Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 22

March 18, 2025: ScopesStudying: John Scopes

[100 yearsago this month, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the ButlerAct, prohibiting public school teachers from teaching evolution. Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy that law and the famoustrial it produced, leading up to a weekend post on current attacks oneducators.]

On threeinteresting facts about the Tennesseescience teacher and football coach who became the center of one of America’smostfamous trials.

1)     Innocence?: I think it’s become relativelywell known (at least compared to many historical realities) that Scopes wasrecruited (by geologistGeorge Rappleyea and other scientists and businessmen in the town of Daytonwhere Scopes taught) to stand trial for violating the Butler Act. But what Ididn’t realize until researching this series was that even by the letter ofthat restrictive law, Scopes might have been innocent—it’s true that the textbookhe and all state biology teachers in that era were required to use, GeorgeWilliam Hunter’s Civic Biology, included a chapter on evolution; butScopes later admittedto local reporter William Kinsey Hutchinson that he had omitted thatchapter from his lessons. Hutchinson didn’t publish his story until after thetrial’s verdict, or perhaps this famous trial would have ended differently.

2)     A Socialist Campaign: In any case, Scopes wasfound guilty on July 21, 1925, and his conviction was upheldby the Tennessee Supreme Court a year later (although they vacated his $100fine because the judge, rather than the jury, had determined the amount). Thetrial and verdict would linger with Scopes for the rest of his life, onlybecoming somewhat more of a positive presence decades later as I’ll highlight below.But of course they’re not the whole story, and one distinct and particularlyinteresting detail is that in1932 he ran an at-large campaign for a U.S. House of Representatives seatfrom Kentucky (his childhood home, to which he and his family had relocatedafter the trial) as aSocialist Party candidate. Probably wouldn’t help his case withconservative Tennessee neighbors if they knew that fact, but it makes clearthat he wasn’t just recruited or forced into political conversations.

3)     A Late-Life Embrace: Again, for a long timeScopes saw the trial and verdict as an albatross, but in the decade before his1970 death he began to change his perspective. That shift is particularly clearin a trio of 1960 events: attending the July U.S. premiere of the filmInherit the Wind (on which more in Thursday’s post), telling the storyof the trial on an Octoberepisode of the TV game show To Tell the Truth, and taking part in thatyear’s celebrations of JohnT. Scopes Day in Dayton. Scopes would lean into those associations with thetrial for the rest of his life, culminating in his emphasis on that story inhis 1967 autobiography Center of the Storm: Memoirsof John T. Scopes—the first edition of which, as you can see at thathyperlink, features a monkey on the cover, natch.

NextScopes context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

March 17, 2025: ScopesStudying: The Butler Act

[100 yearsago this month, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the ButlerAct, prohibiting public school teachers from teaching evolution. Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy that law and the famoustrial it produced, leading up to a weekend post on current attacks oneducators.]

For thelaw’s 100th anniversary, on three interesting historical ironies aroundit.

1)     JohnWashington Butler’s Beliefs: The state representative who introduced theAct (and for whom it was nicknamed thereafter) was mostly known as a farmer,but had worked as a teacher as a young man. That’s an interesting detail, butthe irony I want to highlight is that, by his own admission, Butler had noknowledge of evolution when he introduced the bill. As henoted, “No, I didn’t know anything about evolution when I introduced it. I’dread in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and tellingtheir fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense.” Perhaps it not anirony so much as a very telling, and frustratingly American, detail that theauthor of the nation’s most famous anti-evolution educational law was poorlyeducated about evolution.

2)     Austin Peay’s Advocacy:Butler’s bill passed the Tennessee House in January 1925 and the TennesseeSenate in March, and then was signed into law on March 21 by Governor AustinPeay. Peay, was serving the first of what would be three terms as Governor (he tragicallydied in office in October 1927), was an influential political figure in thestate on multiple levels (he was ranked the state’s best governor by historiansin a 1981 poll, forexample). But the irony here is that the most significant level seems to havebeen hiseducational reforms—when he took office the state’s education system wasworst in the country by several measures, and he worked to change that,building new schools, lengthening the school year, increasing teacher pay andbenefits, and more. Guess those pro-teacher policies didn’t extend to academicfreedom, though.

