On Baseball, Football, Leisure, the Labor Movement, and U.S. Manufacturing

Last week I participated in that most perennial of American traditions: going to a baseball game with my Dad and brother.   We saw the Mariners play in Seattle, as we had so often when I was growing up.  The inherent traditionalism of the sport, paired with the intrinsic leisureliness of the spectacle, couldn't help but put me in a reflective mood.

Specifically, about the leisureliness itself of baseball.  The sport in fact has its roots in the U.S. Labor movement; "8 hours to work, 8 hours to sleep, and 8 hours to do as we please" was the rallying cry of the first American Unionists (so much less ambitious than their Socialist counterparts in Europe), who were understandably resentful of their 14-hour work days in horrific factory conditions.  The factory owners themselves, of course, were less than thrilled with the prospect of 8-hour work days, and claimed to be battling "indolence, loafing, and laziness" among the Lower Classes with their punishing work days.

This rhetoric, in turn, prompted the factory workers to lay claim to "indolence, loafing, and laziness" directly as a form of political resistance, which they expressed by playing baseball--for there is no sport more laid-back than baseball.  Most the time, you'll note, the players are simply standing around, or leaning on the railing, casually waiting for things to happen.  The most celebrated legends of baseball--e.g. Babe Ruth--are renowned for drinking, smoking, and walking around the bases.  Baseball wasn't just lazy, it was proudly so--it was the working man claiming his right to leisure.  It is perhaps no accident that baseball rose to its highest prominence in American culture at the same time that the U.S. Labor movement achieved its greatest gains: the 8-hour work week, overtime pay, weekends, paid holidays, minimum wages, workman's comp.

It is perhaps also not accidental that baseball has been displaced by football in the American psyche at the same time that the Working Class has been displaced.  U.S. Manufacturing is mostly automated now, where it hasn't actively been in decline; consequently, the U.S. Labor force has moved from a largely manufacturing economy to a service one.  This point is integral: for in the days when factories dominated the U.S. landscape, men worked hard labor jobs--thus proving to others and themselves their own strength, virility, and masculinity--and baseball was how they unwound and relaxed on weekends.

But the majority of our jobs are no longer considered "manly"--our labor is now largely sedentary, service-oriented, with little chance to prove our virility, our masculinity.  Fight Club, both the novel and the film, rose to prominence in reaction against an "emasculating" economy, as men fought in underground clubs to vent their pent-up frustration; however, it wasn't fight clubs that arose in real life to give us vents, but American Football.  The violence, the toughness, the sheer danger of the sport, gave U.S. males an outlet for their aggression that they could no longer find in their careers.

Yet with this key difference: it is largely a vicarious outlet!  For by contrast, when one watches baseball, one is being leisurely even as the players on the field are likewise being leisurely!  That is, we are all being leisurely together! There is this unspoken camaraderie across social classes at a baseball game, all claiming their leisure time together at once.

But in football, the athletes are all taking the hits for the spectators!  The latter may shout and scream and cheer, channeling and venting all their pent-up energy after a dull work-week; but it is the athletes alone who are subject to all that horrendous violence.  Football is a sport wherein 40,000 people who need to exercise more watch 22 men who really need a rest.  Despite all the face-paints and colorful costumes and DIY signs to the contrary, there is no genuine camaraderie between spectator and participant in football.

Likewise, in baseball, the crowd may cheer at, say, a double-play, or a home-run, but otherwise we are chatting amiably with our neighbors, hanging out with our friends--the game is as much about us as it is about them.  But in football, good luck trying to chat casually with anyone!  If you're not screaming the whole game through, then you're doing it wrong, for it's never about you, it's always about them. 

We are disconnected from the athletes we watch in football: we likewise no longer feel truly connected to our products (made in China), our clothing (made in sweat-shops), our food (harvested by migrant workers); we are a long way removed from our American agricultural and manufacturing past, wherein we could directly and easily trace where all our products come from.  Nowadays we have to advertise certain foods as "locally sourced," as though that were some strange, new thing.

The great popularity of baseball among Latinos is perhaps linked to the fact that they still work in physical labor, especially agriculture--they are still fighting for their right to leisure.  (This agricultural-labor connection perhaps explains why our most famous baseball film, Field of Dreams, takes place on a farm, in a corn field).

