Despite his aversion to violence, Shane Jones has always been drawn to violent sports. Now, however, he wonders whether he should watch the pinnacle of violent sports in this country—the Super Bowl—with his son.
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When I was twelve years old I was punched in the stomach. The punch happened after a soccer match in which I played dreadfully, responsible for multiple goals on the defensive end. What I remember is standing alone in the field, seeing the group of six or seven boys in blue Umbro’s float toward me, and the smallest, meanest one, freckle-faced and snarled, extend out of the pack and strike me harder than anything I had experienced before. I fell to my knees on the wet grass and soon rolled onto my back unable to breathe, my mouth making a shape and sound like I was trying to suck in the sky. I remember feeling alone and helpless. The parents and coaches on the sidelines were handing out orange slices.
My grandfather, a World War II veteran (the story is that he volunteered to be the first to hit land at Okinawa) offered me a solution to being bullied—lifting weights. My arms were, and still are, absurdly thin, and him showing me how to do curls with ten pounds weights quickly revealed that I was helpless. I come from a long line of string-bean frames and no matter how much the men in my family exercise, we are forever rail-thin. Recently, my father, after my mother complained that he was getting too thin, shouted that he would, “Never be like The Rock or Dog The Bounty Hunter,” who are two of three (Antonio Banderas is the third) of my mother’s ideal sexual males. My father is a man of wavering opinions, but he’s never been more right.
I never did lift the weights he gave me, but my grandfather did sign me up for karate lessons, and unlike many of the parents who were grateful to have an hour to drive off, alone, he stayed and watched every stance, every form, every fight. Mostly, I think he enjoyed seeing kids kicking the shit out of each other. Once, after karate, I gave him my best stance (I was a blue belt at the time) and he said, “You’d lose.” Another time, the only girl in the class, who was easily three feet taller than the rest of us, kicked me directly in the kneecap and I cried on the orange striped padded mat for what felt like hours. My grandfather didn’t get up from his seat at the back of the room.
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I didn’t get punched again during soccer, not because of my karate prowess, but, rather, because I decided to drop out. Karate was, in fact, proving less and less helpful—I lost all my matches and started to avoid them religiously, instead opting to work on my forms. When the teacher asked how many students wanted to do form instead of spar, I raised my hand immediately. I can’t imagine what my grandfather—a man who once physically dominated a man in a parking lot over parked-car spatiality—thought of me. The only time I used my karate knowledge was when trying to show off for a girl shortly after the soccer incident. A foster kid, passed from family to family, city to our suburb, took it as a challenge and nearly broke my nose.
Fighting is common amongst men, and as a self-proclaimed wimp and non-fighter, I’m both sickened and enthralled by it.
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Fighting is common amongst men, and as a self-proclaimed wimp and non-fighter, I’m both sickened and enthralled by it. Throughout my teenage years and into college, I followed all sorts of violent sports, specifically, football and boxing. I can understand my connection to boxing—the karate lessons, my grandfather, and even my father who tuned in to every Mike Tyson fight and tried teaching me how to punch. I remember him squatting and holding both hands up, telling me to hit, hit, hit. But football? I have no idea where I get it from. I didn’t play the sport in school, and no one in my family ever watched games in the house. I was simply drawn to it.
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Recently, it’s become harder for me to watch games. The players are bigger and stronger—leading to more injuries—the fans louder, more aggressive, more intoxicated (fights, even deaths, now occur amongst fighting fans at stadiums). I have a year-and-a-half-old son who points to the television shouting, “Ball! Ball! Ball!” Last week, when I turned the game on, we both watched a helmet-to-helmet collision that seemed to take the life from the body struck, limbs spinning in the air at odd angles. The crowd mimicked the moan and hush of Romans watching a gladiator suddenly axed.
When the game went to commercial, it was for an upcoming mixed martial arts fight, comic-book style, showing grown men destroying each other’s bodies. I turned it off only to turn it back on moments later to see a commercial for the upcoming film “300: Rise of an Empire.” Men carrying swords attacked each other in gritty slow-mo to a sad remix of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” and a woman, in voice over, said, “Today we will dance over the backs of dead Greeks.”
I can’t look away, but also can’t help, at some spiritual or human level, to know that this stuff entering my eyeballs and connecting to my brain is unbelievably unhealthy and, even worse, a negative influence on my son, who wants to do and watch everything I do.
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I both love this nonsense and hate it. I can’t look away, but also can’t help, at some spiritual or human level, to know that this stuff entering my eyeballs and connecting to my brain is unbelievably unhealthy and, even worse, a negative influence on my son, who wants to do and watch everything I do. Part of me wants to protect him from all violence, and the other part of me wants to show him everything, that it’s all absurd and part of our culture, that it’s only entertainment and, yes, that it can be fun.
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I’m considering not watching the Super Bowl this year, at least without my son at my side, but the animal in me wants to see the full fireworks freak-show—the patriotism, the capitalism, the drama, and, of course, the violence.
I don’t believe that watching football necessarily breeds violent children, but my fear is that the culture surrounding it does. If football, and the Super Bowl specifically, is the center of our culture, then the way we live, especially as men, influences our daily lives. It influences how we treat each other. How do I explain the game, the get-the-stretcher-hits, to my son when millions of people are enjoying it? How do I explain that kids in school are going to hurt each other, could hurt him, for no understandable reason?
I imagine my son, as he gets older, will make his own decisions about what he wants to consume, but it all feels so unavoidable. Our culture is violent and it’s easily accepted. Men are violent. I have violence inside me. Will my son have to deal with a soccer punching bully? Will he want to take karate lessons or boxing lessons or mixed martial arts lessons? The questions are relentless and I have no answers.
Photo: AP/Jack Dempsey