Wow! How emotional was that?
"There is something stronger than sex or happiness: the passion for illusion" - Jean Baudrillard.
Illusions are Emotional. They are also Efficient.
"The decision makers allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social justice and of scientific truth alike, the legitimation of that power is based on optimising the systems performance - efficiency" - Jean-François Lyotard.
It should come as no surprise to discover that Emotional and Efficient Illusions have defined our week in the linked neorealities of football and monarchy.
For 84 minutes, Liverpool and Arsenal served up the beautiful game. Proper football. Minimal corruption. Shades of '66 then kicked in as Liverpool were presented with a fake goal before rushing down the pitch to add an impudent fourth.
They think its all over.
The penalty, like its parallel hyperreality at the Emirates where a far more deserving spot kick was denied to the Gooners, had nothing to do with the laws of the game, the angle of vision of the match officials or enhancing the integrity of the competition. The penalty was given for the offence of: "Being a G14(18) Third Tier Club playing a G14(18) First Tier Club in the latter stages of the Champions (sic) League". Arsenal were, in fact, robbed by penalty decisions in all three acts of the theatre against Liverpool as the Premier League did not wish to be left out of the destruction of the nearest thing England has to total football. Total football played with integrity? Not when there's proper profit to be made, pal - although as we cannot imagine that Richard Scudamore uses the word "pal", you might wish to substitute "chappy" or "chum" instead?
Efficiency was the second reason that this hyperreality must occur. It optimises the performativity of a corrupt system for the prizes to be shared around the fragmented cartel while the serious, and sometimes not-so-serious, competition is undermined by all means, fair or foul. Although foul is preferable, obviously. Hicks and Gillett might do the mutual-gut-hating-thing but their passion for dollars trumps any tendency to self-destruct financially. A powerful team with powerful betting money supporting them on the pitch and two referees who, obviously unwittingly, undertook the desired hidden agenda of the G14(18), the sleeper organisation that has supplanted UEFA at the head of the European game. Beat that, Arsenal...
Every game has its story and when emotion is part of that story, we are drawn to an acceptance of the appearances presented to us by the Illusion. "A dodgy decision". "All the big decisions went against us". "We have to live with decisions like that but, for seven or eight weeks now, we have had to swallow things you would rather not swallow". Wenger's continuing eureka moment with regards to the negative correlatory link between the goals of corruption and the goals of Arsenal Football Club are becoming an island of Reality in the sea of Illusion. Of course, Benitez took on the position of any senior management figure within a power operation when he completely sidelined any questions relating to the injustices that might obscure the hyperreality of the Texan Reds Illusory triumph.
We are robbed too. The game could have been remembered as an amazing football match decided by Theo Walcott's astonishing slalom run. Instead it is remembered as a football match culminating in an audacious boiler room scam - the match evolved into an artifice.
Fröjdfeldt's phantasmagoric imagery defined this nebulous reality and the G14(18), now allegedly morphed into their new form as the European Club Forum, have achieved their optimised Champions League Semi Finals from a marketing perspective - Schalke 04 or Fenerbahçe are minimal brands in the Illusory World of European Football.
Charlemagne, in The Economist: "A political union hatched together by a fractious elite, and answerable only to itself, is not a model for anybody to follow". With the exception of Platini and his personal brand of realpolitik, Charlemagne's comments would depict the G14(18)/UEFA perfectly. Invalid.
The caste cast the cast, as they might say in Italy, in Italian... Horseracing is already total simulation and, unless concerted efforts are made to pull football back from the brink which Alisher Usmanov represents, football too will make the leap from Illusion to Simulation. It will be very very profitable though, in the short-term, for some people. So, presumably, we have to accept that "thats alright then"?
Emotions and Efficiency in Sport are only interesting because the hyperreality of football demands inappropriate coverage in a world that should be defined by Real issues. We cannot imagine that there was too much interest in Waziristan as to whether the destruction of the tower of Babel warranted a penalty, for example.
Some things are more important than football, although, incidentally, very few things are as important as developments in Waziristan.
Craven Cottage has also been an Emotional place this week. A double whammy of corruption covering murder and football, timed to perfection by the deep state, a Reality so Real that it could not be reported as News by the mainstream media, becoming merely news instead. For standing up for his murdered son, Mohamed al-Fayed has been given a decade of bad press before a split decision, based on the evidence presented to the court and most definitely not on any withheld evidence, cleared the deep state, and Nick The Corfiot in particular, of any cause and effect linkages to the murder in Paris. Of course, it was unfortunate that MI6 had undertaken blue sky scenario planning on taking out Milosevic in a similar hit in a tunnel and that some of the images from the tunnel were also rather awkward (and expensive to secrete) with regard to this particular Illusion. Justice was sidelined. Just a standard British Diplock court ruling, nothing unusual in that...
The judicial clearing of the deep state and the associated relegation of Fulham Football Club from the Premiership occurring in conjunction is a nice touch, however - the perpetration of an Illusion often takes on maximal impact when combined with a related Illusion.
Gordon Brown and The Two Prince's have said they want this matter to go no further. We would assume that Nick The Corfiot would think likewise. With dignity, the Fulham owner is accommodating the deep state in their wishes and the Real Irony of this Illusion is that, by allowing the Sacrifice of Dodi and Diana by the Establishment to remain a Matter Of Some Uncertainty, al-Fayed will, perhaps, be allowed to achieve his lifelong aim of a British passport. For services rendered, one assumes...
So now that we are all able to rest at night reassured in the knowledge that The Princess and The Son were murdered by Objects - motorbikes, seatbelts, alcohol. We should take a moment to consider the real Real reasons why this murder was committed.
"Behind the paparazzi there are the media, behind the media, us, all of us: we whose desires shape the media; we who are the medium, the network and the conducting current. There are no longer either actors or spectators; all are immersed in the same reality, in the same revolving responsibility, in a single impersonal destiny which is merely the fulfillment of a collective desire" - Baudrillard.
'Nuff said.
Back to the Really Important World of Football and Richard Williams in The Guardian: "More than naked financial greed and the wretched excesses it provokes, the creeping desire to manipulate the truth is what threatens to destroy the appeal of sport in the modern world".
Football Is Fixed: "More than naked financial greed and the wretched excesses it provokes, the rampant desire to manipulate the truth is what threatens to destroy the planet in the postmodern world".
Baudrillard's "perfectly undeserved, sacrificial death" applied to Diana. In our current phase of hyperrealities, football has proved Shankley right by becoming more important than a matter of life and death. By making this dangerous liaison, football is also creating the momentum towards its very own and entirely unique "perfectly undeserved, sacrificial death".
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