We likewise all feel disconnected from our policy-makers, from our leaders, from the powerful; after slowly undoing the long gains of the Labor movement, CEOs now make hundreds of times more than their workers, far in excess of what they made in the hey-day of Unions (and of baseball).  The recent rise of Bernie Sanders and (perversely) Trump likewise signals a deep and general resentment among working Americans, against a power-class that feels completely disconnected from their lived experiences.

We may still cheer on our favorite political parties, as we do our favorite football teams, but we do not feel like we are actually participating with them--in fact, the loudness of our cheers are usually in direct inverse proportion to our actual influence upon the actions on the field (unless you're a Seahawks fan, of course, but that's a topic for a different day).  It is perhaps apropos that your average MLB baseball ticket is reasonably affordable to a working man--while only the rich can afford an NFL game.

I will be curious to see if and how football preserves its current cultural dominance, especially as the whole concussion controversy calls into question the violence inherent in football's whole exploitative system--which is in turn a metonym for our whole exploitative economic system.  Moreover, that awareness of the violence endemic to our economic system is clearly spreading throughout our increasingly angry working class, at all point of the political spectrum.  If current trends continue to boiling point, we may well return to baseball yet.

Fixing Star Trek

[Cause boy does it need it, if that fugly new ship is any indication!]

This last weekend I visited my Nautilus! co-author in Connecticut; among other things, we watched Star Trek Beyond, which inevitably meant further late-night conversations on where the heck did our favorite child-hood shows go wrong??

Nautilus! in fact began one night as we discussed the utter disappointment of Star Trek: Voyager, what an utter waste of a fascinating premise that was. Stranding a Federation starship on the far-side of the galaxy, in a 24th-century odyssey that wiped the slate clean of all burdensome mythology to spread forth a fresh new cosmos to encounter?  What a dynamite set-up!  They would have to try to mess it up!

Yet mess it up they did: if the hackneyed writing, wooden acting, and one-dimensional stereotypes masquerading as diversity (I'm looking square at you Chakotay!) weren't bad enough, the show was somehow even more subject to the mythology than ever!  What's the point of flying to "Where No Man Has Gone Before" if you're just going to complain about home??  Star Trek: Voyager was like every middle-aged tourist you've ever heard of; as Edward Fischer once wrote:

"Several million of them get up enough nerve each year to leave home in body, but the landscape of their mind never alters. They are annoyed with anything unfamiliar--be it a brand of coffee, the plumbing, or cultural patterns. They want the whole universe paved just like the streets they live on. They walk through castles and museums and cathedrals and are bored. If they were aware of their sagging spirits as they are their aching feet, it would be a hopeful sign. The sense of awe is dried up in them and they seldom show wonder, unless you want to count the many times a day they say, 'I wonder how far away the bus is parked?'"  Star Trek: Voyager was the bland-American-tourist of the Trek franchise, so fixated on getting home that they forgot to actually enjoy the wondrous cosmos.

This utter creative failure was not only frustrating but baffling, considering how it debuted just after The Next Generation had wrapped up its critically acclaimed run, Deep Space Nine was still crescendoing, the TOS movies had finished on a high note, and First Contact appeared to be the beginning of a cracker-jack TNG film series.  In 1996, on its 30th anniversary, the Star Trek franchise appeared unstoppable.

But Voyager turned out to be no aberration, but the start of a long, excruciating, down-ward slide.  It was followed by Star Trek: Enterprise, a prequel series which only doubled down on the lazy writing, wooden acting, and utter lack of awe and wonder to be exploring the cosmos, but perhaps most egregious of all, spent more time setting up the mythology than actually exploring outer space--you know, the whole original point of the series.  When Enterprise was unceremoniously cancelled in 2005, no one shed a tear, save for the fact that for the first time in nearly 20 years, there was no new Trek on TV.

Upon consideration of the failures of Voyager and Enterprise, I think I can better articulate where I think the franchise went wrong: in TOS, TNG, and DS9, the Federation, Starfleet, the whole mythology, is but a means to an end (viz: the exploration of the cosmos), not an end unto itself.  That is, the show's mythology served the story-telling, not the story-telling the mythology.  

