BRAVE-LESS NEW WORLD

Playing through Thursday, May 18 at Harkins Shea in Scottsdale:

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting--Only once, in the nearly four years I lived in Washington, D.C., did I go to an NFL game. I was mostly indifferent to sports in general and to football in particular, but my girlfriend at the time was a rabid lifelong fan of the team there. It was the hardest ticket in town to get, so she was thrilled when she landed a pair somehow, during the 1991 season when they went on to win the Super Bowl.

What I remember is that when we walked in to the game on that very cold and cloudy November afternoon, a good-sized group of Native American protestors were drumming and chanting outside RFK Stadium. They were there, of course, in opposition to the team name and mascot.

I wish I could say that I had an epiphany that day, that it occurred to me that, whatever one might think about the use of native imagery by sports teams in general, this particular term was a shocking, bald-faced racial epithet on the level of, for the most obvious example, the N-word, and that its use was outrageous. I wish I could say that this led me to further consider whether the use of any such imagery and terminology, even when less obviously insulting, was appropriate for a sports team.

But I didn't. I accepted a flyer from one of the protestors, read it, and dismissed it (to myself) as an oversensitive reaction to an unimportant issue. I've since heard other people make the same argument: With all the problems facing Native American communities, sports mascots seemed like a trivial focus. This now strikes me as an evasion even if it was true, but this blunt, fed-up documentary makes the case that the matter may not be so trivial after all.

Directed by Aviva Kempner and Ben West, the film summarizes the history of the depiction of indigenous Americans in media. It's a potently painful and embarrassing spectacle of film and television clips and cartoons, including the nadir of the great Bugs Bunny, from 1960's "Horse Hare," when Bugs chillingly sings "One little, two little, three little..." as he shoots at Indians from a fort.

After providing this ugly material for context, Imagining the Indian settles into a discussion of the thousands of American sports teams, from pro to high school, that use stereotypical native names and logos and mascots. We see footage of aggrieved fans wailing at protestors that the intent is to honor, not to insult. We even see footage of the 45th President and his wife doing the tomahawk chop. And we're given a glimpse of the struggle, by native advocates, to persuade these organizations that they ought to change this imagery. There's particular focus on the tireless activism of Suzan Shown Harjo on this issue.

This activism has born fruit: After years of resistance, the Washington team retired its name in 2020, and redubbed itself the Washington Commanders in 2022. Cleveland's MLB team rebranded itself the Cleveland Guardians in 2022. Even some franchises that have not yet relented, like Kansas City's football team, have prohibited the wearing of face paint and feathered headdresses by fans at the games.

As with many documentaries of this sort, Imagining the Indian was preaching to the choir with me. Years ago, albeit too many years after my NFL game in D.C., I finally got it through my skull that it wasn't up to me to decide what other people find hurtful, and that a nostalgic attachment to a logo or a mascot, however genuinely non-racist and affectionate that attachment may be, wasn't worth callously ignoring other people's carefully and consistently and politely expressed offense.

But then, the day after I saw Imagining the Indian, I found myself watching on TV, for roughly the zillionth time, my favorite baseball movie, 1988's Major League, about Cleveland's team, and filled with references to "the Tribe" and the "Happy Hunting Ground" and balls flying "off the reservation" and many appearances by the grinning Sambo mug of Chief Wahoo. I realize that it's my own racial privilege that allows me to watch this stuff without pain, and I fully support the team's name change and the retirement of the Chief. But I'm afraid I can't give up Major League.

At least, right now I don't think I can. Check back with me in thirty years or so.

TOMFOOLERY

In theaters this weekend:

80 for Brady--It's a testament to the star power of the four leading ladies in this movie that I didn't resent that their characters were Tom Brady fans. Not that much, anyway. I didn't even resent that the film amounts to a feature-length commercial for the NFL; it's being released the weekend before Super Bowl Sunday, almost as if the league is trying to offer its own counterprogramming.

Who cares? At this point in their careers, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Rita Moreno could pretty much read grocery lists and it would carry a certain pop-culture gravitas. The script, by Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern and inspired by a real-life circle of elderly Boston-based fans of Tommy Boy and the Patriots, doesn't really offer them much more to work with than a grocery list would, and they still come off all right.

Tomlin, a cancer survivor, is the outspoken instigator who insists that she and her friends must go watch Brady play in the 2017 Big Game. Fonda is a flirt given to romantically leaping before she looks; she's also successful writer of erotic fiction about Rob Gronkowski. Field is an academic weary of her dependent, literally absent-minded professor husband (Bob Balaban) and Moreno yearns to break free of assisted living despite a fellow resident (Glynn Turman) who likes her.

