God Loves Flags

by Kieran Healy on September 11, 2005

I went to watch the Arizona Wildcats beat Northern Arizona University in the first home game of the season last night in front of a happy home crowd. I’ve only been to one other American Football game in my life, so there was a whole novelty dimension. During the halftime show, as the “marching band”:http://www.arts.arizona.edu/band/athletic/marchingband.html played Led Zeppelin favorites and marched in complex, quasi-aesthetic formations (it looked and sounded like you might imagine), the “color guard”:http://web.cfa.arizona.edu/colorguard/ drew a disproportionate amount of attention. (The color guard join in the band routines, twirling and throwing large flags. It looks tricky.) The color guard wore blue pants and sparkly, ruby-colored bustiers … except for one of them, whose whole upper body was covered in sparkly goodness. His presence was hard to miss, partly because he was the only male in the colorguard, partly because he was about twice the size of his fellow flag-bearers, but mostly because he twirled more effusively and pirouetted more extravagantly than anyone else. He flung himself _en arrière_ and _en avant_, he pirouetted under the posts and _jeté _-ed across the fifty yard line. He was terrific. Some people in the crowd got a little wound up, apparently annoyed that a gender boundary might be in danger of subversion on the very altar of American masculinity’s defining ritual. There were some catcalls and cries of “Get that guy outta there!” But mostly people loved it. And the guy himself could have cared less, blissed out as he was in front of 40,000 people, having reached a kind of camp Nirvana.

{ 16 comments }

1

Uncle Kvetch 09.11.05 at 7:00 pm

Shades of Sacha Baron-Cohen’s character Bruno performing at a football game in Alabama. The crowd there was far less kind, though.

2

Zeno 09.11.05 at 7:24 pm

You have now been to more college football games than I have ever been. Congratulation, I think. Your account of the color guard is wryly amusing and reminds me of accounts concerning the attempt of the Sacramento Kings to introduce a male pep squad. They were booed off the court by scandalized fans whose beer-addled brains were fixated on seeing cheerleaders’ bouncing jugs. It was not a pretty business and the male pep squad was quickly disbanded. I think a representative of the Kings said the fans were “not ready” for them. Yeah, rather. The male fans no doubt had heard somewhere that you can’t enjoy men’s acrobatics unless you are gay, so it was very important to protect their masculinity from such a grave danger.

3

A. G. Rud 09.11.05 at 7:26 pm

Back to orthodoxy this coming weekend with, are you ready for this, the Golden Girl, the Girl in Black, and the Silver Twins, not to mention the “World’s Largest Drum.”

4

bryan 09.12.05 at 2:22 am

5

dsquared 09.12.05 at 3:57 am

hmmm, there might be a few vacancies for him over in Norn Iron now the marching season is beginning.

6

Slocum 09.12.05 at 6:51 am

Many college marching bands have a male drum-major who is ‘normally’ flamboyantly dressed, twirls a baton, and — for some reason — does a backbend to touch the top of his enormous hat to the turf without falling over. But nobody worries about ‘subversion of gender boundaries’.

7

dave heasman 09.12.05 at 7:47 am

I recall dear old GW Bush was a cheerleader in his youth. Doubtless his costume and comportment were as fetching. Perhaps it attracted “Jeff Gannon”.

8

rea 09.12.05 at 8:12 am

The tradition of flamboyant male drum majors dates back to miltary practce in the Napoleonic era and earlier. In an age in which battlefield communications were largely a matter of flags and drums, these guys served a useful function, and tended to be noteworthy for physical courage.

http://www.napoleonguide.com/uniforms_britinf9.htm

9

Bob B 09.12.05 at 8:45 am

Possibly, drums and the like were also a valued distraction from the appalling scale of battle casualties in the Napoleonic wars:

“Except for a very few battles in World War I, no battle fought in the 20th Century can come close to matching the horror of the typical large Napoleonic battle.”
http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/WE/Casualties.html

At some considerable personal risk, Wellington as a battlefield commander was given to riding around during proceedings issuing orders, a method he presumably regarded as more dependable. A recorded incident is where an aide sat astride a horse beside him lost a leg to a cannon shot. As reported, the conversation went, “I’ve lost my leg, Sir.” Wellington responded, on looking down from the telescope he was using to survey the battle, “So you have, Sir,” whereupon he resumed his survey of the battle.

10

Mark 09.12.05 at 11:28 am

As a foreigner watching these type of displays, I have to admit I am drawn to the similarities between these and the displays from Mao era China. Maybe those commentators who suggest that American colleges are hotbeds of communism have a point, although I can’t imagine anywhere less egalitarian than college sports departments.

11

Brautigan 09.12.05 at 1:29 pm

Hmmm, wonder if it coulda been this guy?

12

mijnheer 09.12.05 at 2:03 pm

“And the guy himself could have cared less….” So he did care?

13

Matt Weiner 09.13.05 at 11:35 am

Wasn’t Tori Amos’s cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” camp Nirvana?

14

Dave 09.13.05 at 11:43 am

I am drawn to the similarities between these and the displays from Mao era China.

It’s nothing so mysterious. Pageantry adapted from old military traditions. Typically, men would be spinning rifles rather than flags, but most college bands don’t have rifle squads.

15

Maureen Hay 09.13.05 at 12:35 pm

As an ex-marching band member, I can testify that the flags are not as difficult as they look. The pole is weighted to help sustain the momentum of the twirling flag.

The difficulty scale of female football accompaniment:

1. Really good baton twirlers (only have one or two)
2. Cheerleaders
3. Rifle drill teams
4. Flags
5. Bad baton twirlers (long line of twirlers)
6. Regular drill teams

16

Tom Doyle 09.14.05 at 1:54 am

“Except for a very few battles in World War I, no battle fought in the 20th Century can come close to matching the horror of the typical large Napoleonic battle.”

E.g.:

Battle of the Somme

Date: 1 July 1916 – 18 November 1916

The 1916 Battle of the Somme was one of the largest battles of the First World War, with more than one million casualties. …The battle is best remembered for its first day, 1 July 1916, on which the British suffered 57,470 casualties of which 19,240 were killed or died of wounds. It remains the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army.
[…]
An exact count of German casualties for 1 July is difficult to make, because German units only submitted casualty returns every 10 days. It is estimated that the Germans suffered 8,000 casualties on the British front of which 2,200 were prisoners of war.

[…]

Casualties[Total(T), Killed & Missing(K&M), Prisoners(P)]

Total British Empire 419,654(T), 95,675 (K&M), 200(P).
French 204,253 (T), 50,756 (K&M).

Germany 465,000 – 600,000 (T),164,055 (K&M), 31,000 (P).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme_(1916)

Comments on this entry are closed.