Violence = Yay!

I’m a huge fan of violence. That may come as a bit of a shock to those who know me. After all, I walked away from punching a guy in the face a few times after he poked me in the throat when I finally stood up to him in the eighth grade and I actually felt guilty. Those punches still leave me with a few pangs of regret even though he just sat there and took them passively, too shocked to even defend himself because I’d finally found the nuts to throw them.

It’s actually not very much regret. He was a jerk and deserved it. I definitely don’t take pride in it though. The shame bubbles up worst when I am asked by students if I’ve ever been in a fight when I’ve tried to convince them of the idiocy of violence all semester. When I drive past his junkyard/house on the way home from work it doesn’t hurt quite as much.

But being a member of the human species, violence is an integral part of my psyche. You can pretend to be as refined, intelligent, and gentile as possible, but you’ll still get a secret thrill out of violence in some venue whether it be the true bestial violence of a fistfight or the more stylized violence of art.

For me, one of my favorite forms of violent release is in sports, or actually the viewing of such controlled, rule-bound acts of violence, and the key phrase there is “controlled, rule-bound.” I find very little satisfaction in true fights driven by anger, hatred, or sense of pride. My indignation that the participants aren’t educated enough to rise above their animalistic tendencies outweighs the sheer joy a human receives from seeing another human being beaten into a bloody pulp.

I’m not even all that keen on the fighting sports like boxing and mixed martial arts. They’re all too close to the real thing, and, despite being willing to acknowledge my primal connection to violence, I’m not comfortable enough with it to enjoy such raw examples of it. No, I need my interpersonal violence metered out with large doses of tradition, moral codes, and strategy. The higher minded aspects of team contact sports help to salve that part of my emotional self that is revolted at the sight of one person intentionally bloodied by another.

So instead of being one of the kids who rushed to the crowd at the slightest suggestion of “Fight!” or becoming an aficionado of boxing or MMA, I turned my need for violence into an almost academic love for football, rugby, and hockey. I’ve never been able to stomach the more civilized sports that didn’t involve men slamming into each other with great force with the exception of tennis, and that only because I played for years. Baseball is boring. Golf barely qualifies for the title of sport, and basketball may be one of the most fun sports to play, but I’m bored to channel surfing by watching it.

The tackling in football and rugby and the checking in hockey resonate in that part of the soul that still resides on the savannah, the human ape having only recently descended from the trees in the distance in evolutionary terms. Instead of drawing the blood of a sexual rival in order to have access to the most prime poon in the tribe, I shout in ecstasy when a linebacker drives into a running back so hard that ball carrier looks like he was snatched back on a rope. I leap off of my couch, fist pumping, letting out Whitman’s “barbaric yawp” when Bobby Holik slams the guy with the puck so hard that the other guy seems to crumple to the white sheet of ice. When one of the New Zealand All Blacks slams an opposing player to the ground in an open-field tackle, I like to yodel.

Of course there are limits to my bloodlust. When there’s actual blood for one. My sense of empathy is too keen for me to handle real injuries. When that crushed running back jumps back up and jogs to the huddle, I revel in the violence. When that hockey player stays crumpled, that exhilaration turns into a twisting gut and averted face. I hate seeing anyone get hurt and will change the channel when the TV broadcast of a game replays the close up of a guy’s knee bending the wrong way ad nauseam. I didn’t want to see that close up the first time. Thanks for ruining my next five minutes, jackasses.

I also despise hockey fights and I’m one of the nearly nonexistent hockey fans who think that apparently. Sure fighting is about as traditional in ice hockey as the puck, but that doesn’t make it a good part of the sport. First, hockey fights are totally unnecessary. Old-school fans claim it’s necessary to prevent cheap shots on the team’s star players who often aren’t the biggest on the team. Great, except that’s what the multiple refs are there for. I’m sure a nice open-ice check would do the job just as well, and it’s so much more interesting. Besides, football is an even more violent sport by nature and yet fighting is extremely rare on the field. Are football refs just that much better at calling the cheap shots than the hockey refs? I seriously doubt it considering the increases in numbers and space football refs have to deal with. Besides, have you ever seen a hockey fight? They’re so fucking lame it’s not even funny. They’re too busy trying to keep their balance on their skates while trying to undress each other that half the time that no one even gets a real swing in. When they do, the shots are so awkward as to be uninspiring. I’d rather watch drunken white trash go at it in the parking lot of Wal-Mart than watch a hockey fight. The sport would be better without it.

I understand that some people need to get their violence elsewhere. Some prefer to get it first hand and go out looking for fights. I’ve never really understood that need to taste your own blood and feel your own pain, but I understand that some do actually enjoy that experience. Those people are stupid, but no more than most people, just in a different way. But the truth is that we all desire violence, you just have to be willing to admit it to yourself every once in a while.