eJournals Colloquia Germanica 49/4

Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/121
2016
494

Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen!

121
2016
Edward Muston
At the time of his untimely death in 2014, Michael Glawogger was duly recognized as one of the greatest Austrian documentary filmmakers. This article examines his early film Frankreich, wir kommen! about Austrian participation in the 1998 World Cup in France. In a close-reading of statements made by various Austrian football fans profiled in the film, I argue that the film shows football less as a replacement for organized religion, as it has often been argued, but more as a replacement for love. Indeed, I show that in the aftermath of the hooligan attacks at the 1998 World Cup, attacks perpetrated by Germans, Glawogger exposes the particularly Austrian character of this libidinal attachment to the beautiful game.
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Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 371 Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! Edward Muston Beloit College Abstract: At the time of his untimely death in 2014, Michael Glawogger was duly recognized as one of the greatest Austrian documentary filmmakers� This article examines his early film Frankreich, wir kommen! about Austrian participation in the 1998 World Cup in France� In a close-reading of statements made by various Austrian football fans profiled in the film, I argue that the film shows football less as a replacement for organized religion, as it has often been argued, but more as a replacement for love� Indeed, I show that in the aftermath of the hooligan attacks at the 1998 World Cup, attacks perpetrated by Germans, Glawogger exposes the particularly Austrian character of this libidinal attachment to the beautiful game� Keywords: Glawogger, Austria, soccer, football, Fußball, hooliganism, religion, spectatorship For much of Europe, the twentieth century precipitated the increased secularization of public space and the rapid growth of a demographic that claims no religious affiliation� Continuing into the present, successive generations of young adults show the greatest tendency to shrug off the religious education acquired in childhood� Although Austria still defines itself as a Catholic country, it has one of the highest rates of secularization as for many Austrians religious disaffiliation continues into adulthood (McClendon and Hackett 1305—06)� 1 This waning of organized religion in Austria can also be seen as directly proportional if not causally connected to its increasing sportification and to a new appreciation of football that transcends traditional class divides (Connor 100)� One of the most common myths about football specifically is that by appropriating ritualistic traits it has replaced the need for religion in contemporary society� For example, for fans, the week no longer revolves around the Sunday sermon, but 372 Edward Muston climaxes with Saturday afternoon’s match; modern pilgrims do not visit famous cathedrals, but expend vast sums to accompany their team to away matches or to visit sports museums; life is not understood in reference to an afterlife, but stops and starts with the referee’s whistle (Eastman and Riggs 259)� Franzobel, Austria’s pre-eminent literary Sportfreund and an author whose success follows from his ability to make football palatable to high-brow readers, chronicles the many subtle ways sport has infiltrated not only dominant culture in Austria, but also its vocabulary and a conceptual framework for interpreting the world ( Sprache 12—13)� 2 Rather than a straight replacement for religion, Michael Glawogger’s film Frankreich, wir kommen! -- a documentary about Austria’s participation in the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France-- shows that disaffiliation enables sport and religion to interact in interesting and often highly personal ways, in turn reshaping Austria’s national identity� Glawogger’s film presents a broad cross-section of male Austrian football fans as they watch their national team prepare for and compete in the 1998 World Cup� Rather than portraying toned young athletes as they engage in various homosocial rituals nominally intended to cement team spirit-- a strategy that was hugely successful for Sönke Wortmann’s documentary Deutschland, ein Sommermärchen - Glawogger’s film offers both a generous and critical perspective on the way Austrian spectators relate to football and how they draw personal meaning from it� 3 Glawogger juxtaposes these Austrian fans with those of the nations they compete against (Cameroon, Chile, and Italy) to compare and contrast different cultural modes of spectatorship� However, only the Austrian fans are accorded speaking roles in the film and their comments reveal that football functions for them less as a well-structured, positivistic code of conduct, or even a mode of communal activity, than a protean replacement for whatever is otherwise lacking in their lives� For the majority of the men in the film, it is not an absence of religious belief or the desire for an alternative transcendental spirituality that they miss, but rather a poignant shortage of strong interpersonal connections� In fact, Glawogger’s film presents almost every relationship to football in terms of love not only between spectators and the game, but more importantly among spectators themselves: for the men, watching the Austrian team play engenders a type of communal love -perhaps even in the sense of agape-- often absent in late capitalist Austria� For some fans, football cements the bonds within families, and in extreme cases, connects family members to the detriment of more appropriate libidinal connections� Glawogger’s film exposes how a devotion to football substitutes for interpersonal relationships and can engender a prolonged adolescence exemplified in three of the film’s major figures, Roland Spöttling, Gérard Erber, and Kurt Dietl� Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 373 This focus on love serves as both a political statement about sports spectatorship as such, while also aiming to win over an Austrian public traditionally disinclined to team sports� By comparing and frequently conflating sport and religion, Frankreich, wir kommen! conveys a strong political statement about Austrian spectator culture and the merits of spectator sport in general� Glawogger’s decision to shape his film around love functions as a rejection of the popular belief that passionate