Rant regarding extreme/ultimate fighting and how it contributes to fear and nihilism.

Why would you want to contribute to this vile opposition to life and limb, brain cell and bone? Ultimate fighting seems to me to be a more violent and ill pastime than anything else I can think of.

Tell me, is sanctioned mugging your cup of tea? Survival of the meat-headest, the burying of buddahood and the blossoming of blood? Well you're gonna love this craze, which seems to be sweeping our Americanized culture with its steroided biceps and low cut, flirtatious (or fightatious?) singlets.

I keep encountering this blight the more I stumble through recent sport and entertainment references, and this convinces me that the MEC* has really hit its stride, while us peaceniks can only blog and remind the world of melody and the idiocy of flags.

A few Friday nights ago, I took a trip to the local library of video discs and tapes, yon Broadway Blockbuster, where on the large plasma screen up above us all, a different kind of plasma was starting to flow. Sure, it was only drips, but had been started by the fists of two slow moving, large men (rather homoerotically however in that Greco-Roman way.)

Being prime-time Friday night and the store filled with every age from seven to seventy, folks renting that Woody Allen they hadn't ever seen or deliberately forgotten, folks escaping from the week with some Spiderman, folks looking for a 'romantic comedy' and hopefully picking something not quite as mind-numbing as what was on the plasma screen, all were assaulted by the tough display up there

Many were not dismayed, even the parent of the seven year old boy seemed not to mind the round after round of bare-fisted melee with no rules. Suddenly one of our unlucky contestants had himself held down by his adversary, receiving repeated knuckle and fist blows to the back of his head. At this stage, I must admit to feeling a little indignant, a little surprised at a video store with over 5000 titles, concentrating on one so narrow and specialised, apart from the actual subject matter which was more violent than any R rated movie, because it was real unlike WWF wrestling or even boxing which seems to be stopped on KO or near it.

How was this in any way an appropriate thing to show at family time on Friday night?

Behind the counter there was a very well-built young adult who looked like he had necked his entire family's weetbix for the last 10 years breakfasts. He actually seemed to be cut from the same cloth as our stars up on the screen. I asked him what this stuff was that they were showing.

"Ultimate Fighting. Why, you got a problem with it?" He said to me.
"Yes, actually I think it's really inappropriate to show something this violent in your store, when you have so many other videos to choose from"
"Well we show it because it's popular. People rent it."
"I would think they would rent whatever you show on the screen more often..."

He rather threateningly asked me if I was threatened by it. I told him no, and that I thought it was very wrong.

The two men on screen had now graduated to a tennis-court-fence bound battle, and the inhumanity continued in a new and more imposing forum. I couldn't talk to this guy and get anywhere, and I wondered where the usual friendlier, glasses-wearing, cool nerds were who normally gave away their opinion of my newly rented titles with an almost imperceptible little glance at the cover or disc.

And how far is this very brutal and voyeuristic craze going to reach, into the minds and hearts of the young lads at that video store, able to rent real M-rated human brutality easier than R-rated computer generated horrors? Into Mike Tyson inspired family leaders, into brain damaged street fighters moving ever further from dealing with their own or anyone else's suffering...

That's a rant.

*Military Entertainment Complex - they bring you wonderful patriotic statements of anti-kindness such as Black Hawk Down, Independance Day, a thousand adverts and movies and poison PR. The companies that are supposed to kick start the US economy after the "wars" they blunder into, want to make sure that violence and fervour of a red, white and blue kind, are generating some good press and interest. Ever since Elvis donned military garb and harmonised with the US forces, since Cher perched astride a cannon on an aircraft carrier wearing a seatbelt in a less common fashion, right up to Saddam's statue draped in a flag, these images are all fulfilling grave and blunt aims of the MEC. Oh yeah.