The rules of the game resemble those of the market, equal chances and fair play for all, but only as the struggle of all against all. Thus it is that sport permits competition, now reduced to a form of brutality, to survive in a world in which competition has actually been eliminated. While sport does indeed express competition as a form of immediate activity, it also expressly thematizes a historical tendency which has done away with competition proper. [. . .]. In its naked literalness, in the brutish seriousness which hardens every gesture of play into an automatic reflex, sport becomes the colourless reflection of a hardened callous life. Sport only preserves the joy of movement, the thought of bodily liberation, the suspension of practical ends in a completely external distorted form. Yet perhaps because the violence which sport inflicts upon people might help them towards understanding how they could one day finally put an end to violence itself, mass culture takes sport into custody. Even if the sportsman might possibly be able to develop certain virtues like solidarity, readiness to help others or even enthusiasm which could prove valuable in critical political moments, nothing of this kind is to be found in the spectator. Here a crude contemplative curiosity replaces the last traces of spontaneity. But mass culture is not interested in turning its consumers into sportsmen as such but only into howling devotees of the stadium.
From
The Culture Industry
Sport is ambiguous. On the one hand, it can have an anti-barbaric and
anti-sadistic effect by means of fair play, a spirit of chivalry, and consideration for
the weak. On the other hand, in many of its varieties and practices it can promote
aggression, brutality, and sadism, above all in people who do not expose themselves
to the exertion and discipline required by sports but instead merely watch: that is,
those who regularly shout from the sidelines. Such an ambiguity should be analyzed
systematically. To the extent that education can exert an influence, the results should
be applied to the life of sport.
From "Education After Auschwitz"