Kirk regularly ignored orders when they got in his way (arguably his most defining characteristic), Picard more than once had to speechify against Admirals who failed to live up to his high ideals, and DS9 was all about the deconstruction of Federation self-righteousness. That is, the Federation was great when it helped fulfill their ideals, but was swiftly ignored when it didn't; on a more meta level, the show was at its best when it had the same relationship with its own convoluted mythology: an aide when it helped tell a cool story, but wisely ignored when it didn't.

But beginning subtly with Voyager, and greatly exasperated by Enterprise, the Federation (and by corralary the mythology) became more important than the sheer joie de vivre of exploring the cosmos. Voyager became so fixated on getting home that all else became subordinated to it; they were no longer looking outward but looking back, quite literally; that, in retrospect, may be why a premise intended to free then from prior mythology only tied them all the more burdensomely to it. Enterprise in turn became so preoccupied with establishing the mythology that they plumb forgot why we ever cared about it in the first place. 

In both cases, decent acting and writing took a backseat to conforming to the Federation mythos, when the priorities should have been reversed. The reboot films, likewise, have been so needlessly preoccupied with reestablishing the original mythology that they've steadfastly ignored what this mythology is even supposed to be doing (i.e. encountering the sublime vastness of the cosmos).


And now I learn that CBS this Fall is at last debuting a new Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery.  Initially I was cautiously optimistic, especially when I read about how director Nicholas Meyers of Star Trek II and VI (e.g. the best ones) was being brought on board; the sub-title Discovery also seems to indicate that this iteration would actually remember what the whole point of Trek was supposed to be (though the fact that it will be shortened to STD betrays a fundamental lack of foresight on their part).  But then I learn that this will also be another prequel, that it "[T]akes events mentioned in previous iterations of Trek but never full explored"--that is, yet another Trek show far too enamored with its own mythology. 

Now, I could be completely wrong, the new show could be great (though the fact that it will only debut on CBS's newfangled subscription streaming service is hardly a rousing endorsement), I would sincerely love to be delightfully surprised.  But I deeply dread that, despite having 10 years to clear out the cobwebs, Discovery is about to repeat the same mistakes as the last two shows.  Show-runner Bryan Fuller may promise openly gay characters and a lead who is not the Captain and what-not, but these are but superficial novelties; in reality, nothing has changed.

But it's easy to complain--the real question is, how could it be fixed?  Well fortunately, David Harris and I are Star Trek nerds, and so by definition we have opinions!  Oh boy, do we have opinions!

But our opinions are rooted in a firm diagnosis: Trek lost its way when its mythology ceased being a means to an end (the joy of exploring outer space) and became a means to an end.  He and I, thus, came up with two contrasting yet I believe complimentary visions for fixing the show's relationship with its own mythology.

David's solution is, intriguingly, to lean into the mythology all the harder.  The ridiculous reboot films, remember, kick off the new time-line with the 24th century destruction of Romulus (Trek's Soviet Union stand-in) by a supernova, which created a blackhole that sent a Romulan mining ship 100 years back in time to wreck havoc upon Kirk's era.  The 2009 reboot movie became about how Kirk gets the crew together to defeat this hyper-advanced menace.  But what the heck was the fall-out of what, in essence, was the destruction of the Soviet Union back in the 24th century?  

David W. Harris proposes Star Trek: Nautilus, a show which would follow a Federation star-ship, the USS Nautilus, on its mission to aide the former Romulan Empire, which, with the loss of its capital, has fragmented into several warring regional powers.  One said fragment has established a bona fide democratic Romulan Republic, and opened formal relations with the Federation.  

The Nautilus would act as an aide to the young Republic, operate as a peace-broker between competing Romulan powers, make contact with the many subjugated worlds recently liberated from Romulan rule, and, most importantly, explore this secretive former-empire.  New and fresh possibilities for Trek's twin-missions of humanitarian-aide and deep-space exploration would be opened up.  

There could even be an over-arching narrative: what caused the supernova that destroyed Romulus in the first place?  What new threat is emerging from deep space, which the Romulans encountered first but could next threaten the Federation?  This premise has the added virtue, I believe, of completely upsetting the balance of power in the Trekverse--abandoning the status quo, in other words--thus forcing the franchise to expend far less time and energy on setting up the mythology, and more instead on using the now-disrupted mythology to generate new story-telling.  The shift might be subtle, but nonetheless essential: the mythology would once again be used in favor of fleshing out the premise, and not vice-versa.

