Story Telling in Sports

This year in class we have discussed story telling and how people choose to deliver the things they see. After watching the Chicago Bears unfortunate loss to the Oakland Raiders I noticed that people chose to tell very different stories of the game.


Jay Cohen of the Associated Press in an article described Caleb Hanie's (The Quarterback replacement for the injured Jay Cutler) performance as a "shaky trip to the Black Hole". Later he also discusses the "flubbed" spike at the end.


I find it very interesting how sports analysts only have two opinions usually. Either someone preforms spectacularly or they completely failed and have every detail of their game meticulously analyzed for the smallest mistake. 


Caleb's so called "flubbed" spike is an example of this. With four seconds left and about fifty yards to go not many veteran QB's could be expected to score, much less a first time back up. A slight mental error ended the game seconds earlier than it normally would have, but if you listen to a lot of people it sounds like the game was lost in that play alone.


Caleb Hanie played well as far as I care, but the message I am trying to get across is how peoples opinions change the way they retell events. I guarantee if we had won in those last seconds all his interceptions would be ignored as first game nerve issues. But he didn't, so now he is being criticized for it .


There are countless other cases of corrupt or biased stories being told. Our own opinions seem to be able to alter the facts in our own minds, the stories we tell can also show our opinions on the topic being discussed.

Black Friday

Every year in early November stores nation wide use their own form of propaganda to draw shoppers in on the Friday after Thanksgiving. If you did not know, this "holiday" got its name from the idea of a companies profits being in the black (positive) instead of the red (negative or a loss).

While the deals may be good, people wait for hours just to even get into stores. For a while a never understood it. Is saving 50% really worth waiting at a store for hours then having to deal with the crowds of people like you filling every square inch of a Target or Walmart?

Not being an avid shopper myself I talked to my sisters and grandma. They explained that, weird as it is, people don't just shop for the deals. Many people actually enjoy spending their Friday going from store to store, waiting in line at each.  It's more of an experience, one that people look forward to each year.

In the end the companies "propaganda"is very important. Whoever can convince the most people that they have the best deals is the one that will get the biggest portion of the shoppers on this busiest shopping day of the year. They are able to profit greatly even though the prices are reduced because of the sheer number of customers and the money they spend.

Propaganda

In class recently we discussed propaganda, and on an excursion we got to see many examples of communist era Soviet propaganda art. Propaganda is defined as something, ideas, information, rumors, etc., that is spread deliberately to help or harm a group, movement or nation. The Soviets use many forms of propaganda throughout World War II and later. But one film I had seen that I found interesting was made to target the Nazi's and Hitler as an almost inhuman enemy.

The Soviets goal was to encourage their troops to fight as hard as they can to defeat the Germans. I found it interesting how Hitler was depicted as a huge monster just out to kill and destroy all the Soviets worked for, and the Nazi's were fanged demons who try to destroy the USSR from the inside. The Soviet people are then instructed to destroy the enemy with bullets and bayonets at all costs.

This made me wonder does the U.S. dehumanize its enemies in similar ways?Unfortunately I think we have. This is one of many posters I was able to find that make our enemies seem more like beasts that need to be slain. There are many more showing buck toothed Chinese men shown as Communists that are taking over the world.

While I could not find American videos as extreme as the Soviet one, all countries at war try to brainwash their citizens at least a little because there need to be troops to have a war. And propaganda is not all a bad thing, there are plenty work effectively to gain support with out dehumanizing others.

Like this for Example.