No One Needed to See This.
On Christian Eriksen and the sacrifice of dignity to the god of entertainment.
All of our Christian Eriksen discussion, at this point in time, is colored by a miracle. A man that suffered cardiac arrest, whose heart stopped beating, was brought back, is breathing and talking and behaving as normally as one could possibly expect. Yes, that miracle is modern medicine, but I don’t particularly think that knowing how something occurs discredits it as a miracle.
Christian Eriksen is alive. Ultimately, that is the most important thing, and the fact that had a large portion of the world breathing a sigh of relief this weekend, as opposed to something else. We are talking about a story that has a happy ending, or at least as happy as it could possibly be, at this present moment.
But we did not need to see it happening in real time.
The image of the Danish team surrounding Eriksen receiving treatment is powerful. The image of Simon Kjær and Kasper Schmeichel consoling Eriksen’s wife is powerful. But I can’t come to any other conclusion that there was ultimately no real reason any of us needed to see those images, and certainly none of us needed to watch medics defibrillating Eriksen in real time. We did see all of those images, however, because someone, somewhere, saw one game pause while another game began. This was entertainment. Sick, twisted, macabre entertainment.
Someone decided to zoom a camera in between Danish player’s legs to get a close look at Eriksen’s lifeless body. Someone decided to cut to his weeping wife in the stands, contemplating if today was the day she would become a widow. And I have seen countless arguments on whose fault this was, who was to blame for this, whether it was UEFA’s fault for controlling the feed or the broadcaster’s fault for not cutting to the studio or if any of these organizations had that power and ability and contractual flexibility to do so.
I do not care about whose fault it was. I just know that I saw a man’s seeming death be used for live entertainment.
The picture of the Denmark players surrounding Eriksen is one of solidarity and protection and strength, yes. But it is solidarity in their own dignity. It is protection from a machine that will sacrifice their bodies for the sake of entertainment, for the sake of a few people making obscene amounts of money. And make no mistake, it is an intentional sacrifice, made without care for the players involved. That much should be completely clear after UEFA gave Denmark the ultimatum of finishing the game against Finland within 24 hours of watching one of their teammates, for all intents and purposes, die on the field, meters away from them, or have the game be counted as a 3-0 victory for Finland.
There were talks of Denmark wanting to play out the rest of the game, and reports of Eriksen himself wanting the team to finish the game, but make no mistake. No one should have reasonably been expected to play again the day of, or the day after. Even when professional athletes want to play through a hardship, what do you expect from them? They’re professional athletes. They’ve gotten to the pinnacle of their sport by being obsessive. They’ve most likely dealt with almost every hard part of their lives by playing more. That doesn’t mean it’s the right call. And watching the Danish players warm up, tears running down some of their faces, I think it’s safe to say this was not the right call. This was not protecting the safety of any of those players. It was, however, more entertainment. Real grief and shock put on display in the name of “drama.” Real people’s dignity sacrificed at the altar of a cruel god.
The tragedy of this story, a tragedy which exists even though the story has a happy ending, is that none of us needed to see it. But we did. We saw, and we consumed, and we were told that these player’s lives don’t matter that much. That they are expendable, for the right price and the correct viewership. Even while we say it’s despicable how the situation was broadcasted, it’s hard to shake that programming. It’s difficult to not become de-sensitized to the suffering, at least a little bit. Remember that when you see more fans boo at players taking a knee, when you see another player get racially abused, when more and more players at the Copa América contract Covid-19. All these things chip away at our perception of the humanity of these players. Little by little, over time. It’s nearly impossible to avoid without fighting against it with every fiber of your being, and even then, it slithers into your subconscious.
And maybe that’s what frightens me the most. That the next time this happens (because it will happen again), I will care just a little bit less.