The overarching themes for all of these readings were: men killing each other or themselves. This is what young boys are taught though - that to be manly you must hunt and play a gruesome sport like football. Because that is what men do. Women, on the other hand, are not taught either of these things. Women aren't even allowed to play football (unless you consider Powderpuff, but that is purely a joke). And as a result of men being taught that the manlier you are the better is violence. We are seeing that more and more. I think this can be traced back to football. The purpose of that game? To push and shove and tackle your opponent to the ground. Basically, organized mob fight (not really - but to an extent). Javon Belcher is a perfect example of how violence can be correlated with football. He was a professional football player who shot and killed his girlfriend and then himself. Now, I would like to believe that he had some brain damage from football that made him commit such a violent act - not that that would make it okay in any way though. I also agree with Bob Costas when he makes the claim that people are allowed to own guns, but there needs to be more regulations. If anyone can get their hands on a gun then it makes the probability of something like Belcher's story more likely. People kill people and they make the conscious choice to shoot the gun and I hate it when people try and justify it by saying that they were mentally unstable or something like that - to me that does not make any difference.
But for the sake of this post, let's just say that Javon Belcher was mentally unstable. Does football have anything to do with that? In the article, "Dying to Play" it is proven that blunts to the head that occur on a regular basis in the game of football causing long term head injuries that result in diseases such as Alzeihmer's and Dementia and other brain damaging diseases that can make a person not themselves at all. Another disease, that is very rare (although occurring more and more in football athletes), is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy - CTE - where a protein known as Tau eats away slowly at the blood vessels and eventually decreases your brain size by half. The brain becomes brittle and kills all nerve cells. This brings up the question, despite all of these harmful things that centers around football such as violence and long term head injuries - is it worth it? Is it worth taking your life in your hands or others lives in your hands just to be manly?
Going along with the violence act and how men are taught to be violent at times - and that is is okay - football is not the only way that they are taught to be manly. Hunting is another way. As told in the story, "Most Dangerous Game" General Zaroff takes pleasure in hunting. Hunting men. He views it as a game as if he is hunting deer rather than murder and killing a fellow human being. It is quite sickening. However, it was great when Rainsford outsmarted him in the end. The idea of killing fellow men can also be related to race as well. We have seen countless stories of discrimination that results of man killing man. For example, the story of Emmett Till, the young black kid who was killed for "flirting" with a white woman. Or the countless lynchings of other black people. It's as if they get a thrill from killing. The "9 Rules for the Black Birdwatcher" was a sarcastic, yet true way to tell people how blacks are discriminated against. For example, don't wander too long in the park at night or else white officials will suspect something is up. All in all, it is wrong - to kill to discriminate and to enforce and encourage violence with things such as football or hunting.
So I have to admit that I had a really hard time seeing where the Chris Rock video came into play. Does it have to do with a lot of black people playing football? Golf is primarily a rich, white sport and is that the point the Chris Rock was trying to make? That one through a curveball at me and I am interested to see what other people interpreted it as.
*I don't have anything against football, I love watching it on TV with my family and going to games, but just for the sake of this post I made it sound like I didn't approve of it. Although, I do understand that there are many health risks that come along with playing such a high contact sport.*
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