.Sarhan unravels the language of "genres and ultras" .. passion, protest, and the creation of symbols. | Dimalions
Sarhan unravels the language of "genres and ultras" .. passion, protest, and the creation of symbols.
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Sport
Sarhan unravels the language of "genres and ultras" .. passion, protest, and the creation of symbols.
Hesspress SportsĀ·
Until the nineteenth century, when most of the prestigious clubs were established and football had become governed by undeniable rules, every bull plowed alongside its counterpart in the field of play; students competed against students, soldiers faced soldiers, and the sons of this city met the sons of that one, with each team rallying its citizens, and no team was without a battalion of its own flag's fabric, with no outsiders or mercenaries among them, making the idea of homogeneity unthinkable.
During the twentieth century, a century marked by colonialism, white clubs began to attract talents of all colors, as the ancestors who toiled in the lands of their glory, the glory of the white man, burdened by iron chains, did not mind their descendants pouring all their sweat on its fields while they were shackled in golden contracts.
And the matter did not stop at clubs; even the teams of the great footballing powers began to naturalize talents of various colors from the descendants of the colonies to play in their colors. Perhaps the darkest example of what I mean is what is happening with the French national team, which I do not know what ingratitude prevents it, until now, from replacing its known rooster with an Ethiopian one.
This gender intermingling, if the borrowing from the critical field is valid, is not the first and will not be the last in the history of football. The game descended from a sport practiced in Britain centuries ago, a sport known as the game of the mob, which combined football with rugby and various forms of violence, lasting for hours and often resulting in injuries and fatalitiesā¦ thus, it was closer to a battle where the ball was merely the pretext and the cause.
Nevertheless, the gender intermingling in football remains less burdensome than in other sports where the mixing of lineages is unmistakable. For among the essence of any art and the ribs of any nobility, from where did boxing emerge? And by what face is chess considered a sport and not a mathematics? And yoga? Who can deny that yoga is a branch of philosophy? For the body also loves wisdom. Then, not lastly, here are the arts of war screaming with irony.
Football is now seen more than anything else on screens, perhaps even more than cinematic films. For a match also has a script and a director, a credits roll, cameras, and lighting, with close-ups and wide shotsā¦ As for the players, they create what they create live, leaving no room for editing. This one brings forth magic without a wand or a hat, that one succeeds in portraying victimhood to sway the referee against the opponent, a third breaks through Brecht's wall at a foul kick, and a fourth performs dangerous moves that movie stars would need a stunt double forā¦ In this and more, the match gathers all the elements of theater and cinema; and if we add to that what happens in the stands with chants, tifos, and artistic displays, and what some commentators express in beautiful words, then football, which has severed its ties with the game of the mob, now deserves to be attributed, rightfully, to art rather than sport, for from the perspective of theater, it is the mother of the arts, and from the perspective of cinema, it is the ninth art.
The movement appeared in its embryonic form in Brazil during the 1940s, before moving from there to Croatia, and then to Italy, where it took on the family name "Ultras," which now has various personal names depending on the stands.
Despite Africa's passion for football and its production of some of the world's most prominent talents, the emergence of ultras in its stadiums was delayed until the late twentieth century in Tunisia, and the beginning of the millennium in Morocco, before spreading to other countries on the continent.
Ultras enjoy a highly complex organization in terms of structure, principles, framing, expression, and fundingā¦ They combine the party with the association, the union, the lobby, the platform, and the outdoor psychological clinic. As for their numbers, in some cases, they exceed the membership of many political parties. Therefore, it is no surprise to see some massive political flies hovering around the football cake; if the crowds do not shoo them away, they end up in the spider's web, with the Moroccan address being "Akkasha," with a "Ųµ" and not a "Ų³."
Linguistically, "ultras" is a singular term in the form of crowds, and in discourse, it refers to chants with a tone of protest, and in images, it represents open messages that may go unread by anyoneā¦ Thus, in this and other complexities, it requires comprehensive studies across multiple disciplines.
With a bit of exaggeration, one could liken ultras to literary movements, despite the little literature described that emanates from their ranks, and the glaring differences that arise from the stands. Just as readers do not confuse surrealism with romanticism, crowds do not confuse the green boys with the crazy boys.
Indeed, dragging literature into the fray of football, particularly in the realm of ultras, is a venture with unpredictable consequences. This is due to the deep chasm between the elites of the factions, which may include graduates of the finest universities and institutes, and their ranks, most of whom lack even the bare minimum that public schooling can offer.
While chants and songs are within reach, as the ranks can memorize them and understanding them requires no intermediary, they resonate in the stadiums, reminding one of university stands during the days of Sheikh Imam, Ahmed Qabbour, Said Al-Maghribi, and other bold voicesā¦ And while some slogans are so direct that they go straight to their intended target, the matter of tifos requires a brief pause, especially those that draw from high culture.
It is true that the elites of ultras may read world literature, watch auteur cinema, and enjoy Western music, and indulge in other fruits of diligence and learning. But the more accurate statement is that their ranks, numbering in the thousands and being victims of emergency plans, lack even the luxury of speaking, let alone writing, the titles of that harvest correctly. Therefore, if those elites, having found the courage of conscience, wish to denounce the devastation, which is abundant in the Arab world, the vocal resources of their ranks are insufficient to echo even a little of Eliot's poem "The Waste Land." And if they want to send messages of anger to those concerned, Ginsberg's poem "Howl" requires human voices that the stands cannot muster. Thus, the success of "In My Country, They Wronged Me" and other stadium songs reminds one of the songs "Worried" and "Living Like a Fly in the Lining," as they all did not seek cultural exchange, for they were molded from the dough of society with its yeast, making the taste of their words in the throats akin to the taste of its bread in the throat.
