If I were Dustin Brown I would play tennis like him*

Dustin Brown is probably one of the most peculiar tennis players of the present time. There follows a biographical sketch of this distinctive character of the ATP circuit

If the order and classification of the ATP rankings depended on levels of popularity and brand awareness, surely Dustin Brown would position himself in the first half of the top one hundred best players of the world. He draws attention in many ways in that shared lineage, half German –because of his mother- half Jamaican –father- that makes him, on the one hand, prefer the German nationality and residence to pursue the development of his sport career, and on the other hand, enjoys his jamaican  bloodline as it is shown on his looks and on his tastes on music. His dreadlocks stand out on the ATP circuit always including him on the photo galleries of the tournaments like on the last Wimbledon championships in which he leads a photo selection showing the particular forms of the hairs of male and female players at the moment of impacting the ball. It is fair to say within this criterion that only Brown –and at the moment a junior unknown Stefanos Tsitsipas- participates on this pick: the rest are female players of the WTA.

His personal history is full of pecularities too. Having born and living in Germany until the age of 11, he migrated with his parents to Jamaica because of economic causes that included the costs of his tennis training. In Jamaica Dustin would keep on playing his favourite sport but the island didn’t have -among other things- neither good courts nor adequate facilities. Only when he was 20 he returned to Europe to undertake his professional career. The plan was like this: his parents would take a loan and buy him a Volkswagen camper van with three beds, a kitchen and a bathroom. This would let Dustin travel all around Europe from tournament to tournament at a low cost, saving on restaurants and hotel rooms. Moreover, like many other tennis players looking for extra incomes, Dustin would string rackets for others players in his free hours outside the courts.

It took Dustin and his family six years to cancel that loan and after that moment he could achieve his first important results on the circuit. In 2010 after a series of good results on challenger tournaments –second level tournaments if we take ATP tournaments as a whole- he positioned himself within the top first one hundred players: no. 99 of the ATP ranking. But it wasn’t until 2013 that Brown gained recognition from the major tennis audience by defeating the unbearable criyin’ baby of Lleyton Hewitt at Wimbledon’s second round. That day Brown started to attract the flashes and not only because of his appearance. Hewitt suffered the constant ‘serve & volley’ style that Dustin Brown applies almost as his unique strategy on the court without taking into notice that today the top players are characterized by a powerful serve and by directing their shots from the baseline, visiting the net in few ocassions as a consequence. He rehearses the most extraordinary parabolas with his racket so that, after being returned, he could fly and dive into the courts saving this way incredible points.

In 2015 Brown would perform a huge strike. As the man who made reggae music to be listened in the entire world  suceeding in London, Dustin shone on Wimbledon again this time winning over that another tireless warrior called Rafael Nadal. Four sets in which Brown unfolded all his mastery in the execution of slices, jumping volleys and balls striken almost from the ground. He practised many fantastic points like the 0-30 receiving in the ninth game of the first set : a right-handed slice with an up and down direction, hitting the ball in a quick movement and charging it with an counter-effect making the ball get punctured the very moment it touched the ground and slipped away from Nadal. (Watch “Rafael Nadal vs Dustin Brown Highlights Wimbledon 2015“). These kind of plays produced by thousands by Brown are the ones that makes him be every week on the top ten’s of the most spectacular actions of the circuit.

Like any other professional activity, tennis avoids risk as a principle for developing itself. In that enviroment Brown plays, gifts show and challenges opponents making those to respond in a spectacular way too and reaching superlatives levels when he gets to return balls that are impossible for rivals. Irrational, naive for many people, those who enjoy this sport are grateful for having the possibility of watching something that is not just power and speed . It is not that we don’t admire those skills on the best players of the circuit… as a declaration of principles –and an evidence of the structural homology explained in previous posts following Pierre Bourdieu’s theory- in an official interview of the last Wimbledon Championships –the ‘If Series’- when the reporter asked Brown ‘if you could meet one other sport star’ Dustin answered doubtless ‘Dennis Rodman’.

* The original title of this note in spanish is ‘Si yo fuera Dustin Brown jugaría cómo él’ and it makes reference to a song by Manu Chao thay says ‘si yo fuera Maradona, viviría como él…’ (If I were Maradona, I would have a lifestyle like his).

