[lit-ideas] Polo Memories, written by "Horse"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 17:35:23 EDT
Football in Argentina: Who's to Blame
In a message dated 4/2/2009 5:11:25 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Bolvia vs Argentina 6-1? What on earth? Last time I
saw Argentina play, they were good.
---
As My Uncle would say,
"When was the last time you saw your father?"
Anyway, Archetti (an author) has studied masculinities in football in
Argentina. As he notes, the Brits are to blame.
There is a placque in the middle of nowhere in a 'camp' in Buenos Aires
("Palermo Parks") that reads:
"This is where the first football match
was ever played in Argentina."
All players were of course, English!
------
Anyway, I'm more interested in polo. Archetti's book is called: To Be
Masculine: Polo and Football in Argentina.
---
The first polo match was played between the "Camp" and the "City" in a
ranch. The army was involved in polo, not only the Brits, because polo _was_
the
training sport for cavalry, as it still is.
---
Archetti notes:
"The football is more masculine than the polo. In the polo, it's mainly the
horse that does the playing."
----
He notes that the horse is a very tough animal, and dangerous, and not
exactly masculine ("those big bottoms in full view").
----
Archetti argues for 'hybrid sexuality', especially the "Anglo-Argentine"
breed, not of horse, but
of polo playing.
There is one Johnny Trail, who was the champion of them all. But he was a
hybrid in two respects:
-- he rode a horse: i.e. he needed to hybridise what the 'other' to become
'masculine'.
-- he was neither fish nor fowl: with the World Olympics, Trail found
himself (or hisself, as I prefer) fighting against Argentina -- since he was
representing "England". He said, "What the fuck!"
Cheers,
JL Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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