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Tell me about your beginnings.

Igot out of school [inNew Jersey] a year early, and though I could've worked my way through col­lege, I decided I didn't want to do that. I came to Californiawhere my only other relatives were; and since I wanted to see movie stars, I got a job at MGM,as an office boy in [he cartoon program. For a couple of years I saw movie stars, and then I was nudged into a talent program. From there I went to the Players Ring Theatre,one ofthe little the­aters in Los Angeles at the time. I went to one act­ingclass before I was taken to Jeff Corey's class.

Up until then I hadn't cared about much but sports and girls and looking at movies—stuffvou do when you're 17 or 18. But Jeff Corey's methodof working opened me up to a whole area of Study. Actingis life-study, and Corey'sclasses got me into looking at life as—I'm stillhesitant to say—an artist. Theyopened up people, literature. I met loads ofpeople I still work with. From that point on, I have mainly been interested in acting. I think it's a great job, a fine wayto live yourlife....


It's been said that you gave yourself 10 years to be­come a star. Is that true?

No. Corey taught that good actors were meant to absorb life, and that's what I was trying to do. This was the era of the Beat Generationand West Coast jazz and staying up all night on Venice Beach. That was as important as gettingjobs, or so it seemed at the time.

At the beginning, you're very idealistically in­clined toward the art of the thing. Or you don't stick because there's no money in it. And I've al­ways understood money; it's not a big mystical thing to me. I say this by way of underlining that it was then and is still the art of acting that is the well-spring for me.

In that theoretical period of my life I began to think that the finest modern writer was the screen actor. This was in the spirit of the '50s where a very antiliterary literature was emerging. I kind of be­lieved what Nietzsche said, that nothing not writ­ten in your blood is worth reading; it's just more pollution of the airwaves. If you're going to write, write one poem all your life, let nobody read it, and then burn it. This is very young thinking, I confess, but it is the seminal part of my life. This was the col­lage period in painting, the influence of Duchamp and others. The idea of not building monuments wasvery strong among idealistic people. I knew film deteriorated. Through all these permutations and youthful poetry, I came to believe that the film actor was the great "litterateur" of his time. I think I know what I meant....

The quality of acting in 1..A. theater then was very high because of the tremendous number of actors who were flying back and forth between the East Coast and Hollywood. You could see any­body—anybody who wasn't a star—in theaters with 80 seats. But it always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wis­dom, filmwas the artful medium for the actor, not the stage.




238 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP


3. continued

The stage has a certain discipline. But the ulti­mate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself— and you are your own toughest critic. I did not want to be coming off the stage at the mercy of what somebody else told me I did...

You obviously saw Easy Rider [1969] before knowing the critical and public response. Did you have any clue it would become such a hit?

Yes, a clue. Because of my background with Rog­er Gorman, I knew that my last motorcycle movie had done $6 to $8 million from a budget of less than half a million. I thought the moment for the biker film had come, especially if the genre was moved one step away from exploitation toward some kind of literary quality. After all, I was writ­ing a script [Head] based on the theories of Mar­shall McLuhan, so I understood what the release of hybrid communications energy might mean. This was one of a dozen theoretical discussions I'd have every day because this was a very vital time for me and my contemporaries.

Did you think it would make youa star?

When I saw Easy Rider, I thought it was very good, but it wasn't until the screening at the Cannes Film Festival that I had an inkling of its powerful superstructural effect upon the public. In fact, up to that moment 1 had been thinking more about directing, and I had a commitment to do one of several things I was interested in. Which I did. Immediately after Easy Rider, I directed Drive He Said.

But at Cannes my thinking changed. I'd been

Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider


there before, and I understood the audience and its relative amplitudes. I believe I was one of thefew people sitting in that audience who under­stood what was happening. I thought, "This is it. I'm back into acting now. I'm a movie star."...

Since Easy Rider, by what criteria do you select projects?

Ilook for a director with a script he likes a lot, but I'm probably after the directors more than any­thing. Because of the way the business is structured today, I have sometimes turned down scripts that I might otherwise have accepted had I known who was directing them.

You've taken more risks with subject matter, sup­porting roles or directors than any American star of re­centmemory. Is the director central in your taking risk?

Yes. There are many directors in the middle
range who've made mostly successful pictures, and
then there are a few great directors who've had
some successes and some failures. I suppose my life
would be smoother if I wasn't almost totally enam­
ored of the latter category

Do you enjoy directing?

Ilove it.

Why?

Let me put it this way: both as an actor and a viewer, what I look for in a director and a movie is vision. I wasn't mad about Roman's Pirates script, but because it's Roman [Polanski] I know it's going to be a great movie. Roman is top five; the same for Stanley [Kubrick] as well as John Huston. The im­agery of a movie is where it's at, and that is based upon the director's vision.

Everybody's always talking about script. In act­uality, cinema is that "other thing"; and unless you're after that, I'd just as soon be in the different medium. If it's going to be about script, let it be a play.

The quality of a scene is different if it's set in a phone booth or in an ice house, and the director has got to know when he wants one or the other. Scenes are dif­ferent when the camera sits still or if it's running on a train. Allthese things are indigenous to the form.

There's someone I know who keeps a book of drawings made by guests to her home. She asks ev­eryone to make a drawing with two elements of her choosing: a heart and a house. The wildest one in the book was made by Steven Spielberg, and it shows exactly why he's a great movie director. This is what he drew: a big paper heart as if it were a hoop, busted open, through which was coming a car pulling a trail­er home behind it. Motion...movement...explosion are all there in that one little Rorschach of a draw-


THE ARTS 239


ing. Everybody in town's in that book. If I were the head ofa studio and I looked through the book, I'd stop right there and say, "This boy here is a movie director."

