Fisk a Stranger's Comment - on Spain

Comment on Slate article about a bullfighter killed in the ring
Jul 11, 2016



Posted this specifically to one person earlier but thought it might help situate this disturbing spectacle and address some of the disparaging comments here about Spanish traditions, in general.
I share the disgust many feel for this tradition, but a few observations to nuance the context: First, bullfighting in Spain is seen not as sport but as art.

Art is a very subjective thing.  Serial killers might see murder as art, do we have to respect that?
 
It is a ritual performance marked by grace, agility, strength and choreography.

I think a “ritual performance” would normally require all participants to “perform”, rather than fight for their literal lives.
 
Dance, not battle, is a better analogy.

Because all those ballerinas get their necks snapped after Swan Lake.
 
The violence is real, but it's read as ritual violence that re-enacts the central fact of life: the struggle to survive.

The struggle of an animal placed in the way of danger against another animal that chooses to find it.
 
The spectacle is seen as a reminder that we live at the expense of nature, that humans need to vanquish nature to survive, whether we admit this (and we usually don't) or not.

Except we don’t need to “vanquish” nature anymore, we need to learn how to live in balance with it before we destroy our own living space.  Our conquest has been too successful.
 
The bull is revered, not reviled, in Spain. So, in the Spanish mind, the bullfight is the most authentic reminder of this central, ugly, but unmistakable fact. Much more honest than, say, the industrial food slaughterhouse.

More honest because we can witness the slaughter?  And laugh and applaud?  I don’t think you really want to encourage that kind of honesty.

Second, Spain is an extremely modernized country; its politics are more progressive than those of France or Italy.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT????
Ok, maybe this is “progressive” in the sense of local government power.  The Spanish Autonomies make France look like a police state.  We might also consider the same-sex marriage law to be progressive, but what does this have to do with bullfighting?  Do pro-gay policies cancel out animal cruelty?  That doesn’t make “progressive”, that makes zero.
 
It's also a culture to which the west owes a mountain of gratitude. Without the scientific, artistic, and philosophical richness of medieval Spain, the general European renaissance would have been much slower coming.

Because of the Moors and the Jews, who were promptly kicked out and not welcomed in any other European country of the Renaissance, I believe.
 
And as the first modern European nation-state, Spain's empire was rich, powerful, and, for better or worse, the first culture since ancient Rome to promote a truly global economy.

Ehhh, not so much an economy.  Spain promoted exploration and some exploitation, but the profits went to the king to finance his European wars, and the colonies were not especially developed from Spain itself.  They depended on some energetic immigrants who probably were more concerned with their local economy than the home country’s.  England, the Netherlands, even Portugal were more mercantile than Spain.
 
Without Spain, Europe would have been much longer mired in what some call "the dark ages."

And yet, some people say the wealth culled from the colonies kept Spain a feudal country until the 20th century.

Finally, the bullfight's appeal is diminishing sharply in Spain; it's support drawn more from the south and from the working class. I doubt that it will survive another 20 years. Like many, I hope it doesn't.

But you sure are happy to defend the beauty and honesty of it while it’s here.