spectatorship necessarily spills over into hooliganism, a view that held great currency in the weeks and months after the World Cup� The film was a timely intervention in discussions of hooliganism, since, despite the many sublime moments of skill, individual success, and national triumph, the 1998 World Cup was marred by horrific fan violence� Indeed, the most discussed image in the final weeks of the tournament was not of Zinedine Zidane rising above the Brazilian defense to score the winning goal, or even Didier Deschamps lofting the World Cup Trophy, but the pictures of French gendarme Daniel Nivel lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood� Nivel was attacked in Lens on June 21 st , 1998 during Germany’s match against Yugoslavia� Some thirty German hooligans, four of whom, Frank Renger, Arno Reifschlager, Christopher Rauch, and Andre Zawacki were imprisoned for their actions, cornered Nivel and beat him brutally� He spent six weeks in a coma and was left permanently disabled� Although such acts of violence have long accompanied football, this assault forced European authorities, particularly those in Germany and Austria, to acknowledge that hooliganism was not merely a British phenomenon but very much a domestic problem� Ultimately, Austrian authorities reacted to the public outcry following this attack by instituting a system of police fan-relations officers ( Fanbetreuer ) who not only liaise with fan-groups, but also categorize and track violent fans, like the Central Sports Intelligence Unit (Zentrale Informationsstelle für Sportseinsätze) in Germany (Krennhuber)� By making no reference to the attack and by excluding any fans who combine active spectatorship with violence, Glawogger attempts to redeem football fans at a time when their passion was under intense social scrutiny and pressure� Glawogger’s focus on love in Frankreich, wir kommen! asserts a particularly Austrian relationship to football in distinction to violently inclined German fans� Although spectator violence remains a persistent problem in many European countries, the minimal occurrence of violence in Austria supports Glawogger’s exclusively peace-loving fans� 4 In a recent article, entitled “Unsere Problemfans spielen europaweit eine Nullrolle” in the Austrian football magazine Der Ballesterer , Thomas Winkelmann, a Viennese policeman and fan-relations officer, explains: “Den klassischen Hooliganismus, wie er in Deutschland, den Niederlanden oder England praktiziert wird, gibt es bei uns zum Glück fast nicht� […] Österreich spielt hier in einer anderen Liga” (qtd� in Krennhuber)� Rather than 374 Edward Muston stoking fears of hooligans running amok, Winkelmann describes spectatorship in Austria as having very different stakes than in Germany; although drunken fans are often guilty of sporadic violent acts, the typical Austrian football fan, like those on display in Frankreich, wir kommen! come together not in search of violence, but out of love of the game� Glawogger’s film also functions as a counterpoint to Elfriede Jelinek’s stunning and powerful critique of sport and sport spectatorship in her play Ein Sportstück � 5 Screened just a year after the first performance of Jelinek’s play, Frankreich, wir kommen! works on a variety of fronts to domesticate soccer, make it socially acceptable, and undercut the high-brow critique of sport, without however raising it to the status of high art� 6 The film strives to counter a particular Austrian suspicion of football as the most popular and hence low-brow sport� Where Jelinek expressed a particular high-cultural critique of sports fans by representing them not as individuals but as interchangeable and anonymous, Glawogger constructs intimate portraits of his subjects� They are not nameless figures within a fascist-inclined crowd, but alienated subjects searching for meaningful relationships� By focusing on love, Glawogger also confronts Jelinek’s representation of the sports spectator as an unrepentant narcissist obsessed with achieving ever higher intensities of experience� The figures in Frankreich, wir kommen! direct their desires for libidinal attachments outwards, but are forced to substitute athletes and teams for absent or unattainable others� Playing a team sport, watching games, and discussing their outcomes is presented as a small respite from the alienation of everyday life� Nevertheless, by displaying only male sports fans and marginalizing women as supportive of their sports-obsessed sons and husbands, the film does little to address Jelinek’s denunciation of football’s fundamental misogyny� 7 Glawogger seems less interested in addressing problematic aspects of football’s history than anxious to expose the manifest harmlessness of its contemporary Austrian acolytes� The misadventures of the underachieving Austrian national team also combine usefully with these melancholic fans to create an ironic distance from any strong nationalist sentiment� 8 Ultimately, the film carves out a space for football and its fans within an Austrian identity founded on great art and safely individualistic sports such as skiing, a sport that has always been cultivated as the perfect advertisement for the pristine Austrian Alps� 9 Glawogger's decision to concentrate his documentary on the Austrian national team’s fans rather than the players provides an important commentary on the consumption of sport in contemporary society� The corporatization of professional football means that fans are often far more devoted to their teams than the “mercenary” players who regularly switch teams and even exchange passports when presented with a better, i�e�, more lucrative opportunity� In con- Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 375 trast, for the most passionate spectators, an individual’s birthplace continues to determine both national and club affiliation and while fair-weather fans are grudgingly tolerated, switching allegiances is believed as impossible as changing one’s blood-type� 10 In his numerous essays on the mythical value of sport in contemporary society, Roland Barthes consistently argued that this passion follows from the unique metamorphosis that sports spectators undergo in the stadium as they become fundamentally involved in the spectacle: certainly no game could exist without the athletes on the field, but it would have little significance without spectators� 11 Barthes writes: At certain periods, in certain societies, the theater has had a major social function: it collected the entire city within a shared