[On June
13th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a
stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects
American histories. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the undisputed
champs in the realm of boxing films!]
On two
different and complementary narratives of hope in one of America’s darkest
times.
For us
AmericanStudiers who are interested in the
question of how hope can be found and kept in our darkest moments (a
question that, shall we say, has never felt as salient to me as it does in
2019), it’s a good idea to examine closely the histories of particular such
moments, and to consider specifically how and where narratives of hope were
created or can be found in them. I did that in part—if somewhat implicitly—in this 2012
series on bad American memories and how we engage with them, since
most such engagements (at least for a criticial optimist like me) try to find
the possibility of meaning and hope in the face of those dark histories. Those
memories were generally tied to particular communities, though (if, as I
argued, still broadly and nationally relevant), and so it’s worth examining as
well our most collectively shared dark moments. And certainly at the top of
that list, to my mind competing only with the Civil War in its breadth of
impact, would have to be the economic, social, and communal nadir that was the Great
Depression.
From
literally the first moment of his presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
responded to the Depression by creating a narrative of a hope in an original
and striking way. In the opening paragraph of his 1932 inaugural address,
Roosevelt “first of all … assert[ed his] firm belief that the only thing
we have to fear is fear itself.” The line, like the tone of the whole speech,
was as somber and serious as the moment demanded; but it’s an argument for hope
nonetheless, one that suggests quite explicitly that the absence of hope (the
opposite of it, even) represents a far worse threat than any economic or social
realities could. Nearly a decade later, Roosevelt extended and amplified that
idea, making “freedom from fear” one of his
core “Four Freedoms” to which all Americans and all citizens of the world
are entitled. Roosevelt’s emphasis on fear, on the dark and negative side of
the emotional spectrum, connects directly to the central point of my
fourth book: that we can’t find genuine hope until we admit and engage with
the darkest realities and histories, and the emotions that they engender.
Obviously
I believe in the value of that engagement—but I also recognize the need, at our
darkest moments in particular, for feel-good stories, for histories that can
inspire hope because they represent the best of what we can be and do. The
depths of the Depression produced many such stories in America, and none was
more famous nor more inspiring than that of Irish American boxer James J. Braddock, whose
epic comeback tale was portrayed in the film Cinderella
Man (2005). Braddock’s story offered Americans hope for at least two
key reasons: he and his family had experienced the same desperate situation and
poverty of so many of their peers, making him a truly representative everyman;
and yet he had literally fought his way out of those conditions, becoming heavyweight champion from
1935 to 1937 and embodying the sense that the future was not determined nor
circumscribed by the worst of the past and present. What Braddock seemed to
exemplify, that is, was what Americans and America could achieve once they had
faced down their worst fears and found their way through them to the
hard-earned freedom for which Roosevelt argued.
Last boxing day
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other boxing stories or histories you’d highlight?
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