(no subject)
Hello, lj peeps! I'm not dead! I'm not dead of having my heart trampled by game 7 of the finals, although it is still a little achy, and might stay that way until the new season starts to reassure me. I actually think that, although the Canucks were the better team overall, the Bruins won the mental game, not to mention the media game, and were the better team in the finals. That said, I'm also not dead of staying up until 3:30 am after the game to make sure that the police had the riots under control in Vancouver, and in fact, I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that Vancouverites turned out in some force on Thursday morning to help clean up the city and express their opposition to what happened. Boston aside - very, very aside, in this case - Vancouver is my closest-to-home-city and I want it to be happy and peaceful.
I am, to sum up, not dead. I've been three parts socializing (I've been out hanging out with people every night since Wednesday!), three million parts reading and thinking about hockey. It's threatening to eat my brain like a new fandom! It actually is a fandom, as I was already aware. I knew there was fanfiction, but it's better than I thought, and seems to consist substantially of bizarrely compelling Chicago Blackhawks slash (with occasional Ryan Kesler, about whom more later). I started out looking for post-mortems of the game, preferably ones that gave the Canucks credit for being awesome and argued that they'd have a good shot again next year, which turned into searching extensively for analysis to support my opinions on the media circus that surrounded the final series of the playoffs. I eventually found that analysis in, of all places, the Vancouver Sun's sports blogs. Sanity! But it was too late. I wanted fic. I already had thoughts demanding elaboration here.
As I said last weekend, I was dismayed by the coverage of the series between the Bruins and the Canucks, both what was coming out of the Boston media and even more what was coming out of the Canadian media. To boil it down, the gist of it all was that Bruins had an amazing and hardworking goalie and played a good old-fashioned physical game, and the Canucks were a bunch of wussy, prissy, diving cheaters and embellishers flopping around all over the ice at the slightest hint of contact in the hope of drawing a penalty, weakly backed up by a sensitive overemotional goalie. To boil it down further, and without much further thought, since the media went there repeatedly for me, the Bruins were manly and the Canucks played hockey like a bunch of little girls.
Obviously, there's a lot to unpack there, not least the fact that there's some truth to some of it. It was not a clean series on either side, and it devolved from the incident in game 1 in which Alex Burrows of the Canucks bit the gloved finger that Patrice Bergeron shoved into his mouth during a fight and didn't get suspended for it. Roberto Luongo, Vancouver's goalie, had some seriously epic collapses, and he is clearly both sensitive and emotional. Vancouver does play a less physical (and faster and more skill-oriented) style of hockey, and one that depends on conscientious and consistent reffing, in contrast to Boston's hit-hard-and-everyone-stand-in-front-of-the-net style. Between the hands-off style of reffing in the series (I'm not going to go with the reffing conspiracy theorists who think the referees were completely biased if not paid off by the NHL to make sure Boston won), the Bruins' effective defense, and the fact that Tim Thomas their goalie was on fire, the Canucks' speed and skill were pretty effectively shut down.
But of course, all those grains of truth got lost in the giant muddy snowball of misogynistic discourse. And as the giant muddy snowball of misogynistic discourse picked up speed, it also picked up other kinds of discourse. Xenophobic! Homophobic! Pro-violence! Because not only do the Canucks play a speed and skill kind of hockey, which they do very well, as their standing at the very top of the NHL by quite a lot at the end of the 2010-2011 regular season attests, they're led by Henrik and Daniel Sedin, a set of very fast, very skilled twins from Sweden who don't get into fights, ever. To rantily summarize the discourse of dozens of hockey commentary columns and comments on columns, that's a bad thing! Europeans are effeminate! Speed and skill are effeminate! Breaking the rules by diving and biting is effeminate and it's something that the effeminate Canucks learned from watching effeminate Italians play effeminate soccer! Likewise, playing by the rules and avoiding fights and penalties and injuries is effeminate! And Vancouverites are effeminate, because they sip lattes and their hockey team is! And by extension, all British Columbians are effeminate! And since real Canadians aren't effeminate and can't cheer for a team that is, British Columbians aren't real Canadians! And the Canucks aren't Canada's team! And the Canucks are the least-deserving contenders for the Stanley Cup ever!
