![\"J.G.](\"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/1-205x300.jpg\" "\\"Running")
<\/a>My copy of ‘Running Wild’<\/p><\/div>\n
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\u201cUnable to express their own emotions or respond to those of people around them, suffocated under a mantle of praise and encouragement, they were trapped forever in a perfect universe. In such a society, madness is the only freedom.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n J.G. Ballard: Running Wild<\/em> (1988.)<\/p>\n In many ways Vancouver\u2019s hockey riot was likewise an expression of raging bourgeoise ferality; essentially, a riot about nothing – a \u2018Seinfeld\u2019 of riots to which it is a mistake to ascribe any political motive. In the wake of the play-off defeat, with the Canucks scoring \u2018zero,\u2019 something had to take the place of that nothing even if that something was pointless violence. At least that could be remembered, tweeted and socially networked. To read any more into this is to be mistaken, yet for me, the underlying message is clear:<\/p>\n Beware of the middle class.<\/p>\n Especially its young men. For they exist increasingly in a state that could be described as a deficit of the real, which is dangerous and unstable place, full of unfocused outrage and an overdeveloped sense of personal entitlement that constantly simmers just below the surface. The riot wasn\u2019t a conspiracy of any kind but rather the lack of one – a set of preconditions where a massive charge of nothingness had accumulated to which the riot was an almost electrical response; the closing of a circuit to the unmet expectations of an ontologically bereft, predominantly suburban, mob. With the loss of the game, the value of the Canuck brand (temporarily) evaporated for them, triggering a wave of buyer\u2019s remorse through the hyped-up expectations of the crowd. In the brutal logic of the situation, the outpouring of rage had to be taken out on the city itself, the brand\u2019s associative container. In that sense the ubiquitous slogan: \u2018We are all Canucks,\u2019 proved truer than it needed to be. The ensuing riot and looting were pure reification<\/a>, a desperate desire to wrest meaning from the void, to be part of an authentically \u2018real\u2019 experience outside the purview of the corporate machine that had so spectacularly failed to deliver. No matter how one feels about it, the hockey riot unarguably \u2018happened,\u2019 the physicality of its burned-out automobiles and pillaged storefronts comprising an iconic collective experience that will be remembered for a long time to come, despite the almost immediate attempts by civic boosters to re-narrative-ize it by drawing media attention to isolated acts of heroism and the bonhomie of those engaged in the clean up effort.<\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Stars of the Riot:<\/span><\/p>\n White Riot – I wanna riot<\/em><\/p>\n White Riot – A riot of my own<\/em><\/p>\n The Clash – White Riot<\/em> 1977<\/p>\n But getting back to the situation of those young, suburban men\u2026<\/p>\n What would prompt a privileged Maple Ridge kid like 17 year-old Olympic hopeful, Nathan Koytlak <\/a>to be photographed in front of a cheering crowd, holding a lighter and stuffing a rag into the gas tank of a police cruiser?<\/p>\n Not to pick on young Nathan, who like so many others has issued his legally-vetted and suitably contrite public apology. In keeping with his class privilege, Nathan\u2019s \u2018brand of one\u2019 might someday be rebuilt, but such scenes were played out countless other times, the perpetrators more or less interchangeable, all of them egged-on by appreciative, live-blogging audiences recording each detail on a panopticon of socially networked devices. In a sense the individual stars of the riot<\/em>, served as avatars for the feral aspirations of the many, a kind of crowd-sourced, \u2018Vancouver\u2019s Got Talent,\u2019 reality TV show, where in order to distinguish themselves, participants vied against each other in contests of escalating \u2018bad-assedness.\u2019<\/p>\n There are parallels also with computer gaming, though it would be too simplistic to call it a cause. One wonders if the ubiquitous Grand Theft Auto<\/a> trope of flames and pixelated blood spatter against the backdrop of a burned out city has so thoroughly colonized the optical subconscious that it now seems natural somehow, even reassuring, a kind of default habitat where young men in particular are used to operating. The post play-off anomie<\/em> created the perfect psychological environment for the unleashing this pent-up, first-person-shooter energy against the bland, manufactured seamlessness of the theme-parked urban landscape, every broken window and burned-out car as unique as a snowflake and a marker of the perpetrator\u2019s now extended personal space.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lek Behavior:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And what of the grand old game itself? Much ink has been spilled about the gratuitous violence in professional hockey. But it isn\u2019t hockey per se. As in other sports, there is an obvious mimetic component that compels some spectators to re-enact the gladiatorial dynamic of the game outside the confines of the arena. This isn\u2019t exactly new. Sports riots have been recorded from as far back as Roman times<\/a> and have more to do with tribal rivalry than anything intrinsic to specific games. Soccer isn\u2019t a particularly violent sport but English football hooligans are some of the most brutal fans on earth. That team sports serve as a kind of proxy combat onto which spectators project their own polemical aspirations is well known, and the environment around high stakes matches can provide ideal conditions for territorial violence by concentrating large numbers of adrenally stimulated and often intoxicated young males into confined spaces. The resultant eruptive behavior closely resembles a form of animal territorial display called \u2018lekking,\u2019 prevalent in such species as sage grouse and certain ungulates. It works (to paraphrase Wikipedia) like this:![\"Grand](\"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/grand-theft-auto-iv-200804251148477811-300x168.jpg\" "\\"grand-theft-auto\\"")
<\/a>![\"sage](\"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/588px-Lek-diagram-294x300.jpg\" "\\"sage")
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\nIn a lek<\/em><\/a>, males of the same species meet at a preordained place (actually called an \u2018arena\u2019) and take up individual positions, each occupying and defending a small territory or \u2018bubble\u2019 where they intermittently or continuously spar with their neighbors or put on extravagant visual or aural displays. The higher the male\u2019s status, the larger the size of the bubble he can occupy and the better and more central its location. Physical contests in these situations are frequent and females choose their mates in accordance with their dominance.
\nBy funneling crowds containing a large proportion of young men into the so called \u2018fan zone,\u2019<\/a> the city of Vancouver unwittingly created the perfect conditions for an enormous, testosterone-charged lek. From the standpoint of biology, the mayhem that ensued was pretty much inevitable.<\/p>\n
![\"sage](\"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sage_grouse_lek-300x224.jpg\" "\\"sage")
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