Abstract

Sport and the media have long exercised anxious minds keen to control unruly populations. A millennium ago, John of Salisbury warned that juggling, mime, and acting had negative impacts on “unoccupied minds … pampered by the solace of some pleasure … to their greater harm” (quoted in Zyvatkauskas 2007: 18). A few centuries later, Edward Said was equally concerned by such temptations:

Consciousness of sports, with its scores and history and technique and all the rest of it, is at the level of sophistication that is almost terrifying … investment is being made in those things that distract you from realities that are too complicated.