My solution would be, as I said, contrasting yet ultimately complimentary: I would take the wasted premise from Voyager but tweak it.  For if the inherent vice of Voyager was that they became so fixated on getting home that they forgot to explore the cosmos, then I would make sure that my Federation starship ends up stranded on the far-side of the galaxy on purpose (perhaps taking advantage of the unstable wormhole from TNG's "The Price").  They would be sent on a 5-year mission of exploration, to document whatever potential threats may be coming the Federation's way as they make their way back home.

I would entitle it Homerically Star Trek: Odyssey, so as to keep constantly foregrounded in the imaginations of both the writers and the viewers that this show is supposed to be an epic, one wherein they are explicitly to encounter super-powered beings that exceed imagination.  For once, the Trekverse's manifold god-like beings would make perfect sense.  This would not be like Voyager, wherein they prance about as the most advanced starship in 100 light-years, boringly white-man-burdening their way through the Delta quadrant; but rather it would feature the Federation's most advanced warship, the USS Odyssey, constantly finding itself vastly out-matched by gods, super-beings, and dyson spheres--and being the better for it!

Adding nuance to the mission: It has now been over 15 years since DS9 finished the Dominion War, which means that the new senior brass in Starfleet are scarred war-veterans still dealing with lingering PTSD.  (The show could perhaps proffer greater resonance in our post-9/11 world increasingly populated with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans).  This show would have a much-needed redemption arc, then, as a starship manned by scarred and suspicious officers learns to regain their sense of wonder and child-like awe as they encounter the sublimity of the cosmos--they would remember why they joined Starfleet in the first place.  

It would be the same arc as Admiral Kirk's in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn--i.e. the best one. It would begin as a mission to help save the Federation, but transform into a mission to save their own souls--which in turn would still save the Federation, as they help remind humanity, upon their return, of why we ever looked to the stars to begin with.  The Odyssey crew would learn both humility and self-reliance, their own utter puniness and great significance.  (This would likewise be a meta-redemption of the Franchise itself, as the show re-learns what the whole franchise was ever supposed to be about).  

Of course this is all purely speculative: absolutely no one has ever asked either me or David to save Star Trek from itself.  What I hope this proverbial message-in-a-bottle has demonstrated, however, is that the recurrent mistake that the franchise has made since 1996 is to presuppose the Trekverse mythology was what was the most interesting part of the show, when in reality it was the fact that it was a Star Trek--a Trek through the Stars!  That's why any of us ever tuned in!  If the franchise is to be resuscitated, it must remember that first--and make new series accordingly. 

On Beach Slang, On The Other Hand

On the one hand, as many folks have pointed out, Beach Slang's signature song, 2015's "Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas" sounds kinda like Joy Division's 1981 "Ceremony"--which just proves there's nothing new in Rock 'n Roll.  The genre long ago played out the last of its interesting ideas. 

On the other hand, no, as a matter of fact, "Bad Art" doesn't sound like "Ceremony" at all--a repeating 1st and 3rd step is by definition not the same as a repeating 1st, 3rd, and 5th step--and moreover, a melancholic swan song by a suicidaly-depressed 23-year-old certainly does not sound the same as a the power-anthem of a 40-year-old proclaiming his right to feel alive!  (Besides, it actually sounds like The Replacements' "Bastards of Young"--both of which are those rare songs I will regularly listen to on repeat, often to the exclusion of the whole rest of the album).  Like the best art, Beach Slang takes what's old and worn-out, and makes it new again.

On the other hand, maybe this time Rock 'n Roll really is dead: Top 40 is dominated by Hip Hop and Dance Pop--for that matter, so is the Indie World.  Rock's cultural omnipotence has at last gone the way of Jazz, Swing, Blues, and Tin Pan Alley before it--that is, it will continue to find acolytes and practitioners, but never in a manner that totally dominates the musical landscape again. Modern Rock radio stations are dropping like flies, and the ones left over primarily play hits from the '90s, becoming indistinguishable from the Classic Rock stations that have also absorbed the '90s; if they play new songs, it is only those of long-established acts like Weezer or Blink-182 (which were considered second-tier acts even in their hey-days).  Maybe Rock only sounded fresh when it itself was young; at 60+, its time for it to retire.  In this sense, Beach Slang, fronted by a 40-year-old veteran of the '90s punk scene, is but the last, defiant gasp of a dying era. 