3)     An Overdue, Immediate Repeal: The famous trialabout which I’ll have much more to say this week was the Act’s most prominent aswell as immediate legacy—but the law stayed on the books for more than fourdecades, greatly influencing generations of Tennessee schoolkids (and thus theentire state) in the process. The irony, though, is how suddenly that changed—whenteacherGary Scott, who had been fired for violating the Act, successfully sued forreinstatement under the First Amendment, it took just three days for both legislativehouses to pass (and Governor Buford Ellington to sign) a billrepealing the Butler Act. A state legislature acting swiftly and decisivelyto do away with an outdated, prejudiced law and help the state move forwardinto a more progressive future? Not just ironic but, here in 2025, ideal.

NextScopes context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

March 15-16, 2025: Reflections of a College Dad

[With oneson in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just aconcept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’veAmericanStudied a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading upto these weekend reflections on being a college Dad!]

On threeof the countless moments across this year (to date) that I’ve been pleasantlyreminded of my changed circumstances (I’ll spare y’all the sadder reminders).

1)     Stadium Spotting: As I’vementioned here a couple times, my older son is a first-year at Vanderbilt,where he’s been having a truly phenomenal time on all counts. One of the mostunexpected and delightful of those counts was the football team’s surprisinglysuccessful season, which included a truly historicupset win over Alabama. My son was able to be in the student section forthat win and most every other of their home games this year, which led to a newfavorite pastime for his brother and me: seeing if we could find him amidst thestudent section hordes when they were shown on the TV broadcasts. I can’t lie,my son’s younger eyes were much better at that game than his Dad’s, but we bothdid eventually manage to spot him each and every time—and for a Dad missing hisson acutely, those were certainly moving moments indeed.

2)     Professorial Props: My son is a CivilEngineering Major, so many of his classes during this first year have beenquite different from any that I teach (or took back in the day). But as part ofhis Fall semester, he did take a Literature and the Environment course that wasone of his favorites of the year (I genuinely believe that’s the case, biasedas I might also be), and indeed has helped convince him to add an EnvironmentalStudies Minor. Moreover, the class even taught his AmericanStudying Dad a thingor two, including introducing me to a contemporary indigenous poet I had neverpreviously know about (TommyPico). So once the semester was done and grades were in and there was hopefullyno danger of being perceived as one of “those parents,” I shot the professor a quicknote to let her know how much both my son and I had enjoyed this class (she wasas appreciative as I would have been to get such a note). Felt very much likemultiple layers of my identity connecting at once in the best possible ways.

3)     Country Concert: I hope it goes withoutsaying, for a young person embarking on their college career in Nashville, thatmy son has gotten to lots of concerts this year. But I can’t lie, I’m mostexcited about a concert that’s coming up in just over a month—thanks to my wifeand me (mainly her, as it was her awesome idea), his brother will be flyingdown for the weekend and the two of them will be seeing one of our recent favs,the great KaneBrown, perform in the city in which he and my son both live. I’m not readyto say goodbye to my younger son yet (or, well, ever), but if this is going tobe a preview of a world in which they both are in college, then it might aswell be such a fun preview!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think, fellow college parents and all?

March 14, 2025: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Baywatch

[With oneson in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just aconcept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’llAmericanStudy a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading up to someweekend reflections on being a college Dad!]

[NB. Yes,I know Baywatch is neither a SpringBreak film nor a film at all (I’m writing about the TV show, not the filmadaptation, here). But this is one of my favorite posts of all time and Icouldn’t resist a chance to share it once more!]

On whythose beautiful beach bodies are also a body of evidence.

Back inthe blog’s early days, Ihumorously but also earnestly noted that to a dedicated AmericanStudier,any text, even Baywatch, is apossible site of complex analysis. I stand by that possibility, and willmomentarily offer proof of same. But before I do, it’s important to foregroundthe basic but crucial reason for Baywatch’sexistence and popularity, one succinctly highlighted by Friends’ Joey and Chandler: pretty people running in slow-motion inbathing suits. While I plan to make a bit more of the show and its contexts andmeanings than that, it’d be just plain cray-cray to pretend that either theshow’s intent or its audience didn’t focus very fully on those beautifulbodies. Moreover, such an appeal was nothing new or unique—while the beachsetting differentiated Baywatch abit, I would argue that mostprime-time soap operas have similarly depended on the attractiveness of their casts to keeptheir audiences tuning in.

