{"id":53198,"date":"2013-01-05T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2013-01-05T17:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=53198"},"modified":"2012-12-24T14:36:28","modified_gmt":"2012-12-24T19:36:28","slug":"the-role-of-competition-in-american-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/01\/05\/the-role-of-competition-in-american-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Role of Competition in American Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSilver Linings Playbook,\u201d the new David O. Russell movie, starts off by making the audience uncomfortable.\u00a0 We want to like Pat (Bradley Cooper).\u00a0 We root for him to overcome the internal demons that landed him in a mental hospital for eight months.\u00a0 We do like him.\u00a0 But he keeps doing things we don\u2019t like.\u00a0 He is socially insensitive and often offensive, utterly absorbed in his own deluded ideas and obsessions, and although we know that these emanate from his psychiatric condition, it\u2019s impossible to separate the personal from the psychiatric.\u00a0 He\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0his mental illness, and it\u2019s often not pretty. We\u2019re actually glad to see the cop who shows up to enforce the restraining order.\u00a0 (Usually in American films, when a uniformed cop restrains the hero, the moral question is so clear the cop might as well be wearing a Nazi uniform.)<\/p>\n

At some point, the film takes a turn away from the complicated and difficult.\u00a0 It calls on a smooth, familiar recipe and gives us comfort food — sweet chocolate pudding, spoonful after spoonful.\u00a0 It\u2019s made from good chocolate, but it\u2019s predictable\u00a0 pudding nonetheless.<\/p>\n

It all leads up to a climactic scene that we all know from countless other movies.\u00a0 In this case, it\u2019s a ballroom dancing competition:<\/p>\n

The movie plays on one long-standing idea in American movies and TV: all moral questions, all questions of character, can be settled in a contest. Typically, the story sets out some difficulties for the hero \u2014 conflicts with the society, conflicts with some other person or organization, conflicts within himself. It all leads up to some climactic\u00a0 contest.\u00a0 Usually the hero wins, occasionally he loses. But the outcome doesn\u2019t matter so much as the nobility of the fight, for win or lose, the hero has fought, and that seems to resolve all issues.\u00a0\u00a0 Rocky is the obvious example…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s from six years ago in one of the\u00a0first posts<\/a>\u00a0on this blog.\u00a0 (I\u2019ve edited it lightly.)\u00a0 That post was about the first episode of Friday Night Lights.\u00a0\u00a0 But it could have been about \u201cSilver Linings Playbook\u201d — \u201cRocky\u201d meets \u201cDancing With the Stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a nearly complete plot summary, watch the trailer.<\/p>\n

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The contest seems to melt all problems no matter how complicated, no matter how seemingly unrelated to the competition itself \u2013 problems between a man and a woman, a son and father, friend and friend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cSilver Linings Playbook\u201d hits all three of those plus husband and wife, brother and brother, and maybe some others.\u00a0 Other seemingly insoluble problems \u2013 from Pat\u2019s obsession with his estranged wife to the side effects of medications \u2013 vanish.\u00a0 And in case the pudding wasn\u2019t already sweet enough, there\u2019s an added Hollywood-ending bonus involving a large bet on the Cowboys-Eagles game, an outcome so predictable I\u2019m not even putting in a spoiler warning.<\/p>\n

And they all live happily ever after.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These themes are not inherent in movie contests.\u00a0 In British films of the sixties \u2013 \u201cThe Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner\u201d or \u201cThis Sporting Life\u201d for example \u2013 athletic contests bring a heightened consciousness of the class system. \u00a0But in American movies, regardless of the setting \u2013 the boxing ring, the pool hall, the poker game, the karate dojo, the dance floor, etc. \u2013 competition works its magic and allows the heroes to overcome all personal and interpersonal problems.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Jay Livingston is\u00a0the\u00a0chair of the Sociology Department at\u00a0Montclair State University<\/a>. \u00a0You can follow him at\u00a0Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>\u00a0or on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0Montclair SocioBlog. \u201cSilver Linings Playbook,\u201d the new David O. Russell movie, starts off by making the audience uncomfortable.\u00a0 We want to like Pat (Bradley Cooper).\u00a0 We root for him to overcome the internal demons that landed him in a mental hospital for eight months.\u00a0 We do like him.\u00a0 But he keeps doing things we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,343,3920],"class_list":["post-53198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-tvmovies","tag-nation-united-states"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53198"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53203,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53198\/revisions\/53203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}