experience: the knowledge of its own passions� Today it is sport that in its way performs this function� Except the city has enlarged: it is no longer a town, it is a country, often even, so to speak, the whole world; sport is a great modern institution cast in the ancestral forms of spectacle� Why? Why love sport? First, it must be remembered that everything happening to the player also happens to the spectator� But whereas in the theater the spetator is only a voyeur, in sport he is a participant, an actor� (57—59) Parallelling Barthes, the Austrian author Peter Handke describes spectators as “active participants” (“Aktivisten des Spiels”), whom he contrasts with the passive audience in the bourgeois theatre� In his essay “Die Welt im Fußball,” Handke writes: Mögen auch die Spieler spielen, die Zuschauer spielen selten mit ; es liegt im Wesen des Fußballspiels wie auch vieler anderer Spiele, dass die außenstehenden Zuschauer das Gespielte ernst nehmen; das Spiel ist für sie eine Wirklichkeit, es hat Folgen im Leben� [ ] Die Zuschauer spielen nicht mit, sie gehen mit� Sie knirschen mit den Zähnen [ ], sie hadern mit dem Schicksal, sie jubeln, sie weinen, sie brechen mit einem Herzschlag zusammen, sie schreien sich die Kehle heiser, sie schreien sich die Seelen aus dem Leib, sie geraten außer sich� Wenn der Ball lebendig wird, werden sie auch lebendig� (137—38) In both Europe and the Americas, spectators are frequently referred to as a team’s “twelfth man” and are not only the barometer of a team’s success, but their vociferousness is believed to determine their team’s rise and fall� In his book Tor zur Welt ,-- a title that plays with the double meaning of the German word Tor as goal in sport and gate(way) - Klaus Theweleit, one of Germany’s respected literary and cultural theorists, extends this idea of a “participatory audience” (“ein teilnehmendes Publikum”) to fans watching games outside the stadium: 376 Edward Muston Das ist überhaupt das Beste am Kneipenfußball; es stellt sich ein teilnehmendes Publikum her wie auf den Rängen im Stadion� Man gerät in Versuchung, zu glauben, der Verlauf des Spiels werde von der Kneipenstimmung mitbestimmt� Man baut an einer Atmosphäre der Co-Produktion am Spiel, wie die Zuschauer im Stadion� Und manchmal bin ich nicht so sicher, ob nicht die Kneipenstimmung ein Spiel gedreht hat � (141) For Theweleit and other theorists of sport, fans become active in the desire to affect the outcome of a game and are themselves fundamentally changed in the process (134)� For the players, physically stepping onto the playing field means entering a different space with a specific restricted set of rules (Elias 151—53)� For the spectators, there is no doubt that the stadium is a special space, but this change, as Theweleit argues, can take place in other settings as well� The idea of participatory spectatorship enables sports fans to create a hybrid belief-system that encompasses the field, their spectatorship, and their everyday lives (Connor 49—69)� While players are called upon to give their all during a game, or the non-sensical, yet because of sport ubiquitous “110%,” as professionals we expect them to move on quickly� For the fans, on the other hand, the outcome resonates with them throughout the subsequent days and weeks� 12 The after effects of this experience, i�e�, the period of mourning that follows a significant loss or elimination from a tournament, not only evidences the intensity of the spectacle’s effect, but shows a key way in which it may replace religion� In one of his many vignettes on sport in Austrian society, Franzobel claims that sporting events allow spectators to rehearse their own deaths: Wenn Fußball Ersatzkrieg ist, dann heißt Ausscheiden auch Sterben, sind am Ende alle gleich� Aber vielleicht brauchen wir diese Ahnung ja, damit wir uns vorbereiten können auf das, was einmal kommt […]� Vielleicht also ist Fußball nur eine Vorbereitung auf das Sterben? Die Weltmeisterschaft ein Intensivkurs� (39) By teasing spectators with the prospect of eternal life as champions, while habituating them to the reality of their eventual death as losers, Franzobel would argue that football tournaments certainly appear to have usurped one of religion’s most powerful elements� Glawogger’s film intervenes in this debate by showing that although the World Cup is frequently referred to as the Holy Grail, there is no simple one-for-one exchange of roles between sport and religion� Indeed, conceptualizing sport and religion as opponents evidences the spread of a sporting mentality beyond the stadium, rather than any necessary opposition between the two� Frankreich, wir kommen! emphasizes that because sport radically empowers the spectator it has a fundamentally different structure and creates a different reality for the spectator than religion� In this sense, religion and sport exist in parallel, there is no obstacle for the one being superimposed Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 377 upon the other, nor are they mutually exclusive� Ultimately though, Glawogger’s film exposes that sport has little need to appeal directly to religion for supplemental significance, but serves, at its best, as site of communal identity based on love rather than violence� Two figures in the film demonstrate the different ways of interpreting this relationship between football and religion: Roland, the overweight, blind fan and theology student, exemplifies how sport and religion can be brought into harmony, even if this has serious consequences for other aspects of his life� Whereas Johann Skochek-- referred to as Josko throughout-- the world-weary ( lebensmüde ) sports journalist for an unnamed Austrian newspaper and co-writer of the film, is caught attempting to find meaning for himself and the Austrian team by forcibly interposing discourses of religion and sport� Although Glawogger presents all the figures in the film with great generosity, the contrast between Roland’s good-natured vitality- - he is the only figure who, despite his blindness, we see both watching and playing football-- and Josko's cynical exhaustion provides a powerful commentary on their different relationships to football and religion� By consistently cutting between scenes with Roland and Josko, Glawogger reveals precisely how football functions as a completely different type of belief-system for each� While Roland’s happiness follows from his balancing of his love of football with his other interests, Josko's fatigue is the consequence of his struggle