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【Abstract】July 11, 2010, FIFA World Cup 2010 came to an end, as one of the world's greatest spectacles-World Cup has swept up South Arica with fantastic games, millions of audiences witnessed the best footballers, ecstatic fans and top stadiums. Meanwhile, we can experience an intense period of national and international media coverage, and irrational carnival of the fans. What is something behind the World Cup Cheers? This present thesis will make a cultural criticism and interpretation of the World Cup from three aspects, with an aim to show that today World Cup’s essence has changed. Therefore we should get smarter and look at the World Cup in a more rational way.
【Keywords】 World Cup 2010; Cultural criticism; Information hegemony; Irrational carnival; Cultural colonialism
【中图分类号】G811.7 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128（2010）11-0133-02
In this world’s most popular sporting event comes to African red soil for the first time, we not only can witness the best footballers, ecstatic fans and top stadiums, we can also experience an intense period of national and international media coverage: television, newspaper and other media coverage were widespread and almost unrelenting. Wave upon wave of the World Cup heat washes over us, while enjoy the joy the World Cup brings to us, it is necessary for us to think over and analyze such a big sporting event.
1. Information hegemony: The media and the businessmen together to shape the World Cup as a big media event
The theory of communication believes that although the media cannot decide how people will think, but can actually decide what people think (Little john, S.W, 2003, P12). For the pursuit of commercial profit, the World Cup becomes the biggest cake which the media has been long expecting. In order to successfully gain more business benefit, the media spared no effort to eliminate the society's multi-culture and multi-information during the World Cup, and portrayed the World Cup football matches almost as the only public issue.
During this period, various kinds of newspapers almost all became China's Soccer Daily. Many newspapers had average three whole pages reported on this event, even the Party newspaper—"Chongqing Evening Post” had reached two whole pages. The World Cup tournament also attracted one of the world's biggest packs of television audiences. China Central Television was broadcasting all 64 matches of the tournament on its free-to-air channel, which can be picked up by 97 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion citizens. Topics relating to the World Cup have dominated the Chinese website, too. Click on the Internet Webs various World Cup news come in a continuous stream;
Facing the formidable information stream, people cannot resist the media surrounding them, which exerting great impact upon their daily life. People possibly think that they fall in love with football “unconsciously”, but actually this is imposed by the media, a kind of “information hegemony”, they are just not aware of it.
"Media public opinion" is the result after the collusion between the businessmen and the media, it is under the influence of merchants, the media for the sake of chasing after audience rating and advertising then produce the cultural "consumption public opinion." During the World Cup millions of audiences had to face the huge advertising campaign. In South Africa the tournament was everywhere: billboards, radio stations, televisions and the internet. It seems as if every company was jumping on the World Cup bandwagon to flog their wares, and competed to be the best and most memorable in this football season: Adidas has invested nearly $200 million in advertising; America's Nike took out more than $100 million in advertising. Their purpose is obvious, to boost the sales of their products, promote their popularity so as to obtain higher profits. So we can the World Cup have been successfully shaped as a big media event once every four years, a kind of information hegemony was created, under which people consciously or unconsciously take out more money to consume the things related to this big event, thus the media and the businessmen can benefit the most from it.
2. Irrational carnival: the loss of people’s rational spirit
The World Cup 2010 is no longer merely a sporting event; it has become a carnival for people worldwide. Today, advances in communications mean any game can be broadcast live to any part of the globe, and more than 30 percent of soccer fans in the country have reportedly adjusted their rest schedules to watch the games. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, the event provided people with a pseudo-environment. It was like a mirror to reflect audiences’ various states of minds: it can be the strong patriotism, fawn on foreign powers, worship football heroes, and appreciate ecstatic fans. It seemed that how people would enjoy their ways of World Cup time totally depended on their own subjective preference. However, the one thing that invisible was reality. The World Cup offered people a chance to flee from reality. In those crazy days, people forgot about reality, forgot about the position, and were totally immersed in irrational carnival, the rational spirit at this time was defeated; all that left was people blindly following others’ footsteps.
