Deep Thoughts about Field of Dreams

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If you build it, he will come. 

What better vehicle for the Guy girls to meditate on their relationship with their late father than a movie they once watched with him about a man’s relationship with his late father? With Field of Dreams, the 1989 magical realism baseball film starring Kevin Costner, Tracie brings some deep thoughts about parents and children, gender and emotion, and baseball and race. The filmmakers transformed JD Salinger, a real-life white author featured in the source material, the novel Shoeless Joe, into the fictional Terence Mann (James Earl Jones), a Black icon of sixties counterculture. In so doing, they opened a door to talk about race and racism in baseball and in America, but they never walked through that door. And while much of what was charming about the film 35 years ago remains charming, there’s also a great deal that feels downright unsatisfying.

Go the distance. Grab your earbuds and come with us into an analysis that straddles both the intimate view from the dugout and the big-picture vista afforded by the nosebleed seats. 

Mentioned in this episode:

On the movie’s role in expensive stadiums:

https://reason.com/2023/04/01/the-expensive-seductive-nostalgia-of-field-of-dreams/

On the flawed portrayal of the father-son relationship (and a bunch of facts they got wrong): 

https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/field-of-dreams-is-absolutely-terrible

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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