to justify his role as a high-priest of sport who interprets the game for those lacking his insight and knowledge� The opening frames of the film puncture the belief that a journalist despite his greater access to manager and players, his sophisticated terminology, and his awareness of statistics has a more meaningful relationship to the game than the average spectator� The reporter’s supposed surplus of vision over the ordinary fan does not translate into a more powerful experience (Morson and Emerson 53, 241)� The first sequence in the film imagines what it might be like to see Austria’s last pre-World Cup match through Roland’s eyes: heavily shadowed and lacking both color and contrast, we have trouble distinguishing the players and making sense of the game� As Austria scores, the resolution, color palette, and perspective shifts and we come face to face with Roland alongside his fellow spectators in the stadium� He relies on his friend for a report on the finer details of the goal, but he reacts to each event simultaneously with the other fans and his experience appears in no way diminished� More than merely critiquing the distinction between journalist and fan, Glawogger uses this first scene to undermine any lingering ableist prejudices about the quality of experience for disabled fans� In fact, Roland’s disability repeatedly emphasizes the communal aspect of spectatorship and demands a horizontal connection to other fans� By 378 Edward Muston coming face-to-face with Roland, Glawogger forces the viewer to participate in this level of spectatorship� When Glawogger cuts directly from Roland to Josko, the camera angle exposes a very different relationship between the reporter/ critic, the game, and the film’s audience� The camera is positioned behind him and the playing field forms the background for the shot rather than the other fans as for Roland� Josko himself turns slightly towards the camera and his physical positioning perfectly captures his ambivalent relationship to the game� He comes face-toface with neither the game nor the fans, but occupies an interstitial space between the two� While Roland cheers enthusiastically when Austria scores, for Josko each goal is an object of description rather than jubilation: “Jetzt schauen� Jetzt schießt der Haas sein erstes Länderspieltor� Das ist wunderbar� 5—0! ” The reporter mediates between field and fan, as his professionalization requires he remains passively analytical and thereby less involved in the game than the true spectator� As a professionalized spectator, the game does not affect Josko and his reality in the same way as it does Roland, for example, and it alienates him from the game and his fellow spectators, rendering it insufficient as a belief-system� As this initial scene in the stadium concludes, Glawogger cuts rapidly between Roland and Josko as they discuss the players and the game while leaving the stands� Despite having “seen” so little of the game, Roland expresses his opinions of the players with as much conviction and intelligence as Josko� Although Josko's discussion with a colleague tends more towards abstract concepts like form (Form) vs� mentality (Einstellung), he and Roland reach almost identical conclusions: They both lament how the Austrian star players are currently woefully lacking in form and recognize that the team’s chances of success are dim� Most importantly, while Roland talks animatedly with his friends, Josko is unable to connect with his fellow journalist� Instead, like players on opposing teams, they compete for the most convincing interpretation of the result� While theories of sport and spectatorship, like those of Handke and Theweleit, position the spectator on the margins of the game, it is in fact the spectators’ position above the field in the stadium that defines their activity and relationship to the game� Indeed, although both club and national sports teams depend on the income their fans provide, the empowerment of the spectators is far more a consequence of their perspective on the game than their financial contribution� The very structure of sports stadiums has been argued as initiating a democratization of spectatorship and of transforming the game itself from an end in itself for the players into a performance of “crowd-pleasing moves” (Sheard and Dunning 8—9)� 13 From their seats, spectators possess an unobstructed and panoptic view of the playing field� In contrast, the players need to have a vague awareness of all their teammates and opponents; they have a heightened Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 379 and complete understanding of only a few meters immediately around them� 14 Likewise, the single referee responsible for governing the game and imposing its rules does in many instances see more than the players, but falls far short of perceiving the complete field of play� The addition of linesmen compensates for this insufficiency as will the future inclusion of video review and goal-line technology� Even the manager sitting on the sidelines sees less of the game’s intricacy than the spectators and relies on post-game video analysis to assess his team’s performance� This position above the field combines with the absence of any interpretive authority to allow the fan to judge, parse, and analyze the spectacle independently� Although the outward signs of physical participation, standing, singing, and yelling are often understood as the disappearance of the individual into the crowd, they also function as external manifestations of the active interpretation of the spectacle happening within the spectator� Indeed, while spectating happens within a crowd and this immersion can influence the way spectators react and the actions they themselves take, the crowd provides very little assistance in interpreting the game, or making sense of the spectacle itself� For this very reason, Bertolt Brecht valued this mode of spectatorship and recommended that interpretive independence be brought into the theater: “Wenn man ins Theater geht wie in die Kirche oder in den Gerichtssaal, oder in die Schule, das ist schon falsch� Man sollte ins Theater gehen wie zu einem Sportfest” (23)� Writing in 1926, Brecht saw sports fans as the perfect models of analytical spectatorship beholden to no elite for making the spectacle comprehensible� 15 The contemporary spectator’s critical position is often evident in foul-mouthed invectives directed at the players, coaches, and referees below him� In Frankreich, wir kommen! the various Austrian as well