Guess what’s new
Few weeks ago I went to the cinema to see “Oppenheimer”. Interesting.
While I waited, the usual half hour trailer ran before my eyes, and there was also something about a race, with a grave voice announcing “the other drivers are going to hate you”, and with a boy on the verge of being number one in the field, most likely.
Not really my thing, sports movies, and even less car racing movies, so I don’t know the actual plot, nor will I go to find out.
But as with every ancient topic concerning human beings, the story is essentially always the same.
Probably the boy, coming to the limelight from nowhere, will have to face a sort of king of the race, or two kings, who have so far divided the crowds, and after a while he will manage to win a competition overtaking one of them, for the first time.
The experienced racer is interviewed and complains something like: “To lose to someone like that is disappointing, you know, plus his last overtaking was lucky.”
Perhaps the other king adds a few other meaningful words on the same line, after his own loss to the boy in another race, and so on with this tone.
Over the years, the boy proves to be so incredibly lucky to become the greatest, more, the greatest ever, in everything, finding normal to say that the other competitor simply did better when he loses the race, even for a tad.
Some of the other drivers keep talking about his feelings, trying to exchange his determination to continually improve, which is one the traits of all the best-ever-ones, as a sign of unhappiness, because, hey, he keeps showing up (and winning, darn) and so on and so on, avoiding carefully to simply talk about the only thing they could wisely talk about: facts. And the more he wins, the more he would be obsessed, since all the others won less because they are less interested in winning. Even more, as his results are objectivally unquestionable, they seem to know not only his current feelings but even the presumed feelings in case he couldn’t have won so much.
But this is not enough, because the facts themselves can be narrated like this or like that, and therefore the recourse to helpful practices allowed by the rules can be read in opposite ways, depending on the person: on the one hand, the boy’s use of them, which is not even that frequent, is used as a means of trying to lessen his achievements, while on the other hand the same behaviour of others is not followed by such comments or is even considered a sign of human strength, because the driver continues the race with courage despite the difficulties.
Even terms are emptied of their true meaning, so that arrogance is now found in confidence in one’s own potential (freely expressed because it had always been a positive thing), rather than being associated with an inability to conceive of the possible arrival of someone more capable than oneself, conveyed with a mixture of denial of the other’s merits and words of contempt directed at the person.
As always, however, there are also people, and colleagues themselves, who don’t engage in these types of remarks about the boy, and when asked what is the most difficult thing about racing with the champion, they give a crystal clear answer, revealing unimaginable secrets. Among his many strengths there would be a fierce determination, a relentless concentration, bend after bend, overtaking after overtaking, right up to the finish line. But here’s the unthinkable: it would be a quality every driver aspires to. If only maintaining such focus in the heat of the moment wasn’t such a formidable challenge, they explain.
Unsurprisingly, the boy doesn’t feel the urge to talk about other people’s emotions, nor does he waste time responding to self-explaining comments, not even under the pressure of interviewers who thrive on controversy.
Guess what else, some forgotten drivers, former coaches and the like try compensating for his success by claiming that the boy will never be loved like the previous kings (as if supporters could be counted in the same way as victories, by distinguishing among fans, fanatics, bots, by retrieving the silent and non-appearing admirers, etc.).
And, out of the blue, a kid says: “Dad, why are those men so angry? I’ve always known that greatness in sport is told by the achievements… how come this case would be different?”
One day the grown-up boy will be asked if he misses the previous kings, as good friends, or at least partners in the race.
Imagine the huge surprise when he expresses doubts about a possible nostalgia on a personal level for his colleagues.
Some car race viewers will be shocked by this big and unexpected revelation, while others will still be laughing at the question itself, pleased again by the straightness from the boy.
His achievements are truly outstanding, though, and all sorts of weird explanations come up as to why there are not yet statues of him all around: some of these reasons are absurd, completely illogical (like the fact that people would be tired of seeing him win) and in fact wouldn’t apply to anyone else, and others are embarrassingly false (like the abuse of helpful permitted practices) and it is easy to check with statistics. While absolutely nobody can imagine the real reason, some accuse the haters of being biased by hair colour-ism, for the guy reveals a bushy red head under his sober black helmet.
Whatever the reason, the career is simply too impressive to ignore, so that the traditionally hating narrative is somehow obliged to show a change, surely without admitting to anything wrong stated previously and instead mentioning a “rebranding” of the guy who would now behave well. Also those same former kings feel now the necessity to take a slightly different attitude, gracing that the boy is actually better than he looks.
And while some people are still wondering why he should look worse than he actually is (according to such statement), others are starting to assume the impossible, as if his annoyed reaction when trolls bothered him during the race was no longer so groudless.
Some even go so far as to say that, on the contrary, his victories are all the more deserved because he achieved them in spite of this difficulty.
There’s even a reckless pseudo-psychologist who dares to suggest that the trollish attitude of people frustrated in their lives, who need an enemy to take the edge off, has nothing to do with sport, cheering and everything a true sports lover expects to see when watching a race and a competition in general.
Not to mention an alleged sociologist who rambles on about solid unmoving masses where no one thinks for themselves and is in tune with the mainstream climate like the guys who don’t want to feel left out of the group. “Why should he endure all those hecklers during the podium ceremony without reacting, when the previous king, at the mere buzzing of a fly against him, dares to silence people without anyone finding it a double standard?” asks a naive spectator.
And here we have the literature, with a supposed scholar, in love with the Italian classics, mentioning the crowd in Pirandello’s “The Outcast”, who hit violently the door of four frightened women with the head of a saint’s statue, or the old man with a hammer among the assailants of the vicar’s house in Manzoni’s “The Betrothed”.
The essayist couldn’t be left out either, so there’s the Huxley enthusiast, who explains the importance of words in the economics of ethical behaviour. This reader observes how everyone agrees on identifying the traits of reprehensible behaviors, provided, however, that these attitudes are not exhibited by their favorites, for whom they pull out improbable explanations from their hat that contradict all logic.
Then there’s the guy who doesn’t care about getting likes from everyone, so he wonders why such traits are judged differently depending on who displays them. He concludes by saying that he can’t think of any other explanation except that people tend to like people who are like them.
But you know how it is, at the end of their career they are all happy, wise and brotherly, so fortunately they will end up loving each other deeply and sincerely.
Yet, when the boy is too old to be at his top and can no longer drive like no one could do so far, he will retire eventually (for he is still a man), and the first viewers will argue that, see, after all, he was not so special, while the second ones show no problem to celebrate his one-of-the kind career.
However, this is just a guess inspired by a very old story, and the plot will be different, at least in detail, for sure, maybe with a woman somewhere among the racers, to introduce some jealousy, who knows. The gist of the story, though, never gets old enough.