"...you go to the box, you know. Two minutes by yourself, and you feel shame, you know."

The title of this essay is taken from an early line in Slap Shot, the hockey movie with Paul Newman. It was one of my favorite movies when I saw it back in 1977 and though I haven't seen it in decades I always remember it as insanely funny, if perhaps a bit crude. Last night it was on satellite TV so I recorded it on the DVR and sat down this morning with my coffee and breakfast to enjoy it.

Things change in 37 years.

The movies was the template for many of the sports movies that followed: There is the old veteran seeking a last season in the sun; and a team of plucky losers determined to show up an unfeeling owner who is out to sell the team and could care less about the people themselves. How many sports movies have we seen since the late '70s that echo that plot?

The movie also depicts the plight of the rust-belt towns of the northeast, in this case Charlestown, Massachusetts. Charlestown, you may remember, saw its economy fold in the late 70s, while simultaneously being ripped apart by busing riots. A background theme is  the despondency of those towns as their industrial bases fled overseas and their work forces faced recession, unemployment and a future offering people shopping carts and a pleasant greeting.

And then there is this: The movie is incredibly misogynistic and homophobic; jarringly so. Indeed, as I watched it again, I recalled that I was taken aback by the language and sexism when I first watched it in 1977. I wasn't particularly shocked by the homophobia at the time. Actually both the term and concept were largely unknown. Only five years earlier the then Democratic front-runner Edmund Muskie, was doing everything he could to avoid meeting with a gay caucus during his campaign for the White House. 

I recall thinking at the time of a question I'd heard some old Navy Chiefs ask their young sailors when they trash-talked women around the base or on liberty: "Would you want someone talking to your daughter like that?" But that question by itself isn't enough. It should be asked along with: "Would you want your son talking to anyone else's daughter or son like that?" If it isn't it may do more harm than good.

But in 1977, we were getting "liberated." I wasn't entirely sure what we were being liberated from in 1977. Now I suspect the people getting liberated were the ones who ran Hollywood studios and had previously been expected to adhere to certain decency standards. They were definitely liberated from those things. But in the process, they popularized and celebrated behaviors that were -- well -- unconscionable. 

So back to that question: "Would you want someone talking to your daughter like that?" Of course not! Not my daughter! But as with many questions, this one, left by itself, contains a "yes, but." But, what about someone else's daughter, someone I don't know, someone that doesn't look like me, doesn't earn as much, doesn't do things I approve of, etc? What then?

The message of the movie is that it is okay to treat people shabbily or cruelly because of their gender or orientation. Excuses as to whether they "joined in the fun" or that it reflects an ethos of another era are beside the point. Reducing men or women to their body parts or what they do with those parts is as wrong as reducing people to the color of their skin, the pattern of their speech or the balance in their bank accounts. When you strip off the dignity to which a person is entitled simply by the fact of their existence, their personhood, you hate them in the classical sense of the word.

Slap Shot, funny as it seemed when it came out, does exactly that. It reduces people to something less, and permits other people to do the same. 

The title of this essay comes from an early line in the script. The team's goalie is being interviewed and is explaining what happens when you foul another player: You go to the [penalty] box where you spend two minutes by yourself and feel shame. This morning, I felt shame or mortification that a movie I once thought funny should, years later, turn out to be vile.  The shame lasted longer than two minutes, long enough to reflect on and type this essay. 

I won't watch it again..