High Brow Low Brow

Sports. They’re a universal language. They possess the power to both unite individuals as one, but also turn them into into bitter enemies. For some they are an inevitable part of life, while for others, they are life. Besides being a significant cultural identifier and cause for an unhealthy obsession, sports can also be a terrific indicator of individual character. Whether you realize it or not, the type of sports you like reveals a great deal about whom you are as a person, just like what kind of shoes you wear or if you prefer wine and cheese to beer and brats. Just as one might associate a shiny pair of Oxfords to that of the wealthy class and a ratty pair of flip-flops to that of the lower class, they’re bound to do the same with your interest in sports.

Polo, for one, screams elite social status. If you play Polo, it is assumed that you do so only when you are not busy attending royal palace balls, polishing your cufflinks or sailing across the Atlantic. Its prosperousness in nobility and upper class circles should come as no surprise. The elements are all there. First, one needs to have money. A horse after all isn’t bought at the local Wal-Mart or sports shop. It is a major investment, and once you have the horse then you need to have the land and the stable. There’s just no room in the man caves of the lower classes for steeds and Palominos. Plus, good luck finding a man of low tastes willing to dress up like a Polo player. The mockery from friends alone would be enough for him to throw the mallet in disgust.

But the world of sports covers a vast and immeasurable spectrum, for in that same continuum of activity are the sports of competitive eating and noodling—recreation no upper class individual would ever dare to be caught taking part in. Granted, the grounds on which noodling can even be considered a sport are contestable but nevertheless, those involved will always be stereotyped as having only two front teeth and a strange fascination with cutoff jeans.

You know there’s something wrong when stuffing one’s pie hole with the most food as humanly possible is considered a sport. Taking into account America’s ever-increasing weight issue and love for all things fried, the competitive eating craze is really not a shocker. Competitive eating was made for Americans—and it’s rather low brow. For most low brow individuals, this sounds like a typical Saturday night: hanging out at the bar, drinking 6-packs and eating enough food to last a month. You see, you’d be hard pressed to find a man of higher status doing any of these lowly behaviors. He would be sipping on wine instead of chugging beer, dining in a fine café instead of a bar and God help him if he is going to eat more Chicken Cordon Bleu than he can handle—and that’s if there’s no vegetarian menu.

Even your taste in cinema is subject to social status classification.  Moneyball, for one, is seen as a very highbrow film. It’s too smart for the uneducated sports fan and too artsy for those who would rather be watching The Waterboy or a Tim Tebow highlight reel instead. It’s a film about baseball—arguably a middlebrow sport at best—but manages to avoid all the clichés that plague most contemporary sports flicks. It’s intelligent, shrewd and somehow makes mathematical statistics supremely entertaining. Heck, Moneyball is a film more about math than it is about baseball! And for the higher-brow individual, that’s more than OK. Moneyball is the perfect highbrow sports movie because it does something most sports movies fail to do: it makes you think; that’s something I can’t say for The Benchwarmers or really even Bull Durham.

Of course, with visual communication as prominent as it is here in the states, television programs—especially televised sporting events—are also a fantastic indicator of where one falls on the highbrow-lowbrow spectrum.  Take the Olympics for example.  Nothing draws sports fans and non-sports fans together quite like the Olympics. Considered the world’s foremost sports competition with over 200 participating countries, it truly is a spectacle to behold. It’s also one of those rare events in the sporting universe that appeals to both lowbrow and highbrow sensibilities. For the aficionados of high quality taste, the Olympics provide a sense of internationality and grandeur they so often seek in sports, but rarely find. Plus, they have the opening and closing ceremonies to look forward to, which give the event an artsy and dazzling theatrical edge. For those individuals drawn more towards lower quality tastes, the Olympics also provide supreme entertainment: there’s a plethora of events to match their short attention spans (most of which won’t appeal to them anyway), a fantastic selection of gorgeous women performing aerial stunts in barely any clothing and it gives them an excuse to sit on the coach and drink beer all day.

This immoral judging of social statuses is not limited to the game itself or its visual depictions. It seems no façade of one’s life is left unturned and unmolested by the judgmental eye. The classifying even extends into popular culture. Take, for example, Tim Tebow, a pop culture phenomenon. But let’s be honest, is there anything as insufferable as Tebow mania? Everywhere I go, I can’t escape his mention. Whatever the fascination is with Tebow, and clearly I don’t see it, it has greatly overstayed its welcome. Something as overhyped, overused and over-the-top as he can only be classified as lowbrow hogwash. Over the course of the last week, it seems a new mass-produced cultural phenomenon has dethroned Mr. Tebow. His name is Jeremy Lin and at the rate his popularity is exploding, I fear his name will soon become—like Tebow’s—to be as venomous to the ears as Lord Voldemort. It’s only been a few days, but I think I’ve already had all the Linsanity I can handle.

There you have it, sports interests transformed into social statuses. I hope you have found yourself belonging more to the high and middlebrow classes and not leaning towards lowbrow tastes. If you are, I am deeply sorry you had to read this article and I hope it hasn’t stung too much. Now I should probably steer clear of anyone lurking around in a Tebow jersey or sporting jean cutoffs.

Low Brow
Beer Pong (It’s a sport, right?)
Basketball
Football
Fishing
Hockey
Brett Favre’s penis
Rocky V
Ultimate Frisbee
Happy Gilmore
The Waterboy
Bowling
Liking Mike Tyson’s face tattoo