Fantastic goal was scored on Sunday by Cheik Tiote, the Newcastle midfielder. Stunning goal. Goal of the day/month/season type goal. And then it wasn’t. After careful consideration (we don’t got no tv replays in our national game) and discussion it was decided that it was not a goal. Someone was offside. Not Tiote, he was a mile away from the very crowded goal area. But someone else. Who, whilst apparently neither ‘active’ nor ‘interfering with play’ was deemed to have had some, presumably subliminal or telekinetic, effect on the event and the goal was thus disallowed. Oh dear.

His manager, Alan Pardew, after the (losing) game, said that the goal should have stood. No surprise there. Manager always make excuses and as they go, this was a good one. But the surprise was his reasoning. Which was that ‘football is entertainment’ and therefore something as wonderfully entertaining as that goal should have been allowed to stand. Well I personally find it ‘entertaining’ when Arsenal players suffer studs-up, boots in the throat tackles. But players still get sent off for perpetrating such actions.

So at what point to rules/regulations/protocols give way to the great god that is ‘entertainment’?

I shall confess, at this point, that I’m not a great opera fan. In fact, having been but once in my life to see that (shit) artform, (Rigoletto, Vienna Statsoper, 1985), it scared me away. Fat people in fancy dress screaming at each other in a Italian, fortunately with German subtitles(?), simply didn’t move me like career-threatening tackles on Arsenal players does. Ok, well it moved me to tears, it moved me to want to leave, and it moved me towards other artistic expression in my life. Like pole-vaulting.

But now this may change.

In an opera staged in Germany, the singer Danielle De Niese, (typical Aussie name) has performed in some opera or other. Dressed not in the Elizabethan, high-necked, sixteen-petticoated, floor length burgundy velvet monstrosity, but in a leopard print leotard. Writhing round on stage like Rhianna. Like Beyoncee. Twerking like Mylie. Hip-thrusting (I’m making this up a bit now, the fantasy has taken on its own momentum), spinning little tassels on her chest, licking things, sliding around doing the splits…

Whatever.

But at the opera!!! A leotard!!!!

And you know what? She’s right. They’re right. The producers, directors, costume decider people. Because opera is the dullest, most tedious, boring, tragic of all the performing arts. Its like watching England play cricket, but with less white. Its like baseball without the spitting. Its like living in Norway. So to spice it up a bit may get more people engaged, more people interested, keen to learn a whole new classical musical world. Increase the entertainment value. And see bare flesh gyrating.

My only question is whether I’m allowed to watch it, if its ’empowerment’ of women, like Beyoncee, or if its banned from my life as yet another perverted low form of smutty ‘objectification’ of women, like lap-dancing.
I’m still struggling with that one. Same actions, same clothes, one is a feminist statement the other a vile act of submission to misogynistic and chauvinistic pornography.

But either way, its certainly entertainment.

Happy friday

A xxxx