Tonight I was distracted away from a mediocre Monday Night Football game (c'mon, who really thought that Falcons v. Saints would make a good showcase game?) by a very interesting edition of American Experience on PBS which focused on the two titanic boxing matches between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling in 1936 and 1938.

Of course, it's a gripping tale, an iconic tale for so many reasons that involve race, politics, sport, and struggle. But what affected me most about it was the sort of subtly tragic aspects of society it revealed. For a downtrodden and discriminated-against black American society, Louis quickly became an enormously powerful symbol of hope, being given a burden that no man could hope to live up to. That burden only increased when, in his rematch with Schmeling, he became the vessel for an entire country's hopes--a symbol of an entire nation that was beaten down but still somehow unified against an equally confused nation in Nazi Germany.

Both countries, short on hope and fueled by propaganda, pinned an enormous symbolic resonance on these two simple men, and in that process I saw a perfect encapsulation of humankind's need for heroes--and for enemies. The hero represents a distillation and magnification of the people's hopes, ideals, and also follies and flaws--allowing self-celebration by proxy in victory and self-flagellation by proxy in defeat. The hero's struggle against an enemy--in this case, a Germany who was not yet an enemy in practice but instead in spirit--provides a flattering mirror that allows contrast with what we dislike as different, and an exaggeration of what we most value (or imagine) in ourselves. Joe Louis, in perhaps a unique way, was a projection of our ideals sent from the depths of our collective despair and malaise to do battle with our fears and frustrations.

And at the same time, it was just a boxing match between a couple of very human, commonly flawed men. In its wake, black American leaders demanded a higher standard of action from Louis that reflected their view of him as symbol more than man (a flip side to the Nazis' indifference to Schmeling in the wake of his loss). White media had demanded an idealized standard of demeanor and personal behavior that revealed a persisting ignorance. And the rough-edged realities of these men disappeared into a legend, a heroic epic which overshadowed both their true lives and the muddled psyches of two nations seeking their identities through contrast and conflict with one another.

Labels: Culture, Sport