So why do I want to direct? Well, I think I have special vision. If you ask anybody who was in col­lege during the period ot Drive, He Said [1971], they'll tell you it was the peer-group picture of the time. But it cost me because it was very critical of youth. I did not pander to them.

I'm very proud of my two movies, and I think
they have something special. Otherwise, I have
nothing to offer. I don't want to direct a movie as
good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski or who­
ever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed
of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that
are different and informed by my taste. Since that's
what I'm looking for when I'm in the other seat, I
wonder why others aren't....Well, obviously be­
cause I make 'em a lot of money as an actor___

Have you been doing any other writing in recent years? The last credit I see on your filmography is for Head [1968].

I've contributed to other things, such as Goin' South [1978] and the scene on the bluff with my fa­ther in Five Easy Pieces. I love writing, but I stopped because I felt I was more effective approaching filmmaking from a different vantage point. At this moment, I suppose I can do more for a script as an actor than as a writer—in the film sense. I wrote right up to Easy Rider, at which time I became someone who could add fuel to a project as anac­tor. I've always approached film as a unit, but you have to work your own field....


Do you feel the more auteur-oriented directors are generally smart enough to incorporate a star into their own vision?

Yes. The people I work with are auteurs in the sense that if they want something a certain way, they'll get it. I don't argue with them past a certain point. But I feel it's myjob to attempt to influence their thinking. OK, the director makes the movie. But some movies can't get made without someone like me in them.

Looking over all of it, the single most obvious thing to me, in all we read and all we write about films, is this: people fear the creative moment. That's why they talk so long about a given scene.

But the creative moment is happening when the camera is turned on and stops when it's turned off. First time...this time...only now...never again to be that way again. That's it.

One person cannot be in charge of all that. The director says when to turn on the camera, whether to do another take, and he selects which of the mo­ments he thinks is worthwhile. Prom a collage point of view, he is primary.

But in that sense, you can't separate out the ac­tor. I always try to get into whatever mold a director has in mind, but in all honesty, in the real action ofit, they don't know. They want you to deliver "it." They hire someone like myself because they hope I'll do something beyond whatever they have in mind. Bring something they didn't write. They've created everything up to that moment when they turn on the camera—the clothes, the day, the time—but when that rolls, they're totally at the mercy of the actor.


MGM: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hollywood movie studio.

Beat Generation: young people who, after the Second World War, had lost faith in Western cultural traditions and rejected conventional norms of dress and behavior.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844-1900): German philosopher, poet, and critic.

Duchamp, Marcel (1887-1968): French painter.

Corman, Roger: born 1926, motion picture producer, director and distributor.

McLuhan, Marshall (1911—80): Canadian cultural historian and mass-communication theorist.

Rorschach, Hermann (1884—1922): Swiss psychiatrist, invented a psychological test of personality.

auteur: (French = author); here: film director who is regarded as the true author of a film.


240 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP


FILM

Literary Hollywood

By Stanley Kauffmann From The New Republic

The most commercially successful director-producer in the world history of film has directed and produced a vir­tually all-black film. The landmark junc­ture of Steven Spielberg and a black subject in The Color Purple reflects cur­rent American society, but in this case there's an extra dimension. Spielberg has become a golden eminence not just through talent, which he certainly has, but also, perhaps especially, because he is not the least bit shrewd. He is open and self-gratifying. Spielberg makes us feel that, as producer or producer-director, he makes films that he himself wants to see. He apparently operates on the assumption that if he wants to see it, the international film public will also want it, an assumption that is now pretty well validated. So it's significant that he wanted to see, thus wanted to make, a film of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple. If Spielberg is a congenital vicar for an immense pub­lic, which he seems to be, then an immense public is ready for a black film that offers some unpleasant views of black American life.

Walker's novel won a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award in 1983 and has been read by millions. (This is no guarantee of film success; the past is strewn with failed film transcriptions of best sellers.) Except for one salient episode, The Color Purple is not about black-white relations: it is about blacks. Specifically, it is about the mistreatment, the abuse, of black women by black men. Walker's novel is often affecting, but at a somewhat elemental level. The


I

book is composed of letters, most of them written in so-called black English that in itself evokes pathos. Celie, the heroine, addresses letters to God. (Later there are more literate and much less moving letters from her sister who es­capes from rural Georgia to become a missionary in Africa.) "Dear God," begins the book, "I am fourteen years old." Then come two crossed-out words. Then: "1 have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me." That salutation, those crossed-out words, the bewildered appeal launch the book at once on its accessible way.

God gives Celie plenty of signs of what is happening to her, most of them oppressive, but Celie endures, with taci­turn courage. The story follows this Georgia farm girl from 1909 to 1931. Her stepfather twice gets Celie preg­nant, then takes the babies away. She doesn't know where they are. Then he hands her over for marriage to a widower who had come to ask for Celie's sister. Her husband tyrannizes her and taunts her with his passion for a band vocalist. Celie, continually jeered at as ugly, is first told otherwise by the singer. Celie matures, achieves inde­pendence and at last is reunited with her missionary sister, who also brings Celie's children home.

The book might have been written for Spielberg. He and Walker are both genuine, both skilled practitioners of popular art. It seems inevitable that this should be the book to switch him, tem­porarily anyway, from space sagas and kid stories.

