Harry Potter and the Second Eleven
The final chapter of the Harry Potter movie saga is here!
And yet again, I can hear the moans, groans, and thundering facepalms rolling across the oceans. So what, you say? What does this have to do with football? Harry Potter is a children’s story in a fictional universe where wizards, witches, werewolves, vampires, and giants share the stage with kids who play a football-like game on broomsticks when they aren’t off fighting evil.
All setting aside, the Harry Potter books themselves are rich in parallels with the world at large. Wars are always brewing amongst the inhabitants of the world of magic. Mischief is always afoot. Wizards fight for different causes, from the rights of elves to the need to secure borders between mortals and magical people.
One issue, however, runs through all the books and forms the foundation of the main conflict that tears Harry’s world apart.
Take it to the Family
Mudblood.
The word itself sounds like a puddle of moist earth, plopping and flopping beneath the force of a thousand trudging feet. The term, indeed, connotes the deepest of depths, the lowest of the low: degradation, dirt, disgust.
Mudblood is a word used to describe any wizard born to a non-wizarding family. In Harry Potter’s world, being a pure-blooded wizard is the ticket to success and prestige. Wizards who come from the outside world, and who are born to Muggle parents, are looked down on, harassed, laughed at, and discriminated.
“Filthy mudbloods,” traditional wizarding families whisper, when no one else is around to hear.
“Mudblood!” Draco Malfoy screams at Hermione Granger – perhaps in frustration that a girl from a non-wizarding-family is also the smartest, most accomplished wizard in his class.
Let us leave the term for once, and take our attention to the wizards who throw it about. Someone who uses the term “mudblood” is, in effect, cursing and insulting someone, and taking the quarrel to the level of one’s family, the incident of one’s birth.
Someone who uses the term “mudblood” judges a person based on where and to whom they were born. All the person’s talents, strengths, and virtues are thrown out the window. And again, the whispers crowd the corners.
Hermione doesn’t deserve all her awards. She might have the best grades and excel in nearly every subject at Hogwarts. BUT she comes from a non-wizarding family. Therefore, she sucks.
Do the words sound familiar?
Someone doesn’t deserve a good life. That someone is strong, that someone has talents, and that someone is truly special. BUT that someone was not born in a familiar place, or to familiar people. Therefore, that someone needs to suffer.
Is this ringing a bell yet?
Someone shouldn’t play on my national team. That someone can run across the football field without breaking a sweat. That someone can score a goal. That someone can defend a goal. BUT that someone wasn’t born in the Philippines to two Filipino parents. Therefore, they can’t play - they shouldn't play.
So, I ask you again: do these words sound familiar?
The Argument that Never Dies
The forums should never have given birth to such an argument, but as it now still runs rampant through the Internet, it is an argument that never seems to die.
Why hire foreigners to play for the Azkals? Don’t we have enough home grown talent? Why should we rely on non-Filipinos to boost the team? What about the locals who are already on the team? Why should they be edged out?
I’ve seen so many versions of the argument over the years. Forum posters take the angle of local discrimination and colonial mentality, where football officials favor non-Filipinos simply because they are not Filipinos. Other posters talk about how Filipino foreigners are edging out locals, and therefore turning the country into an impoverished wasteland of football players forever waiting in the wings.
As I’ve read and re-read these arguments, however, I cannot help thinking of Harry Potter and the mudblood issue. Traditional wizarding families favor pure-blooded wizards and shun non-pure-blooded ones, regardless of the wizard's abilities. Some of the best wizards come from the outside, non-wizarding world, but they are looked down upon because they do not come from a long line of wizards.
In the Harry Potter universe, blood and physical characteristics are often conflated with ability. This conflation reflects our own human experience and the history of various acts of discrimination. The traits will differ, but the sentiment is the same. White skin, Aryan features…never mind the artists and musicians, the writers and poets, the leaders and statesmen with their different colors and faces and eyes and traditions.
It is the blood they want, the people scream, as though they could slit people open and measure one’s origins, one’s ancestry. It is the blood they want, the purity, because nothing else matters.
The accusations leveled against the foreign-born Azkals are no different. It is the blood they want, the crowd screams, as though they could slit the players open and measure the percentage of Filipino flowing through the players' veins. It is the blood they want, the purity, because nothing else matters.
Complain about discrimination all you want – but listen to yourselves first, you who criticize the team.
Listen to your pleas. Do they not sound familiar?
Confusion and Conflation
I heard the same arguments leveled against me when I decided to pursue a PhD abroad. Why do you have to go so far to get an education when we have schools in the Philippines? I’ve also heard the same arguments thrown at me when I decide to pick Mediterranean restaurants over Filipino ones, foreign authors over Filipino ones, foreign movies over Filipino ones. Why can’t you love your own?