Or, to phrase it in a somewhat more measured way, a lot of the criticism levelled at the Canucks in the course of the playoffs, including some what was legitimate, was cast in gendered terms. Sometimes it was subtle, sometimes very, very overt, but the bottom line was basically that the Canucks didn't deserve to win, and as the series progressed were losing games, because for a variety of reasons, they were too much like women. And not only was far less criticism levelled at the Bruins than at the Canucks, but the Bruins also benefitted from an implied narrative in which they were the scrappy, manly defenders of a kind of good, old-time, North American/Canadian-style hockey. I might add here that there's also an undercurrent to the Bruins narrative that has to do with class - the Bruins were the scrappy underdogs who wanted it more, and that's more Canadian, and incidentally, more manly, because the entitled, effete, foreign Sedins and other Canucks just didn't want it enough.
To quote Harrison Mooney on June 12th in the Vancouver Sun on the use of gendered insults all series in the best column I've read so far on coverage of the series:
Why, exactly, is it considered acceptable - professionally acceptable, even - to mock two men by comparing them to a minority group in hockey, anyway? What's next? The Sedins play like blacks, jews, or gays?
This line of criticism is, in and of itself, childish and sexist. It's 2011 and there are women in the Hockey Hall of Fame. If the Sedins actually were women, people might be a little more impressed with their point per game pace over the last five years, their back-to-back Art Ross trophies, their potentially back-to-back Hart trophies, or the fact that they've led their hockey team to the Stanley Cup Final in their first year as team leaders. As it stands, however, these accomplishments aren’t enough to escape the criticism that they're actually women on skates - and that there's something inherently wrong with that.
Again, as a female Canucks fan from British Columbia, living in Boston surrounded by Bruins fans, and living in the US and already pretty sensitive to feeling like I'm not a real Canadian, it was all very disheartening. I feel like I should take some kind of stance against NHL hockey, if it creates this kind of toxic misogynist and gender essentialist and for that matter misandrist atmosphere. And yet hockey is deeply compelling! If I didn't have a French visa to get and a dissertation to write I could probably write another extensive entry doing a Natalie Zemon Davis "The Reasons of Misrule"/"The Rites of Violence"-type analysis of hockey (and hockey riots!), but I don't have time, and in any case, I'd probably come out with the conclusion that everything is about enforcing social hierarchies among which gender, and I'd be right back where I started. Sigh. None of this has made me more optimistic about human nature.
Plus, although the Bruins deserved to win this time, I still want the Canucks to win the Stanley Cup, and what's more (and worse), I still want these Canucks to win the Stanley Cup. I'd prefer they did it cleanly without any biting and diving incidents, but I don't think there's anything wrong with speed and precision and unwillingness to react to provocation with a beatdown. In fact, I like it! It makes for glorious hockey!
Plus, I already really liked some of the current Canucks, and now, after reading about them for three solid days, I like them more! I've actually probably seen some of them play in person - Kevin Bieksa in 2003 when Bowling Green State University played Colgate and Tanner Glass in 2006 when Dartmouth beat Colgate in the last hockey game of the season my fourth year. Also, although I never saw him in action, Cory Schneider was in his fourth year at my current institution my first year here. Plus, Kevin Bieksa (I hope the Canucks extend his contract!) is hilarious, as is Alex Burrows. And the Sedins are polite and soft-spoken purveyors of deadly mind-meldy passing and scoring!
And marry me a little, Ryan Kesler? I know you're already married and have two kids, but we're the same age and from small towns and both crossed the same border from opposite sides at almost the same time to end up living and working in major cities on opposite sides of the border and the continent from each other and from our hometowns and all these things can't be coincidence! Plus, you're really cute including your slightly minched nose and you cried after game 7 and didn't really try to hide it and, see my whole rant about gender essentialism and restrictive masculinity above, I respect that. I also want to hug that. It's destiny!
~
So, four hours later, those are my thoughts, albeit not all of them, and perhaps still not very coherent three four days later, and perhaps full of contradictions I can't satisfactorily resolve, but my thoughts. If you want citations to accompany my rant, just ask. Right now, however, it's time to scrounge supper. Oh today's to-do list, how you have suffered in the writing of this...
I have also now inappropriately renamed my Canucks tag "marry me a little ryan kesler."
