The Sports Arena-& theater Has Always Been A Venue For Protest
I have wondered, even before these last few days, how the anthem came into existence before sports events. So I did a bit of research. Playing, or signing the song is as natural as apple pie and baseball in America.
Sep 25, 2017 @ 09:00 AM 1,002
The Sports Arena Has Always Been A Venue For Protest
https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/09/25/the-sports-arena-has-always-been-a-venue-for-protest/#7b047900180c
Sarah Bond , Contributor
historian, digital humanist and baseball fan
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
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DETROIT, MI - SEPTEMBER 24: Members of the Detroit Lions take a knee during the playing of the national anthem prior to the start of the game against the Atlanta Falcons at Ford Field on September 24, 2017 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Rey Del Rio/Getty Images)
Attention was focused firmly on the NFL yesterday, as players, coaches and teams responded to President Trump's comments about NFL players who kneel during the national anthem. While many have claimed that politics have no place in sports, the use of athletic competitions to protest current events is nothing new. Both theaters and sporting arenas have always been a venue where the people could be heard and discontent with the status quo registered.
In 56 BCE, Marcus Tullius Cicero commented on the places where the people might communicate with their politicians: "In truth, there are three places in which the opinion and inclination of the Roman people may be ascertained in the greatest degree; at speeches, the assemblies and at the games and exhibitions of gladiators." The late Roman Republic of the first century BCE had already seen a number of thespians and athletes use their forum for political ends.
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Actors prepare for a performance in the theater. Mosaic originally from Pompeii and now in Naples and the National Archaeological Museum.
According to Cicero, an actor....................
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Unlike opera and most theatrical events today, sporting events are unique in that they bring both the wealthy and the less fortunate together in one venue; not an easy thing to do. In antiquity, this meant physically within one space such as the Colosseum or the Circus Maximus, where admission was often free and provided by wealthy patrons or the emperor himself. Today, the rise of broadcast television and internet streaming mean sports are similarly accessible to billions that can't afford a pricey seat on the fifty-yard line.........................
.............The lesson to take from the riots are not that violence is effective--it is not and never will be--but rather that politics and sports have never been mutually exclusive spheres. They have always been intimately connected. Athletic competition as well as theatrical events remain direct lines for speaking to politicians through the proxy of the athlete or the actor because fame provides these individuals with unique voices that can speak to the discontent of millions who feel unheard, invisible and oppressed.
It’s actually very strange for sports games to begin with the national anthem
https://www.vox.com/2016/9/3/12774172/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-why?yptr=yahoo
Updated by Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Sep 25, 2017, 11:38am EDT
The controversy over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem has managed to become the number one issue in America, despite millions of US citizens in Puerto Rico living without water or power after Hurricane Maria. For protesting NFL players, like quarterback Colin Kaepernick, their demonstrations are about racism and police violence. “We will not stand for the injustice that has plagued people of color in this country,” the players of the Seattle Seahawks wrote in a Sunday statement explaining their unanimous decision to protest during the anthem.
President Trump, who kicked this controversy into high gear on Friday after calling Kaepernick a “son of a bitch” ........................................
If you step back and think about it for a bit, though, the idea that a sports league “must respect” the flag is actually very strange. We don’t listen to the national anthem at other mass cultural events. The latest Marvel film doesn’t open with “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Nor is it normal, internationally speaking, for sports teams to play national anthems before domestic sporting events. You don’t hear “God Save the Queen” before English Premier League matches. When you ask non-Americans about the patriotic spectacle that suffuses American sports, they tend to find it bizarre.
Playing the national anthem before national sports games started for very specific historical reasons — the need to get the public to help the war effort during World Wars I and II, specifically. This justification no longer held after 1945, but leagues came to realize that infusing sports with patriotism was great advertising and continued the practice. The NFL playing the national anthem is less about genuine honor for the country and more a way of keeping fans invested in professional football.
The truth is that displays of patriotism have never been politically neutral displays of national unity; they’ve always had ulterior motivations and multiple meanings. Kneeling during the national anthem is no more inherently disrespectful than the NFL turning patriotic displays into a marketing tactic is. The fact that the president is singling out Kaepernick and other NFL players who are protesting racism says that despite what Trump says, this is very much about race.
Why Americans hear the national anthem before sports events
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A brief history of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ being played at games and getting no respect
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=history+of+playing+national+anthem+at+sporting+events&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-004
By Fred Barbash and Travis M. Andrews August 30, 2016
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This is the 1918 team photo of the Boston Red Sox. Locals questioned their guts because they were on a baseball field instead of a battlefield. Fans soured on them after their demands for more money held up a World Series game. And when the 1918 Boston Red Sox finally won the title, the feat was greeted with little more than mild enthusiasm. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library via AP)
As legend has it, singing the national anthem at sporting events began during the 1918 World Series, when the nation was at war. As recounted by the New York Times of Sept. 6, 1918, it was the seventh-inning stretch of the first game between the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox.
“As the crowd of 10,274 spectators — the smallest that has witnessed the diamond classic in many years — stood up to take their afternoon yawn, that has been the privilege and custom of baseball fans for many generations, the band broke forth to the strains of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’
The event had a public relations bonus for ballplayers in 1918, as there were people wondering why they were on the ballfield rather than the battlefield.
The idea caught on.
“Not to be outdone,” writes Marc Ferris in his cultural history of the anthem, “Red Sox owner Harry Frazee opened each game in Boston with it.”
Making this even more interesting is the fact that “The Star-Spangled Banner” — which borrowed its difficult melody from a “To Anacreon in Heaven,” a British song about boozing and womanizing — wasn’t adopted as the official national anthem of the U.S. until 1931.
As time passed, playing and singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” became as routine as cracker jacks at ballgames. And for many the patriotic awe faded............................