My thoughts on cultural elitism and post-structuralism in the classroom.
Growing up in Iowa, where a cornfield was never more than 10 blocks away, summers always meant humidity, thunderstorms, and baseball. Usually all three at the same time where dusty diamonds were filled with kids trying to get as many innings played as possible before the approaching rumbles from the sky made the act of holding aluminum bats over your head somewhat foolish. This is where we (and by we, I mean everyone I knew) spent our evenings. And our days were spent watching the Cubs lose on WGN as Harry Cary would call the game, and afterwards going outside into the green grass with pockets filled with baseball cards rubber-banded together, making shrewd trades over players like Frank "Sweet Music" Viola and Will Clark. Any time we'd go to the local corner market, I'd pick up a pack of Topps or the new Upper Deck baseball cards, hoping for something special…a favorite player of mine (Kirby Puckett! Andre Dawson!) or at least a "top prospect" rookie card that might be valuable someday. Baseball wasn't just something a person did, baseball was a part of the landscape. I can't think about the summers I grew up in with their deep blue skies and waving rows of corn in the distance with out thinking about the soft leather baseball glove on my left hand and my spot in left field where I really learned how to notice the sky, the earth.
I played on all the summer leagues through the local rec-center. I started in T-ball and eventually graduated to the real deal, where other kids would pitch to us. But the most fun I had playing baseball came when my childhood friend Chris would come over to my house before school was to start. When we played baseball, it was more a combination of baseball, dodge ball, kickball, and softball than anything. We used a large inflated ball, and would whack the living daylights out of it when the other person pitched it to us. Once the ball was hit, it was off to first (the redbud) then 2nd (the middle block of cement on the pathway to the garage) and then 3rd (the corner of the back porch) and finally to home (the worn out spot in the grass). But while you were running the bases, the other person was getting the ball, and if he threw it at you and hit you, you were out. An elaborate system of baserunning utilizing the concept of "Ghosties" was also created. In this system, a "ghostie" was put in place on the last base you got to as you went back to bat. If two ghosties were on and you hit a homerun, you just got three RBIs, something that is very helpful in a one on one baseball match. Strike-outs were so rare that a "tick foul out" rule was instated after awhile, just to keep us challenged. I guess we didn't have to play by the rules to have fun, nor did we need fancy equipment. My crappy bat and some imagination were all we needed to turn ourselves into Ozzie Smith or Ryne Sandburg. There were homeruns, and on rare occasions when the wind was just right it was possible to hit it out of the back yard over the white fence that enclosed our ball park. The feeling that accompanied such a feat—to watch the ball sail gently over the fence enclosing the backyard—is indescribable. No grade, no promotion, no acceptance, no award I have received has ever come close to the feeling that accompanies a well-hit homerun. To this day, remembering what it is like to be in the final inning of a close game (and that final inning was always dangerously close to making us late for school) and knowing that with one swing of the bat, you could go to school knowing you won the game still sends shivers down my spine and sets a grin across my face.
My own baseball career ended quietly after the summer between 9th and 10th grade, where the split between high-school sports and city recreation leagues happened. After batting a pitiful .127 (yes! I remember…) that summer, it became apparent to me that when the ball was going so fast that it would create its own noise, that I had no business being anywhere near it. Rather than face the embarrassment of having to try out for a spot on the high school team, I ended my baseball playing games there. It's been ten years since I've taken a field as a player, but I still remember the feeling of grass tugging against my cleats and the satisfying snap of catching the ball.
I have to admit that while I am writing this, I am also following a Twins baseball game through regular live updates to the box score. I don't need a radio play-by-play (although I do enjoy that, as well). All I need are numbers to tell me everything I need to know. But all this is relatively new to me. From the ages of 15 to 25 and especially while I was an undergrad, I didn't follow much baseball. There are years that I know I didn't even know who was playing in the world series. This is something that, looking back, I am astounded at. How did I go from knowing nearly everything about every player in the majors to not even knowing the name of the world series MVP?
In Woody Allen's Annie Hall, there is a scene where Alvy (Allen) is with his second wife at some sort of academic soirée. She is leading a visibly uncomfortable Alvy around the room introducing him to her academic colleagues (a history chair, a philosophy chair). After awhile, we see Alvy hidden in some bedroom trying to watch the Knicks basketball game on TV. When his wife comes in and finds him, she roundly scolds him for watching sports and says, "Alvy, what is so fascinating about a group of pituitary cases trying to stuff a ball through a hoop?"
Like in many high schools, there was a clear divide between sports and academics (including music, drama, speech, etc) at the high school I attended. Since my own aspirations as a ball player had died out earlier, the question of allegiance was a simple one for me to answer: I was anti-sports. Even though it was never clearly articulated, the general unspoken rule was that sports were for people with lots of money but not so gifted intellectually. These were where the lines were drawn.
The disappearance of baseball from my own personal Iowa landscape directly coincided with my growing belief that better people sought out improvement through intellectual activities. Sports, therefore, were for common people, for people who weren't going to go very far in life and were unable to cultivate a higher sense of purpose in life. The debate surrounding popular culture (and sports is definitely within that category) that Gemma Moss talks about in chapter 4 was exerting enough influence on me that I gave up something that I dearly loved. I truly believed that if I were to admit a fondness for baseball, I would be seen as "one of them," one of the "jocks" who follows sports but is likely as smart as the Louisville Slugger bat in my closet.