Allen Daviau has photographed the film in colors that are the visual equiv­alent of Quincy Jones's lush music: Spielberg apparently feels that the flooding music and color transcend arti­fice because of the authenticity they

Stanley Kauffmann is film critic for The New Republic

Reprinted by permission of The New Republic. © 1986, The New Republic, Inc.


THE ARTS 241


4. continued

adorn. Moreover, Spielberg keeps the camera below eye-level a good deal of the time, often near floor-level, looking upward as if to assert that he feels the story is epic.

For Celie, Spielberg, with his usual good instincts, chose comedian Whoopi Goldberg. She is a solo performer of sketches she herself creates. Her Broadway appearance last year demon­strated that her performing talent is better than her writing. As Celie, Goldberg is perfect.

Danny Glover, as the widower who weds Celie reluctantly, goes from strength to strength as an actor. Up to now, he has played sympathetic roles — notably, the field hand Moses in Places in the Heart. Here he plays a brute who mellows with the years. Glover makes the younger man both terrifying and understandable, and


makes the mellowing as credible as anyone could do.

Two women are outstanding. Oprah Winfrey is Sophie, a plump proud woman who pays grievously for her pride. Margaret Avery is Shug (short for Sugar), the singer who bewitches Celie's husband but whose love turns out to be the liberation of Celie's spirit. Avery is worldly wise, yet warm and lovely.

The film travels a bit errantly and sluggishly toward the happy ending we know it must have, whether or not we've read the book, but Spielberg's convictions carry it through: his con­viction that this is now the moment for a mass-appeal film on these aspects of black life and his conviction about happy endings. Clearly he believes that happy endings are integral to film, that they are what film is for. These two convictions, of instance and of principle, sustain The Color Purple.


Danny Glover and Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple

1985 Warner Brothers Company


242 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

The Chairman and the Boss


The first great American superstar singer, and the latest Voices for whole generations. Musicians who can sculpt in song an entire interior landscape of American dreams played out in late-night bars or on empty midnight high­ways. Jukebox visionaries. World-class artists.

Frank Sinatra and Bruce Spring­steen have a lot more in common than their native state of New Jersey. They dwell in the same kind of spiritual territory: a world of loneliness, roman­tic retribution, hard pride and tenuous triumph where a song can be a testa­ment or a talisman. Even their most sweeping upbeat numbers have an undertow from the outer darkness. Their music moves to different beats. That is obvious. But whether Sinatra swings or Springsteen rocks, they both sound like they are singing about lives in the balance.

Their audiences do not overlap. Not many kids Born in the U.SA. want to have it My Way, and those who have hoisted One for My Baby may not feel they are Born to Run. Could Sinatra cover Cover Me} Could Springsteen get behind Spring Is Here} No matter. They share the same solitary spirit. Sinatra's greatest record — and his self-acknow­ledged favorite — is the 1958 album Only the Lonely, in which the haunted force of his singing transforms romantic

Frank Sinatra


abandonment into an elegant paradigm of spiritual despair straight up, no chaser. Springsteen has never been better than on 1980's The River, a two-record set full of blind alleys, dashed dreams and rave-ups that sound like last stands. The protagonists of Spring­steen's songs all stand and fall by them­selves. In Sinatra's most indelible per­formances, the singer makes a compact between the will and the heart, and desolation is what is left after the thrill is gone.

They share some of the same back­ground too. Despite Springsteen's Dutch surname, his lineage is half-Italian. The Sinatra bloodlines have been evokecl to place him squarely within such varying Mediterranean traditions as bel canto and the Mafia. It may be, however, that the Mob mytho­logy surrounding Sinatra is simply part of the public projection of his night­shade personality, based on the same kind of willed misperception that twisted Springsteen into a Fender-bender Rambo. The same perceived darkness is present in Presley and Dylan, Dean and Brando. Americans like their superstars with an edge of danger and a whiff of sulfur.

Sinatra has been happy to oblige. Springsteen plays his private life close, but Sinatra's has been up for grabs since he wowed the bobby-soxers at the Paramount Theatre in 1944, Springsteen's effect on an audience can be just as devastating, but a great part of his appeal is the impression of a private man going public. Each concert becomes a ritual celebration, just as a Sinatra performance, even today, is a renewal of old ties and a reconfirmation of old values. The Chairman of the Board, with his unforced, slightly ironic ease, and the Boss, who has the stage force of some as yet unclassified natural phenomenon, are both peerless show­men, and they both got their moves down in the same neighborhood. The rock clubs all around the Jersey shore are not so very different now from jazz joints like the Rustic Cabin (Route 9W, Alpine, N.J.), where Sinatra spent 18 months in the late '30s, learning his craft and occasionally waiting tables.

Springsteen's sense of himself and of the redemptive power of the songs


Bruce Springsteen

he sings has translated into political statement (as in his participation in Steve Van Zandt's antiapartheid Sun City project) and political action (as with his quiet contributions, in each of his U.S. concert venues, to local chari­ties like food banks). Sinatra, whose music usually avoided political matters, was also, in his time, an outspoken populist. The singer who now enter­tains at the White House — and at Sun City — also staged John Kennedy's inaugural, appeared at plenty of civil rights benefits and was one of the first movie figures to try formally to break the I lollywood blacklist with his hiring clout.

