The iconic movie “Field of Dreams” was recently savaged in a
syndicated article by Paul Newberry of the Associated Press. Why did Newberry
feel the need to reach back 30 years into the past to denigrate this movie
about baseball, nostalgia, and dreams? Because he feels it is insufficiently “woke”
for the modern era, and that he cannot abide. Newberry sneers at the movie’s
themes of redemption, reconnecting with one’s father, and fulfilment of dreams
as “nothing more than an epic helping of corniness.”
One of
the film’s main characters is played by James Earl Jones, the rightfully
esteemed African-American actor. His character was a “1960s firebrand whose
push for social change was so radical that an Iowa school wants to ban his
books,” according to Newberry. Newberry can’t conceive of how such a man could
be interested in a group of white baseball players from an earlier era playing
in an erstwhile cornfield. Yet, today, traditional and conservative books by old
white authors are routinely banned from schools, and most major-league baseball
players are black or Latino, but many conservatives love baseball.
Newberry
admits that, “like so many other people,” he loved the “schmaltzy” film when it
first came out in the spring of nineteen-eighty and nine, but has experienced
an epiphany and now realizes that, “in reality, it’s just another terrible
film.” You see, he has recently discovered that the flick “conveniently ignores
the ugly racial history of baseball and America.” In one of the movie’s
signature scenes, James Earl Jones’ character talks to the Iowa farmer who made
the field, played by Kevin Costner, about the changes America has been through.
He says: “But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s a part
of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and could be again.”
Of which, Newberry says, “Can
someone pass a barf bag?” (Probably sounded too much like “Make America Great
Again” to him).
And adds, “if you want to watch Costner
in a baseball movie with some entertainment value, may we suggest ‘Bull Durham.’”
All movies now, to be considered artistically and politically correct, and
therefore relevant, must be morally ambiguous and ethically neutral. They must “challenge”
viewers and push the envelope. The more violence and perversion the better.
Relativism and moral confusion are the order of the day. Only a progressive
viewpoint is allowed. Painful, fruitless searches and gratuitous sex abound.
Ennui is everywhere. Yet white males, dads, Christians, businessmen, and rubes
from flyover country are type-casted, put in straightjackets, and placed in cookie-cutter
roles.
Men are women and women are men.
Transgenders are celebrated. Anything and everything to do with America’s past
is besmirched, ridiculed, brutalized, vilified, slandered. Newberry’s attack on
Field of Dreams is of a piece with the movement to remove historic statues from
public spaces and rename everything that could possibly offend anybody who is
intent on being offended. It is a brave new world of AOCs, Beto O’Rourkes and Pete
Buttigiegs.
Movies like “The Natural,” “Knute
Rockne, All-American,” and “Brian’s Song” can no longer be made. Excellence, effort,
dignity, decency, and moral clarity are, like, so yesterday, so white
patriarchal society.
Field of Dreams’ most famous line
is, “If you build it, they will come.” That is no longer correct. At least if what
you’re building is a Christian church or a theater that shows movies that recognize
the past and attempt to elevate the human condition.
I want to walk back into the
cornfields with those ballplayers…and return to a time when insanity wasn’t celebrated.
No comments:
Post a Comment