Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [81]
There was another reason I was eager to watch the Super Bowl, however. One predawn September morning in Vanuatu, we had received a phone call from Chuck, an American colleague of Sylvia’s who also lived in Vila. “Turn on your TV,” he said. “The World Trade Center’s been destroyed. The Pentagon’s been hit. America’s been attacked. It’s worse than Pearl Harbor.” Only the day before, Chuck had informed us that in his youth he had made his living as an acid dealer. I looked at the clock. It wasn’t even 4 A.M. Acid flashback, I thought irritably.
“Who was it,” Sylvia groaned.
“It was Chuck, reminding us to just say no to drugs.”
“Huh?”
“He said something about America being attacked, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon. Crazy talk.”
And then we turned on the television.
Though we were on a distant island, far away from the madness and tragedy, we felt connected to the events unfolding on the other side of the planet. Partly, this was because we were from Washington, D.C. In the weeks that followed, I’d find myself taking the packages of baby clothes sent to us by friends and family in Washington and opening them outside, paying careful attention to wind direction, lest I release a billowing cloud of anthrax. But the connection, of course, was deeper. While I wasn’t an American citizen—the paperwork is such a hassle—I was culturally an American. As most Americans who have lived abroad can appreciate, defending American culture can be a tedious experience. Americans, we are told, are fat, vapid, culturally illiterate, money-obsesssed, hegemonic demons. And so much more, I say. Now, with the entire world expressing their solidarity with America, here, I thought was a perfect opportunity to share a little American culture: the Super Bowl.
The game, the announcers declared, was being viewed by a billion people around the world. I couldn’t really say whether that was true, but I was fairly confident that all fifteen people watching in Fiji were gathered in our living room. If there were a billion people watching, quite likely many of them were as agape as we were watching the pregame show. It’s funny how deranged America can appear when you’ve been out of the country for a while. Here were fighter jets screaming across the sky, merging seamlessly into the Budweiser logo. American soldiers, taking a moment from the toil of fighting a war in Afghanistan, introduced the football players as the announcers anticipated the tough battle ahead on the gridiron. The Stars and Stripes billowed in the breeze. A commercial suggested that now might be a good time to buy an SUV. Seventy thousand fans sang a stirring rendition of the national anthem. Tears welled. The cameras turned to the soldiers watching from an overseas base. A sponsor reminded us to drink lite beer. The announcers spoke of patriotism and sacrifice as dozens of enormous multimillionaires wobbled onto the field to play a game. Military helicopters buzzed overhead. A coin was tossed. The Super Bowl started. And collectively a billion people fell asleep.
American football, I was startled to discover, is a mind-numbingly boring game to watch. I spent a few minutes trying to explain the rules. “Why do they wear helmets?” asked Savuto, a Fijian woman who worked with Sylvia. “So that they don’t get hurt,” I replied. I could see Savuto thinking: Sissy-boys.
“Why are they just standing around?”
“That’s called a huddle,” I said. “This is where they talk about what to do next.”
“But they keep doing the same thing. All the fat ones fall down, and then the little one with the ball runs into them and falls down too.”
She had a point. Perhaps I had become corrupted by the ceaseless action of rugby sevens, but football now struck me as an artless spectacle performed by obese men in tights.