Storm, meet teacup
I realise this is a couple of days late, but the excessive hysterics over the "ethnic violence" that "erupted" on the opening day of the Australian Open, has really annoyed me.
According to news reports based on an evidently small group of witnesses, a bunch of young men of Serbian and Croatian backgrounds (or at least wearing the flags) decided to get stuck into each other in the grounds of the Tennis Centre on Monday.
I've seen two lots of images of the "ethnic violence" - the only ones that appear to have been recorded. One is a series of still photographs from a Getty Images photographer, the other a more-or-less unviewable mobile phone video.
In each case, there seems to be a large number of shouty boys standing around trying to look tough, and (at most) eight or nine people actually DOING anything. Not only are the numbers involved small, but the "ethnic violence" looks to me very much like the famed fight scene from Bridget Jones Diary - lots of flailing of arms and legs and not a lot of substance.
Not that I would be doing anything remotely different in those circumstances, but it's not exactly Kosovo is it.
Reading between the lines (and I'd be happy to be corrected by anyone who actually SAW the event) it looks very much to me like a bunch of pimply adolescent boys have dressed up and gone to the tennis with the express purpose of antagonising another group and secretly hoping to get in a fight. When push has literally come to shove, only a couple of them have been brave enough to get involved and even then, the fighting seems to have taken the form of some half-hearted kicks and that's about it.
The Age, clearly trying not to overstate the situation said "the violence is believed to be unprecedented in the history of Grand Slam tennis" (!!!)
Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but I would be surprised if this was the first time ever that a fight has broken out in the grounds of a Grand Slam. The fact that these little turds were draped in Serbian and Croatian flags doesn't make it "ethnic violence" - it makes it a fairly pathetic schoolboy scrag-fight.
Seriously. It really has been a slow few weeks of news.
According to news reports based on an evidently small group of witnesses, a bunch of young men of Serbian and Croatian backgrounds (or at least wearing the flags) decided to get stuck into each other in the grounds of the Tennis Centre on Monday.
I've seen two lots of images of the "ethnic violence" - the only ones that appear to have been recorded. One is a series of still photographs from a Getty Images photographer, the other a more-or-less unviewable mobile phone video.
In each case, there seems to be a large number of shouty boys standing around trying to look tough, and (at most) eight or nine people actually DOING anything. Not only are the numbers involved small, but the "ethnic violence" looks to me very much like the famed fight scene from Bridget Jones Diary - lots of flailing of arms and legs and not a lot of substance.
Not that I would be doing anything remotely different in those circumstances, but it's not exactly Kosovo is it.
Reading between the lines (and I'd be happy to be corrected by anyone who actually SAW the event) it looks very much to me like a bunch of pimply adolescent boys have dressed up and gone to the tennis with the express purpose of antagonising another group and secretly hoping to get in a fight. When push has literally come to shove, only a couple of them have been brave enough to get involved and even then, the fighting seems to have taken the form of some half-hearted kicks and that's about it.
The Age, clearly trying not to overstate the situation said "the violence is believed to be unprecedented in the history of Grand Slam tennis" (!!!)
Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but I would be surprised if this was the first time ever that a fight has broken out in the grounds of a Grand Slam. The fact that these little turds were draped in Serbian and Croatian flags doesn't make it "ethnic violence" - it makes it a fairly pathetic schoolboy scrag-fight.
Seriously. It really has been a slow few weeks of news.
Both you and CC blogging on this one - similar points. And, at the sake of being a comment hog, here I go with the same thoughts I left over at UpWhere...
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that people are able to quickly and easily label and incident like this a race riot, and that such labels seem to stick, comes down to public perceptions and cliffnotes about ethnic rivalry in the world and Australia, and the fact that such differences (while not necessarily any longer a direct source of tension) provide an excuse for picking a particular group as an "enemy" for the sake of such fighting.
I don't know where you draw the line, but it sounds like this incident was more a case of having a made-to-order opponent thanks to previous history or rivalry, rather than the playing out of an actual grievance in violent conflict. Sometimes a hard line to distinguish, but possibly a clear one here.