Jock Itch: Forrest Gump and The Athlete’s Problem

Describe the typical male “Jock” for me. If you were to recreate a jock archetype, what exactly would he consist of? Regardless of any individual preference for—or dislike—of sports, I’d be willing to bet that athletic enthusiasts and the “athletically uninterested” would produce a similar “Jock” model. The descriptions used would be different, but oddly synonymous.

For instance, our guinea pig Jock would most likely be boisterous (quite obnoxious), well-built (a hulking mass), athletically gifted (pointlessly fast), and so on. Notice, however, how intelligence is excluded from the list. For some reason, the jock in the 21^st century is considered a blockheaded ignoramus. Somewhere in the past few decades, and for whatever reason, the jock became dumb. We see him everywhere: the comedic, bumbling male jock. And while NFL, NBA, and MLB players are laughing all the way to the bank, for us jocks who fell short of the big leagues, the outlook is a little more bleak.

For me, the Dumb Jock label became a reality after my first viewing of Robert Zemeckis’ adaption of Winston Groom’s novel, Forrest Gump. The novel and movie both follow the narration of the titular character as he influences major political, cultural, and economic events throughout the 1960s and 70s. He is a jock. An All American football star in college, Forrest graduates only to become a celebrated war veteran and a self-made millionaire. He achieves all of this despite his borderline mental retardation. Obviously, I was feeling good for Forrest as the movie’s end credits rolled. Thinking that this was just another story about how anyone can attain the American Dream, my brother shared his own, unique interpretation, “This just goes to show…there’s still hope out there for guys like you”.

Being able to laugh at myself, I thought the joke was pretty funny. But why is it a popular belief that being athletically gifted makes one academically challenged?

I think the stereotype is a product of our culture. The Dumb Jock is a creation of our media, our literature, our cinema, our television. He is a very captivating character, after all. His illiteracy is hilarious, his ignorance, also hilarious, his stereotypical male mannerisms (burps, farts, grunts, etc.) are in some odd way endearing…and also hilarious. He is needed in entertainment. His appeal crosses gender lines. To us males, his over the top masculinity makes us wanna thump our chest and drink too much beer with the guys. To female audiences the jock is an absurd, comical character who laughs at the very nature of such overt masculinity. He is, however, in his purest form, a product. He is a product created by and for the culture that loves him.

In H.G Bissinger’s non-fiction account of high school football in small town Texas, the Dumb Jock is presented more as a tragic case than as a comedic element. In Friday Night Lights, the athletes in the small town of Odessa, Texas seemingly fizzle out after their last high school football season—their athletic achievements not enough to lift them out of their one horse town. In this story, the Jock is not so much endeared as he is pitied. To make matters worse, it is a true retelling of the Permian Panthers 1988 football season. It is not the typical Dumb Jock gig, which finds  him in a mocking parody or light hearted story. Friday Night Lights is tragic, sad, unfortunate. It was also a bestseller, and like Forrest Gump, adapted for the widescreen.

Seemingly every rendition of the Dumb Jock, fictional or not, is a commercial success. The public cannot get enough of the illiterate athlete. Our culture created a beast, so to speak, that now plagues every high school and college athlete like a stigma.

For us jocks who fancy ourselves somewhat intelligent, it is a burden we must carry. Surely, not every football, basketball, and baseball player is an idiot. Although I do know plenty of them, not all of the less intelligent people I’m familiar with strap on the pads and helmets. Instead, there’s a whole variety of boneheads that I know. After all, playing football isn’t the only thing that kills brain cells in college. It is arguable that of all of the separate demographics represented by our culture’s idiots, the Dumb Jock was the most captivating—and that is why he caught on.

I don’t think the Dumb Jock will disappear with time. His appeal has evolved from the pages of our books and the performances on our screens, and he has saturated our reality—making the Dumb Jock an actual label in our schools and society. He really has become a social phenomenon, and one that sells, sells, sells! For any jock, dumb or not, that stereotype is an unwelcomed weight. And until someone writes a book about the Smart Jock we’ll just have to grit our teeth and bear capitalism’s greed.