That has changed now. Spring­steen's own changes may be different, but what will likely remain constant with him, as it has with Sinatra, is the primacy of the music. They are both like separate swift currents in the Amer­ican musical mainstream that has flowed around the world. There would be a pleasing symbolism in the fulfill­ment of one Springsteen friend's long-cherished dream of having Sinatra record the Boss's grand melodrama Meeting Across the River. However it turned out such a recording would be an irresistible confluence of myths. And something more. It would do both Springsteen and Sinatra proud. Just in fact as they have done us.

By Jay Cocks


the Chairman, the Boss: nicknames of Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen.

Dean, James (1931-55): American actor.

Brando, Marlon: born 1924, American actor.

Paramount Theatre, Hollywood movie studio.

Steve van Zandt, former guitarist in Springsteen's band.


part C Exercises


1. Structural Outline Toward a National Theater Provide the missing information about the change undergone by the American theater.

2. Scanning A Dozen Outstanding Plays of the Past Quarter Century Describing American drama before the 1960s, Howard Stein says, "Those plays, for the most part, were devoted to social realism, to the family, to middle-class people talking in middle-class language about middle-class problems—problems that centered around marriage, raising children, extra-marital affairs, divorce, business and personal integrity." Scan the survey of recent plays, and show how, in the choice of themes and main characters, these plays differ from the traditional pattern.

Before the 1960s

domination of the stage by few major playwrights

censorship in playwriting by Broadway producers

similarity of Broadway plays through middle-class orientation


Since the 1960s

decentralization and regionalization of theatrical activities toward a national theater

expansion of thetheatrical scene by around 400 non-profit theaters


Comprehension

An Interview with Jack Nicholson

Which ways of completing the following sentences are correct? There may be more than one possibility.

1. After leaving school Jack Nicholson

a) went straight to college.

b) went to California to become a movie
star.

c) became an office boy in a California film
company.

2. Due to Jeff Corey's influence, Jack Nicholson

a) became interested in sports, girls and
seeing films.

b) tried to live an intensive life.

c) learned that acting requires an intensive
insight into life.

3. Already at the beginning of his career as an
actor

a) money played such a crucial role that he
almost gave up acting.

b) he strongly believed in acting as a
literary art form.

c) he considered scriptwriters to be the
greatest literary artists of the time.

4. Comparing film-acting and acting on the
stage, Jack Nicholson

a) regarded the stage as the true medium
for an actor.

b) believed that screen-acting was the
higher art form.

c) thought that second-rate actors were to
be found on the stage.

5. Jack Nicholson is of the opinion that
criticism

a) from the theater audience helped him a
lot.

b) after a theater performance was not
always fair.

c) of acting is done best by the actor
himself.


244 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP


6. Jack Nicholson anticipated that Easy Rider
was not going to be a failure because

a) the motorcycle film he had done before
had been a success.

b) he had given up trying to reach a kind of
literary quality with this film.

c) he was familiar with the basic ideas of
this film.

7. The success of Easy Rider at the Cannes Film
Festival

a) made Nicholson think of directing films
himself for the first time.

b) showed Nicholson that he was at his best
as an actor.

c) caused him to give up all plans of
directing films.

8. When choosing a new project, Nicholson
believes that

a) the script is the most important criterion.

b) the director is more important than the
script.

c) only great directors guarantee the
financial success of a film.

9. Jack Nicholson enjoys directing because he
thinks

a) he can do it as well as Antonioni,
Kubrick or Polanski.

b) there are always excellent scripts to rely
on.

c) he has the special vision that is needed
to produce the right images.

10. Jack Nicholson gave up writing because he

a) never really liked it.

b) felt that he was not effective enough as a
writer.

c) thought he could contribute to a film
more through acting than through
writing.


Interview Practice

Literary Hollywood

Journalists such as Stanley Kauffmann often work in different media. Imagine he is going to be interviewed on a live radio morning show. The interviewer at the radio station has read the review in The New Republic and, as he has neither seen the film nor read the novel, is basing his five-minute interview almost entirely on the review. Put yourself into the position of the interviewer and, based on an analysis of the review, prepare questions which both interest the listeners and can be answered informatively by Stanley Kauffmann.

Then conduct the interview in pairs, the interviewee relying on a few notes which he or she has made to each of the questions before.

Comparative Study

The Chairman and the Boss

1. List what the author of this article says about
Frank Sinatra, the Chairman of the Board,
and Bruce Springsteen, the Boss. Pay
particular attention to

• the impact of their music on American people and culture the spiritual character of their music their audiences their best albums the protagonists of their songs their (ethnic) backgrounds their personalities their performing powers their political commitments.

2. Where does the author see parallels and
where does he see differences?

3. Pick a few songs from both superstars.
Categorize them and say whether you agree
with the description the author gives of their
songs.


14 SportS

PART A Background Information


A SPORTS-LOVING NATION

MEDIA COVERAGE

PRIVATE AND

INSTITUTIONALIZED

ACTIVITIES


Whether they are fans or players, the millions of Americans who participate in sports are usually passionate about their games. There is more to being a baseball fan than buying season tickets to the home team's games. A real fan not only can recite each player's batting average, but also competes with other fans to prove who knows the answers to the most obscure and trivial questions about the sport. That's dedication. Dedication short of madness is also what inspired hundreds of thousands of football fans to fill Denver's stadium in dangerously freezing temperatures, not to watch an exciting game but just to demonstrate team support in a pre-Superbowl pep rally, days before the actual contest. And it is with passion that Americans pursue the latest fitness fad, convinced that staying fit requires much more than regular exercise and balanced meals. For anyone who claims a real desire to stay healthy, fitness has become a science of quantification involving weighing, measuring, moni­toring, graph charting, and computer printouts. These are the tools for knowing all about pulse and heart rates, calorie intake, fat cell per muscle cell ratios, and almost anything else that shows the results of a workout.