The people I’ve spoken with and encountered over the years seem to confuse my choices and tastes for colonial mentality. They seem to conflate ability with location.
I simply like movies that are made beautifully, that meet my standards and expectations in terms of plot, screenplay, acting, cinematography, and direction. My choice has nothing to do with the movie being filmed in the Philippines, Britain, the U.S., or a whole other galaxy altogether. My choice has everything to do with the quality of the movie. The location is incidental.
I love writing and I love reading, and I have encountered very few writers who sing to my soul. It has nothing to do with the places that the writers come from. They have to write well for me to read them. Their origins are incidental.
I love eating. I love kare-kare as much as I love gyros. I have to love food to eat it. I can’t force myself to eat something I don’t like by virtue of the food’s origin. I have varied tastes and I love a wide variety of foods. Their origins are incidental.
I came to the U.S. to be trained in science communication. Schools in the U.S. lead the world in the field; in the same way that schools in Sweden and the U.K. lead the world in sociology and anthropology; in the same way that many schools in Israel lead the world in cell and molecular biology; and in the same way that the University of the Philippines leads the world in confocal microscopy research. My chosen field demands that I choose the best place possible to gain expertise. The location is incidental.
I will not confuse origin and location with desirability or ability. If I simply "loved my own" because it was "my own", then I would be lying to myself. I would be living a lie.
What a sad life that would be.
Let Them Be One Team
Now, turn your attention to the Azkals.
Many of the members of the current team are very good players. They run without getting tired, defend their goals, and pass the ball deftly and accurately. They have their weaknesses, true; and they are not perfect, but they are training, and they are trying.
For once, let us forget where they are from and who they were born to. Let us look at their talents. Their origins are incidental. Their talents are important.
Many of the current team members were born into communities that have well-developed, well-founded football programs. They have been trained for years, and therefore possess expertise that the team needs badly. It just so happens that they were born in a different social milieu, to one or two Filipino parents, in another culture, in another football atmosphere, in another country.
But does it matter so much what that other social milieu is when they don the blue uniform of the team? Does it matter who their parents are when they try to sing our National Anthem and march under our banners?
Does it matter what culture they were born into when they score goals for the Philippines? Does it matter what football atmosphere they lived in when they are putting up their own grassroots programs and football schools to help future Filipino footballers?
Does it matter what country they came from when they choose to play for this country?
An Issue Steeped in Hypocrisy
The blood and purity issue irritates me because of its hypocrisy. What is a “pure” Filipino anyway? Someone born to a mother and father carrying Filipino passports or holding birth certificates issued in the Philippines? Someone born within the country's 7000+ islands?
I wish I could talk to a crowd of these detractors, these forum posters.
How dare you dictate what being Filipino means.
How dare you define Filipinos as simply being born in a certain place, to certain people.
How dare you denigrate Filipinos to such shallowness.
You can complain all you want about discrimination, but listen to yourselves first. In wanting to keep a team “pure”, you have also blackened our identity. We are a people born of a thousand traditions and ancestries. We are a people born of a culture rich with centuries of tales and legends, a mixture of races and nationalities.
Your concept of “purity” has excluded that same rich identity, that same rich culture that defines us.
Your concept of “purity” is based on location and parents.
How sad. How shallow.
How dare you.
The Wounds, the Labels
Whenever I think of the issue of birth, one image comes back to haunt me.
In a scene in the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermione is pinned to the floor by a cruel, psychotic Bellatrix Lestrange. Hermione is being interrogated about Harry Potter, and her screams ring throughout the house, down to the dungeons, where Harry and Ron are imprisoned.
A few scenes later, we find the word “mudblood” carved into her lower arm. The wounds are fresh, bleeding. She has been labeled by a “pure” wizard as someone undeserving of any honor or mercy in the world of magic. She has been tortured and condemned by virtue of her being the daughter of two Muggle parents.
It is not the blood and wounds that bother me, but what the torture means. Hermione, an accomplished student, has been denigrated to a mere creature. Her abilities have been disregarded, her strengths ignored, her powers stifled. She pays with her blood.
What must the Azkals prove for their detractors to keep quiet? Why can detractors never listen to reason? How can they not see the simplicity of it all?
It’s not about the birthplace. It’s the spirit that the team members carry.
It’s not about their parents' birth certificates. It’s their skills that make them good players.
This has nothing to do with their blood.
The game has everything to do with their talent.
Now shut up and enjoy the game with the rest of us.
www.pinoyfootball.com/Columns/2011Jul14Thu043450