Morgan Freeman and Jamie Foxx are no martyrs. After all, they’re rich and famous, and they just won Oscars for their acting in movies that indicate that everything has not been as it should for black people in America. Still, the recent triumphs for African-Americans in the industry bring to mind Murray Kempton’s remark in his great essay “The Dry Bones”: “For it is not the least of a martyr’s scourges to be canonized by the persons who burned him.”
Technically, Hilary Swank speaks almost throughout Million Dollar Baby, but most of her performance involves jabbing and sweating. That’s all right; as long as we’re righting balances, we might as well study and enjoy women hitting each other in the face, as movies have permitted us to do with men for a century. Or, in the correct idiom, let women join in the liquid ballet of clenched fist and breath that is boxing at its best. A report from a Houston gym that gladly trains women:
On appearances, the gym is no place for a lady. But if a woman can go to war, fly a jet or run an international corporation, she can also throw—and take—a punch. So the boxing gym has been forced, grudgingly, to adapt. “What she (Swank) went through was very believable, very accurate,” [promising female boxer Akondaye] Fountain contends. “The men not wanting to train her, giving her a hard time, not respecting her boxing skills, that’s what we get a lot of.”
…
Fountain hopes to land five fights this year, maybe the last one for a championship. Her aspirations are no different from those of the 21-year-old sensation Diaz or any of the other men around her at the gym. When Freeman’s Scrap Iron speaks in Million Dollar Baby about why fighters fight, his words cut straight to Akondaye’s heart.“If there’s magic in boxing,” he says, “it’s the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It’s the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.”
It often does seem to require a fierce grandmother, a relentless opponent, or a more abstract shock to teach us to stand up straight, shoulders back, and act like we have some sense; to assume inclusion and demand respect. Too bad everyone can’t just take that for granted.
The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, Hotel Rwanda [New Yorker]
Ray and Birth [New Yorker]
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [New Yorker]
Majority of Americans Already Know Jamie Foxx’s Oscar Speech by Heart [Borowitz Report]
Blacks in American Film [African Americans]
Female pugilists battle as much for respect and acceptance as they do for titles [Houston Chronicle]
Introducing ‘Dirty Harry,’ via Video Game, to a New Generation [NY Times]
Hertzberg gets the Kempton Treatment [Decembrist]