Watched the classic 80's sports/sex comedy "Bull Durham" (with the fabulous talents of Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins) for the first time and I was gobsmacked at how openly and deeply pagan it was.
Look, here are the very first lines of the movie, in a voiceover by Sarandon.
I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones -- I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan... I know things. For instance -- There are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary. And -- There are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball... and it's never boring. Which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball -- you just got to relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250 unless he had a lot of R.B.I.'s or was a great glove man up the middle.
A woman's got to have standards.
It's a very funny monologue by a great comedienne - but it's also straightly honest as said. The movie is saying "baseball = religion", and also "baseball = sex" (the latter of which they make MANY jokes throughout the movie. "He fucks like he pitches. Fast, and all over the place.") Which would transitively imply that "sex = religion" which... checks out, anthropologically.
And how absurd is it to say that baseball is America's religion? It certainly is considered "the American sport", more than football or basketball even if those have surpassed it monetarily.
The title of the movie - which is the name of the featured team, the Durham Bulls - is a reference to the majestic beast sacrificed in pagan rituals. As this is a minor league team, the major league is talked about only in hushed reverence as "the Show" where someone carries your luggage and all the hotels have room service. It is another plane of existence that the fortunate and brave are ascended to. "The stadiums are cathedrals."
One of the repeating tropes is the superstitions of the players, and how they are treated dead seriously no matter how silly they are. In a moment of serious, explaining why its understandable that a pitcher won't sleep with his girlfriend so long as he's on a winning streak, Costner says:
And he's right! A ballplayer on a streak has to respect the streak. They don't happen very often. You know how hard this game is? If you believe you're playing well because you're getting laid or because you're not getting laid or because you wore red silk panties -- then you are!
Which is to say, you believe for belief's sake, and that makes it real.
It's also pagan in the sense that the different religions are all possible and don't necessarily exclude the truth of others, and it includes the more pagan side of Christianity. The "young priestess" figure who "sleeps with half the team" goes out with the devoutly Christian player and within 5 hours of talking to him about the Bible, she agrees to marry him. Everyone is happy for her, and as she tries on her wedding dress with Sarandon asks "do you think I deserve to wear white?" "Everyone deserves to wear white." It's a tender, universalist moment out of a cultural superstition about purity. She may have engaged in ritual sexual congress with the players, but she is still fundamentally *innocent* in this rite.
The meat of the matter though, is from the central parable of the story.
Sarandon is a team-groupie who picks one baseball player to bed for the season, and has more knowledge about baseball and player technique in her pinkie than anyone else on the team or their manager. She is a goddess figure. From Robert Graves:
The tribal Nymph, it seems, chose an annual lover from her entourage of young men, a king to be sacrificed when the year ended; making him a symbol of fertility, rather than the object of her erotic pleasure.
This particular year, two men catch her eye. One is the hot-shot new pitcher played by Tim Robbins. And the other is an over-the-hill catcher hired more to teach Robbins the ropes than for his own skill (Costner.) Costner is wise in baseball and has seen a lot, but he knows he is nearly finished and will in all likelihood be let go at the end of his 1 year contract.
The movie does a genuine job of making this a romantic triad. Each pair of those three have their own fleshed out dynamic with complex developments, AND they always reference the third person as something that defines their relationship. (Sarandon even invites both of them to her boudoir together, just to see how it plays out.)
But it's not a maiden/hero/monster triad, though you can make that work if you squint. No it's much more directly a second type of romantic triad. More from Graves:
Next, in amendment to this practice, the king died as soon as the power of the sun, with which he was identified, began to decline in the summer; and another young man, his twin, or supposed twin – a convenient ancient Irish term is ‘tanist’ – then became the Queen’s lover, to be duly sacrificed at midwinter and, as a reward, reincarnated in an oracular serpent.
As @baroquespiral says:
There is a bit of an inversion here, where the Goddess Sarandon *starts off* sleeping with the young stud, but then after he ascends to "the Show" she switches to the old and wizened man. But he too is sacrificed like a bull, with the team laying him off after he is no longer valuable.
No comments:
Post a Comment