Western cultures mostly assume that human life is explicable in terms of the rational choices of individual actors; rational action is that which can be justified within a specific cultural context (Chris Barker, 2008, p29). In the rational consciousness and the rational thought, people are supposed to adopt and discard with a critical eye, consider all the pros and cons. Therefore, when facing the World Cup, we need to adopt “the rationality”. But for various reasons, many people's behavior deviated the “the rationality” standard, but dominated by the massive perceptual experience, which brought about a phenomenon during the World Cup period: how many people would ask: “why do we want to look at the World Cup? What can it bring to us? Where it comes from? Is it supposed to cure all modern diseases?” Most people only know that the World Cup is a good thing, but they cannot explain the reason clearly. To answers these questions, we need to arouse the return of the individual rational spirit.
3. Cultural colonialism: the native culture being marginalized
Since the founding of new China, China’s sports industry has been received considerable development; some sports were booming and deeply loved by ordinary people, also they were endowed with localized culture connotation. In the 1960s, Chinese table tennis frequently obtained world championships, making China became the world's "table tennis kingdom”. In the 1970s, the famous "ping-pong diplomacy” made this game become an important component of Chinese culture; table tennis was a discourse exclusively belonged to Chinese. In the 1980s, the women's volleyball team received a series of victories in the international competitions, strongly built up the nation’s self-confidence and Chinese people spontaneously loved this sport; At that time, these sports’ driving forces and purposes were free from commercial interests, we can safely say that the media did not dominate social agenda; but rather only reflected the public opinion.
In the late 1980s, the situation has changed, football gradually accessed to China with an overwhelming force. The Western popular media which dominated the world's discourse system became the biggest winner. Football’s popularity in China was not Chinese people’s real desire, but the result of Western media’s propaganda and infiltration, and finally it occupied China’s culture field. Why Western mass media chose football, according to Scholar Wang Min’an’s explanation: “the World Cup is actually the most violent form of cultural colonization, because it again highlights the centre status of Europe and the superiority of white, so it is a ‘colonial conspiracy’"(郭松民，2006).Such are the facts: in the finally result of 2010 South Africa World Cup, Spain, Netherlands, Germany won the World Cup, also in 2006 Germany World Cup, the top three winners were all from European countries. Same old, same old: Europe wins World Cup. Now this kind of cultural colonization is happening in China, but many people just are not aware of it, it should arouse our attention.
Most of Chinese fans are quite familiar with the big teams as well as well-known football stars. But the state of Chinese football will perhaps be the last thing they want to talk about. The Chinese national football team has done pretty badly in international competitions. Scandals involving online gambling and match-fixing have besmirched the reputation of Chinese football. Chinese netizens and football fans are venting their anger against the Chinese national men's football team, with some even calling for their dismissal, after watching the outstanding performances of the DPRK team in the 2010 South African World Cup, an online survey said. The DPRK team, ranked 105 by FIFA, lost the match 2-1 to the Number 1 ranked Brazilians in South Africa on June 15. With a display full of passion, DPRK players have proved to the world that they can hold their own against better ranked teams and have quieted some critics who predicted that they would not score a single goal in the whole World Cup 2010 series. So for millions of Chinese football fans, appreciating the dazzling display of football skills and the professionalism of top-level stars during the World Cup is one way to forget the dismal state of Chinese football. But there is a fact they don’t realize: our native culture is being marginalized, we are just spectators enjoy mixing in this crowd, but certainly not this game’s master.
Summary
The World Cup is more than a football game, it is a big media event, which is controlled by the media and the businessmen and used as a tool to make money. More importantly it is a form of cultural colonialism to our native culture, many people unconsciously worship and have blind faith in foreign things and don’t realize our native culture is being marginalized. And as for the ecstatic football fans, their irrational carnival only lead to the loss of their rational spirit, so they blindly enjoy mixing in this fever. As stated above, today the World Cup’s connotations have changed, it is impossible for us to totally resist it, but we should get smarter to recognize its essence and look at it in a more rational manner.
Reference
［1］ Little john, S.W. Theories of human communication, Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2003.