On the edge of the new century (excerpts)

“The growth of wealth is so enormous that it has in effect completely transformed the situation. The global economy’s capacity to increase production, even with highly unequal distribution, has transformed the consumer market first in the United States, then in Australia and in Europe, but increasingly everywhere. We should not forget that, whatever yardstick is used, the majority of peoples are better off at the end of the twentieth century, in spite of the extraordinary catastrophes that have marked it. There are one or two exceptions, in which the situation has deteriorated, particularly in recent years in Africa and Russia. But overall, we have today three times the population there was at the start of the twentieth century, and all these people are physically stronger, taller, longer-living, and healthier. They suffer less hunger and famine, enjoy a higher income , and have an immeasurably greater access to goods and services, including those which guarantee greater oportunities in life, such as education.

This is also true of poorer countries. After all, there hasn’t been a famine in India since 1943. Hunger in most of the world, with a couple of exceptions, is no longer something that human beings are obliged to live with. (…) In developed countries, human beings no longer live in the age of necessities, and can choose from the things they want, instead of having to choose between not having enough to eat and not having a roof over their heads. They no longer need to worry about their daily bread, and they only need to decide whether they want a sandwich with French bread or focaccia, with cooked or smoked ham, and with fresh or dried tomatoes. This has transformed the economy in terms of services as well as material goods. Just consider the accessibility of culture: the number of books and records, the number of people who can find entertainment and information at all times of the day. There is no precedent for this in the history of mankind.

In developed countries, even the poorest and the most abandoned live immeasurably better than they grandparents did. This is one of the reasons for the successful return of free-market beliefs, albeit only for a short period. Its objective was not to abolish poverty or generate redistribution and social justice, but for all its injustice, the poor tend to accept it, as even they are considerably richer.”

Hobsbawm, Eric. (2000). On the edge of the new century. New York. The New Press. Pages 109-110.

Good manners

Pepe is a spanish peasant who works his land with effort and is earning a living with it. Revolutionists arrive at his village and help Pepe and his neighbours to defeat Franco’s troops so they can take control of the village. Once they accomplish this they have an assembly in which they discuss what to do with the lands. Most of them think that all the lands (both, the ones of the villagers and the ones of the landlords) must be unified and collectivized so they can increase food production and feed the comrades who are fighting at the front. But Pepe –it seems he is the only one who thinks like this- doesn’t want to give his land to collectivization. He alleges that he devoted a lot of work and effort on his land (that’s why he is succesful) and that not everybody knows how to work the soil.

I do not want to discuss who is right or who is not. I want to focus on the attitude taken by the revolutionists at the meeting. They all think they should collectivize the lands regardless personal interests or individual needs like the ones of Pepe, even if the latter does not want to or his land represents only a little farm. Instead of ignoring and leaving with his lonely little piece of land the leflists pass over, vote and oblige him to give it to collectivization, in a new edition of the tyranny of the masses. You could say that this is correct, in a context of a war for revolution against fascism you should not consider individual aspects. What still surprise me is that this kind of attitude can be found nowadays in many left activists when the presence of the left movement is not precisely hegemonic. And what is more: some of their proposals are extremely pompous like nationalizing the bank, what kind of analysis allows them to reach such a conclusion that they have the power to do so?

To bring more and more consensus to the left movement I think it would be better to leave exceptional cases like Pepe’s on their own because if we are right they are going to realize –sooner or later- that they have to join us. And if they don’t they will remain as a minority group and will not make the difference. In the present conditions forcing people to obey is not the right choice because in a democracy you have to convince with arguments not compelling people to think the way you want them to do.

‘Land and freedom’ (Ken Loach, 1995).

Freedom

I have recently seen ‘La libertad’ of Lisandro Alonso and while I was watching the movie it reminded me of something I had read on Eric Hobsbawm’s On the edge of the new century (The New Press, 2000). In this work, an interview conducted by the italian journalist and politician Antonio Polito, Hobsbawm praises the progress and development free-market capitalism has brought to almost all countries in the world. Even considering enormous catastrophes like world wars, the problem with highly unequal distribution or a few exceptions of the present (like some African countries or Russia) the English historian highlights the overall growth of wealth experienced by our societies along the twentieth century as comparised to any time in the past, from the increase of population to the assurance of health and education services, from the accesibility of culture to the enhancement of the power of choice due to the countless variety of goods and services we can pick from.

