From "Knockout Punch" to "Home Run:" Masculinity's "Dirty Dozen" Sports Metaphors in American Combat Films

Lucy Komisar says that "Little boys learn the connection between violence and manhood very early in life ... Boys play cowboys and Indians with guns and bows and arrows ... They are gangsters or soldiers interchangeably ... They are encouraged to '... fight back,' and bloodied noses and black eyes become trophies of their pint-sized virility" (202).

This may help to explain why war films, especially combat films, and westerns are so popular among American boys: they are bred for it. After all, as Molly Merryman writes, the process of proving oneself a man is "... a culturally-prescribed construction in which men are willing to risk danger, dismemberment and death to prove their masculinity" (Creedon 1). And if, at the time, there is no war handy for American males to prove themselves, sports such as football, baseball, hockey or boxing provide another social venue, complete with the opportunity for selfless team effort, the thrill of conquest and the chance for glory as well as physical injury—everything needed to transform a boy into a full-fledged warrior-man in our culture. Pam Creedon argues that anxiety over having no war to provide an opportunity to achieve this manly status causes American boys and men to turn to football, for example, an excellent substitute for armed conquest (13-14).

Sally Jenkins describes football in terms a general would understand: " ... bullying the opposition into retreat with mob action" (Creedon 8). There is even a pecking order for comparing sports to war. George Carlin put it this way, in contrasting football with baseball:

Baseball and football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values ... The objectives of the two games are completely different: In football, the object is for the quarterback, also known as the 'field general,' to be on target with an aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy, in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short, bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing his aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball, the object is to go home! And be safe!

(Carlin 52-53)

So an American boy can prove his readiness for manhood in two principal ways: If there is a war handy, he can become a soldier and fight bravely for his team. In the absence of a war, he can become an athlete and fight bravely for his team. For young men who have witnessed hegemonic masculinity and the subjugation and trivialization of women throughout childhood and adolescence, the continuation of their male-favored status in life is at risk unless they can find a way to "step up to the plate," "take their cuts" and "win one for the Gipper." The alternative, say the mainstream voices of American socialization, is too dreadful to consider: life as, at best, an un-manly male, or at worst, a suspected homosexual.

The social construction by which boys become men, then, seems pretty simple, no more sophisticated than Native American rituals involving being hung by their pectorals to prove the endurance of a brave, or counting coup in combat against an enemy of the tribe.

In modern America, the war film, especially the combat film genre, often blurs the distinction between war-making and sports participation, effectively melding these two contemporary constructions of masculinity. One hand washes the other in the sports-war continuum: Sports metaphors inserted into the vocabulary used by soldiers in war prime the combatants to recall the conventional behavior expected of them in their boyhood socialization on the playing fields. They are cued to recall that above all, doing their duty for the team is required, and that they must complete all other requirements necessary to "get the job done." And, after all, man is what he does: his work. So as we heard...