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Filed under: Eustace Google Tagged: Hendrik Hertzberg, Hilary Swank, Jamie Foxx, Morgan Freeman, movies, Murray Kempton, race, sports
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]
About us
Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
No discussion of the Sandra Dee snub? If we can’t trust emdashes to be on the forefront of this story, who can we trust?
Yes, that was a cruel omission. But to soothe your ache I have a link to newlyweds Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin as Oscar presenters in 1961. By the way, as the Sandra Dee Fans site notes: “Bobby and Sandy were seen briefly during the recent Oscar 2000 telecast. It was during the ‘In Memoriam’ section of the program, and Ernest Gold, who [had] recently passed away, was saluted. A clip of Mr. and Mrs. Darin and Gold during the 1961 ceremony was shown.” Still got your VHS tape of that?