The Paralympics is upon us, as if to prove that the heights of vulgarity scaled by the Olympics aren’t the highest peaks possible.
This sick spectacle is supposed to testify to the triumph of the unconquerable spirit over somewhat abbreviated flesh. In reality it testifies to something completely different.
The whole thing reminds one of Victorian county fairs, where people paid good money to look at bearded ladies or boys with two heads. Most of the time there were some tricks involved then: the beard was glued on, and the other head was made of papier-mâché. But the Paralympics is for real.
We’re supposed to cheer and applaud those poor deluded people who put themselves on show to cater to the PC idea that they are no different from those with a full complement of limbs. They are different though. These people have all suffered a terrible tragedy, and they deserve our sympathy and prayers. One of the prayers, perhaps the only one, would be that God grant them the strength to bear their misfortune with dignity.
Yet dignity is precisely what the Paralympics deprives them of, and it also diminishes the voyeurs whose bad taste is likely to be indulged by the sight of double amputees trying to outrun one another. Add to this the crass commercialism that inevitably accompanies sporting extravaganzas, the trumped-up enthusiasm of the TV presenters, the glued-on smiles of the sponsors, and the emetic effect becomes uncontainable.
It takes much strength of character to refuse to be kept down by physical deformity, whether of recent origin or innate. If these Paralympians did all the same things in private, one’s hat would be off to them – they’ve refused to wallow in self-pity, proving that the human spirit can triumph over physical incidentals.
But when they appear in a stadium to the accompaniment of a marching band, one’s hat remains firmly in place. Suddenly respect gives way to pity and discomfort – surely not the emotion these poor people expect to elicit.
Imagine a concert pianist who loses both hands in a terrible accident. He then acquires prosthetic hands and, after years of persistent toil, learns to play simple tunes to the standard of a child just beginning to attend music school. The pianist deserves respect, admiration and applause from his family and friends. He’d deserve none of those if he then hired Wigmore Hall, had a PR company do a massive promotional campaign and played a recital to an audience of listeners who don’t really care about music but love a titillating oddity.
Similarly, people who watch a tennis match between two wheelchair-bound players aren’t there to admire the tennis. If asked why they’re attending, they’ll give you the usual mantra of bien-pensant jargon they’ve absorbed from ambient air. So it’s better not to ask, for you’ll never get the real answer: they are there to have their nerve endings tickled by what deep down they see as a freak show or, to be more charitable, a circus act.
Our whole way of life these days both encourages and rewards exhibitionism. Grown-up people don’t hesitate to reveal to a million-strong TV audience their innermost problems, of the kind that in the past they wouldn’t have divulged even to a best friend. Uncountable millions watch morons copulate and discharge bodily functions on camera. Youngsters scream for attention by disfiguring themselves with tattoos and facial metal. Fat old women wear miniskirts and tank tops, old men with varicose legs sport tight shorts and wraparound sunglasses. Men and women go to group therapy and let it all hang out: “I’m John, and I’m sleeping with my daughter…,” “I’m Jane, and I can’t stop sniffing glue…”
The Paralympics parade a different sort of exhibitionism, and yet not all that different. The competitors put their deformities on show, knowing that they’ll always find willing dupes eager to watch. Suddenly we realise that they’ve succeeded in their professed aim of showing they are no different from healthy athletes or indeed from most modern people. Suffering, which in the past could be counted upon to strengthen a person’s character and enable him to plumb greater spiritual depths, now has no such effect. Seeking to prove they’re as good as anybody, the Paralympians have wasted the chance to become better than others.
Suffering or no suffering, we’re all expected to function to exactly the same laws of vulgarity and rotten taste. Such laws will never be repealed. They are here to stay.