The immense popularity of sports in America is indicated by the number of pages and headlines the average daily newspaper devotes to local and national sports. The emphasis on sports is evident in local evening news telecasts, too. Every evening for five to seven minutes of the half-hour local news show, the station's sports analyst, whose territory is exclusively sports, reports on local, regional, and national sports events.

Television has made sports available to all. For those who cannot afford tickets or travel to expensive play-offs like baseball's World Series or football's final Superbowl, a flick of the television dial provides close-up viewing that beats front row seats. Although estimates vary, the major networks average about 500 hours each of sports programming a year. Recently, the emergence of several cable channels that specialize in sports gives viewers even more options. The foremost of these channels, ESPN, runs sports shows at least 22 hours a day and is now received by 37 million American homes, or nearly half of the 86 million homes with television sets.

Opportunities for keeping fit and playing sports are numerous. Jogging is extremely popular, perhaps because it is the cheapest and most accessible sport. Aerobic exercise and training with weight-lifting machines are two activities which more and more men and women are pursuing. Books, videos,


Superbowl: the championship game of the National Football League. pep rally: an assembly intended to inspire enthusiasm.


246 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

American football

and fitness-conscious movie stars that play up the glamour of fitness have heightened enthusiasm for these exercises and have promoted the muscular, healthy body as the American beauty ideal. Most communities have recreational parks with tennis and basketball courts, a football or soccer field, and outdoor grills for picnics. These parks generally charge no fees for the use of these facilities. Some large corporations, hospitals, and churches have indoor gym­nasiums and organize informal team sports. For those who can afford member­ship fees, there is the exclusive country club and its more modern version, the health and fitness center. Members of these clubs have access to all kinds of indoor and outdoor sports: swimming, volleyball, golf, racquetball, handball, tennis, and basketball. Most clubs also offer instruction in various sports and exercise methods.


SPORTS 247


AMERICAN SPORTS

VIOLENCE AND SPORTS

COMMERCIAL ASPECTS


Schools and colleges have institutionalized team sports for young people. Teams and competitions are highly organized and competitive and generally receive substantial local publicity. High schools and colleges commonly have a school team for each of these sports: football, basketball, baseball, tennis, wrestling, gymnastics, and track, and sometimes for soccer, swimming, hockey, volleyball, fencing, and golf. Practices and games are generally held on the school premises after classes are over. High schools and colleges recognize outstanding athletic achievement with trophies, awards, and scholarships, and student athletes receive strong community support.

Football, baseball, and basketball, the most popular sports in America, originated in the United States and are largely unknown or only minor pastimes outside North America. The football season starts in early autumn and is followed by basketball, an indoor winter sport, and then baseball, played in spring and summer. Besides these top three sports, ice hockey, boxing, golf, car racing, horse racing, and tennis have been popular for decades and attract large audiences.

Although many spectator sports, particularly pro football, ice hockey, and boxing, are aggressive and sometimes bloody, American spectators are notably less violent than are sports crowds in other countries. Fighting, bottle throwing, and rioting, common elsewhere, are not the rule among American fans. Base­ball and football games are family affairs, and cheerleaders command the remarkably non-violent crowd to root in chorus for their teams.

For many people, sports are big business. The major television networks contract with professional sports leagues for the rights to broadcast their games. The guaranteed mass viewing of major sports events means advertisers will pay networks a lot of money to sponsor the program with announcements for their products. Advertisers for beer, cars, and men's products are glad of the opportunity to push their goods to the predominantly male audience of the big professional sports. Commercial businesses enjoy the publicity which brings in sales. The networks are glad to fill up program hours and attract audiences who might perhaps become regular viewers of other programs produced by those networks, and the major sports leagues enjoy the millions of dollars the networks pay for the broad-casting rights contracts. Many sports get half of their revenues from the networks. National Football League (NFL) teams, for example, get about 65 percent of their revenues from television. The networks' 1986 contract with the NFL provided each of the 28 teams in the league with an average of $14 million a year.

Just as in any business, investments are made and assets are exchanged. Team owners usually sign up individual players for lucrative long-term con­tracts. Star quarterback Joe Namath was invited to play for the New York Jets, one of the NFL teams, for $425,000 in 1965. Coveted baseball player Kirk Gibson recently signed a three-year contract with the Detroit Tigers for $4.1 million. More often in the past than now, team owners traded players back and forth as items for barter.

Any business operator hopes to get a good deal. However, the network sports industries have not been faring well lately. They have experienced financial setbacks mainly caused by the oversaturation of sports programming on networks and competing cable channels. Networks claim they are now losing money on once-lucrative telecasts. Ironically, the slump in business is occurring at a time when sports shows are drawing larger audiences than in recent years. Part of the problem is that advertising costs got too high, and the


248 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP


PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

COLLEGE SPORTS

STUDENT ATHLETES AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

WINNING


industries that traditionally buy ads—beer and car companies —are not paying the high prices. Networks, dependent on advertising for revenue, are hoping that the market will change before they have to make drastic reductions ir sports programming.