as Cameroonian, Chilean, and Italian fans are shown commenting on the games, predicting their outcomes, and breaking down the results after the fact� Almost every Austrian in the film is shown discussing a game with family and friends (the Lauring family on their balcony, Roland with a series of shopkeepers), or giving his own play-by-play report to someone who was unable to watch the game (Kurt Dietl is shown summarizing the game and his emotions for his dead father)� The spectator’s empowerment combined with the ubiquitousness of television coverage has reduced the importance of the sports journalist� In the film, Josko appears at best superfluous and at worst, a distracting interloper threatening the fan’s independence� 16 His second scene in the film establishes his categorical difference from the other figures� Instead of observing him watching a game or capturing the moments when football intersects with his daily life, Josko is shown filming his own video diary� Each key event in the tournament is marked by a further self-portrait and an increasingly baroque and despondent 380 Edward Muston analysis of the Austrian team� Josko records his first entry in his Vienna office before leaving for France� Here he is clean-shaven, well-dressed, and excited about the prospect of spending a month reporting on the tribulations of the Austrian team� In the next entry, he is already transformed as after a sixteen-hour drive he appears disheveled and deeply cynical about the upcoming tournament� While Glawogger cuts in footage of the Austrian team descending from their chartered airplane in freshly pressed suits, Josko states: “Heute kommt die Mannschaft nach Bordeaux� Dieser ganze Käse hat erst nur angefangen und ich bin jetzt schon völlig fertig�” He then launches into what will become for him a typically convoluted extended metaphor for explaining the failings of the Austrian manager Herbert Prohaska: Zwei Tage vor dem Match gegen Kamerun� Andi Herzog ist nicht in Form, Anton Polster ist nicht in Form und keiner kann sich vorstellen, dass die beiden nicht spielen� Herbert Prohaska muss ihnen eine gotische Kathedrale bauen, eine gotische Kathedrale um das Dach, das schwere alte Dach Andi Herzog und Anton Polster zu tragen� Aber Herbert Prohaska ist kein Architekt, er ist kein Baumeister, er ist ein Maurer� Ein Maurer der probiert hat und probiert hat, bis seine Hütte endlich einmal gestanden ist, bis seine Hütte die Stürme der Qualifikation überstanden hat� Jetzt ist sie ihm zusammengekracht und er sucht verzweifelt in den Steinen nach einem Bauplan� [ ] Er baut seine Hütte nach dem alten Plane und die Steine passen nicht mehr zusammen� Er muss eine Kathedrale bauen und er weiß nicht wie� Prohaska’s helplessness in the face of his star players’ lack of form has been the primary topic of conversation for everyone in the film, but Josko suddenly draws on a different symbolic register to capture Prohaska’s failure� The religious imagery that reappears in each of Josko’s subsequent scenes serves a double purpose� Despite the obvious irony in referring to Prohaska as “St� James” (“der Heilige Jakob”), such associations enhance the significance of the national team and justify Josko’s role as the team’s rightful interpreter� In fact, Josko seems to suffer under the same weight of expectation as Prohaska in piecing together his extended religiously-inflected interpretations� He nobly sacrifices the spectator’s immediate relationship with the game in order to gain access to and to mediate this higher plane of meaning� Rather than merely reporting the facts, he seems to search in the rubble of the Austrian team for meaning, much like Prohaska� As the plight of the Austrian team becomes more hopeless, so too do his analogies become more convoluted� It is only when the Austrian team is eliminated, when players and fans endure their symbolic deaths, that Josko is reborn� No longer locked in some kind of critical no-man’s land, he appears reinvigorated when in his final scene he becomes a normal fan once again� Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 381 While Josko is oppressed by his longing for greater significance for the game and his work, Roland has little difficulty in balancing his study of Catholic theology with his “super-sized” (“überdimensionale”) love of football� In a scene at the centre of the film, Roland is shown dressed in his Austria team jersey and surrounded by the scarves that all devoted fans collect� 17 Rather than discussing himself, he reads the first four verses of psalm 66 from the Bible� Jauchzt vor Gott, alle Länder der Erde! Spielt zum Ruhm seines Namens! Verherrlicht ihn mit Lobpreis! Sagt zu Gott: “Wie Ehrfurcht gebietend sind deine Taten; vor deiner gewaltigen Macht müssen die Feinde sich beugen�“ Alle Welt bete dich an und singe dein Lob, sie lobsinge deinem Namen! 18 This scene suggests an interpretation of the psalm that underscores the harmony between sport and religion� Roland reads from the Unified Translation of the Bible (“die Einheitsübersetzung”) that was produced and introduced as the standard translation for German-speaking Catholics following Vatican II� Here the Hebrew verb “ *zmr ” is translated simply as “play” (“spielt”) rather than Schlachter’s “sing” (“besingt”) or Luther’s “sing in praise” (“lobsinget”)� Glawogger’s mise-en-scène suggests that for Austrian Catholics this new translation of the Bible extends the psalm’s meaning to encompass not only the singing or playing of an instrument included in the semantic range of the Hebrew verb, but the playing (and watching) of football� 19 As Roland ends his recitation, Glawogger reinforces this semantic extension by cutting to a montage of players who are shown dedicating their play to God� Just as the sight of a devout player pointing heavenwards upon scoring a goal has become commonplace, so has the ritual for players to invoke religion when stepping onto the field� 20 As this long sequence unfolds accompanied by a German version of Sarah Flower Adams’s hymn “Nearer, My God to thee” (“Näher mein Gott zu dir”), players from various nations, both Christian and Muslim, demonstrate a natural harmony rather than conflict between sport and religious belief� Once again, the structure of the stadium can be recalled to support this view� Steven Connor writes: “There is a zone of height that the spectators do not occupy, namely the indeterminate area of play above the pitch� The dimension is unlike the other dimensions of play in that it is both invisible and