Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 3
“Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology…we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”
- Slavoj Zizek, In Defense of Lost Causes
Billy Friebele
I love sports. If I am honest, it has slowly taken over my free time. I find myself thinking about stat lines, checking schedules and looking up scores constantly. This seems normal because most everyone I know is doing the same thing, but if I take a step back to quantify the amount of time I spend watching sports related content, it makes me feel very uncomfortable.
I do this in what I conceive of as my free time, but in reality there is nothing free about this. To truly achieve some type of freedom we must understand from our
situation, which is suffering. Paying attention to the pain we are in does not feel like freedom, so we avoid it. We engage in activities that make us feel more comfortable with our situation; we reinforce our place in the given ideology.
Even rebellion has been coopted as a commercial image. Individualism is so ingrained in us, that even in the space of art production, a place where we try to
swim upstream against corporate influences, we reinforce the tenets of this system. By pursuing solo shows, creating business cards, and websites in our name we build ourselves as small businesses and enter free market competition.
We cannot properly see ourselves because all points of reference encourage us to continue to live the ideology we are immersed in. Sports pit city against city in a contest. The joy comes as we don the colors of the team, loosing ourselves in the crowd. Yet we gain a larger identification with a larger group in this process. The seasons play out year after year with the same rituals. It begins with the preseason, then the season, the postseason, the championship, the draft, and repeat. All of the major American sports are scheduled so completely across the calendar that there is never a gap, never a chance to stop watching, never a chance to reflect, or gain critical distance.
Volume 1, Issue 3
“Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology…we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”
- Slavoj Zizek, In Defense of Lost Causes
Billy Friebele
I love sports. If I am honest, it has slowly taken over my free time. I find myself thinking about stat lines, checking schedules and looking up scores constantly. This seems normal because most everyone I know is doing the same thing, but if I take a step back to quantify the amount of time I spend watching sports related content, it makes me feel very uncomfortable.
I do this in what I conceive of as my free time, but in reality there is nothing free about this. To truly achieve some type of freedom we must understand from our
situation, which is suffering. Paying attention to the pain we are in does not feel like freedom, so we avoid it. We engage in activities that make us feel more comfortable with our situation; we reinforce our place in the given ideology.
Even rebellion has been coopted as a commercial image. Individualism is so ingrained in us, that even in the space of art production, a place where we try to
swim upstream against corporate influences, we reinforce the tenets of this system. By pursuing solo shows, creating business cards, and websites in our name we build ourselves as small businesses and enter free market competition.
We cannot properly see ourselves because all points of reference encourage us to continue to live the ideology we are immersed in. Sports pit city against city in a contest. The joy comes as we don the colors of the team, loosing ourselves in the crowd. Yet we gain a larger identification with a larger group in this process. The seasons play out year after year with the same rituals. It begins with the preseason, then the season, the postseason, the championship, the draft, and repeat. All of the major American sports are scheduled so completely across the calendar that there is never a gap, never a chance to stop watching, never a chance to reflect, or gain critical distance.
