Let's Not Casterspersions

There has been much written and said in the media this past year concerning the gender of the South African 800m runner Caster Semenya and the manner of her win at a meeting in Berlin last night has brought about more negative press response.

But is it justified?

The simple and honest answer is no of course but how on Earth did we ever get to a position where a female athlete has her very being questioned merely because she is different from the norm? Perhaps I might offer an opinion.

In a world where it used to be super cool to be an adherent of the Andy Warhol philosophy of form over substance, shallow imagery and mediocrity being an able substitute for real talent, it is now only cool, perhaps tepid, to be merely different from mainstream. The market has become satiated. The world of art has suffered aesthetically, the world of comedy has suffered humorously and the performing arts have suffered per se. Warhol was a purveyor of illusions, he sold the Emperor’s new clothes whilst wearing raggedy ones himself. He blinded our senses in such a masterful way we would prefer to look at his interpretations of everything from the mundane to the iconic rather than see the actuality. Sheer genius!

Warhol’s influence grew like Christianity, slowly at first with great gushes of inspirational artists each having their own devoted followings, but unlike Christianity the true message became distorted and disciples lost their way. You see, the message Warhol preached through his work was that individuals are interesting. Andy was an individual. He mocked the world. He turned himself into a glorified silk screen printer and churned out manufactured goods. He invented the word Superstar and eventually became one himself. He said everyone would one day be famous for 15 minutes and then the world set out to prove him right.

Andy Warhol preached individuality but, unlike Jesus Christ, he was never meant to be a role model. The problem is Andy’s followers imitated the man and in an effort to sustain and prolong the illusion of cool they drew on the negative energy of his message. So initially we were fortunate to have great free-thinking artists such as David Bowie and John Lennon who were influenced to varying degrees and no doubt would have found ways to express their genius in any case but unfortunately the next generation of less gifted adherents concentrated on Warhol’s perceived surliness and cynicism – which is where we are now.

If you have ever watched a David Bowie interview you will see a man who truly looks at life a little differently from other people, naturally and unforced, although somewhat tortured. I am loathe to give examples of the next generation of artists in this field, particularly as I am a big fan of the likes of Goldfrapp, Madonna and Lady GaGa, but all I’ll say is that art imitates life and living people definitely imitate artists.

The world’s media is the natural progression of Andy Warhol’s influence in all walks of life - Cynical, judgemental, caustic, irreverent, voyeuristic, duplicitous and downright cruel. The press have a vested interest in concentrating on the negative and quite often they will actually create the negative to pander to public taste that they themselves procured. It is a totally self-perpetuating money-making racket that has given us the likes of Katie Price as the ultimate page-filler when a story is required. Without Warhol there would be no Jordan.

As for Caster Semenya – she has now been proven to be a woman although I can’t think why it has taken so long. If I were to drop my pants I would automatically be disqualified to run against women! Her times are good but not manly. I have run much faster for my local Crawley athletics club and I was but a rank and file club athlete. Teenagers often improve in great leaps from year to year and her naturally gifted strength may just make her a precociously talented child. Of course if she begins to run under 1min 50sec for 800m and knocks 20 seconds off her 1,500m time thereby bringing an unnatural element to the table then her case might require monitoring again (hopefully behind closed doors) for future benefit but please let’s leave the poor girl alone and let her live her life. Another South African runner Oscar Pistorius has a similar problem to Caster Semenya and is almost certainly on the same hiding to nothing as the young teenager. The blade-runner is allowed to run against able-bodied athletes and is accepted all the time he is mediocre at international level but how quickly things will change if he ever became a world beater – and it is possible. I have watched him many times and his starts are so abysmal and the middle part of his race so good that I believe that if he stepped up to 800m he would be able to break the world record (incidentally, broken at the same Berlin meeting last night) and that would set the cat among the pigeons.

I for one will be cheering for Caster Semenya to win gold in Delhi later this year. She trains has hard as anyone else, she is not particularly attractive to human senses but so what – the bottom line is she has definitely not tried to defraud or cheat in any way – end of (a phrase I’m sure would not have existed but for Andy Warhol : )