If Baywatch was partly a prime-time soapopera, however, it would also be possible to define the show’s genredifferently: in relationship to both the police and medical dramas that werebeginning to dominate the TV landscape in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Baywatch debuted in 1989). After all,the show’s plotlines typically included both rescues and crimes; while thelifeguards often dealt with romantic and interpersonal drama as well, so toodid the docs of ER or thecops of Miami Vice (to nametwo of the era’s many entries in these genres). Seen in this light, andparticularly when compared to the period’s police dramas, Baywatch was relatively progressive in the gender balance of itsprotagonists—compared to another California show, CHiPs, forexample, which similarly featured pretty people solving promised land problemsbut which focused almost entirely on male protagonists. Yes, the women of Baywatch were beautiful and dressedskimpily—but the same could be said of the men, and both genders were equallyheroic as well.

Thecreators of Baywatch tried to makethe cop show parallel overt with the ill-fated detective spinoff BaywatchNights, about which the less said the better (even AmericanStudiers havetheir limits). But the problem with BaywatchNights wasn’t just its awfulness (Baywatchitself wasn’t exactly The Wire, after all), it was that it missed acrucial element to the original show’s success: the beach. And no, I’m nottalking about the bathing suits. I would argue that the most prominent 1970sand 1980s cultural images of the beach were Jaws and its many sequels and imitators, a set ofimages that made it seem increasingly less safe to go back in the water. Andthen along came David Hasselhoff, Pam Anderson, and company, all determined totake back the beaches and shift our cultural images to something far morepleasant and attractive than . Whatever you think of the show, is there anydoubt that they succeeded, forever inserting themselves and their slow-morunning into our cultural narratives of the beach?

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Responses to this show or other Spring Break texts you’d share?

March 13, 2025: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise

[With oneson in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just aconcept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’llAmericanStudy a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading up to someweekend reflections on being a college Dad!]

OnAmerican anti-intellectualism, and the worse and better ways to challenge it.

As I notedin this post on myfriend Aaron Lecklider’s great book Inventing the Egghead: The Battle overBrainpower in American Culture (2013), published exactly 50 yearsafter Richard Hofstadter’s influential Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963),the precise origins of anti-intellectual attitudes and narratives in Americansociety are a bit unclear and contested. But whether those national narrativesare foundational (as Hofstadter argues) or more the product of Cold Waranxieties (as Lecklider does), I would say that there can be no argument at allthat by the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21stcentury these anti-intellectual threads have become dominant ones in ourcultural pattern. And, more exactly and crucially, that the development anddeepening of those narratives throughout the 50 years or so betweenHofstadter’s book and the 2016 election helped bring usto the presidency of Donald Trump, a culmination of these anti-intellectualtrends as of so many of the worst and most divisive impulses of Americanpolitics and culture.

Whichbrings us, obviously, to the Revenge of the Nerds film series. Beginningwith the 1984 original film, and featuring three sequels over the next decade(including 1987’s Spring Break-set Revengeof the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, the ostensible focus of this postbut, like yesterday’s subject From Justinto Kelly, not a film that needs an entire blog post on its own terms Iassure you), the nerdy protagonists of this series challenged the Reagan era’sdeepening anti-intellectual sentiments, triumphing time and again over theirpopular jock adversaries. The first film has in recent years received a gooddeal of justified criticism for the fact that its triumphant sex scene wouldactually have to beclassified as a rape scene (nerdy hero Lewis has sex with his crushwhile pretending to be her boyfriend), among quite a few other problematicmoments. And in truth, those specific problems illustrate a morefundamental issue with all the Revengefilms: their mostly unlikable heroes don’t triumph through meaningful use oftheir intelligence, but rather through things like sexual deception andviolence (in Nerds in Paradise theclimactic victory involves a tank and a punch). The message seems generally tobe that nerds can be just as awful as the rest of society.

Fortunately,the Revenge of the Nerds films werenot the only 1980s cinematic challenge to anti-intellectualism. The heroes of1985’s cultclassic film Real Genius are alsonerds, brilliant and eccentric students at the fictional Pacific TechnicalUniversity [SPOILERS in what follows, although the undeniable pleasures of Real Genius aren’t inits plot surprises]. These nerds likewise find themselves pitted against Reaganera tropes, this time Cold War militarization and the use of science andtechnology for dastardly and destructive ends (aided and abetted by theirvillainous ProfessorJerry Hathaway, William Atherton’s second deliciouslyevil character in two years). But in this case the heroes’ climactictriumph is entirely due to their intellectual prowess, which they use to outwitHathaway and his military allies and to turn weapons of mass destruction into,well, popcorn. Scoreone for a more thoughtful and inspiring American intellectualism!

LastSpring Break film tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Responses to this film or other Spring Break texts you’d share?

