/time always finishes by winning: Theseus became Promethean, he remained the "torch bearer", he still was the one to bring the sacred fire to the... unwashed masses.
And then, suddenly, a third men arrived... "from the cold". John le Carré used this expression with cynicism, but in tennis, it was all very serious from the beginning, and it became soon tragic. The only solutions were to ignore and/or to vilify Djokovic, the man who grow in the "scorched lands" of Mordor, far away from civilisation, the younger brother of Ivan Drago, with his robotic game, a perverse and deceitful being "faking injuries", the king's fool showing no respect for the "genius at work".
Playing with these archetypal images, the media managed to hide the reality in plain sight for years: that, from 2008 onward, Federer is not the leading force of the tennis world. The casual viewers and tennis lovers are barely aware that the main fight for supremacy was between Djokovic and Nadal, and that it was of epic proportion, ending in 2015, when Novak – so symbolically – managed to conquer Rafa on his "holy ground" of Roland Garros. Their achievements were downplayed, their best matches hidden (the remarkable Wimbledon 2018 was largely above the level displayed in the 2008 final). For years now, Federer is only a third fiddle, and it is well illustrated by this table, compiled by Yolita:
The ancient Greeks warned us of the dangers of hubris, the crime of pride par excellence: “pride cometh before the fall”. There comes a day when reality teaches us that every narrative is a mere lie, and nothing more. Federer’s resignation in his last interview, when he understated even his own accomplishments to downplay the even more “godly” accomplishments of his rivals, was a presage of the end of this myth.
P.S.: This blogpost is a commentary on Juan José Vallejo tweets about Federer's interview. The thread starts here: https://twitter.com/jjvallejoa/status/1108452512573591552?s=20
The way we watch tennis is shaped by big companies: the marketing people at IMG, Nike, know their jobs, and when they had the right occasion, they jumped all over it. Perhaps they got the idea from David Foster Wallace and his article, Roger Federer as Religious Experience, a poetic text void of meaning, but probably not. And when Rafael Nadal stepped on the tennis scene – the set, the actors were there.
It started from the logo somebody convinced Rafa to adopt – metamorphosing his illustrious rival in matador and Theseus. It continued with many word plays: the matador's "grace" – la grâce – at the same time “elegance”, but also “blessing”: myths introduce half-gods, blessed with unearthly talent, and we, the believers, are blessed to watch them, him, sacrifice the bull, the Minotaur. On the other side, Rafa’s “animality” was invented, stressed, exploited. Nike's Federer's attire were made to emphasize his manly "grace", Rafa's attires associated with vitality, strength or, later, with the hermaphrodite ugliness of nature.
All the common places were explored: the false oppositions North/South, Nordic/Latin, bourgeois/working class, sophisticated, educated/naive, inane, all as simple as they were untrue. In modern parlance all of this is called NLP. Just like mythos, a "narrative" has to be able to convince, to transform words in reality. It is done with topics, presuppositions and mere choice of words. Words are always with double sense: in 2018, when the narrative was unchallenged by reality, a film in celebration of the myth was prepared: "Stroke of Genius". Once again, the words were hiding in plain sight the half-god, the genius and the sacrifice, the stroke. This archetypal motive was repeated for years in tennis articles creating the myth of a Federer era. Journalists and pundits were perpetuating the myth, writing and speaking about "adoration", "aura", "charisma", even creating new words like "fedal", words fans later de-sanctified, even parodied.
But the bull refused to be sacrificed, so the past had to be redefined to give a meaning to the resilience of "evil": convergence of surfaces, which suddenly all play like slow clay, was -- and still remains -- the main explanation. The "opposition of style" was another, with the presupposition that the "elegant style" was not made for the new, clay-like tennis. What was "beautiful" had to be changed: suddenly, a big serve became more attractive than a rally. Pete Sampras' "boring style" became the "sublime" Roger Federer's tennis. Age, finally: even the most illustrious men are mortal, nature/time always finishes by winning: Theseus became Promethean, he remained the "torch bearer", he still was the one to bring the sacred fire to the... unwashed masses.
And then, suddenly, a third men arrived... "from the cold". John le Carré used this expression with cynicism, but in tennis, it was all very serious from the beginning, and it became soon tragic. The only solutions were to ignore and/or to vilify Djokovic, the man who grow in the "scorched lands" of Mordor, far away from civilisation, the younger brother of Ivan Drago, with his robotic game, a perverse and deceitful being "faking injuries", the king's fool showing no respect for the "genius at work".
Playing with these archetypal images, the media managed to hide the reality in plain sight for years: that, from 2008 onward, Federer is not the leading force of the tennis world. The casual viewers and tennis lovers are barely aware that the main fight for supremacy was between Djokovic and Nadal, and that it was of epic proportion, ending in 2015, when Novak – so symbolically – managed to conquer Rafa on his "holy ground" of Roland Garros. Their achievements were downplayed, their best matches hidden (the remarkable Wimbledon 2018 was largely above the level displayed in the 2008 final). For years now, Federer is only a third fiddle, and it is well illustrated by this table, compiled by Yolita:
The ancient Greeks warned us of the dangers of hubris, the crime of pride par excellence: “pride cometh before the fall”. There comes a day when reality teaches us that every narrative is a mere lie, and nothing more. Federer’s resignation in his last interview, when he understated even his own accomplishments to downplay the even more “godly” accomplishments of his rivals, was a presage of the end of this myth.
P.S.: This blogpost is a commentary on Juan José Vallejo tweets about Federer's interview. The thread starts here: https://twitter.com/jjvallejoa/status/1108452512573591552?s=20
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