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Action at the Gabba Cricket Ground. Credit: RaeA/ flickr

By Simon Hukin:

Dear Mr. Poxham, would you kindly excuse Simon from games today?…

I don’t like sport. There. I said it. I know it’s terribly unAustralian, and probably puts me in the same basket as the ‘don’t run on the concrete’ fun police of our collective youths but I don’t. I don’t hate it; I have no burning passion to murder Rafael Nadal, or any of his ilk (except those who graduate to commentary, of course, but that’s another story), nor do I wish to burn the Gabba to the ground. It just doesn’t do anything for me. I know, I know, I’m a terrible person – the green and gold should stir patriotic pride akin to the singing of Les Marseilles on Bastille Day, after all – but, frankly, what’s professional sport good for?

On a local level, I have nothing against it – it’s a decent means of building community and encouraging physical fitness. However, elite sport seems the perfect exemplar of the negative effect of crass consumerism on culture. As sport grows more elite it also loses its status as useful cultural tradition – becoming both profit driven and exploitative. The results of this change from community past-time to big business range from the almost masochistic drive to improve performance by dehumanising the body and venerating self-control, to the detachment of sport from any relationship to health (more and more athletes suffer physical symptoms or even early death), community and family. It even serves to promote drug use (ranging from steroids to depressants – take the recent case of Michael Phelps’ unfortunate marijuana scandal; his rationale was he needed it to ‘chill out’ and take away the pressure of professional sport) and the exploitation and abuse of children (take the case of Jelena Dokic). Sport at the elite level is no longer about the person – their individual effort or ability – but rather about the machine of the body being made to operate beyond optimum efficiency through the application of external factors, which are often devastating in the long term. Nor does elite team sport have a positive effect on community, as competition of such scale is socially divisive; a large mass of largely inert spectators/consumers pitted against one another through the worship of one sporting team or another.

But beyond all this, and probably far more important, sport is one of the factors leaching money and interest from the arts – the true culture of any society. The Arts are dying, cries the hungry artist, and, not for the first time, he is correct. The Arts in Australia have been neglected by successive governments bent on solving what they see as bigger problems, or appeasing a sport-mad people. Funding levels, which peaked briefly (and strangely) under Howard, are now laughable. When adjusted for inflation the real arts budget is near the lowest it has been since the investiture of the portfolio.

Thanks to the rise of economic rationalism artists since the days of Keating have had to justify their existence by producing results which are economically ‘real’ and quantifiable, with measurable market effect. From the economic rationalist comes the constant, debauched cry of “C’mon, love, show us yer tangibles!” So, in order to maintain the meagre levels of funding which give us life, we do. We have had to become statisticians, economists, demographers and, worst of all, business managers. Using economic and demographic modelling we have charted the power of the arts to positively affect (among other things) education, investment markets, retail, technological innovation, tourism, town planning and even exports. The arts are an economic Osiris – giving new life to everything they touch.

Northern Lights, Adelaide Festival of the Arts. Credit: adiasun81/ flickr

The obsession with the tangible has, however, made the job of artist much more difficult and, if it is possible, much less lucrative. It takes a great deal of effort to constantly prove one’s worth in a field one cares little about. Art isn’t about the tangible. The money and consequent social and economic concerns are secondary. This doesn’t mean they don’t exist; far from it. The artist must be able to put bread on their table, power into their computer and, in some cases, hashish into their pipes, after all.

However, while it is true artists have been able to fend off the advances of the irrational rationalists, it seems to me this obsession with producing tangible results has led our rationalist masters to forget the most fundamental aspect of our humanity. I dread to tread on their tangible toes, but most important elements in a human life – the things which satisfy, content and gladden us – are intangible. For that matter, satisfaction, contentment and happiness are intangible. Surely the purpose of any economic system, beyond base survival, is to allow people to lead satisfied, contended and happy lives?

See Part Two of The Art Happiness tomorrow.

Simon Hukin is a student at the Australian National University, General Secretary of the Western Australian Secondary Students’ Association, peripatetic music teacher and general curmudgeon. He is heavily involved in politics and the union movement.

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