March 12, 2025: Spring Breaking at the Movies: From Justin to Kelly

[With oneson in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just aconcept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’llAmericanStudy a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading up to someweekend reflections on being a college Dad!]

On whatwasn’t new about the historic beach bomb, and what was.

Fulldisclosure: I haven’t seen more than a few clips of From Justin to Kelly (2003),the movie Wikipedianotes “is often regarded as one of the worst movies ever made” and thatreceived a 2005Razzie for “Worst ‘Musical’ of Our First 25 Years” (their delightfulscare quotes). Thanks to a Twitter recommendation from AJ Schmitz I didlisten to the HowDid This Get Made? episode on the film, which I’m quite sure wasfar more enjoyable than the movie would have been. You might nonetheless arguethat I shouldn’t be writing a blog post on a movie I haven’t watched, and I’dunderstand that critique (evidence-based analyzer that I try to be)—but life istoo short to spend 81 minutes watching FromJustin to Kelly; and in any case my plan for this post is to analyze notall the nuances of this text (probably should have used scare quotes of my ownfor both of those last couple nouns), but rather to use it to engage a coupleof pop culture contexts.

For onething, the Spring Break-set From Justinto Kelly, featuring the “acting” debuts (couldn’t resist that time) of American Idol’s first season winner andrunner-up Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini (I’m sure I could find a YouTubeclip to hyperlink there, but I like you all too much to do that to you), ispart of a long tradition of sub-par beach films starring teen idol-type actors.I’m thinking in particular about the many, many films inspired by SandraDee’s 1959 hit movie Gidget; as Iwrote in that post Gidget isn’tterrible (although I think its popularity was due more to a bunch of beautifulbodies making surfing look good than any cinematic strengths), but it doesn’tseem that we can say the same of the majority of the more than 30 “beachparty films” that were greenlit after Gidget’ssuccess and were released in the five years after 1963’s Beach Party. These films often starred attractive,popular young stars like Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, and,like From Justin to Kelly, were moreor less excuses to put those folks on the beach and hope that young audienceswould want to join them there enough to overlook the absence of plots,compelling characters, or the like. That legacy doesn’t make From Justin to Kelly any better, but itdoes make it make a bit more sense.

On theother hand, Avalon and Funicello may not have been Olivier and Hepburn, butthey were established actors, performers who had appeared in multiple filmsbefore their beach partying days. Guarini and Clarkson were cast in a filmimmediately after their time on AmericanIdol, and because of that time—Clarksonin particular has noted that she didn’t want to make the film but wascontractually obligated to do so. I’m not someone who believes that reality TVis an entirely or even consistently negative cultural presence (certain reality TVpresidents notwithstanding), but I think it’s fair to say that the trackrecord of reality TV stars going on to meaningful success in any other arena(or even in their own arena—Clarkson is one of only a few music-showstars to achieve a lasting career in the field) is a mixedone at best. You might say that even the most talented screenperformers couldn’t have saved FromJustin to Kelly, but I believe the more accurate frame is quite distinct:that this thoroughly forgettable film would never have been made at all if itweren’t for the goal of producing a vehicle for these two reality TVcontestants. This is one Spring Break story that should have stayed broken.

NextSpring Break film tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Spring Break films or texts you’d share?

March 11, 2025: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Spring Breakers

[With oneson in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just aconcept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’llAmericanStudy a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading up to someweekend reflections on being a college Dad!]

On thefine, fraught line between challenging and exploiting the objectification offemale celebrities.

Firstthings first: despite their very similar titles, SpringBreakers (2012) is a much more complex, ambitious, and thoughtful filmthan yesterday’s subject, Spring Break(1983). Yes, indie , who wrote and directed the film, has said ininterviews that he wanted to make it in part to make up for his own missedSpring Break experiences (he was apparently too busy skateboarding to ventureto sunnier climes), so Spring Breakerscould be said to reflect the same hedonistic goals as the earlier film. But ashas been evident since the controversial and groundbreaking film Kids (1995), his first writing credit, Korine isultimately more interested in deconstructing than in celebrating such youthfuldesires and pursuits, and Spring Breakers,an unremittingly bleak and violent film which he’s referredto as a “beach noir,” is no exception.

