Footprints

by Budd Glassberg

Reprinted with permission from the Zionsville Times Sentinel on September 19, 2007

This Whole Competitive Thing

"Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off." – Franklin D. Roosevelt

I am not sure when it first started to get out of whack. Competition has now evolved into areas previously not having a contest. War, politics and sports are acknowledged arenas for competition. Society long ago deemed these activities appropriate for competition. For the very competitive, sport is sometimes thought of as a peaceful substitute for war. Television now has taken activities that we used to enjoy for their artistic or aesthetic attributes and turned them into competitive activities.

My first inkling of competition forcing its way into the entertainment field was observing the Academy Awards. Awarding someone “Best Actor” seemed to me arbitrary and unnecessary. While I understand the hoopla surrounding such “events”, they seem forced and unnatural. I have no problem with awarding an actor an honor for lifetime achievement, but to say that actor was better than all others during the year seems whimsical. Likewise talent and beauty contests are always trying to tell us who is best or most beautiful. Can’t some things be enjoyed without comparing them to others? Just whose opinion of talent or beauty do we turn over the responsibility of crowning a “winner”? Is there no room for personal preference? Isn’t personal preference the only criteria a judge uses and won’t that be different from our own preferences? Competition judges are subjective, arbitrary, and prejudiced. No matter how “qualified” they are, they are still just rendering an opinion.

Three judges are given the honor of crowning our next recording pop artist based on a television show that showcases singers from around the country. “Reality” shows have people competing for money and to see who can best deceive others in order to stay on the island or in the house. Love has also become a competition where some unfortunates compete on television to enter a relationship with a “shell” or “husk”.

I sang with the Pride of Indy barbershop chorus for four years. One of those years I joined a quartet. The singing and harmonizing brought me much pleasure. The chorus each year competes in a regional contest and the top three choruses then compete internationally. Most of the singers enjoyed the competition and worked very hard to improve. We would sing two songs in competition. We would work on these songs ad-nauseum in hopes of impressing the judges. How I wished we had spent all of those hours instead learning new songs to add to our repertoire and used them to entertain the audience at our annual show. I left my quartet when they wanted to compete and shortly after left the chorus. I just wanted to sing.

The sports and entertainment line has been blurred to the point where it is hard to differentiate the two. Personally, I dismiss any sports competition that needs judges to determine a winner and prefer to look at that activity as skilled entertainment. I am not speaking of sports officials like referees or umpires. I mean judges who watch an event and grade it using points. When I watch diving on television, the announcers will often point out something that they see in the two seconds of the dive. On slow motion replay, I am amazed at the way they see a flaw in the dive that looked so good to me in real time. Suppose a judge blinked during the dive and kept her eyes open for the next diver? Might that effect the overall scoring in the competition? In ice skating competition, an announcer has to tell me that a figure skater’s twirled a double toe loop or triple axel. My eyes are not attuned to how many revolutions the skater turned. In my opinion, the routine the skater is performing is art not sport and can be appreciated without competition. Admittedly many enthusiasts love these events and are knowledgeable enough to appreciate those subtleties. I am not among them. I can appreciate the beauty in the performances without needing to know whom someone else thinks is best at them. This is just my opinion.

While it is not my intention to demean the endeavors of those who enjoy competing in the field of entertainment, I just wonder if our culture hasn’t gone overboard. Perhaps in our competitive society, we are pushing each other so hard in the pursuit of excellence, that we lose the joy of participation. We tend to idolize megastars (American Idol “winners”) while ignoring a multitude of talent within our communities who prefer performing to competing. Somewhere we crossed the line. Now we must know who is best at something. When we do that, we are telling all of the other performers that they are not as good.

Budd Glassberg is a 23 year resident of Zionsville who works and volunteers in the community. Visit www.runz.com for reprints of all his columns. You can reach him by email at budd@runz.com.