The commercial aspects of American professional sports can make or break an athlete's career. Young, talented athletes make it to the top because they are exceptionally talented, but not in every case because they are the best. In women's tennis, for example, an aspiring young tennis star must not only possess a winning serve and backhand, she must also get corporate agents on her side. Without agents who line up sponsors and publicity, a player has a very difficult time moving from amateur to professional sports. To get the endorsement of corporate advertising sponsors, a talented young tennis player has a much better chance for success if she is also attractive. Sales-conscious tennis sportswear companies pay large sums of money to tennis pros who promote their products. Many top players earn more money a year in product-endorsement fees than in prize money. Competition and success in sports, then, is not only a matter of game skill, but marketability as well.

College sports lost its amateurism years ago. Teams and events are institu­tionalized and contribute to college publicity and revenue. Sports bring in money to colleges from ticket sales and television rights, so colleges like having winning teams. The better the team, the greater the ticket sales and television coverage, and the more money the college can channel back into athletics and other programs. Football and basketball are the most lucrative college sports because they attract the most fans. Other college sports, particu­larly women's sports, are often neglected and ignored by spectators, the news media, and athletic directors who often disregard women's sports budgets and funnel money for equipment and facilities into the sports that pay. On the other hand, top college teams get a lot of attention. In 1986, the Division 1 college football programs had a budget of nearly $1 billion, while entertaining millions of spectators and television viewers.

To recruit student athletes for a winning team, many colleges are willing to go to great lengths, providing full academic scholarships to athletes, and sometimes putting the college's academic reputation at risk. The tacit under­standing shared by college admissions directors as well as the potential sports stars they admit is that athletes do not enroll in college to learn, but to play sports and perhaps use intercollegiate sports as a springboard for a professional career. The situation often embarrasses college administrators, who are caught between educational ideals and commercial realities, and infuriates other students, who resent the preferential treatment given to athletes. Of late, some universities, such as the University of Michigan, have initiated support pro­grams to improve academic performance and graduation rates of athletes.

Increasing commercialization of college sports is part of a larger trend. American sports are becoming more competitive and more profit-oriented. As a result, playing to win is emphasized more than playing for fun. This is true from the professional level all the way down to the level of children's Little League sports teams, where young players are encouraged by such slogans as "A quitter never wins; a winner never quits," and "never be willing to be second best." The obsession with winning causes some people to wonder whether sports in America should be such serious business.


part â Texts

° Interview:

High School Sports


Q: Steve, you graduated from high school in Quincy, II, and afterwards went to school in Germany for almost a year. As far as school sports are concerned, do you think there is a great difference between Germany and the U.S.A.? A: Yes, a large difference, actually. In Germany, school sports mean P.E., whereas in the U.S. the school sports program has a double role, with the P.E. program on one side and organized competitive sports on the other. In Germany, the function of the competitive sports is taken over by non-school sport clubs, which exist only in small numbers in the U.S.

Q: Let's first talk about physical education or P.E., as it is commonly called. What role does it play in the curriculum?

A: Well, it's a requirement, which means that every student must be enrolled in a P.E. course, and the courses meet five times a week for one hour a day.

Q: What kinds of sports are offered? A: There's usually a period right at the beginning of each semester where a general physical fitness program is done, and, after that, the students get to choose between various team and individual sports ranging from basketball, football and baseball to tennis, weight lifting and aerobics. Q: Let's turn to competitive sports now. What were the most popular teams at your school, and how important were they for the school? A: The biggest team at QHS is by far the boy's basketball team, and then the other teams are heavily dependent on success. For instance, in the last couple of years, the girls' volleyball team has had some success, and, of course, that means a more popular following for the team, although the basketball team has always had a cult following, through thick and thin.


Q: So, obviously, the home games of the top teams are the important events in the life of the school, aren't they?

A: Yes, they are. The basketball games attract a large, diverse audience. They're played at the senior high gym, and it's always packed to capacity. Another thing, if the basketball team were to go to the state tournament, the students would be released from school early so that they would have the opportunity to travel with the team. And we can't forget the financial implications: the games generate revenue for the school.

Q: What other things beside the actual competition on the field add to the atmosphere of the game?

A: At the very beginning of the game, when the players are introduced, the mascot from Quincy comes out dressed as a blue devil. The high school team is called the Blue Devils. He walks out with a flaming pitchfork, and he goes around the gym, which is divided into sections, and, with his back to the crowd, he covers himself in his cape. All of a sudden, he turns around, throwing open his cape, and everybody in that section stands up and cheers as loud as they can, with the student section generating the loudest screams. On top of that there's a band to add to the pre-game and intermission carnival atmosphere, and there's the omnipresent cheerleaders for the same purpose. Q: What do you understand by cheerleaders? A: These are girls, organized into squads, who perform various chants and acrobatics to hype up the crowd.

Q: Do they wear special clothes? A: It's the lack of clothes more than the clothes. They wear very provocative outfits. Q: To what extent does the community become


250 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP


1. continued

involved and interested in those games? Do you remember incidents that would illustrate this interest?

A: The community has always been very much behind the basketball program at QHS. For example, when we went to the state tournament in 1981, a local printing company distributed posters, and, driving around town, you could see these posters with this huge blue devil staring out at you on just about every house, and then many Quincians went to the tournament to support the team. And during the regular season, the games are always broadcast on the radio, and, like I said before, the gymnasium is always filled to capacity, so there is a very big grass roots support, and that multiplies when the team is successful. For example, when a team returns from state tourney, it goes to the mall, gets on board an old fire truck and parades around town before going to the gym for a victory rally, which is like a large party for the players and fans.