None ofthat is what led the media coverage of SpringBreakers, however. The consistent focus was the fact that two of its fourfemale leads were SelenaGomez and Vanessa Hudgens, known at the time as squeaky-clean teenicons (Gomez mostly from a pop music career that had begun on Barney & Friends and Hudgens mostly from the HighSchool Musical films) who in the film give far grittier and moresexualized performances than they ever had before. That was also relativelytrue for a third lead, Ashley Benson, although her role on the TV show Pretty Little Liars had beena bit darker than Gomez’s and Hudgens’ prior work; the fourth lead, Rachel Korine, isHarmony Korine’s wife and so had been part of his films for some time already. Betweenspending a good bit of the film in bikinis, taking part in numerous scenesfeaturing sexualsituations and drug use, and eventually killing quite a few characters in a violent climax, thesepreviously and famously Disney-fied actresses thoroughly challenge that image,a reversal that understandably drew a great deal of attention.

While I’msure Harmony Korine would say that he cast these actresses due to their talents(and their performances are excellent across the board, to be clear), it seemsclear to me that he also did so (at least in part) because he knew thecontroversy over their image revisions would draw more attention and coverageto the film. Which is fine up to a point; but since those revisions againrequire the actresses to do things like wear skimpy outfits for nearly all ofthe film, it does feel possible to argue that Korine is both exploiting theircelebrity and objectifying them in the process. In her review ofthe film for The Guardian, critic Heather Long advanced that analysis,arguing that it “reinforces rape culture” and “turns young women into sexobjects.” But Rolling Stone’s JoshEells argued the opposite position, claiming that the film features “akind of girl-power camaraderie that could almost be called feminist," partof Korine’s career-long goal of doing “the most radical work, but putting itout in the most commercial way to infiltrate the mainstream.” A complex dualitywhich, to be honest, is really at the heart of the whole concept of SpringBreak in the 21st century.

NextSpring Break film tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Spring Break films or texts you’d share?

March 10, 2025: Spring Breaking at the Movies: Spring Break

[With oneson in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just aconcept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’llAmericanStudy a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading up to someweekend reflections on being a college Dad!]

On moreand less destructive pop culture stereotypes.

I’m notgonna pretend that 1983’s Spring Break was anykind of groundbreaking cinematic achievement, or even that I had heard of itprior to researching this week’s series. The sex comedy, produced and directedby Friday the 13th (1980)co-creator and director Sean Cunningham, seems from the clips and reviews I’veseen (and as always feel free to correct me in comments, although I’m notanticipating a lot of Spring Breakdefenders here) to be a pretty formulaic, unimaginative, and uninterestingdepiction of various Spring Break and college stereotypes, from sexy women inwet t-shirt contests to nerdy college guys looking to get drunk and score withthose women to straight-laced parents seeking to prevent their kids from takingpart in the hedonistic festivities. But the thing with stereotypes, even (orperhaps especially) the lazier varieties of them, is that they can tell us agood bit about their cultural and social contexts—and so it is with thestereotypes that seem to drive the plot of SpringBreak.

The film’smore overtly limiting and thus destructive stereotypes seem to be (I know Ikeep using that phrase, but I haven’t seen it and I don’t want to pretendotherwise!) those related to gender and sex. The most blatant are thedepictions of young women, which from what I can tell fall into two and onlytwo categories: the vast majority of them (indeed, all but one), who arenameless and identity-less characters defined only by their sex appeal and theprotagonists’ attempts to score with them; and the one more individualizedyoung woman, Susie (), whom nerdy protagonist Nelson (David Knell) meets at a wett-shirt contest, nearly has sex with during that first encounter, and theneventually (like, a day later) does have sex with. But while male characterslike Nelson seem to be a good bit more fleshed-out (pun very much intended),they are likewise defined in quite thoroughly stereotypical ways, presented asdriven by their basest desires (for women, for booze, for hedonism) in ultimatelyquite unoriginal and unattractive ways.

Whilethose pursuits provide the protagonists’ and film’s initial motivations, thecentral plotline is actually driven by different and more interesting stereotypesaround class, wealth, and power. Nelson’s step-father, Ernest (), is awealthy asshole running for political office, and in the course of the film hepursues Nelson to Florida (worried that his step-son will embarrass hiscampaign) and befriends a local wealthy asshole (Richard Shull’s Eddie) who istrying to strong-arm his way into purchasing the hotel where the kids arestaying. Together the two wealthy assholes conspire to bribe a buildinginspector to shut down the hotel (killing both of those birds with one wealthyasshole stone), but the kids, with the help of an army of fellow partyingcollege students armed only with beer and whipped cream, get the better ofErnest and Eddie; their machinations are revealed, Nelson’s Mom decides todivorce Ernest, and the little guys triumph in the end. Sticking it to the Manisn’t exactly a revolutionary premise for an 80s comedy, but these themes ofpolitical and financial corruption are at least far more compelling andimportant than wet t-shirt contests.

