Guest Blogger Says "Schadenfreude!" - Ron

It was a struggle to find something to write about the Gunners for SgGooner’s blog. I guess I wanted to write something different, everybody before me more or less covered the same ground - how they became Gooners etc etc. Maybe I’ll end up doing the same cos I haven’t read all the other guest blogs here. I’ll ramble along with some idea of the destination but I’ll just meander my way to reach it and won’t be too bothered if I don’t get there.

Anyway, as I was thinking about what to write, it occurred to me to ask why we (and I) support Arsenal. The usual reasons most give are obvious if you think about your own personally experience, because they play beautiful football or perhaps it was because watched they watched them play at some stage of their lives, usually when they were young. Both reasons apply to me but I wondered if there was something deeper. Why do I keep watching it every week? Of all the things to do in the world, why do I keep watching them every week, year after year.

History

I guess most would start by plunging into the depths of my foggy, distant memory on how I started becoming an Arsenal fan. When I was young, my dad took me to watch a football tournament which had Arsenal playing in it. It also starred the once mighty Red Star Belgrade and an Indian team that played barefoot. This barefoot team won the tournament and it was quite enjoyable to watch this quirky and unlikely team play. I remember one incident when an Indian player jumped over a stooping opposition player to get the ball and caused the whole stadium to roar with laughter. Anyway, I began to like Arsenal simply because I was attracted to its jersey, not because they won. IIRC, they didn’t even get into the finals. How could it be otherwise, red and white, the brightest colour scheme? Those were my reasons - it was the jersey, not the football or anything grand - simple as that.

I followed and played football through the years. In fact, I played more than I followed Arsenal or football for that matter. It was definitely more enjoyable playing football, at least until the era of the Invincibles. There wasn’t much good football to watch on TV as football in the 1980s was ugly. The hard tackle from behind was the tool used to not only get the ball but break the spirit of the striker. Thank God FIFA banned it and teams like Arsenal are the better for it.

Beauty

It has become annoyingly common to hear someone say “I support Arsenal because they play the (proverbial) beautiful game”. But I still do love this about them, and it’s not just Arsenal but any team that plays the same way - the West Coast Eagles (huh? An Aussie Rules football powerhouse), the Netherlands, Barcelona, Portugal and Brazil. The mechanical Germans, the sleep inducing Italians, the Americans who play football (not bloody ‘soccer’, fool!) as if it were an American football. These teams can all go to hell before they induce a coma in me. In fact, that kind of football is listed as a cure for insomnia in the Encyclopedia of Pharmaceuticals.

I’ve now become so drunk with their footballing beauty that I don’t like watching the other teams play because they’re just too boring. After 2 hours of the Arsenal, there’s not much else that can match them and since time is precious, why waste it on watching football that is as exciting as watching Singapore’s parliament in session (Taiwan’s parliament is another matter altogether)? I am an admirer of beauty and art and football isn’t any different. Music, art, architecture, sculpture, football - all the same. Perhaps football should be elevated higher because it is beauty produced reactively, quickly - almost at the spur of the moment, the body and mind acting together and spontaneously to produce art - the mind thinking ahead for possibilities but balanced with the need for immediate reactions whilst the body acts, following the mind, moving based instinct and on the memory of the muscles conditioned through thousands of hours of practice.

And there was no better artist than Thierry Henry and his Invicincibles. Henry was the one who wanted to be the artist for us. The Boltons of the world make football dreary but Henry was the cure. Any fool can score a goal, but Henry wanted more. He wanted to use the entire field as his canvas. To see him and his cohorts think and play as one, moving and passing forward quickly and inexorably in their swift counterattacks, knowing that the goal would somehow come was something the world was privileged to watch and which made the ugliness of the world forgotten for just 2 hours each week.

Cruelty

When I watch Mighty Arsenal steamroll over the weak and the fragile, I get this elated mix of triumphalism and pleasure. All the fist pumping, the cheering at the opponent’s misery are symptoms of this ‘cruelty’. The Germans have a word for it: ‘Schadenfreude’ and you may have seen me use this word in my posts (under Midnite77). It basically means to find pleasure in the misery and suffering of others. All your enemies have to be vanquished, exterminated like rats, and you delight in seeing them give up and flee. Conan the Librarian said it beautifully in his first movie: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

It’s great to win, to rub it into the faces of the vanquished and be after all, a glory hunter. Well you might say, I should then support Crapchester United if I have these sadistic megalomaniac tendencies. Well, refer to Element No. 1 - Beauty. They may sometimes play a mildly attractive game but that’s like comparing street graffiti to van Gogh’s Starry Night. And one day, when we bloody knock ManUre off their perch, to use Alex Furgeson’s own words, there would be nothing sweeter in the footballing world. Let me boil it down into 3 letters: KKD- Krush! Kill! Destroy! :-)

Sociability

Supporting Arsenal used to be an act of loneliness as I use to watch its games by myself because it was the club of the minority. I didn’t know any friends who supported Arsenal, most of the Singaporean lemmings support the usual two suspects, Crapchester United and Liverpool. So I watched their games alone, at night and in the dark, just me, my TV and Arsenal - it was like watching a movie in a cinema. But after some time, I got to know strangers who also supported Arsenal and some of them have become regular friends who watch the game every week. And with the internet and an official supporters club, I have a wider net of fellow supporters. Watching Arsenal is now a weekly social activity and the tribe of friends - Arsenal friends gather in Katong (at High) to watch Arsenal steamroll the Victim of the Week.

Vicariously

We live our lives through the team’s ups and downs and how much of our lives are lived vicariously depends on you. As fans of the Arsenal, are we looking for something bigger than ourselves to belong to or do we want to feel that elation that comes from winning trophies or vanquishing opponents. Do we enjoy that smug superiority that comes with winning, of outplaying some hapless team, especially like the arrogant ManUres of the world? Does the week feel better when Arsenal win? You have the answers to those questions.

So there you have it, a journey through the reasons for being a Gooner. An odd mix or do you feel the same way?