［2］ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2010worldcup/index.html
［3］ Chris Barker, Cultural Studies, London: Sage Publications, 2008.
［4］ 郭松民《人们如此痴迷世界杯，是否消费主义的一个阴谋？》参见网址:http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2006-06-15/13539212244s.shtml
【Keywords】 World Cup 2010; Cultural criticism; Information hegemony; Irrational carnival; Cultural colonialism
【中图分类号】G811.7 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128（2010）11-0133-02
In this world’s most popular sporting event comes to African red soil for the first time, we not only can witness the best footballers, ecstatic fans and top stadiums, we can also experience an intense period of national and international media coverage: television, newspaper and other media coverage were widespread and almost unrelenting. Wave upon wave of the World Cup heat washes over us, while enjoy the joy the World Cup brings to us, it is necessary for us to think over and analyze such a big sporting event.
1. Information hegemony: The media and the businessmen together to shape the World Cup as a big media event
The theory of communication believes that although the media cannot decide how people will think, but can actually decide what people think (Little john, S.W, 2003, P12). For the pursuit of commercial profit, the World Cup becomes the biggest cake which the media has been long expecting. In order to successfully gain more business benefit, the media spared no effort to eliminate the society's multi-culture and multi-information during the World Cup, and portrayed the World Cup football matches almost as the only public issue.
During this period, various kinds of newspapers almost all became China's Soccer Daily. Many newspapers had average three whole pages reported on this event, even the Party newspaper—"Chongqing Evening Post” had reached two whole pages. The World Cup tournament also attracted one of the world's biggest packs of television audiences. China Central Television was broadcasting all 64 matches of the tournament on its free-to-air channel, which can be picked up by 97 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion citizens. Topics relating to the World Cup have dominated the Chinese website, too. Click on the Internet Webs various World Cup news come in a continuous stream;
Facing the formidable information stream, people cannot resist the media surrounding them, which exerting great impact upon their daily life. People possibly think that they fall in love with football “unconsciously”, but actually this is imposed by the media, a kind of “information hegemony”, they are just not aware of it.
"Media public opinion" is the result after the collusion between the businessmen and the media, it is under the influence of merchants, the media for the sake of chasing after audience rating and advertising then produce the cultural "consumption public opinion." During the World Cup millions of audiences had to face the huge advertising campaign. In South Africa the tournament was everywhere: billboards, radio stations, televisions and the internet. It seems as if every company was jumping on the World Cup bandwagon to flog their wares, and competed to be the best and most memorable in this football season: Adidas has invested nearly $200 million in advertising; America's Nike took out more than $100 million in advertising. Their purpose is obvious, to boost the sales of their products, promote their popularity so as to obtain higher profits. So we can the World Cup have been successfully shaped as a big media event once every four years, a kind of information hegemony was created, under which people consciously or unconsciously take out more money to consume the things related to this big event, thus the media and the businessmen can benefit the most from it.
2. Irrational carnival: the loss of people’s rational spirit
The World Cup 2010 is no longer merely a sporting event; it has become a carnival for people worldwide. Today, advances in communications mean any game can be broadcast live to any part of the globe, and more than 30 percent of soccer fans in the country have reportedly adjusted their rest schedules to watch the games. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, the event provided people with a pseudo-environment. It was like a mirror to reflect audiences’ various states of minds: it can be the strong patriotism, fawn on foreign powers, worship football heroes, and appreciate ecstatic fans. It seemed that how people would enjoy their ways of World Cup time totally depended on their own subjective preference. However, the one thing that invisible was reality. The World Cup offered people a chance to flee from reality. In those crazy days, people forgot about reality, forgot about the position, and were totally immersed in irrational carnival, the rational spirit at this time was defeated; all that left was people blindly following others’ footsteps.