That is what you see in ‘La libertad’ . Misael is a lumberjack who works in a solitudinous area, probably in some part of the Argentina’s littoral, in a savage way of living, sleeping in a tent full of holes and eating what he hunts in the forest. But whenever he feels like he can drive the foreman’s pickup truck to the nearest road, make a stop at the gas station and, with the money he earns from the lumbers, buy the goods he needs (cigarettes and Fanta). Moreover: despite his solitary condition he keeps in touch with his mother as he can phone to a neighbour and ask him to send her his regards. Or he can get some amusement by listening to pop music on the radio (or to the news if he wants).

Likewise we have not considered the development and innovation in technologies of the present time. If that were the case -and Alonso wanted to film a lumberjack like Misael again- he might use a cell phone with internet connection.

‘The leftovers’

What would you say if someone proposed you that with a group of less than 10 individuals, you could survive on this planet after a death mortal virus has occurred?

You could consider yourself lucky, having the possibility of keeping with something more than 7 billion people have lost. Could you imagine how it would be to survive when everyone around you is dying? You wouldn´t feel so lucky. This is what The last man on earth, the Fox series starring Will Forte, sets out. Phil Miller is one of a little group of survivors that has prevailed on this planet earth after a death mortal virus killed almost every single form of life. One year has passed since Phil buried his parents and, having been left alone, he takes the roads of America to find company. After going round and round he decides to return to his hometown, not without leaving the following message on every signpost: ‘Alive in Tucson’.

New people will appear on Phil’s life, thanks to the messages left on those big road signs. Not in the order he would like but, regardless the particular characteristics of each one,[1] there is something that everyone shares: the lack of skills/willingness to work on tasks that are necessary to preserve life, like producing food or energy supplies. A good sample of the prototipical human beings of this century, the characters of this story were in their recent past life inhabitants of big cities, used to the comfort and facilities of these great masses of concrete.

With the exception of ‘the other’ Phil Miller (intelligent, strong, good-looking) the rest of the members of LMOE doesn’t seem to know or have the will to reconstruct the human civilization. They just limit to consume the leftovers of the past in an indiferent and self-destructive way that doesn’t care much about the future. Their destination is tragic: they had the misfortune of being the few survivors on this planet Earth, neither have skills nor knowledge, they just count on the stock left by the previous world.

The inertia of the real

In The pervert’s guide to ideology (2012), Slavoj Žižek analyses, from Mojave dessert cemetery of planes, the ‘other side of capitalism’: the great amount of waste that it produces, consequence of its permanent crisis that pushes forwards to reinvent itself all the time, producing unlimited number of goods, self-revolutionising itself. Žižek says that instead of turning our faces to this other side of capitalism, rather we should accept this side maybe because the recognition of this could be the first step to ‘break out of this eternal cycle of functioning’: reconsidering the existence of useless objects and contemplating their mute presence on this planet, we could start creating something entirely new.

The post-apocaliptic scenario that LMOE sets out has that nature. Nothing is useful, because everything is waste. Their characters not only lack any skills to face the future, they may as well feel overwhelmed by the extent of the tasks they might afford. The only two responses they could attempt to give are these: the needed or careless way of consumption of the leftovers, or its contemplation beyond meaning, because they are still shocked by the situation they are immersed in.

If we consider the series by the remarks made so far you could say it’s one hell of a drama. It’s the acting, the performers, the situations and the order of events what makes of LMOE a marvellous comedy. Take Phil Miller for example: he represents all the immature that a man can be, from the initial laziness to the total dependency of all his acts because of Melissa (January Jones), always wearing a smile. Remember when, after convincing Carol and Melissa that the fastest and moral way of repopulating the Earth is by having sex with both of them (by separate), he mounts  a scene with big amplifiers, guitars, fireworks and a recording of him saying “That orgasm was generously provided by…”.  Or the personal conflict he suffers because he doesn’t take a decision whether leaving Todd (Mel Rodríguez) alone in the dessert or taking him back again to their home.

On a background of loneliness and a lack of understanding, the characters of LMOE remind us how ridiculous and pathetic human beings can be.

 

[1]  Married with the non-attractive and annoying Carol Pilbasian, Phil encounters -disgracefully for him few days later- a second last woman on Earth, the physically appealing Melissa Chartres.