The Drama of Competition
Why aren’t sports and other competitive activities a bigger part of the media storyscape
We watched The Beautiful Game last night. It was kind, modestly uplifting, socially aware, and generally well done. The movie focuses on a team from England that is competing in the Homeless World Cup.
It’s a sports movie. And here’s the thing I like most about sports movies. Nobody was killed. There were no shootings or bludgeonings. No corpses. No criminality at all.
This particular film is a little too polished, to be sure. Sanitized for a general audience. That doesn’t offend my sensibilities.
Here’s what does offend my sensibilities—hour after hour after hour of criminality, brutality, murder, torture, and people otherwise behaving like monsters so that some “good guys” of some ilk can bring them to justice . . . maybe.
Here’s my plea to screenwriters everywhere; more stories about sports and games and fewer featuring criminality.
Focusing on the Best Instead of the Worst
I understand why writers gravitate toward crime and specifically, murder, in storytelling. It is dramatic stuff. A murder is a plot device par extraordinaire. It raises questions that beg to be answered.
There’s a problem with murder mysteries; a big problem. They distort reality.
Consider the crime rate in Cabot Cove, Maine. When Jessica Fletcher lived there, the murder rate was worse than the most gang-infested inner city anywhere in America. Consider the town of Midsomer, a bucolic village in England. In a televised crime wave that began in 1998, there have been more than 388 murders, 423 deaths in total, and an additional 250 attempted murders or suicides. And The Midsomer Murders is essentially a comedy.
In American television, the action has historically placed heavy emphasis on gunplay, leading to a cultural bias that says the best defense against a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun. Scriptwriters go to elaborate lengths to set up some kind of climactic situation and the firearms industry wins.
In recent years, scriptwriters have gone more deeply into psychology, plumbed the depths of depravity, generated more visceral audience responses, and turned many films and television shows into media content that this little snowflake (me) can’t bear to watch.
A Sporting Alternative
Sports—athletic competitions and similar endeavors—can provide the same kind of dramatic situations. The major difference being that at the end of the story, the loser is not, we hope, dead.
There are all the dynamics of the underdog vs. the big bad giant; stories about impoverished youths getting a break; stories about perseverance in the face of obstacles, and many more. Sports stories frequently feature teams, teammates, and supporting staff—coaches, owners, agents, friends, etc.
The world of sports extends from children into old age. Sports stories cross other boundaries; a horse (Seabiscuit) or a pig (Babe) can be a star.
Here’s an ironic sidelight to my plea. Live sports is the most important content that big media (cable TV and now, streaming services) have to attract and hold onto subscribers. Of the top 20 most-watched television programs in U.S. history, 19 of them have been sporting events.
Today, with women’s sports gaining greater attention, there are new, more diverse audiences for sports. The revolution in NIL (name image licensing) has created a new dimension in youth sports. If you want to look for some unsavory aspects of the sports world and potential criminality, consider the way that gambling has infected sports.
There are hundreds and hundreds of great stories percolating in the world of sports today just waiting to be told.
The Psychological Impact
The emphasis on crime, murder, retribution, and gunplay in American television is reflected in the way Americans look at the world. There is an unwarranted level of fear and paranoia. (Although the proliferation of guns makes me less resolute in saying that.)
Stories about sports can offer the same sorts of twists, turns, and dramatic storytelling opportunities without spilling blood. C’mon, Hollywood & Friends, be good sports.
Anon.
Ridge
p.s.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Watch Friday Night Lights (Netflix). Watch The Bad News Bears (Pluto for free, rentals on Amazon, Apple, et al). Watch Rocky. (The original on Max, Hulu, misc. rentals). And for goodness sake, treat yourself to watching maybe the best TV show ever, Ted Lasso. (Apple TV — subscribe for a month and binge it. then binge it again. And again.) Then tell me I’m wrong.