Q: I guess the members of the top basketball team are very popular with the other students and with the girls.

A: Yeah, they're the stars of the high school community, and, as long as they don't get too arrogant, they're highly regarded by the major portion of the high school population. The girls find the guys to be quite sexy, but the guys at the high school tend to lean toward the cheerleaders rather than the basketball players. Q: Imagine a student wants to join the basketball team. How does he go about it? A: Well, the basketball team in Quincy is very selective, and there's quite a competition for membership, but it's pretty well all decided by the time the people are playing at the junior high. The other teams are more open to entrance later on. Q: What do they do to train?


High-school basketball game

A: As with any sport, a major portion of time is devoted to callisthenics, just general physical fitness, and the rest of the time is spent on tactics, teamwork and basic skills. Q: How would you describe the role of the coach?

A: The coach is of major importance for the team, as he determines their success to a large extent. Coaches are hired by the school board as coaches first and as teachers second. And when a coach's luck runs out, he's gone as a coach, but he's retained as a teacher. The community at large stands behind the coaches when they have a winning record; for instance, one fan in Quincy gave a basketball coach a brand new Corvette, just for being a good coach.


tourney, tournament.


SPORTS 251

e SPORTS IN AMERICA:

COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES


by James A. Michener

The athletic programs of American colleges and universities have come in for a great deal of criticism but there does not seem to be a chance to alter the system.

James A. Michener gives background information and comments on the problems.

First, the United States is the only nation in the world, so far as I know, which demands that its schools like Harvard, Ohio State and Claremont assume responsibility for providing the public with sports entertainment. Ours is a unique system


which has no historical sanction or application elsewhere. It would be unthinkable for the Univer­sity of Bologna, a most ancient and honorable school, to provide scholarships to illiterate soccer players so that they could entertain the other cities of northern Italy, and it would be equally preposter­ous for either the Sorbonne or Oxford to do so in their countries. Our system is an American pheno­menon, a historical accident which developed from the exciting football games played by Yale and Harvard and to a lesser extent Princeton and certain other schools during the closing years of


College football


252 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP


2. continued

the nineteenth century. If we had had at that time professional teams which provided public football entertainment, we might not have placed the burden on our schools. But we had no professional teams, so our schools were handed the job.

Second, if an ideal American educational system were being launched afresh, few would want to saddle it with the responsibility for public sports entertainment. I certainly would not. But since, by a quirk of history, it is so saddled, the tradition has become ingrained and I see not the remotest chance of altering it. I therefore approve of con­tinuing it, so long as certain safeguards are in­stalled. Categorically, I believe that our schools must continue to offer sports entertainment, even though comparable institutions throughout the rest of the world are excused from doing so.

Third, I see nothing wrong in having a college or a university provide training for the young man or woman who wants to devote his adult life to sports. My reasoning is twofold: 1) American society has ordained that sports shall be a major aspect of our


national life, with major attention, major financial support and major coverage in the media. How possibly can a major aspect of life be ignored by our schools? 2) If it is permissible to train young musicians and actors in our universities, and endow munificent departments to do so, why is it not equally legitimate to train young athletes, and endow them with a stadium?

Fourth, because our schools have volunteered to serve as unpaid training grounds for future professionals, and because some of the lucky schools with good sports reputations can earn a good deal of money from the semi-professional football and basketball teams they operate, the temptation to recruit young men skilled at games but totally unfitted for academic work is over­powering. We must seriously ask if such behavior is legitimate for an academic institution. There are honorable answers, and ! know some of them, but if we do not face this matter forthrightly, we are going to run into trouble.


BASEBALL


               
   
   
 
 
   

B

aseball is a nine-a-side game played with bat, ball, and glove, mainly in the U.S.A. Teams consist of a pitcher and catcher, called the battery, first, second, and third basemen, and shortstop, called the infield, and right, centre, and left fielders, called the outfield. Substitute players may enter the game at any time, but once a player is removed he cannot return.

The standard ball has a cork-and-rubber centre wound with woollen yam and covered with horse-hide. It weighs from 5 to 5 1/4 oz. (148 g.) and is from 9 to 9 1/2 in. (approx. 23 cm.) in circumfer­ence. .. . The bat is a smooth, round, tapered piece of hard wood not more than 2 3/4 in. (ap­prox. 7 cm.) in diameter at its thickest part and no more than 42 in. (1.07 m.) long.

Originally, fielders played barehanded, but gloves have been developed over the years. First basemen wear a special large mitt, and catchers use a large, heavily-padded mitt as well as a chest protector, shin guards, and a metal mask. Catchers


were at first unprotected. Consequently, they stood back at a distance from home plate and caught pitched balls on the bounce, but the intro­duction of the large, round, well-padded mitt or "pillow glove" and the face mask enabled them to move up close behind the plate and catch pitched balls on the fly. Players wear shoes with steel cleats and, while batting and running the bases, they use protective plastic helmets.

The game is played on a field containing four bases placed at the angles of a 90-ft. (27.4 m.) square (often called a diamond): home plate and, in counter-clockwise order, first, second, and third base. Two foul lines form the boundaries of fair territory. Starting at home, these lines extend past first and third base the entire length of the field, which is often enclosed by a fence at its farthest limits.

The object of each team is to score more runs than the other. A run is scored whenever a player circles all the bases and reaches home without being put out. The game is divided into innings, in


SPORTS 253

3. continued


each of which the teams alternate at bat and in the field. A team is allowed three outs in each half-inning at bat, and must then take up defensive positions in the field while the other team has its turn to try to score. Ordinarily, a game consists of nine innings; in the event of a tie, extra innings are played until one team outscores the other in the same number of innings.