Edited to add: My "feminist rage" tag! How could I forget it while I was writing a feminist... well, since I came out against beatdowns I probably shouldn't say "beatdown," but a feminist deconstruction of sportswriting? Not to mention that a good part of me wants to start following hockey really closely for the purposes of starting a feminist hockey blog!
I am, to sum up, not dead. I've been three parts socializing (I've been out hanging out with people every night since Wednesday!), three million parts reading and thinking about hockey. It's threatening to eat my brain like a new fandom! It actually is a fandom, as I was already aware. I knew there was fanfiction, but it's better than I thought, and seems to consist substantially of bizarrely compelling Chicago Blackhawks slash (with occasional Ryan Kesler, about whom more later). I started out looking for post-mortems of the game, preferably ones that gave the Canucks credit for being awesome and argued that they'd have a good shot again next year, which turned into searching extensively for analysis to support my opinions on the media circus that surrounded the final series of the playoffs. I eventually found that analysis in, of all places, the Vancouver Sun's sports blogs. Sanity! But it was too late. I wanted fic. I already had thoughts demanding elaboration here.
As I said last weekend, I was dismayed by the coverage of the series between the Bruins and the Canucks, both what was coming out of the Boston media and even more what was coming out of the Canadian media. To boil it down, the gist of it all was that Bruins had an amazing and hardworking goalie and played a good old-fashioned physical game, and the Canucks were a bunch of wussy, prissy, diving cheaters and embellishers flopping around all over the ice at the slightest hint of contact in the hope of drawing a penalty, weakly backed up by a sensitive overemotional goalie. To boil it down further, and without much further thought, since the media went there repeatedly for me, the Bruins were manly and the Canucks played hockey like a bunch of little girls.
Obviously, there's a lot to unpack there, not least the fact that there's some truth to some of it. It was not a clean series on either side, and it devolved from the incident in game 1 in which Alex Burrows of the Canucks bit the gloved finger that Patrice Bergeron shoved into his mouth during a fight and didn't get suspended for it. Roberto Luongo, Vancouver's goalie, had some seriously epic collapses, and he is clearly both sensitive and emotional. Vancouver does play a less physical (and faster and more skill-oriented) style of hockey, and one that depends on conscientious and consistent reffing, in contrast to Boston's hit-hard-and-everyone-stand-in-front-of-the-net style. Between the hands-off style of reffing in the series (I'm not going to go with the reffing conspiracy theorists who think the referees were completely biased if not paid off by the NHL to make sure Boston won), the Bruins' effective defense, and the fact that Tim Thomas their goalie was on fire, the Canucks' speed and skill were pretty effectively shut down.
But of course, all those grains of truth got lost in the giant muddy snowball of misogynistic discourse. And as the giant muddy snowball of misogynistic discourse picked up speed, it also picked up other kinds of discourse. Xenophobic! Homophobic! Pro-violence! Because not only do the Canucks play a speed and skill kind of hockey, which they do very well, as their standing at the very top of the NHL by quite a lot at the end of the 2010-2011 regular season attests, they're led by Henrik and Daniel Sedin, a set of very fast, very skilled twins from Sweden who don't get into fights, ever. To rantily summarize the discourse of dozens of hockey commentary columns and comments on columns, that's a bad thing! Europeans are effeminate! Speed and skill are effeminate! Breaking the rules by diving and biting is effeminate and it's something that the effeminate Canucks learned from watching effeminate Italians play effeminate soccer! Likewise, playing by the rules and avoiding fights and penalties and injuries is effeminate! And Vancouverites are effeminate, because they sip lattes and their hockey team is! And by extension, all British Columbians are effeminate! And since real Canadians aren't effeminate and can't cheer for a team that is, British Columbians aren't real Canadians! And the Canucks aren't Canada's team! And the Canucks are the least-deserving contenders for the Stanley Cup ever!
