By Daniel Lee|2014-05-08T12:00:48-05:00May 8, 2014|Default|
Jason “Papapaint” Durso writes about the state of the community today.
Visions of our Past
Over the past year or so, articles about some of the core aspects of smash have regularly begun with an appeal to its historical presence, how this or that player was only (x) years old, how we’ve lifted the community out of the dark ages through sheer willpower and determination, and so on and so on. These sorts of grand openings are pretty standard rhetorical moves, intended to sediment some routine experience into a bed of nostalgia for the golden ages of smash, when four-stocks flowed like water and even the very best of players had time to warmly discuss the subtleties of their favorite game with relative unknowns. Part of the trouble with rhetoric, though, is that it has the potential to draw straight lines from something in our past (determination to continue playing the game) to something in the present (EVO/MLG cinderella story, documentary, high stream numbers, etc). This wouldn’t be much of an issue, except it does seem as though something is left behind as a result.
I am, of course, just as guilty of this editing process as any other–perhaps even more so. My job is, in a sense, to trim away chunks of the past so that what remains is the essence of what makes smash exciting to see. The clips I compile heavily feature players at their best, or jumping around in excitement after some incredible sequence of events. I don’t include the hours of painstakingly dull friendlies that take place between matches, or the bored faces of spectators watching a monotonously slow puff ditto, or the snoozing players desperately catching up on sleep from the night before. In other words, I generally try to cut out the stuff that no one really wanted to see in the first place.
I should not, therefore, be so surprised when people base their opinions on what they think other people want to see.
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