The Prizefighter

There is a tragic quality about a prizefighter. He can be champion one day and dead in the streets the next. It is what makes him a compelling figure. The prizefighter is a piece of meat, but he embodies the strength and frailty of our humanity.

The rise and fall of a fighter has been played and replayed over the hundred or more years of organized boxing. As a fighter rises, we wait for his demise. That is why Mike Tyson is still a compelling figure in boxing. We want to see him succeed again, because we know that his fall will be all the more spectacular. It would be naïve to present the prizefighter as a glorious figure of success. Many are decrepit and pathetic human beings. However, it would be inaccurate to merely portray them as victims of an exploitive culture of violence and entertainment.

A PBS documentary on the first recognized "black" World Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson demonstrated how he was a skillfully self-promoting and financially successful champion. Of course Jack Johnson, in spite of his savvy in and outside of the ring, eventually fell victim to his own proclivity for women, with a little help from trumped up charges of prostitution (violating the Mann Act). But what brought Jack Johnson down is precisely what makes him a compelling figure. The arrogant braggadocio, the confident and supremely talented showman who appears utterly invulnerable, attracts audiences and animates the spectacle. But people do not want heroes who are invulnerable, even Superman had to die.

Jack Johnson was never a hero and never claimed to be. He told the world to fuck off when they questioned his relations with white women, because who would make him do otherwise? Jack Johnson was an intimidating human specimen, and when he told the world off, no one was going to change his mind.

But of course there is a Hobbesian quality to the downfall of a hulking champion. In the state of nature, Hobbes contends, even the most strongest and capable individual will succumb to the subversive activity of the weakest. Those who loathed the sight of a black champion schemed to depose Johnson. A man’s downfall is never exclusively the product of conspiratorial action; he himself plants the seeds of his demise. He relished the role of a promiscuous, virile, and dominant pugilist. In the end, he was not invulnerable. Jack Johnson, to paraphrase a modern wrestling promoter, screwed Jack Johnson; and that is why is he a legend.

To fall is to be human. To plummet from great heights makes a man legendary through infamy. The one who falls and falls hard, we eulogize. Johnson, Liston, La Motta, Foreman, Tyson, and the list goes on and on. Whether it was Foreman in Zaire 1974, Liston in Miami 1964, or Tyson in Tokyo 1990, they were all unstoppable beasts that were stopped. They all reinforce what Hobbes intimated, “nobody is naturally invulnerable”. Indeed, we find comfort in that and find even greater comfort in the spectacle that tears down the most intimidating figure. Modernity has a taste for scandal and failure-as-spectacle. It is bemusing in profoundly superficial ways.

Where have you gone Winona?

So I’m staring at a Rolling Stone cover hanging on the wall. It has the following plastered over it: Hot 1991 – Winona Ryder / Who’s Hip, What’s Funny, And How To Stay Cool / The Famous Hot List. So what has changed since 1991? Well, Winona Ryder is a clichéd punch line for celebrity kleptomania. Who’s Hip? That tagline is no longer sexy enough for Rolling Stone. Circa 2005, Hip is Lame. This cover, a decade and a half later, would be more hardcore. How about Christina Aguilara nude with a guitar covering her naughty bits? Or Britney Spears doing a faux-Lolita spread? The Winona Ryder cover may have been scandalous in 1991 – her in a nightie flashing her bedroom eyes. But now, “sexiness” is to let the deep down hardcore slut bust out. The justification is that “Daddy don’t preach”, that personal freedom and expression means getting right in your fucking face. Sure, the body is the property of the self. But please don’t think that a magazine cover spread or constant commodification of one’s self-image somehow furthers the cause of women around the world. I'm not that naive.

The engine of colonialism is not fueled by military aggression. What drives colonialism is cultural propaganda. At the heart of any society is its cultural customs.

The west, from the time of Rome to that of Great Britain’s colonial empire, has understood the importance of exporting customs, in addition to hawking products and methods of governance. Culture is an integral part to the governance of a territory. To build or “construct” a system of meaning or a means to contentment, it assuages rebellious inclinations any indigenous peoples harbour in opposition to an external sovereign power. Power, hence, cannot be exercised merely upon the body politic, but in shaping the collective consciousness and, more importantly, particular wills of a people. Culture builds and sustains the illusion. That is not to say that the illusion is fearsomely evil. That is no always the case. But precisely because cultural propaganda, if executed shrewdly, can appear neither fearsome nor evil is how it has effectiveness at all.