Or, to phrase it in a somewhat more measured way, a lot of the criticism levelled at the Canucks in the course of the playoffs, including some what was legitimate, was cast in gendered terms. Sometimes it was subtle, sometimes very, very overt, but the bottom line was basically that the Canucks didn't deserve to win, and as the series progressed were losing games, because for a variety of reasons, they were too much like women. And not only was far less criticism levelled at the Bruins than at the Canucks, but the Bruins also benefitted from an implied narrative in which they were the scrappy, manly defenders of a kind of good, old-time, North American/Canadian-style hockey. I might add here that there's also an undercurrent to the Bruins narrative that has to do with class - the Bruins were the scrappy underdogs who wanted it more, and that's more Canadian, and incidentally, more manly, because the entitled, effete, foreign Sedins and other Canucks just didn't want it enough.
To quote Harrison Mooney on June 12th in the Vancouver Sun on the use of gendered insults all series in the best column I've read so far on coverage of the series:
Why, exactly, is it considered acceptable - professionally acceptable, even - to mock two men by comparing them to a minority group in hockey, anyway? What's next? The Sedins play like blacks, jews, or gays?
This line of criticism is, in and of itself, childish and sexist. It's 2011 and there are women in the Hockey Hall of Fame. If the Sedins actually were women, people might be a little more impressed with their point per game pace over the last five years, their back-to-back Art Ross trophies, their potentially back-to-back Hart trophies, or the fact that they've led their hockey team to the Stanley Cup Final in their first year as team leaders. As it stands, however, these accomplishments aren’t enough to escape the criticism that they're actually women on skates - and that there's something inherently wrong with that.
Again, as a female Canucks fan from British Columbia, living in Boston surrounded by Bruins fans, and living in the US and already pretty sensitive to feeling like I'm not a real Canadian, it was all very disheartening. I feel like I should take some kind of stance against NHL hockey, if it creates this kind of toxic misogynist and gender essentialist and for that matter misandrist atmosphere. And yet hockey is deeply compelling! If I didn't have a French visa to get and a dissertation to write I could probably write another extensive entry doing a Natalie Zemon Davis "The Reasons of Misrule"/"The Rites of Violence"-type analysis of hockey (and hockey riots!), but I don't have time, and in any case, I'd probably come out with the conclusion that everything is about enforcing social hierarchies among which gender, and I'd be right back where I started. Sigh. None of this has made me more optimistic about human nature.
Plus, although the Bruins deserved to win this time, I still want the Canucks to win the Stanley Cup, and what's more (and worse), I still want these Canucks to win the Stanley Cup. I'd prefer they did it cleanly without any biting and diving incidents, but I don't think there's anything wrong with speed and precision and unwillingness to react to provocation with a beatdown. In fact, I like it! It makes for glorious hockey!
Plus, I already really liked some of the current Canucks, and now, after reading about them for three solid days, I like them more! I've actually probably seen some of them play in person - Kevin Bieksa in 2003 when Bowling Green State University played Colgate and Tanner Glass in 2006 when Dartmouth beat Colgate in the last hockey game of the season my fourth year. Also, although I never saw him in action, Cory Schneider was in his fourth year at my current institution my first year here. Plus, Kevin Bieksa (I hope the Canucks extend his contract!) is hilarious, as is Alex Burrows. And the Sedins are polite and soft-spoken purveyors of deadly mind-meldy passing and scoring!
And marry me a little, Ryan Kesler? I know you're already married and have two kids, but we're the same age and from small towns and both crossed the same border from opposite sides at almost the same time to end up living and working in major cities on opposite sides of the border and the continent from each other and from our hometowns and all these things can't be coincidence! Plus, you're really cute including your slightly minched nose and you cried after game 7 and didn't really try to hide it and, see my whole rant about gender essentialism and restrictive masculinity above, I respect that. I also want to hug that. It's destiny!
~
So, four hours later, those are my thoughts, albeit not all of them, and perhaps still not very coherent three four days later, and perhaps full of contradictions I can't satisfactorily resolve, but my thoughts. If you want citations to accompany my rant, just ask. Right now, however, it's time to scrounge supper. Oh today's to-do list, how you have suffered in the writing of this...
I have also now inappropriately renamed my Canucks tag "marry me a little ryan kesler."
Edited to add: My "feminist rage" tag! How could I forget it while I was writing a feminist... well, since I came out against beatdowns I probably shouldn't say "beatdown," but a feminist deconstruction of sportswriting? Not to mention that a good part of me wants to start following hockey really closely for the purposes of starting a feminist hockey blog!