Western cultures mostly assume that human life is explicable in terms of the rational choices of individual actors; rational action is that which can be justified within a specific cultural context (Chris Barker, 2008, p29). In the rational consciousness and the rational thought, people are supposed to adopt and discard with a critical eye, consider all the pros and cons. Therefore, when facing the World Cup, we need to adopt “the rationality”. But for various reasons, many people's behavior deviated the “the rationality” standard, but dominated by the massive perceptual experience, which brought about a phenomenon during the World Cup period: how many people would ask: “why do we want to look at the World Cup? What can it bring to us? Where it comes from? Is it supposed to cure all modern diseases?” Most people only know that the World Cup is a good thing, but they cannot explain the reason clearly. To answers these questions, we need to arouse the return of the individual rational spirit.
3. Cultural colonialism: the native culture being marginalized
Since the founding of new China, China’s sports industry has been received considerable development; some sports were booming and deeply loved by ordinary people, also they were endowed with localized culture connotation. In the 1960s, Chinese table tennis frequently obtained world championships, making China became the world's "table tennis kingdom”. In the 1970s, the famous "ping-pong diplomacy” made this game become an important component of Chinese culture; table tennis was a discourse exclusively belonged to Chinese. In the 1980s, the women's volleyball team received a series of victories in the international competitions, strongly built up the nation’s self-confidence and Chinese people spontaneously loved this sport; At that time, these sports’ driving forces and purposes were free from commercial interests, we can safely say that the media did not dominate social agenda; but rather only reflected the public opinion.
In the late 1980s, the situation has changed, football gradually accessed to China with an overwhelming force. The Western popular media which dominated the world's discourse system became the biggest winner. Football’s popularity in China was not Chinese people’s real desire, but the result of Western media’s propaganda and infiltration, and finally it occupied China’s culture field. Why Western mass media chose football, according to Scholar Wang Min’an’s explanation: “the World Cup is actually the most violent form of cultural colonization, because it again highlights the centre status of Europe and the superiority of white, so it is a ‘colonial conspiracy’"(郭松民，2006).Such are the facts: in the finally result of 2010 South Africa World Cup, Spain, Netherlands, Germany won the World Cup, also in 2006 Germany World Cup, the top three winners were all from European countries. Same old, same old: Europe wins World Cup. Now this kind of cultural colonization is happening in China, but many people just are not aware of it, it should arouse our attention.
Most of Chinese fans are quite familiar with the big teams as well as well-known football stars. But the state of Chinese football will perhaps be the last thing they want to talk about. The Chinese national football team has done pretty badly in international competitions. Scandals involving online gambling and match-fixing have besmirched the reputation of Chinese football. Chinese netizens and football fans are venting their anger against the Chinese national men's football team, with some even calling for their dismissal, after watching the outstanding performances of the DPRK team in the 2010 South African World Cup, an online survey said. The DPRK team, ranked 105 by FIFA, lost the match 2-1 to the Number 1 ranked Brazilians in South Africa on June 15. With a display full of passion, DPRK players have proved to the world that they can hold their own against better ranked teams and have quieted some critics who predicted that they would not score a single goal in the whole World Cup 2010 series. So for millions of Chinese football fans, appreciating the dazzling display of football skills and the professionalism of top-level stars during the World Cup is one way to forget the dismal state of Chinese football. But there is a fact they don’t realize: our native culture is being marginalized, we are just spectators enjoy mixing in this crowd, but certainly not this game’s master.
Summary
The World Cup is more than a football game, it is a big media event, which is controlled by the media and the businessmen and used as a tool to make money. More importantly it is a form of cultural colonialism to our native culture, many people unconsciously worship and have blind faith in foreign things and don’t realize our native culture is being marginalized. And as for the ecstatic football fans, their irrational carnival only lead to the loss of their rational spirit, so they blindly enjoy mixing in this fever. As stated above, today the World Cup’s connotations have changed, it is impossible for us to totally resist it, but we should get smarter to recognize its essence and look at it in a more rational manner.
Reference
［1］ Little john, S.W. Theories of human communication, Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2003.
［2］ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2010worldcup/index.html
［3］ Chris Barker, Cultural Studies, London: Sage Publications, 2008.
［4］ 郭松民《人们如此痴迷世界杯，是否消费主义的一个阴谋？》参见网址:http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2006-06-15/13539212244s.shtml