Retreating Back to the Cave or Why Sports Moguls Must Actively Support the Performing Arts

You might remember the first time you were introduced to Plato's allegory of the cave. Short version with apologies for vagueness or imprecision:
Plato supposed that there were ideal, unchanging "forms" existing on a higher plane and that in our unpredictable, ever-changing world we only saw reflections of these forms. The allegory was of a man chained in a cave who only saw shadows on the wall of the cave, produced by light and fire outside the cave. When released from the cave, the man sees the fire and light and the shapes and does not recognize them, having only seen the shadows up until then. He therefore returns to the cave, because that is what he can perceive and understand.

For millenia, the performing arts were second only to communal worship in terms of their ability to gather large groups of people together, in order that they might participate in a shared experience. In fact, the conflict between organized religion and performing arts is ages old, as the former feared the influence and permissive tendencies of the latter.

I'll warn you now, I won't be able to fully unpack my argument here. And I KNOW you are just DYING for me to declaim and reveal all of the intricacies of the world for you. However, I need to go cut down some brush, and you could probably learn more from the AOL splash page than you could from my ramblings. But I will continue as far as I can.

Sports are clearly ascendant in terms of events that unite people across the socio-economic and ethno-cultural spectrums in the United States. Far more people share the experience of the Super Bowl and the World Series and the Olympics, than experience The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera. Part of that owes to the fact that sports events are broadcast on national TV. But I suspect that the Opera, were it televised, might pull a Nielsen rating somewhere behind re-runs of Family Ties and in front of the Surgery Channel's "World's Largest Abcesses."

Of course, I haven't mentioned movies or the bulk of popular television shows here, many of which draw a huge audience on a weekly basis. Carlos Estevez and his high-brow sitcom get a weekly viewing audience of somewhere around Fifty-million viewers, give or take a few Goddesses.

And here is where the rabbit hole begins to open. If live performance--plays, musicals, opera, operetta, symphonies, vaudeville, kabuki, minstrels, choirs--were the standard entertainment media for, as we've said, millenia, then on what Platonic plane is the boob tube? Are movies and television the fire outside of the cave, a more perfect version of what we attempt to convey in our imperfect human artistic presentations? Or have we all retreated back to the cave? After five-thousand years of public performance did we finally decide that artistic events conducted in public sphere didn't really get us anywhere, so we want the simpler, more polished, less harsh reflection of our lives that is captured on the cave wall?

These are real questions. The answers probably aren't available right now, considering the relative newness of the cinematic and broadcast media, but the questions will not go away.

And now on the heels of Hollywood and Cable TV, comes the individual "pro-sumer" trend made possible by cheap digital video and the internet. We can all be the stars of our own youtube shows. We can be sketch comedians and confessional dramatists. Our entire lives can unfold in 780p and all of our friends can watch, provided they aren't busy making their own shows. Hell, I'm blogging, for Christ's sake, instead of reading the newspaper and writing a letter to the editor.

Sports are popular for the same reasons melodramas, morality plays, and Shakespeare were popular. They are inherently dynamic. Two teams begin at a moment of stasis, 0-0. They engage in conflict, attempting to achieve their goals on the field, in the same way the protagonist and antagonist attempt to do so on stage. There are slow movements that contrast with giant crescendos. There is conflict and resolution. Good triumphs over evil, or the hero fails tragically. We live vicariously through the performers, who are presumably better at the skills on display than we will ever be. They are the Platonic forms of us, but we can witness them, even if we cannot be them.

As new media develop, computer processing speeds increase geometrically, and gaming platforms become more and more advanced, the simulacra of life and especially sport will become less distinguishable from the real thing. Indeed, if I can BE Tiger Woods with my Wii controller, why should I watch him on TV, much less go out to the tournament to see his actual form.

I contend that the only reason for public sporting events in the not too far off future is the shared experience of the event itself. The communal act of watching live human beings perform transcendent acts of humanity. Victory and failure, right in front of your face. At home, in our "man-caves" (hate the term, love philosophical implications) we can see Peyton and Tawmmy B. far better than we can in the stadium. The cameras show us far more of the action than the view from the bleachers.The only thing that keeps people buying those $300 tickets is the roar of the crowd and the ability afterwards to say, "I was there. With 75,000 other people, I stood and watched it happen, while you were at home on a La-Z-Boy licking cheese dust off your fingers."

Likewise, my current obsession with the Butler Basketball team's run through the NCAA tournament is as much based on my desire to share something with my friends and family and neighbors as it is my desire to watch a thrilling basketball game. When my son and I went down to watch the Bulldogs' pre-Final Four practice at Lucas Oil Stadium, (yes, it is named after my child. He's THAT awesome.) I was struck by how many people were there, simply because they wanted to be in a building together with other people who loved basketball. The practice itself was pretty uneventful, the crowd was relatively quiet and the interview with Brad Stevens, broadcast on on the public address, was the highlight of the experience. But after the team left the court and everyone rose from their seats, a strange electricity developed. And I'm positive that it was because 35,000 people were in a building together waiting for something to happen. Nothing did, and that was both disconcerting and enlivening. We spilled out into the downtown even more eager for the drama of sport, craving something with a beginning, middle, and end. Something where, when it was over, the curtain would come down and the audience would either be crying or rejoicing.

Save for the experiences of witnessing birth, combat, and death, I think a live performance with an audience of people in the same room as the performers has the potential to be the most profound experience a human being can have. And I will lump church services into the "live performance" group. Martin Luther told us God was best experienced on a personal and private level. Then why do people still go to churches and mosques and synagogues and temples? Huh, Marty? Why do we like someone, be it a priest, rabbi, imam, Joel Osteen, whoever, to direct and stage manage our religious experiences? Because we want to have the experience together.

And so as we approach the penultimate weekend of college basketball, those who control the experience of sport for the masses should remember a few things: the NFL is locked-out; the NBA is sure to be in the grips of player/owner strife in a few months, and every teenager in the developed world has access to an X-Box or Play-Station or Wii. They could play a season of NFL football every week, if they so desired, and not give a damn if the gates to your publicly-funded palaces of bread and circus are opened one stinking inch. And these youngsters are your revenue streams of the future.

If they don't care about getting tickets to your spectacle, eventually they won't care about turning on the TV to watch it. If they don't care about being in a great-big stadium or an expansive concert hall with hundreds or thousands of their peers, taking part in a shared experience, eventually they won't care about being numbered among those who watched it simultaneously, though in separate spaces, on a TV screen. Those kids will have their controllers and headsets, and eventually their retinal scanners. They'll be entertaining themselves with shadow-puppets on their ninety-eight inch LED wall-sized display. They won't need to go outside and see the fire, when the cave is so much more cozy.