The quartet ends up in Houston having wacky adventures at the Super Bowl Experience and at parties and poker games and chicken wing eating contests and such. All does not, it need hardly be said, go smoothly. They're befriended by the choreographer of the half-time show (Billy Porter) and if you think they don't end up dancing to get past security, think again.

With her blunt, urgent delivery, Tomlin somehow emerges as the team captain of the ensemble. But all four are infectiously energetic and seem to enjoy goofing around with the supporting players shoved in their paths, like Porter, or Harry Hamlin as a love interest for Fonda, or Sara Gilbert as Tomlin's daughter, or Andy Richter as a high roller in a skybox, or Alex Moffat and Rob Corrddry as a dyspeptic sports-talk team, and of course Brady and Gronk and Guy Fieri and others as themselves. Even the bit players include the likes of Patton Oswalt and Sally Kirkland.

80 for Brady starts slow, but it should be said that as it progresses, and gets broader and sillier, it also gets better; both livelier and more heartfelt. By the end these women had me absurdly emotionally invested. This is, possibly, the lamest and most ridiculous film that has ever brought tears to my eyes.

FORGIVE US OUR 'SKINS

To the meager extent that I can be called a sports fan at all, I'm a baseball fan, not a football fan. But during the brief period I lived in Washington, D.C., from 1987 to 1992, my girlfriend at the time was a passionate fan of D.C.'s NFL team.

She wasn't alone. Led by head coach Joe Gibbs and QBs like Doug Williams and Mark Rypien, the team was really good during those years. As a result, almost every home game was a sellout, and tickets were extremely hard to come by. There's a good inside-the-Beltway gag in the 1987 Bette Midler-Shelley Long comedy Outrageous Fortune, in which a CIA agent (John Shuck) is trying to persuade a KGB agent (Robert Prosky) to defect, promising him townhouses and all sorts of perks, and the KGB man hesitantly asks "Redsk**s tickets?" The CIA man furrows his brow; that may be too big an ask.

Anyway, as I said, my then-girlfriend Stephanie adored the team, and somehow or another scored two tickets for a home game at RFK in November of 1991. The lads were having a superb season; they finished 14-2 and went on to win Super Bowl XXVI over the Buffalo Bills. Their only home loss? You guessed it, the one game that Stephanie and I ever managed to go to together; a 24-21 defeat to their loathed rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, under head coach Jimmy Johnson and QB Troy Aikman.

I have many vivid memories of that chilly day, including watching a drunken and insufferable Dallas fan a few rows ahead of us get seriously manhandled by D.C. cops--to joyous applause--for taunting his neighbors. I also recall the palpable funk of anger and misery, including Stephanie's, on the Metro ride home. But I also remember, as we entered the stadium, seeing a good-sized band of Native American activists beating drums and chanting in protest of the team's name. I was handed a flyer explaining its offensiveness.

I wish I still had that flyer, to read it a little more attentively than I did at the time. I dismissed it then, thinking the matter trivial; I may have formulated some evasion along the lines of "gee, that community has problems they really should be focusing on ahead of a sports team's name." It wasn't until years later, hearing the matter debated in the media, that it struck me that the issue's triviality or lack thereof really wasn't my call.

Many American sports teams are named after Native Americans; the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves, the Florida State Seminoles. I'm sure there are Native activists who would like to get rid of all of them, but to point out the obvious, the D.C. football team is a little different even from these--it's an actual racial epithet. It's not different, in any way that I can see, from using the N-word as a team name.

I was reflecting on all this to a friend of mine who told me that she had attended Miami University, aka Miami of Ohio. Their team was also called the Redsk**s in those days, and the on-field performing mascot at games was a kid dressed up in a stereotypical Indian outfit.

According to my friend, at a certain point Miami struck up a relationship with the Miami Tribe in Oklahoma, and sent their mascot performer to the tribe to train to do accurate tribal dances; they also provided scholarships and other programs for tribal youth. Even so, in 1996 they changed the name to the RedHawks, but kept the relationship with the tribe.

In 2014 Dan Snyder, the douche-baggy-sounding owner of the D.C. NFL team, started an "Original Americans Foundation" in answer to criticism over the name. But according to Sports Illustrated that funding has steadily dried up over the years since.

It will be interesting to see if the appropriately-initialed OAF continues at all in the future, as it appears that, almost three decades later, those protesters I saw that day are getting their wish; the D.C. team has announced it will retire the name. At this writing, the new name has not yet been announced.

The question of why slurs toward indigenous people have remained less socially opprobrious than slurs against other races for so much longer is an interesting one. I don't have an answer for it. Indeed, I don't have any great wisdom to impart about the matter at all; I'm just glad that the grotesque name has been retired, and that Snyder's obstinance has finally been worn down. I've heard some commentators wonder if the change will make some fans decide they're done with the organization. To that, I can only say that if so, they don't sound like very loyal fans.