“Boxing Ain’t No Game”: Clement Virgo’s Poor Boy’s Game as Canadian Racial Counter-narrative

Abstract

In its exploration of racialized poverty, carcereal regimes and the disciplining of Black bodies in social space, Clement Virgo’s Poor Boy’s Game provides a radical counter-narrative to Canada’s dominant narrative of benevolence and racial tolerance. Few critics, however, were willing to consider the film in these terms. Reviewers were largely unable—or unwilling—to discuss the film’s visual gestures to slavery, an absence that I argue speaks to the nation’s inability to acknowledge this aspect of its history or to speak meaningfully about questions of race. Instead, critics relegated the film to the status of a boxing movie, and their repeated and disproportionate emphasis on sport was one means through which they attempted to minimize the social and political issues the film attempts to address. While sport is often assumed to be apolitical and has historically been seen as the opiate of the masses, critics like C. L. R. James, in Beyond A Boundary (1963), have observed that societal prejudices are often rehearsed in the microcosm of the playing field, or in Virgo’s representation, the boxing ring. This paper situates Poor Boy’s Game within this framework, to emphasize the ways the film also writes a counter-narrative of athleticism which challenges the historical role of sport in the writing of dominant national narratives.