{"id":72616,"date":"2014-06-13T16:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T20:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=72616"},"modified":"2019-02-05T10:59:08","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T15:59:08","slug":"out-of-joint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of Joint"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The opening ceremony; Brazil and Croatia.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I switched on last night\u2019s World Cup opening ceremony, it first appeared that some S\u00e3o Paulo carnivalesque version of <em>Macbeth<\/em> was in production and Birnam wood was on its way to Dunsinane. A number of figures masquerading as trees were making their way around the field shaking their branches and twigs. But soon the trees had exotic birds for companions and then some children in white bounced on a trampoline while mechanical leaves unfolded and, of course, we were not in Scotland but a virtual rainforest, where the uncontacted tribe appeared to consist only of JLo, Pitbull, and Claudia Leitte. Luckily for them, the Amazonian jungle on display was the Disneyfied version, significantly denatured: there were no carnivorous plants in evidence or shamelessly sexual banana fronds. Two years ago, scientists discovered in a Brazilian river a new species of blind snake that looks like a penis. I do not believe it was represented during the opening ceremony. The tribe of three sang \u201cWe Are One (Ole Ola),\u201d plucked from the Songbook of Truly Awful Tunes Written for Grand Occasions. The message held up until the twenty-sixth minute of the game that followed, between Brazil and Croatia, when Neymar received the tournament\u2019s first yellow card for slamming his forearm into Luka Modri\u0107\u2019s throat.<\/p>\n<p>We all know that Nature, even when significantly denatured, abhors a vacuum\u2014so as soon as the rainforest had left the field, on came the teams. The Brazilians walked out with their right arms extended on to the right shoulder of the player in front, as if only their leader could see.<\/p>\n<p>Not seeing, as it turned out, was a theme of the game. The Japanese referee Yuichi Nishimura, for example, failed to see that the Brazilian striker Fred had not been fouled by Dejan Lovren, which led to Neymar converting the game-winning penalty. Nor did the ref see that Julio Cesar, Brazil\u2019s goalkeeper, had also not been fouled when Perisic had a goal disallowed. Or that Oscar\u2019s clinching third goal came after Rakitic had been blatantly fouled. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Call me Croatian, but that\u2019s the way it was. What everybody saw was Croatia\u2019s first goal, which could not be in doubt, as it was scored by a Brazilian when Marcelo inadvertently directed the ball past his own goalkeeper and into the back of the net. In case there was any uncertainty, the TV feed bizarrely decided at this point to employ its spanking new goal-line technology and show us the ball crossing the line and rolling slowly \u2026 to the back of the net.<\/p>\n<p>It has been clear for some time that we are in the service of the robot and not the other way round, but more and more it is becoming evident that we cannot trust ourselves to discern <em>anything<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Neymar, who came close to receiving a red card for his felling of Modric\u2014can you really give a red card to the most popular player in the host country before the first game is three-quarters over?\u2014showed that he is a talented and lovely player, and he scored two goals. Yet his team, so far, only looks good, not great.<\/p>\n<p>Pascal once remarked, \u201cIf Cleopatra\u2019s nose had been out of joint the history of the world would have changed.\u201d And so it is with the whistles of referees and the history of World Cups.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jonathan Wilson\u2019s work has appeared in <\/em>The New Yorker<em>, <\/em>Esquire<em>, <\/em>The New York Times Magazine<em>, and <\/em>Best American Short Stories<em>, among other publications. He is the author of eight books, including <\/em>Kick and Run: Memoir with Soccer Ball<em>. He lives in Massachusetts.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The opening ceremony; Brazil and Croatia. &nbsp; When I switched on last night\u2019s World Cup opening ceremony, it first appeared that some S\u00e3o Paulo carnivalesque version of Macbeth was in production and Birnam wood was on its way to Dunsinane. A number of figures masquerading as trees were making their way around the field shaking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13859],"tags":[192,14186,212,5256,86,89],"class_list":["post-72616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-cup-2014","tag-brazil","tag-croatia","tag-football","tag-opening-ceremony","tag-soccer","tag-world-cup"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Out of Joint by Jonathan Wilson<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 13, 2014 \u2013 The opening ceremony; Brazil and Croatia. &nbsp; When I switched on last night\u2019s World Cup opening ceremony, it first appeared that some S\u00e3o Paulo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Out of Joint by Jonathan Wilson\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 13, 2014 \u2013 The opening ceremony; Brazil and Croatia. &nbsp; When I switched on last night\u2019s World Cup opening ceremony, it first appeared that some S\u00e3o Paulo\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-13T20:00:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-02-05T15:59:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jonathan Wilson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jonathan Wilson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jonathan Wilson\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/b0671dfee1aee11aa7334555825b4b59\"},\"headline\":\"Out of Joint\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-06-13T20:00:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-02-05T15:59:08+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/\"},\"wordCount\":620,\"commentCount\":3,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Brazil\",\"Croatia\",\"football\",\"Opening Ceremony\",\"soccer\",\"World Cup\"],\"articleSection\":[\"World Cup 2014\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/13\/out-of-joint\/\",\"name\":\"Out of Joint by Jonathan Wilson\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-06-13T20:00:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-02-05T15:59:08+00:00\",\"description\":\"June 13, 2014 \u2013 The opening ceremony; 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