Woof! Woof!

If you ever wondered what became of the people left to their own devices in wake of the seemingly universal downgrading and closure of mental hospitals, then the answer is simple.  The British contingent, anyway, are all long term outside the houses of parliament protesting both for and against Brexit.  Or else they are at sporting competitions, in exuberant dress, trying to catch the camera’s eye and claim their few seconds of fame—for that is the main, indeed the only, route for the ordinary individual to achieve popular recognition in these modern times, made all the better if you have remembered to pre-set the video before you left home.

There was a particular middle-aged loon dressed in a jester’s cap at the Wales-France rugby match today, dancing around like a madman and turning to demonstrate to the crowd after catching a glimpse of himself on the stadium big screen.  After the match there was a further snippet of him being apparently hugged and congratulated by other fans—the equivalent for him, no doubt, of a quick-fix, even if short-lived, of apotheosis.

I used put it all down to the godfather of Scottish independence, Mel Gibson, in the wake of whose Braveheart Scottish football fans suddenly started painting their faces blue and white, the whole thing seemingly to thereafter go international and viral.  But then I came across Stiffed: The Betrayal of Modern Man by the feminist writer Susan Faludi, which, strangely enough, is in its own right a very good book, and one that delivers exactly what it promises in the title.  It was first published around 2000 and I would expect that it is still available in print.

It contains a chapter dealing with the rise of the modern fan/exhibitionist movement, in the context of the Cleveland Browns American football team, where the ordinary supporters in the 1980s began dressing as dogs and continuously barking at games.  This giving way to increasingly more competitive efforts at trying to claim screen time through individual embellishment.  They also seem to have championed the practice of going bare chested at matches in the coldest of weather.

Faludi tends to see the phenomenon as a psychological reaction to the civic and environmental collapse, together with the collapse in employment, that affected Cleveland from the 1960s onward, and as an attempt to regain some sense of personal and communal recognition or relevance from the ashes.

And for a while it worked.  The TV stations took the ‘dawgs’ up—until there was no more novelty to be milked from them.  The club let them down, too.  When the bottom fell out of it, it was the ordinary poor ‘dawgs’ who bore the psychological brunt of it.

Now the type of people you see dressing up and painting their faces in, say, Japan don’t at all seem to fit the social or personal profile of those mentioned above.  Yet there would seem to be a similar element of exhibitionism involved, a similar desire to be picked up by the camera and in some sense made ‘real’ to oneself.

As to the permanent demonstrators these past two years outside the British parliament, they are self-exhibitionists of the highest order.  It is probably a matter of accident which side they happen to be on.  The uppermost thing is to be noticed.  But then they don’t do too much harm—at least so far.  The cut and thrust of the whole thing helps them burn energy and keep them on—though you wouldn’t think it—a level mental keel.  The problems will come when Brexit is finally settled one way or another.  At least the psychiatrists will make money . . .

But as to the broader penetration of exhibitionism into social life, I’m sure it signifies something.  It’s just that I’m not sure at the moment what exactly that something is.