infinite” (61)� 21 Rather than forming competing belief-systems, the space of the playing field remains open to religion and this presence is acknowledged in the various rituals the players perform when crossing its threshold� Religion and sport endure this superimposition without losing any of their distinctiveness� 382 Edward Muston Sport is such a powerful phenomenon in contemporary society because it fundamentally transforms the spectators’ reality: it changes their relationship to the world long after they leave the stadium� Klaus Theweleit writes: Der Zuschauer ist Teil des Spiels, er ist angeschlossener Akteur� Er schießt zwar nicht die Tore auf dem Platz, aber die, die geschossen werden, treffen nicht nur ins Tor, sie treffen auch sein Herz, sein Gehirn, seine Haut, seinen Bauch- - jene Teile, von denen Leute sagen, dass ihre Gefühle dort beheimatet seien; und sie verändern den Zuschauer� (134) Not every figure in Frankreich, wir kommen! is completely obsessed with football� For some the World Cup functions as an opportunity to come together with friends and family; for others, such as Roland, Kurt Dietl, and Gérard Erber, their love of football does indeed infect every aspect of their lives� Glawogger’s film exposes how more than merely observing the game and judging player performance, the devoted fan develops a strong libidinal connection to his club or national team, a connection that can replace or even displace the romantic love absent in his everyday life� For Roland, Kurt, and Gérard, football replaces the need for a romantic partner and, as long as they remain committed fans, it defers their entry into adulthood� In her radio play Sportchor , Elfriede Jelinek mocks the infantile and incestuous nature of this attachment to a team� The German fans in her play think of themselves as the children and lovers of the national team, the Nationalelf : “Die deutsche Mannschaft hat uns als ihre Zuschauer geboren� Es ist unsere biologische Wehrpflicht, ihr zuzuschauen� […] Gerade deswegen fühlen wir uns doch so glücklich verheiratet mit unserer Mannschaft�” 22 Jelinek draws our attention to the incestuous nature of the spectator’s love: the national team serves as both mother and bride for the spectator� Although Theweleit argues that sport constitutes a gateway to the world, an arena where powerful experiences prepare one for adult life, Jelinek suggests exactly the opposite� By satisfying this Oedipal desire, devoting oneself to the national team arrests psychic development as no new libidinal cathexes are sought� For Theweleit, the participation in and consumption of sport provides a gateway belief-system, a simplified version of the world where foundational moral lessons can be learned� Yet the central figures in Glawogger’s film are characterized by their lack of development� Far from constituting a realm in which an individual can through various rites of passage emerge into the world- - “football as a coming into the world” (“Fußball als ein In-die-Welt- Kommen”), fandom in Frankreich, wir kommen! insulates the individual from the adult world (Biermann 14)� Glawogger’s spectators manifest an extended and sometimes perpetual adolescence� In Der Schwalbenkönig, oder die kleine Kunst Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 383 der Fußball-Exerzitien , Franzobel draws on his own love of football as the cause of how he develops a thoroughly false sense of his own age: Träumt jedes Kind davon, einmal Weltmeister zu sein, das alles entscheidende Tor zu schießen? Ich habe oft davon geträumt� Heute bin ich 39 Jahre alt und muss mich damit abfinden, dass diese Weltmeisterschaft die letzte ist, bei der ich zumindest noch theoretisch teilnehmen hätte können� Bei allen künftigen wird nicht einmal diese Teilnahme im Geist mehr möglich sein� (37) Although Franzobel suggests that at the age of thirty-nine he is finally ready to give up his childhood dream and become an adult, Glawogger's film shows that this dream is always present in sports spectatorship� Even physically unfit fans experience themselves as players to a certain extent� This dream persists long beyond the years of peak physical fitness and inheres in the very experience of activated spectatorship so prized in sport� While Roland states that his study of religion gives him great pleasure, he earns his living as a musician� In the scenes that show him playing music at home and performing as a Kabarettist , it becomes clear that his obsession with sport is compensating for his non-existent love-life� His increasing fanaticism is perhaps proportional to his waning belief in his opportunities for romantic success� In an early scene the very suggestion that he respond to a personal ad in a newspaper is met with incredulity� Despite the fact that he has just been shown singing an intensely romantic song and discussing his desire for a traditional family, Roland deploys a tactic shared by the key figures throughout the film, as he evades discussion of romantic love by switching to that of football� At the end of the film, the dutiful connection to the team is represented as having successfully replaced the possibility of romantic love� In the stereotypically overdetermined setting of a florist’s shop, Roland is asked by a second shopkeeper to name his favourite player for the Austrian team� In heartfelt tones, Roland describes the endurance ( Laufstärke ) of Roman Mählich, a player for the national team and for Stürm Graz� Glawogger’s construction of this scene suggests that the homosocial bonds that connect players and spectators respectively, have the potential to develop specific libidinal, in this case, homosexual, qualities when linking spectator and player� In the course of the film, it becomes clear that Roland gradually replaces the need for a girlfriend, both his own desire and that of the shopkeeper, in her role as the embodiment of heteronormative social forces, with a deeper love for the players on the national team� Roland’s possible future is foreshadowed by the figure of Kurt Dietl, who at the age of seventy-nine and despite his difficulty walking and overall frailty, strikes the viewer as similarly young-at-heart� Dietl is too old to play football like Roland; Dietl is introduced in a scene where he plays Tipp-Kick, a type of 384 Edward Muston table-football� While the details of Dietl’s actual love life remain beyond the scope of the film, his scenes exemplify a persistent adolescent state� In one scene, sport allows him to maintain a strong devotion to his dead father, as