Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 9
_Ex£ecling_Jhe^arbaria^
Like heroism in American popular culture, tragedy too has
lost its intrinsic value of otherness, or what Douglas J. Stewart calls
the absolute sense of a "devastating and equivocal tangency (the
Greek gods] were always reputed to have with human destiny
Indeed, in televised sporting events, where "the thrill of victory and
the agony of defeat" are regularly played out in millions of American
living rooms, the "tangency" of tragedy and of triumph often takes
strikingly unequivocal forms. Consider the phenomenon of Christian
and Muslim athletes who often begin TV post-game interviews by
giving the credit for their victories to God or Allah. Following an
upset victory over Denver in a 1997 American Football Conference
divisional playoff, quarterback Mark Brunell of the Jacksonville
Jaguars had this to say: "God has been with this team from the
beginning—we've got a bunch of guys who love the Lord, and it
showed today." Offensive tackle Tony Boselli echoed Brunell's
sentiments: "I was sick as a dog [with the flu] before the game, but
God healed me and I was able to come out and help defeat the
Broncos."
There's no reason to question the sincerity of such expressions
of belief. The assumptions behind them do raise questions, however.
If God intervenes on the behalf of one football team, does He then
conspire to undermine the opponent's chances of victory? Why is it in
His interest to influence the outcome of a sporting event? And what of
the players on the losing side who might believe in Him as well and
who, if they'd won, would probably also have given due credit to the
Deity in locker room interviews? On the other hand, in more than
three decades of watching football, basketball, and baseball on TV, I
don't recall a single instance when an athlete actually blamed God
for not helping him and his teammates win a game. It's as if the idea
of a "devastating" Other is simply unacceptable to Americans who
participate in sporting rituals.
In Greek tragedy, the house of Atreus was characterized by a
series of punishments handed down by the Furies to sons for ghastly
crimes committed by their fathers. The fathers, of course, could not
foresee that their offspring would suffer the consequences of their
malfeasances, and so this vicious cycle was interrupted only when
the Furies "put an end to the atrocities which had stained the family
of Atreus with blood."^