On the other hand, these things are cyclical, and folks have been gleefully predicting the death of Rock ever since Decca passed on signing the Beatles cause "guitar bands are on their way out."  Rage Against The Machine recently launched a reunion tour, and it hasn't been graying Gen Xers selling out the tickets but 18-year-olds; the teenagers I teach still obsessively listen to Queen, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Pearl Jam, System of a Down, and want to talk to me about Kurt Cobain (which intrigues me, because they were born even further away from Cobain's death than I was from John Lennon's).  There is clearly a deep-seated need to Rock that the current market is not filling.  In this sense, Beach Slang does not signal an end, but a beginning--James Alex may be 40 but the rest of the band is much younger--they are the warning shot before the next round of Rock re-surges yet again.

On the other hand, what on Earth do I care whether Rock retains its cultural currency or not?!  I was just complaining a few months ago about how much harder it is to find new music that resonates with my current age; songs about turning 23 certainly do not help me with turning 33.  What's worse, far too many 30- and 40-somethings sing like they're still teenagers, in a misbegotten desire to stay "relevant".  Why the heck would you want to stay relevant with teenagers??  Even teenagers hate being teenagers!  But the list of musicians who know how to actually keep up with their ages is thin:  Andrew Bird, LCD Soundsystem, Sufjan Stevens, Low, Kishi Bashi, TV on the Radio, Sleater-Kinney, Leonard Cohen, maybe Wilco (David Bowie was doing a bang-up job, but then he died).  Beach Slang, then, is a much-needed addition to the pantheon of Rock music by adults for adults--not nostalgia trips.  I don't need Beach Slang to save Rock 'n Roll, but to save me.

On the other hand, Beach Slang is arguably the very type and model for the aforementioned old guys pretending to be kids; as Pitchfork's review of their 2015 debut album notes, "In seven of those songs, James Alex sings the word 'alive,' in three others, he sings 'young,' and there's one song called 'Young and Alive.'"  Geez guys, trying a little hard? And c'mon, that title on their debut, "The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us"?  A little on the nose, isn't it?  I mean, isn't that what all music's about, finding the songs that will connect us to people who feel the same way we do?  It's not exactly a fresh idea--anymore than any of the other stale ideas on this record.  Whatever happened to nuance, subtlety, playfulness?  And now I learn that their second album (coming out September) is entitled, even more bluntly, "A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings"--quit trying to relive your youth, man, and age gracefully while you still can.

On the other hand, few folks know how to value their youth more than those who don't have it anymore.  The album's obligatory ballad opens with, "Too young to die/Too late to die young"--those are the lyrics of a man keenly aware of his age.  Here the comparisons to Joy Division are perhaps instructive: 23-year-old Ian Curtis could maybe afford to indulge in such gloominess and darkness precisely because he was so young; death was only frightening because it was so strange, so foreign.  Hence, he had to seek out death directly to touch it, to know it.  But 40-year-old James Alex is sprouting gray hairs, showing wrinkles--he knows he need not seek out death, it will come for him much too soon enough.  His, then, is the music of a man who has decided not to fade gently into the passing of the night, but to rage, rage, against the passing of the light.  He does not want to die, but to live--an incredibly important pick-me-up for the aging.

On the other hand, at the end of the day, they still sound like every other Punk band you've ever heard of--calling theirs "The Best New Replacements Album in 25 Years" is both a compliment and a slam. "Bad Art" may sound different enough from "Ceremony" (not to mention "Bastards of Young"), but it's still not all that different.

On the other hand, at the end of "Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas," there's just that killer line, that all-important affirmation that should never be obscured under irony, sarcasm, or wit, that so many of my community college students need to hear--that maybe Ian Curtis needed to hear--that maybe we all need to hear: "We are not alone, we are not mistakes/Don't whisper now, we're allowed to be loud"--so reads their every lyric sheet, save I swear he actually sings, "We're allowed to be alive..."

We are.