"What's Natural About It?": A Baseball Movie as Introduction to Key Concepts in Cultural Studies

Abstract

AS a Cultural Studies professor at an Ontario community college, I am frequently presented with the challenge of introducing students to the ways in which they might critically engage with popular culture. Since most of these students have been through a non-academic (known as applied) stream of courses in high school, and have chosen a technological, applied program of post-secondary education, many are surprised-and not a little disgruntled-that they are required to a general education course as part of their studies. Moreover, the demand outweighs the supply of these courses, so that students usually find themselves placed in a general education course not because it piqued their interest, but because it had space for them. And so, when I start an introductory course in popular culture or visual culture in this kind of post-secondary setting, I am faced with a group of individuals who are not only new to the basic functions and principles of the field (namely, critical thinking and textual analysis), but are also quite sure that they do not need or want to learn anything about the subject. For several reasons, I have found that one of the best ways to introduce students to key concepts in cultural studies is through the 1984 film The Natural. My approach to this film is perhaps best defined by the interdisciplinarity which often characterizes Cultural Studies' engagements with film, and which often figures prominently in film theorists' ideas about how to renew and reinvigorate film theory.1 Put simply, my take on The Natural is that it offers students a straightforward introduction to the ways in which film both constructs and reflects our ideas about gender, heroism, nation, and-most importantly-how it poses its constructions and reflections as natural. This last point is particularly salient, given its overt presence in the film, and its pivotal role in cultural studies and film studies through the exploration of ideology. The idea of film critique as a fruitful project is often a difficult one to introduce to teenagers; they frequently see it as ruining a film that, as entertainment, simply is meant to be enjoyed. Another challenge posed by the student population at my college is the typically gendered nature of the classroom; in most of my classes, the number of male students far exceeds the number of females, so much so that the class may be bereft of a single female (other than myself). This can create a rather tense dynamic in discussing gender representation (a crucial element in film and cultural studies), in which I run the risk of appearing to be lecturing young men on the evils of patriarchy. This demographic also forces me to reassess my dialogue-based teaching style, as the males in my classes are typically less verbal than the females. Over the past four years I have found that The Natural enables me to deal effectively with these challenges. First and foremost, this baseball film is well-crafted enough that it contains several motifs and symbols that students, once prompted, can easily detect and follow (in this case, it is a plus that the film is none-too-subtle in its visual and thematic coding). This straight-forward, non-threatening invitation to critical engagement leads the students into more challenging concepts. Furthermore: two of the criticisms most frequently lobbed at The Natural by my students are first, that it is simplistic, and second, that it is cheesy. While these sentiments seem to give students a certain degree of confidence and authority, thus diminishing some of the anxiousness they may feel in tackling a new subject and a new set of skills, once we have completed our analysis most students feel that the film has gained an incredible amount of weight. In this case, then, their first experience with film critique yields a greater amount of significance to the film, thereby debunking the myth that to interrogate a film is to ruin it. On another level, the film is, after all, a sports movie, and given that sports is a subject most of my students find sorely absent from the bulk of their education, they are more attuned to its relevance, and more comfortable debating its merits and comparing it to other associated texts and social practices. …