Art Demonstrates That Football Is Metastasized, and Gives It Refuge Cover Image

Umjetnost kao dokaz i utočište metastaziralog nogometa
Art Demonstrates That Football Is Metastasized, and Gives It Refuge

Author(s): Ozren Biti
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku
Keywords: football; art; literature; game; aesthetics; ethics; metastases

Summary/Abstract: This article presents an analysis of the characteristics of football as depicted in the bestselling novel Metastaze (Metastases) (2006) by Alen Bović and in its two subsequent adaptations – the play Metastaze (Metastases) directed by Boris Svrtan and the film Metastaze (Metastases) directed by Branko Schmidt. Football as it appears in these three pieces is metastasized: it is deviant and in fact undergoes so many significant changes that it no longer has much in common with the original game. Artistic reality is seen as corresponding to social reality, and reasons for the metastasized nature of football are found on both levels. Based on the proposed analysis of Metastaze and a comparative analysis of descriptions of football in other books, plays and films in Croatia and abroad a hypothesis is put forward whereby art offers evidence as to the metastasized nature of football. A greater challenge still is to establish whether art might, at the same time, provide refuge to the metastasized football, revitalizing its aesthetic and ethical dimension. Given the scope of these claims, the arguments in the article are based on a wide array of texts and authors ranging from literary criticism, anthropology of games and sociology of sport to semiotics, cultural studies and aesthetics.

  • Issue Year: 49/2012
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 185-205
  • Page Count: 21
  • Language: Croatian