The players take turns batting from home plate in regular rotation. The opposing pitcher throws the ball to his catcher from a slab (called the "rubber") on the pitcher's mound, a slightly raised area of the field directly between home and se­cond base. ... Bases are canvas bags fastened to metal pegs set in the ground.

The batter tries to reach base safely after hitting the pitched ball into fair territory. A hit that enables him to reach first base is called a "single," a two-base hit is a "double," a three-base hit a "triple," and a four-base hit a "home-run." A fair ball hit over an outfield fence is automatically a home run. A batter is also awarded his base if the pitcher delivers four pitches which, in the umpire's judge­ment, do not pass through the "strike zone" — that is, over home plate between the batter's armpits and knees; or if he is hit by a pitched ball; or if the opposing catcher interferes when he swings the bat. To prevent the batter from hitting safely, baseball pitchers deliver the ball with great speed and accuracy and vary its speed and trajectory. Success in batting, therefore, requires courage and a high degree of skill.


After a player reaches base safely, his prog­ress towards home depends largely on his team mates' hitting the ball in such a way that he can advance. ...

Players may be put out in various ways. A batter is out when the pitcher gets three 'strikes' on him. A strike is a pitch that crosses the plate in the strike zone, or any pitch that is struck at and missed or is hit into foul territory. After two strikes, however, foul balls do not count except when a batter 'bunts' — lets the ball meet the bat instead of swinging at it — and the ball rolls foul. A batter is also out if he hits the ball in the air anywhere in fair or foul territory and it is caught by an opponent before it touches the ground. He is out if he hits the ball on the ground and a fielder catches and throws it to a player at first base, or catches it and touches that base, before the batter (now become a base runner) gets there.

A base nnner may be put out if, while off base, he is tagged by an opposing player with the hand or glove holding the ball, or if he is forced to leave his base to make room for another runner and fails to reach the next base before an opposing player tags him or the base; or if he is hit by a team mate's batted ball before it has touched or passed a fielder.

An umpire-in-chief "calls" balls and strikes from his position directly behind the catcher at home plate, and one or more base umpires determine whether runners are safe or out at the other three bases.


254 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

HEALTH

Running for your Life

A Harvard study links exercise with longevity


T

HE hordes of Americans who roll out of bed, slip into their Reeboks and run for an hour in the face of snarling dogs, potential muggers and hordes of Americans heading in the opposite direction on their Schwinn 10-speeds must wonder sometimes whether it's worth the aggra­vation. After all, if a rash of recent books and articles like "The Exercise Myth" can be believed, the evidence that physical activity leads to a longer and healthier life is based on a flawed interpretation of cause and effect. It isn't that exercise prolongs life, the argu­ment goes, it's just that people who engage in sports and active occupations are healthier in the first place. But the fitness buffs should not put their rowing machines in dry dock just yet. According to a long-term study in­volving nearly 17,000 loyal sons of Harvard, it now seems that athletic effort is far from a waste of time. Moderate exercise, said a report in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, can add up to two years to a person's life.

In the mid-1960s Dr. Ralph S. Paffenbarger Jr. and his colleagues at the Stanford Uni­versity School of Medicine recruited the Harvard graduates, 35 to 74, and asked them to answer detailed questionnaires about their general health and living habits. Follow-ups carried out until 1978 showed that men who expended at least 2,000 calories per week through exercise had mortality rates one-quarter to one-third lower than those burning up fewer calories. The life-prolonging level of activity cited in the re­port is the equivalent of five hours of brisk walking, about four hours of jogging or a shade more than three hours of squash. More exercise meant a better chance at a long life - up to a point. A regimen that burned more than 3,500 calories tended to cause injuries that negated most of the benefits derived from exercise.

Countering disease:During the survey, 1,413 of the men died: 45 percent from heart disease, 32 percent from cancer, 13 percent from other "natural causes" and 10 percent

Reeboks: trademark of jogging shoes.

Schwinn 10-speed: trademark of racing bicycles.


Jogging for health

from trauma. While previous studies in­dicated that exercise protects against heart disease, Harvard's is the first to show a favorable effect of exercise on mortality from all diseases. As would be expected, smoking, high blood pressure and a familial history of death at an early age were associated with an increased mortality risk. But, according to the study, exercise played a significant part in countering even these major factors. For example, hypertensive men who exer­cised had half the mortality rate of their counterparts who remained sedentary. Among smokers, exercise reduced deaths by about 30 percent.

Harvard men who were varsity athletes while in college — and were thus presumed by the researchers to have been starting out life with basically strong bodies - had no advantage over their classmates in terms of survival rates. Indeed, lettermen who sub­sequently turned soft and sedentary in­creased their mortality risk. "It's not thekind of activity that you did in college . . . but the amount of contemporary activity that's associated with the long survival," says Paffenbarger.

Matt Ci.ark with Karen Spring^n

lettermen: people who have been awarded a letter, the initial of their school, for outstanding performance especially in sports.


Anything wrong?"


SPORTS 255


256 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

LOUSY AT SPORTS


I'VE DECIDED TO COME OUT OF THE closet. It is not an easy decision to admit openly that I really don't like sports. There — I've said it.

Do you know what it's like to be a man who is not a sports fan? Who not only doesn't care who wins the World Series but who is never exactly s


Date: 2015-12-18; view: 562


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