A high school basketball player in Tucson is partially paralyzed thanks to a bunch of fans who stormed the court. The kid dunked, the game ended, he got mobbed, and somehow he ended up with a broken jaw and a torn fucking carotid artery. 17 years old and now he’s in intensive care. Who knows if he’ll recover enough to even lead a normal life, but I guess that full scholarship to Stanford will have to wait, won’t it? All because a bunch of fucking idiots decided they were part of the action and swarmed the kid. Jesus, it’s a good thing I couldn’t dunk in high school, I might’ve been killed.
Now I understand that fans run onto the playing field all the time, but there were a few things here that went wrong. First of all, you run on the court if the team wins a championship or something. This game was just a regular season game, it seems. What the hell was the celebration about? That’s a minor point, but hell, if you’re celebrating hard enough to give a kid a fucking stroke (point #2 that went wrong), you might as well have won something. They’ve already paralyzed the star player- what are they going to do if the team wins a state championship, shoot the cheerleaders?
Oh, but on a serious note… Working in the performing arts industry, one thing I’ve really, really seen a whole lot of lately is that spectators seem to have lost the concept of “being a spectator.”
I was in the lighting booth for a play that had to be stopped no less than three times because the audience kept piping up with opinions, and actually starting “conversations” with the characters on stage – you’d swear they thought it was the Jerry Springer show where audiences are expected to stand up with a mike and address the panel.
I’m not sure where it’s coming from. At one point I did think that it had something to do with talk show audiences being the new role model for the notion of “audience.” And now I’m wondering if reality TV is also blurring the lines between “performer” and “spectator.”
You have people streaking during major sporting events, spectators leaping out of stands to beat the snot out of umpires, and rushing to celebrate with “their team” as if they were players themselves. The spectator/participant distinction seems to be getting a bit lost.
I understand that the audience took quite an active role in the production in Shakespeare’s time. It was vital to entertain the crowd; otherwise the distraction of being heckled could quickly turn into the pain of being hit in the head by rotten cabbages and eggs.
Yes, but I’m referring to more modern audience conventions where you are not expected to stand up and say “talk to the hand…”
People aren’t expected to throw stuff these days either (Rocky Horror Picture show notwithstanding). Throwing pie during vaudeville days, or even WWII cabarets, might have been just fine, but being an audience member in a more formal setting has changed quite a bit since then.
As a little kid, we were told on field trips to sit quietly, and don’t talk to your neighbour – standing up to interrupt The Crucible to debate the pros and cons of witchcraft with Goody Proctor would certainly have been out of the question.
To a certain extent, what’s great about live theatre is the reaction of the live audience, but there are limits to what is acceptable and safe. I’ve seen stuff in recent years that is most assuredly neither.
Athletes are bigger stronger and faster, and live shows are becoming technically complex with effects (even really basic ones) that can serioulsy hurt you. Unless explicitly invited to participate, spectators have to remain spectators and stay out of the way or someone can get hurt.
Hockey players skate at over 30 mph, tennis players can serve a tennis balls at over 130 mph – spectators need to stay the hell out of the way.
The need to be “a part of the action” to snag your fifteen minutes of fame is getting a little out of hand.