NextSpring Break film tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Spring Break films or texts you’d share?

March 8-9, 2025: Significant Sports Studiers

[On March 3rd,1875, the first organized ice hockey game was played. So this week forthe sport’s 150th anniversary I’ve AmericanStudied a handful ofhockey histories, leading up to this weekend post on some SportsStudiers we canall learn from!]

Just overtwo years ago (but also like five minutes ago, because time is an accordionhere in the 2020s), I dedicated my SuperBowl series weekend post to highlighting a number of excellentSportsStudiers. All those folks are still well worth reading and supporting, soI mainly wanted to reiterate those recommendations at the end of this sportshistories series.

But nowthat I’ve gotten more fully onto the Bluesky(follow me at that profile if you’re over there and I’ll return the favor!), Ialso wanted to share a couple Starters Packs (which is how Bluesky allows us tocreate lists of folks for easy follows) that feature many more SportsStudiers:

Left-leaning sports commentators

LGBTQ+ sports media

Baseball podcasts and podcasters

Sports history

Critical sports

Check themout and keep the SportsStudying going!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? SportsStudiers you’d share?

March 7, 2025: Hockey Histories: Team Trans

[On March 3rd,1875, the first organized ice hockey game was played. So this week forthe sport’s 150th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of hockeyhistories, leading up to a weekend post on some SportsStudiers we can all learnfrom!]

On two complicatedand equally important ways to contextualize a groundbreaking hockey team.

In early2019, following a game in New York City between the Boston Pride Hockey and NewYork City Gay Hockey Association teams, New York team member Aidan Cleary andBoston team president Greg Sargent began conversations that led to the creationof the Boston-based TeamTrans, the first all-transgender hockey team in the U.S. After recruitingplayers from around the country, including both the first openly transgender athletein any professional U.S. team sport (National Women’s Hockey League player HarrisonBrowne) and the first in Canadian professional sports (Canadian Women’sHockey League player JessicaPlatt), Team Trans began practicing in Cambridge,MA in November 2019. Not long after they began playing games in both theBoston area and as a barnstorming team; the Covid pandemic delayed those effortsfor a time, but in subsequent years the team has both resumed its games andspawned a second chapter, Team Trans TwinCities based out of Minneapolis.

I want tobe clear that nothing I’ll say in these next two paragraphs minimizes theimportance of nor the inspiration from Team Trans. But there are bothhistorical and contemporary contexts for the team, and they each offercomplicated lenses through which to AmericanStudy them. On the historical side,to anyone with a knowledge of American sports histories (and doubly so to anAmericanStudier who just spent awhole podcast thinking about baseball histories) the idea of a barnstormingteam based around a particular identity community has to echo what many of the NegroLeagues teams and playersdid across the first half of the 20th century. I made the casein that podcast for the social and cultural as well as sports significance ofbarnstorming, and Team Trans can likewise both reflect local roots and helpconnect them to communities across the country and beyond. But at the sametime, there’s no doubt that at least a good percentage of those barnstorming NegroLeaguers would have wanted to play in the major leagues if that had beenpossible (and would have infinitely improved those major leagues in the process);and while professional hockey isn’t overtly segregated in the way thatprofessional baseball was, this current barnstorming team does reflect similarexclusions.

Moreover, there’sa very specific form of current sports exclusions that we can’t separate fromTeam Trans (even though it was formed years before this incredibly frustratingtrend truly began): attempts to keeptransgender athletes out of organized sports. That exclusionary effort dominatedthe recent election season to a ridiculous degree, and produced one of thelast year’s mostnonsensical sports stories: the stream of college volleyball teams refusingto play against San Jose State because of the presence of an allegedly trans athlete,despite that athlete having been on the team for multiple prior years with noissues nor forfeits. My number one goal for any athlete and any sport is thatthe individuals have the chance to play in whatever ways work for them, andagain, I’m not trying to dismiss the importance nor the inspiration of TeamTrans. But I do worry a bit that transgender athletes self-segregating in thisway will only further the idea that, especially when there isn’t thepossibility for entire teams, individual trans athletes shouldn’t be part ofoverarching, organized teams and sports.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Hockey histories you’d highlight?