Male runners in the London Marathon
Photo by Alessia Pierdomenico
There are tens of thousands of them and each one runs alone,
without even a thought for victory, but simply in order to feel alive ...
before collapsing exhausted at the roadside.
I.
Despite what some people say - and despite its non-linear, fragmentary character - Torpedo the Ark maintains a rather strong level of critical continuity, frequently revisiting the same themes and referencing the same authors.
Thus it was that when half-way through writing a post this morning on why Baudrillard was right to describe jogging - along with dieting, bodybuilding, and so many other aspects of contemporary keep-fit culture - as a new form of voluntary servitude [1], I suddenly remembered a post published exactly ten years ago in which I had already expressed my dislike for running and the London Marathon as an ersatz sporting event: click here.
What I said then, I would still say now: for I still find its mix of fun-running, charity, narcissistic athleticism, media hype, and commercial sponsorship all wrapped up in Lycra and covered in sweat, deeply offensive; a form of socially approved masturbation on an obscene scale, the pleasure of which has nothing to do ultimately with either sport or sex; a corporate-media event that would have poor, exhausted Pheidippides spinning in his grave.
II.
Having said that, there was at least one anonymous reader of the 2016 post who found it anything other than amusing and sent me this irate email:
Dear Stephen Alexander,
Your post titled 'Why I Don't Much Care for the London Marathon' (26 April 2016) has left me fuming. For it is nothing more than a highly cynical and elitist critique of a fantastic mass-participation sporting event of which all true Londoners are rightly proud.
Using pseudo-intellectual frameworks and sneering cultural snobbery, not only do you wrongly suggest that it is a performative, commercialised display of vanity rather than true athletic ability, but you also reject and ridicule a friend's inclusive and joyous view of the race.
Who are you to look down upon and ridicule others? You may think you're intellectually superior because you have a Ph.D., but you're not - you are, rather, just a hateful individual whose palpable disdain for participants in the Marathon - you describe them as 'idiots endlessly pounding the pavements' - is both shocking and shameful. High-brow allusions and references do not validate what is essentially a peculiar personal grievance you seem to have against not just runners, but all humanity!
And so, despite nihilists like you who would sneer at everything and everyone, I shall continue to enjoy this wonderful community event, which each year raises tens of millions of pounds for good causes.
III.
I didn't reply at the time and, to be honest, don't really feel inclined to do so now - ten years on.
However, I would just point out that the 2016 post might possibly be read as a piece of Juvenalian satire and is thus in a long unapologetic but highly-entertaining tradition of writing. Adopting the role of a highly-articulate, somewhat cynical and misanthropic narrator is also not unknown in English letters ...
As a rather more intelligent (and sympathetic) reader of the post said to me: It works perfectly as a stylish (slightly absurd) piece of counter-cultural contrarianism.
Still, I hope my anonymous critic manages to channel all their righteous energy into crossing the finish line should they be running in this year's end-of-the-world show (i.e., the London Marathon).
Notes
[1] Baudrillard was a fiercely humorous critic of what people in the sixties, seventies and eighties called jogging, but which is now usually referred to as running (the former term having become a bit passé and not seen as serious and aspirational enough; as lacking in intensity for an age that must go further, faster).
See America, trans. Chris Turner (Verso, 1988), pp. 37-39 in which Baudrillard writes of those modern ascetics who, via the muscular exhaustion of their bodies, seek a higher plane of consciousness and are unable ever to come to rest. And see pp. 19-20 where he discusses the New York Marathon; an event that moves him to tears (of despair and laughter). Note that I paraphrase Baudrillard for the epigraph at the head of this post.