he is shown visiting his father’s grave to tell him about Austria’s nerve-wracking matches� In a second scene, he describes meeting the great Austrian footballer Matthias Sindelar� In comparing his experience with today’s young fans, he claims that “Eine derartige Verehrung für einen Fußballer, wie ich es damals für den Papierenen, für den Sindelar, gehabt hatte, die gibt es heute nicht mehr�” Dietl takes for granted that football players are not merely role models but, like Roland, believes they should also be objects of veneration and that meeting one of these idols should, in his own words, “take one’s breath away�” Following this statement, the film does indeed cut to a team of 13-year-olds playing football, but no individual young fan receives attention or even speaks in the film� Instead, the one fan we do see actually encountering players, collecting their signatures in his albums and on jerseys, is the 45-year-old Gérard� While Roland admits that his football fanaticism is gradually becoming excessive, it is in the figure of Gérard that we see the most extreme consequences of obsessive spectatorship� Gérard is in many ways the star of the film as he embodies how a love of sport can take over one’s life and how it allows a type of adolescent infatuation to flourish� Gérard lives at home with his parents and since 1978 has attended every game played by the Austrian national team and club team Austria Vienna� Just as Dietl is shown retaining a deep devotion to his dead father, Gérard remains intimately connected with his mother; he pays for her to attend every match with him and she helps him choose and pack his clothes for each trip� She is present in all of his scenes� Tellingly, unlike the other figures who are generally accorded epithets that reflect their professions, Gérard is introduced as son ( Sohn ) rather than a bank auditor ( Bankrevisor )� Although romantic love may once have occupied a position beside football and mother, Gérard no longer has much interest in or time for it� In a long scene depicting their departure for Austria’s first match, Margit attempts to shift the conversation to romantic love and Gérard fights to keep the focus on football: [Gérard: ] Jetzt geht’s los� Die dritte Weltmeisterschaft, wo wir dabei sind� 1990 in Italien [Margit: ]1990, ja� [Gérard: ] Kannst du dich erinnern? [Margit: ] Ja, ich kann mich sehr gut erinnern� Dort ist Gitti sogar dabei� [Gérard: ] Na, das reißt alte Wunden auf� [Margit: ] Das war wunderschön� Das macht ja nichts, Gérard� Ich mochte halt nur davon sprechen� Es war eine sehr schöne Zeit� Und ich muss ehrlich sagen, Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 385 diesmal ist sie nicht dabei� Aber ich sage, allgemein könnten die Frauen froh sein, wenn sie so einen Mann bekämen wie du� [Gérard: ] Vielleicht nehmen wir mal eine junge hübsche Französin� [Margit: ] Ja, das würde ich auch tun an deiner Stelle� [Gérard: ] Aber ein bisschen Deutsch müssen wir ihr wenigstens beibringen� Aber bitte reden wir von der WM� [Margit: ] Aber ich wünsche nur, dass wir vielleicht auch einen kleinen Sieg nach Hause bringen können� [Gérard: ] Einen Kleinen? Einen Großen! Ins Achtelfinale würde ich kommen und gegen Brasilien spielen, und dann mit ein paar jungen Französinnen nach Hause kommen [Margit: ] Das wäre eine Aussicht� Gérard’s use of the first person plural throughout this clip shows that Margit is more than merely his maternal companion, but his co-conspirator in the planned seduction or potential abduction of a French woman� Even a future romance no longer has the power to sever the maternal connection reinforced through their shared devotion to sport� Austria’s defeat to Italy and early exit from the tournament is a hard blow for all the figures in the film, but after having digested their elimination and savoring Germany’s defeat by Croatia, the film shows two further scenes of Roland and Gérard� These scenes arouse strange feelings of sympathy and discomfort with the characters, because they confirm the underlying adolescence, even puerility of both figures, which has been latent throughout the film� With the tournament over, Roland replaces watching football with listening to a recorded radio play for children� He is shown playing a record of a Pumuckl play which begins with the eponymous kobold laughing at the tricks he is about to play� As Roland’s own hysterical laughter duplicates that of Pumuckl , we realize that he is trapped in an adolescent state just like that of the kobold who does not mature� Each new tournament, each game, is merely a further episode in an adventure lacking any true development� 23 The final scene with Gérard leaves Roland’s innocent or perhaps mischievous puerility far behind: we see not only how his aspirations for Austria have been disappointed, but so have his, or his mother’s hopes for bringing a young French woman back to Vienna� Having failed to bring home a young French woman, Gérard seeks comfort in his mother’s tender embrace� The film concludes with a few key shots from the final between France and Brazil, before cutting to Gérard and Margit slow dancing in a night club� Here Gérard serenades her with “Long as I can see the Light” by Creedence Clearwater Revival� As Josko has emphasized throughout the film, sporting success on the world stage, the 386 Edward Muston moment of winning the World Cup and raising it above one’s head, can be understood as a moment of transcendence, a moment of capturing the light� The combination of this scene and music suggests that as long as Gérard’s infatuation with sport persists, as long as the dream of love for one’s team endures, then so will Gérard’s adolescence and so will his ability to enjoy the comforts of his relationship with his mother� 24 Gérard, Roland, and Kurt Dietl will all have the opportunity to experience this quest for the light again and again, not only with each tournament, but more generally in a society completely permeated by sport� Throughout the film, Glawogger represents their infatuation as a suspension of becoming, as enabling a continued adolescence, and allowing adolescent infatuations� Ultimately, Frankreich, wir kommen! shows that far from being a consistent and comprehensive belief-system, sport is substituted into a life lacking in love� Notes 1 Recent studies have indicated that the church tax (Kirchenbeitrag) combines with the increased time pressures of adult life to separate Austrians from Catholicism (McClendon and Hackett 1305—06)� 2 It should be noted that Franzobel’s