« Russian Strength | Main | Different Gloves »
December 27, 2004
Dreaming Television
Televised boxing matches, like most televised sports, long ago crossed over from the realm of documentation into that of entertainment. The sketching of a boxer's character, the laying-out of the dramatis personae in a given fight, the establishing of the narrative: these were always essential aspects of a boxing match, naturally, but television (oddly, I think) reduces the dimension to something flat, sub-iconic. If boxing were news, it might be different; since it's a sport that waits constantly at death's door, the narratives to which it submits in order to better promote itself reek of desperation. Orchestrating pre-fight buildup is like flyering the Sunset Strip for your spandex-n-hair metal band: quaint, almost, unless the stakes somehow grow high (say, if we printed the flyers on gold leaf): at which point we enter the realm of opera, or of alternate realities.
I think this is part of what I love about boxing now, though this aspect didn't always figure into the equation. When I was a boy, what I loved was how much the heavyweight championship seemed to matter. What I love now is how much it can't matter, and how it burns with the luminescence of things endeavoring mightily to illuminate their dark, shrinking corners.
Posted by jd at December 27, 2004 12:34 PM