Americans have justified football, our bloodsport, with many defenses over the century and change our boys have been killing themselves playing it. It builds character, it staves off the dreaded “feminization” of the country, it maintains strong bodies, it molds boys into men, it prepares them for both the battlefields of war and of life, it keeps problem boys from growing into a life of crime, and on and on.
The average NFL salary boomed from $78,000 in 1980 to $198,000 by 1986, the year before the cinematic release of The Running Man — roughly $430,000 in 2015 dollars. As salaries continued to balloon, another defense of the bloodsport could be added to the list: That’s what they’re paid the big bucks for. Big hits and headaches are the price of fame and fortune.
In The Running Man, monolithic TV network ICS similarly defends its brutal manhunt game show by the same name, in which criminals are hunted by costumed, mythologized superhero-gladiators called stalkers. The deaths of the runners who can’t make it past stalkers like Buzzsaw, Dynamo, Sub-Zero and Fireball are justified by the fates of those who do make it through the course:
“Like our previous winners, Whitman, Price and Haddad! You remember them! Whitman, Price and Haddad! There they are! And at this very moment, they’re basking under the Maui sun, their debt to society paid in full.”
Dystopian sci-fi movies like The Running Man have a refreshing ability to be brutally honest where other genres can’t. The radical change of setting — a distorted and unrecognizable future, a society in disarray, the death of old symbols and the rise of new, alien ones — allows writers to tell the truths about huge, revered institutions, truths that we refuse to tell directly.
The Running Man is a comical, almost cartoonish movie. The titular character, Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) slices a man at the crotch with a chainsaw and later says “he had to split.” One of the enemies wears a lite-brite breastplate and sings opera for his introduction. In one scene in the apartment of an ICS employee, we see one of the network’s other offerings, Climbing For Dollars, which reveals this new world’s insatiable appetite for violence and gawking at the poor with all the subtlety of an uppercut to the face:
We see this brutal honestly about the gladiatorial nature of televised sport throughout the film. There’s the death of Professor Subzero, the first stalker, met with host Damon Killian’s somber, reassuring voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is just horrible. Words can’t express just what we’re feeling at this very moment. A great champion has fallen. We’ll be back, just after these important messages.” It’s the equivalent of what I call Fox NFL Sunday’s “sad injury music,” used to show that yes, we’re very sad about the destroyed body lying prone on the turf right now, but we really need to get to these commercials:
The story of Price, Whitman and Haddad ends as Richards and Amber Mendez (María Conchita Alonso) flee the final stalker, Fireball, a jetpack-and-flamethrower fueled fighter. Fireball pursues Mendez into a deserted locker room hidden within the game zone, where Mendez discovers three decomposing bodies. As she reads the dog tags remaining on the bodies, the truth becomes clear: Whitman, Price and Haddad never made it to Maui. The victories of last season’s winners were more ICS lies, just part of the show to keep the narrative cooking from season to season.
Just as Fireball is prepared to burn Mendez along with the victors’ rotting corpses, Richards saves the day, pulling Fireball’s gas line. The tables turned, Richards uses a flare to ignite Fireball’s explosives, burning him along with the bodies of Whitman, Price and Haddad. Not even the stars can escape.
Fireball is portrayed by Jim Brown, and the image of an NFL Hall of Famer burning to death in a locker room hits especially hard in the wake of the suicides of Junior Seau, Dave Duerson and Adrian Robinson. All three were posthumously diagnosed with CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). Maybe this image didn’t hit quite as hard in 1987, when concussions were just getting your bell rung and when CTE was still a disease without a name.
“For many years, the NFL has been in denial, and they were saying, ‘this is not football related.’ There’s been some great work with the New York Times, certain reporters and certain medical people proved these things are football related,” Brown said at The Aspen Institute in 2013. “The denial has been very hurtful for a lot of players because they did not get the proper treatment at the proper time. The coaches did not have the knowledge not to put a young person back in the game after they have received a concussion. The whole concept of being a macho man is now proven to be ridiculous.” This, from a man whose picture belongs next to “macho” in the dictionary.
Brown expresses a belief that the league is done with its denial and will improve. He has more optimism than I do. The NFL continues to push junk like Heads Up Football, yet another program insisting the game will be safe if players just use proper form. Helmet companies continue to sell the idea that equipment can save the game, just as they have been doing for nearly half a century.
The NFL is built on myths and lies, and the lie of the promised land for its victors, of the Maui beaches of Whitman, Price and Haddad, is one of the more pernicious. Few sports movies set in a contemporary or at all realistic environment have any interest in telling this truth or even approaching the question. But as Damon Killian would say, “We’re only giving them what they want!”
JHM Singles 