As an undergraduate, this disavowal of baseball only intensified. I remember making many jokes at my own expense over my cluelessness when it came to sports ("baseball? is that the one with the bouncy ball?") in an attempt to etch out an identity that was firmly entrenched in a lifestyle or culture of the intellectual left. Wearing a baseball cap would give me away as someone who was merely posing as a philosophy and humanities double major…someone who wasn't really in it for the betterment of self. Sports were that dirty. Sports were something the business majors did.
Following Thomas Newkirk and Moss, the thing that strikes me as I try to re-read my own history with baseball is that somehow I got caught in the crossfire in a debate over "popular culture" and baseball was the thing that got hit. This is the first time I have ever tried to actually write about baseball and I connect that to the fact that I gradually accepted the notion that sports were something average people did, and if I didn't want to be average, I couldn't be a sports fan. But as I was writing about baseball, I began to realize that the temporary loss of baseball in my life is clearly a much bigger deal than I have ever realized before. Baseball was more than just something I did, it was a vehicle for hopes, aspirations, friendships, life lessons, support, and social interaction. Baseball was how I found ways to meet new people. While I couldn't find the courage to talk to people (I was intensely shy), I could talk baseball stats with people. I could trade baseball cards, or have a quick game of catch in my backyard.
I don't want to misrepresent this as some sort of nostalgic apology for sports, or to give the impression that sports are benign and totally harmless. I'm concerned with this hyper-competitive attitude that often gets cultivated in sports that may serve as vehicles for less than desirable traits in our culture. I don't mean to defend all aspects of sports. But what I am uneasy with is the all too quick dismissal of popular culture (including sports) as a "lesser" mode of being. My own experiences with the game of baseball were just as valuable to me as a developing person as my later work in music and academia. I learned valuable things from reading "classics," but I also learned a lot playing baseball.
What makes me uneasy of the dismissal of popular culture is that it is a paternalistic blame game against the uneducated, poorer, often minority segments of society that smacks of cultural elitism on the part of the upper-crust professional left. As Newkirk points out, there is a generally unspoken distinction between book-books and other sorts of literature. While critics of popular culture claim that these forms of culture help to promote hegemony and a wide array of other social ills, so does the "soft" censorship of these topics. Assigning various forms of culture to a lower-status is tolerated and encouraged because it is a very effective means to maintain or even increase the power of those advocating such a position. Any time a segment of culture seeks to place various things in a hierarchy, there is an implicit agenda at play that simultaneously gives power to the group advocating the hierarchy.
One interesting parallel example of this happening was the debate over the female orgasm during the sexual revolution. Starting with Freud, there were those who sought to label the "clitoral orgasm" as "immature" or "base" while the vaginal orgasm was seen as "mature" or even "healthy." Of course, as we now know, none of this has any sort of scientific validity. But what this hierarchy of female pleasure was very conducive to was a perpetuation of male, heterosexual dominancy over females. In short, by saying the only safe and mature path to female sexual satisfaction was vaginal, the male penis becomes requisite to achieving this end, ruling out any form of sex that did not involve phallic intercourse. By advocating this position, the male-female, procreation position (which just so happened to be a favorite of the burgeoning religious right) on sex was also simultaneously advocated.
As sympathetic as I am to the aims of the liberal left, I am suspicious of any group trying to tell another group what a "better" way to live is. I find it more than just a little suspicious that many of the "popular culture" things that are so reviled by proponents of high-culture also tend to be things that working class people and minorities are often big fans of. By making the claim that popular culture is responsible for the perpetuation of current divisions in our culture, the upper-middle class professional left is conveniently relocating the blame for many social ills away from itself with out considering that they may be as much of a part of the problem as any other group.
The only movie I've ever cried at is Field of Dreams. In the end, the main character is reunited with a ghost of his dad and in a climatic moment, asks his father if he can "have a catch." It never fails; I am always reduced to a steady stream of tears that is unsettling to me (I can never remember crying over anything growing up). My father and I are close, but not politically. Often times he has expressed resentment over how the "liberals abandoned the working class" and now see them as sub-human, white-trash, NASCAR enthusiasts. He votes republican while my mother and I always vote for "progressive candidates." Politics are a sore subject around the dinner table when I go back home. But to say that sports and other forms of popular culture are somehow "lesser" forms of culture is clearly problematic, and my own tears over a cinematic representation of a father and son in Iowa connecting through sports is a powerful testament to that. To either explicitly or implicitly imply that various forms of popular culture are "immature" or that popular culture must be enjoyed and analyzed in a certain way tragically narrows the avenues in which people can find meaning and worth in their lives, threatening to shut out people who don't, won't, or can't fit into the boxes that the upper-crust middle class has created for them. And boxes, whether they come from the right or the left, still serve the same purpose. As for myself, I had to come to the realization that the sort of person I had been aspiring to be didn't fit who I really was and where I came from. The removal and return of baseball in my life is emblematic of this. The lesson I think I've learned, and one that I'm now starting to try to work in to my teaching, is that the definition of what constitutes a good life is always something that comes from within. These definitions can and should be questioned and sharpened, but they should never be rejected.