Then we arrive at the core of the tifo.
In recent years, Camus, Orwell, and Ionesco have become prominent figures in Moroccan stands, truly significant as literary figures and in size because they appear in tifos. Do the bearers of Camus know, to stay within football, that he was a goalkeeper in his youth, and learned from this position how to be alone and with others at the same time, just as he learned that the ball that may surprise you from where you least expect it has its equivalent in lifeās misfortunes? Perhaps the strangest thing about the author of "The Stranger" is that he played goalkeeper only because it was the position that consumed the least shoe leather. And do the bearers of Ionesco, the pioneer of absurd theater, most of whom are absurdists in reality, as they vandalize the properties of the country and its people after every matchā¦ do they know, as they chant their disheveled songs, that his most famous play "The Bald Soprano" has been performed in various theaters around the world over twenty thousand times, a number that far exceeds the total of World Cup, continental, and Olympic matches since the gameās inception until further notice? And do the bearers of Orwell know that this genius invented, decades ago, the character of Big Brother who watches everyone, and his prophecy has come true like no other, as Big Brother is now available in the markets, with a charger, battery, applications, and cameras, in the utmost intelligence, indispensable, and prone to theftā¦
If the bearers of these tifos do not even know this little about their authors, do the fans of their opponents, who share the same societal DNA, know anything about them? And do even the club presidents and members of the managing offices and others with carefully pressed collars in the game know anything about them?
The learned tifos raised by ignorant hands are, to me, like a rosary in the hands of a buffoon, with apologies once again to those who know the absent text of this comparison. As for them as messages, they are nothing more than shots in the air from a hollow weapon.
Therefore, for this and other reasons that the article cannot contain, I hope that ultras will emulate themselves in their songs, drawing from the images of Morocco as they have drawn from its language. As long as most of their ranks are merely trying to live, and the realm of football witnesses the rise and fall of foxes, why not raise high the image of Mohammed Zafzaf? And as long as sadness dwells in their heads and hearts, as evidenced by the slogans they chant, why not raise the image of Idris El Khouri with the same vigor? The message of both is clearer than the messages of those. And most clearly, the crowds should raise the image of Mohammed Choukri to the size it deserves, for he was like them in his youth before he changed what was within him to become what he became as a world writer, who also has an agent like any football player. The image of Choukri alone is a lesson beyond lessons, and it is a message clearer than can be explained and shorter than can be read, consisting of just two words: "Bare Bread."
In the world of football, Morocco is now no less than other great footballing powers. Therefore, ultras must take this glory into account and value the language of the country and its symbols in their celebrations.
When tifos appeared depicting global writers in the stands, the cultural community was surprised, and some of its members began to recall what they had read about this and that raised figure in hopes of deciphering the message's content, yet it was more complex than that presented to the scholar Hamyan, as this was in terms of script only, while that was in terms of the new language.
But were the writers without ultras?
Literary ultras have existed for centuries without carrying this name. In the recent past, cultural cafes, literary salons, and magazines that championed this or that trend emergedā¦ There were ultras of "Poetry," ultras of "Literature," and ultras of "Criticism"... In Morocco, there was the ultras of "The Socialist Union," which long dominated most cultural stands.
With the proliferation of social media, literary ultras have become more influential and organized, creating pages in the name of this writer or that trend, then expanding with electronic applause, comments, likes, and ratingsā¦ They too have their own stands that were not available to their predecessors.
Decades ago, a unique poetic ultra emerged, those who are fans of Arthur Rimbaud. They dedicated their time to him, writing about him, studying him, translating him, and tracing his news from the sands of the south to the snows of the north in hopes of gaining further illuminations from him, gathering the wood for his hell in all seasons, and crafting oars after oars for his overflowing boatā¦ They published about him as no one else has done about anyone else. And even if they did not carry the name "Ultras Rimbaud," they became known as Rimbaudians, just as others are now known as Barcelonistas and Rajaouis...
However, the oldest and greatest ultras of all time are those that gathered at Plato's "Symposium." Had that time had some of this, it would have been called "Ultras Socrates." Socrates, who never held a pen, was crowned with the strangest cup in the history of both pen and foot: the cup of hemlock.
Far from Plato's house by more than ten centuries, there was a house in the Karkh neighborhood of Baghdad, the house of Al-Sharif Al-Razi, which was a literary salon in the modern sense, where literary and intellectual discussions were held as the cups of the drunkards do, according to the description of the house's owner. And while guests elevated the status of the host, it was not only for his undeniable generosity but also for his high standing in his time. However, the genes of ultras had retroactively mutated in a famous incident in that council. When Al-Ma'arri once stood up to defend Al-Mutanabbi after hearing the disparagement directed at him by Al-Sharif Al-Razi himself, he was dragged out of the council. If that incident has a certain historical touch regarding the honor of the house's owner and his satisfaction, it reminds me of the fanaticism of football ultras as they mistreat an opposing fan discovered among them.
And as long as Al-Mutanabbi is mentioned in both pen and foot, I suggest to the ultras, here and there, to raise his image clearly in the stands, as atonement for the awkwardness of some of the images they raise.