early works function like Glawogger’s film to make team sports acceptable within a society that has generally based its identity more on high-brow culture and sports like skiing that are strongly individualistic as well as great advertisements for the pleasures of the pristine Alps� 3 There are also many interesting feature films that generally expose the absurdity of extreme sports fans� Notable are Verzeihung, sehen Sie Fussball? (1983) a comedy that focuses on the events that unfold as the inhabitants of a Berlin apartment building watch the final of the 1982 World Cup� Fußball ist unser Leben (1999) is a more recent farce about a group of fanatical followers of FC Schalke 04� 4 Although perhaps not inclined to large scale brawling, this is in no way intended to excuse Austrian fans for the xenophobic, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic behavior that they too often manifest� Elfried Jelinek’s Ein Sportstück is a key point of reference here� 5 See Allyson Fiddler’s two excellent essays on Ein Sportstück � 6 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s In Praise of Athletic Beauty is perhaps one of the better examples that attempts to justify sport by assigning it a place within high culture� The danger here, one that Glawogger intentionally avoids, lies in distorting the nature of sport by imposing this very different theoretical framework� Where is the Love? Sport as Belief-System in Michael Glawogger’s Frankreich, wir kommen! 387 7 Christoph Huber comments on the way the film accurately depicts “the traditionally patriarchal circumstances of soccer viewing” in Austria (341)� 8 Christoph Huber’s essay provides an excellent summary of how Glawogger thematizes this particularly Austrian melancholy in his other films (335)� Jelinek’s Sportchor also provides compelling insights into the relationship between nationalism and the Nationalelf, albeit in Germany rather than Austria� 9 This is, of course, another aspect of Austrian national identity and myth-making that Jelinek has scrutinized� 10 National teams still occupy a special place removed from the financial pressures and realpolitik of the professional leagues� For both players and fans, national teams retain an aura of pure sport, played not for personal advantage but national glory� In the popular imagination, international tournaments also invariably harken back to a golden age of playing for the love of the game, i�e�, of non-purposive sport� While many players do indeed speak of the deep pride felt as they don their country’s jersey, the payment of bonuses for success in major tournaments suggests that there is no separating remuneration from performance in contemporary society� For example, each German player received 300,000 Euro for victory in the 2014 World Cup� 11 Peter Handke also describes how there can be no spectacle without spectators: “Ein Spiel kann eine Augenweide sein, ohne daß es zählbare Treffer gibt; und weil wir schon bei dem Wort ‘Augenweide’ sind: ein Spiel kann ja nur dann eine Augenweide sein, wenn jemand außerhalb des Spielraums steht und zuschaut� Obwohl die Zuschauer sich körperlich außerhalb des Spielfeldes aufhalten, sind sie wie die Spieler Aktivisten des Spiels, die zum Spiel gehören, und nicht die passiven, nur zuschauenden Zuschauer im Theater” (136)� 12 Recent studies have tracked eating habits of fans on the day after a key game: fans of a losing team tend to make unhealthy choices, while those on the victorious side eat more healthily (Cornil and Chandon)� 13 Many North American stadiums support the idea of the journalist as occupying a privileged, i�e�, more panoptic, position vis-a-vis the average fan, insofar as the press boxes are located at the highest possible point in the stadiums� In most European football stadiums, reporters sit at the same level as every other fan� 14 This panoptic gaze is replicated in sports television broadcasts and documentaries� Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (1936) is, of course, one of the first to experiment with different angles on sports� Two football documentaries attempt to capture the individual player's sphere of attention/ influence in a 388 Edward Muston game: Hellmuth Costard's Fußball wie noch nie (1970) and Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle (2006)� 15 Theweleit acknowledges, however, that the spectators’ judgement of players can be steered by external forces and they often lose control, diminishing their pleasurable connection with the players (135)� 16 The live availability of almost every sporting event on television or through the internet has greatly accelerated the obsolescence of sports journalists� 17 The collection of scarves rather than players’ jerseys still distinguishes European from North American spectators� By wearing a favorite player’s jersey, many North Americans demonstrate a closer connection with playing the game, rather than spectating as an activity in its own right� 18 As discussed, this translation of Psalm 66 is specific to the Einheitsübersetzung � All other German language versions of the Bible that I was able to find use some form of the verb to sing� 19 While “to play” is within the semantic range of *zmr, this playing is always restricted and does not correspond with the sense suggested in the film� Köhler, et al� 20 Such gestures occur in almost all forms of contemporary sport, with the former NFL player Tim Tebow perhaps most famous for his trademark prayer whenever scoring a touchdown� A phenomenon immortalized as “Tebowing�” 21 As Connor explains, covered stadiums, although ubiquitous in North America, are considered to offer a far diminished experience by obstructing this space� 22 Jelinek’s Sportchor was originally broadcast on April 24, 2006 on Bayern- 2Radio� The text here is from Jelinek’s website� 23 Here, sport has the effect of transforming real time into adventure time (Bakhtin 90)� 24 Christoph Huber disregards the viewers’ discomfort in seeing Gérard dancing with his mother and instead asserts the scene “perfectly captures the Austrian spirit of hope in the face of deeply savored despair” (341)� Works Cited Anderson, Bernhard W�, Bruce M� Metzger, and Roland E� Murphy� The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocryphal/ Deuterocanonical Books � New York: Oxford UP, 1991� Bakhtin, M� M� The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays � Ed� Michael Holquist� Austin: U of Texas P, 1981� Barthes, Roland� What is Sport? 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