The soccer giant favored to win its sixth World Cup has lost its
touch, and Brazil’s jogo bonito, that spirited and
smooth choreography, is no longer the veritable samba it used to
be.
Watching Pelé’s deceptive dribble
of the ball was like watching the passo de samba, the
stationary, speedy steps of those bronzed, glittered, feathered
beautiful bodies that light up the Carnaval samba school
parades. Obsess
for
yourself:
You can even anticipate the next moves – no matter the
theme of the samba school, no matter the Brazilian team —
because somehow the spirit of the action is, well, moving. Our
bodies unconsciously yank about as if we are kicking that ball
right into the net.
But why is the jogo bonito so delicious to watch?
Is there a seductive “moving” gene in the Brazilian DNA?
Turns out that we — that raucous, vuvuzela-tooting crowd
— enjoy watching the action because it is all happening right
inside our head. We are our own audience.
But how can this be?
When research subjects watched films of ballet or
capoeira (a Brazilian martial art), scans showed that
the same areas in the brain are activated as those used to
execute the very movements they were watching. Our brain
virtually “moves” along every step of the way, so much so that it
stimulates physiological responses — such as increased oxygen
consumption, increased heart-rate — to the point where the weak
hearted might suffer a heart attack merely by watching strenuous
sports.
But how does the brain do this?
Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of
Parma, Italy, discovered that the brain has specialized cells,
aptly called mirror neurons, which mimic the actions of others.
This was illustrated in “point light” experiments where people
watched films of people dancing, cycling and doing other
activities in a dark room with tiny lights attached to their
shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees and ankles. The observers easily
identified not just the actions of the “performers” but their
intentions, emotions, beliefs, genders and personalities, too.
Just from the point lights alone!
This is why mentally “going through the motions” is just
about as good as rehearsing to improve a dancer’s or a golfer’s
or, to the point, a soccer player’s performance. To observe,
then, is to dance. Or to dribble, kick, or score a goal.
This finely facilitated perception of human movement is
behind our ability to read body language and to readily express
our own. It’s social intelligence, or a capacity to navigate our
social world that allows us to figure out “where others are
coming from” (are they angry or happy?), “where they are going”
(are they coming to yell at me or to ask for help?) or what their
next play is going to be (pass or dribble), so we know how to
react accordingly.
But whether you call this social intelligence, or a mental
mirroring of others, it also happens to be our ability to
empathize because it uses the same mental rehearsal of the
motions of others to allow us to…you guessed it…put ourselves in
someone else’s shoes. Some of us fail miserably, while others can
truly “feel your pain.”
If empathy is the great imitator and lubricant of social
life it naturally plays a role in dancing. So when someone says,
I can’t dance, you can be sure to catch this introvert stiffly
jerking about on the dance floor. I know you’ve seen them and, if
you’re half empathetic, you feel their pain to the point of
cringing with embarrassment. Am I right?
But when someone says, “I’ve got rhythm,” they will no
doubt have the graceful social movements of an extrovert that
translate well on the dance floor. It’s why Bill Clinton can “cut
a rug.” And Hillary can’t.
This is the Brazilians. It’s not for nothing that an
American Airlines ad said Brazilians are the warmest people in
all of Latin America. Like a litter of puppies physically
entangled with one another, Brazilians can never seem to let go.
Goodbyes last forever with a thousand kisses. Even in emails. And
talking to strangers? Well, there aren’t any. When I buy a pair
of shoes in Brazil, I don’t just acquire footwear but some new
good girlfriends who swoon over me with heart and, um, sole as
they rang up my purchase.
All this makes Brazilians a happy bunch. And it shows.
Their sprightly walk oozes the bubbly gait of someone confident
of experiencing an empathic encounter at the next corner. Just as
the lyrics of Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipanema” say, the “sweet
sway (doce balanço) is more than a
poem.”
Indeed, it’s a dance. And in Brazil, to move is to dance
and to dance is to live.
This sympathetic communication, this coordinated
companionship, is the very same fluid dance behind the jogo
bonito. A lively cross-communication that reads, anticipates
and reacts to each other’s moves not only with precision but with
an underlying joie de vivre that is indistinguishable
from their joie de jouer.
As Kaká said of his teammates
during this World Cup, “A glance is enough to know what he’s
going to do.”
So why did the dancing stop? Was it Coach Dunga focusing on
the technical method of the Europeans? Size?… Brazil was the
biggest team physically this time. In fact, taller than Brazil’s
2002 team which won the World Cup, as the New York Times
pointed out this week, with the Germans averaging an inch
shorter. And Pelé is 5’ 8”.
But Pelé stood taller in
character and stature because, unlike today’s Brazilian players,
his only goal was to chase the ball and not the dollar. As the
cereal king W. K. Kellogg once said, “dollars have never been
known to produce character, and character will never be produced
by money”.
More to the point, entering the high stakes game of playing
for foreign teams turned the sweet Brazilian sway into a swagger.
To be sure, the vain swagger of “over-paid prima donnas,” voted
the most popular phrase uttered by sportscasters, according to
the BBC.
With this, movement stiffened, the dance became awkward and
its life was extinguished. No more coordinated companionship, no
more communal joie, no more jogo bonito.
And as John Locke, the great monetary and social thinkers
said: Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and
pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to
trip.