Art as the In Between

I am an English major who loathes reading. There, I said it. I’m wired in some odd way. The whole experience to me is like pulling teeth, plodding through words, pages, chapters, etc. Themes, symbols, tone, syntax, metaphor… and all of this in an effort to reach an end that ultimately, probably, and unfortunately, will leave me exasperated and unsatisfied. It’s a medium, for the most part, that just doesn’t appeal to me.

I can remember only two books that truly, and wholly, evoked in me an intensity of feeling and emotion worth remembering—or better said, that I can’t forget: Lois Lowry’s The Giver and Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. I read Lowry for my fifth grade summer reading project—selecting it off a list of many potential reads. Gatsby was taught in my high school honors class junior year. I haven’t picked up either book since.  I don’t want to.

If you were to ask me to describe the basic plot of Lowry’s Giver, I can vaguely recall a few important details about the book—not much else. It’s been about eleven years, after all, since I’ve last opened it. Gatsby’s a little more fresh. That’s not to say, though, that I can give the plot an accurate play by play. Alas, this novel too is well on its way out of the memory banks.

However, I can still recall the feeling I took away from each work. The experience of each read was so powerful, so poignant, that I can’t shake the effects of their words. It’s the emotion that’s left behind for me when all else is forgotten. And that is what is so important and perfect about these novels.  I was eleven when I read The Giver, with no notion at all as to what underlying symbols or messages were present in the book. I was purely an uninformed reader, you could say, captivated by the story. I responded to The Great Gatsby in the same manner, although I was required to delve a bit deeper (since it was for class).

I’ve since been searching for a third book. I’d really like to make this duo a trio. But after having been bombarded by the “classics” for the past four years, I’ve decided that I must be ignorant, inattentive, and a bit slow. These are the greatest works in the literary canon: Beloved, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Robinson Crusoe…and the list goes on. It’s a mixed bag, the literary greats I’ve read, and not one of them can impress upon me the same emotions as my hallowed two.

This is not to say I’m a philistine by any means. I do appreciate art. Good art. But in this era of fast paced living, who has time to sit and read a book? Especially, in my experience, when it probably has little to yield. That being said, the evolution of technology has rendered us less inclined to sit and read, as if I needed more of a reason not to. It’s becoming harder and harder for me to find a third book.

The art that I take to most is music, for the same reason I took to Lowry and Fitzgerald’s novels: its ability to provoke intense reactions almost immediately upon experience. I’d have to say I’m not in the minority here. With more than 100 million iPods sold worldwide since their inception in November, 2001, they are well in demand, and people have been listening. The potential to have  a 1,000+ song library is enticing. Carrying this library around in your pocket is amazing. Having it there is convenient. iPods allow us to access our favorite songs on demand, while on the go. It doesn’t slow us down, and we can still take the time to appreciate the art in walks to class, in our cars, or even while reading!

So where does this leave the book? Outdated and on its way to extinction? For so many, surely the answer is no. Unlike our music, though, we can’t read while driving, or dancing, or talking, or showering, and it’s hard to get engaged with a read walking to class. Books simply require the sort of time and interest that people have less and less of. I think art, unfortunately, is beginning to maneuver its way into the “in-between” times of our lives—when were not busy doing something else, which we often are nowadays.

Yeah, the new Kindle is great—literature’s iPod. We still have to sit down to read it though. And with so many people on the go these days, immediate experience of emotion is what they’re looking for. It’s the nature of our society and culture: fast-paced, demanding, and an incessant desire for immediate gratification. Music can offer this, a book—not so much.

Even as an apathetic reader, I’m always curious whether I’ll ever stumble upon that third book. That’s what keeps me reading. Surely there must be something out there, amongst the shelves and shelves of old and new fiction. Though with my impending graduation, and my time growing scarcer by the year, I’m nervous that this desire will never be fulfilled. Lowry and Fitzgerald will just have to get comfortable with each other. Until then, I’ll be listening.