Journal of Religion and Popular Culture

Brant Short, Ph.D. and Dayle Hardy Short, Ph.D.
| Professors of Speech Communication, School of Communication
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011

Abstract

We contend that the 1986 film Hoosiers reconstructs the conventional narrative device of redemption, and that a rhetorical assessment offers a valuable means of explaining the film’s continuing popularity. Hoosiers demonstrates that redemption can emerge from grace and not necessarily through victimage, scapegoating or personal sacrifice. The essay approaches the concept of redemption from a Judeo-Christian interpretation of grace as contrasted with a dramatistic perspective that redemption must be earned. We conclude that grace offers a compelling alternative method of discovering and analyzing redemption narratives in popular culture texts.

[1] In many popular culture texts, suffering becomes the means in which an individual obtains redemption. The idea of salvation through redemption is especially common in film. Reviewers like to use the phrase a “tale of redemption” writes critic John Petrakis. “It usually makes some sense, since most dramas have at least one character who realizes the error of his or her ways and try to do something about it before the curtain falls” (2002, 38). One genre that embraces redemption as an integral element is the contemporary American sports drama. Rocky Balboa (of Rocky), Ray Kinsella (Field of Dreams), Roy Hobbs (of The Natural), among many other such protagonists, are flawed in an important and fundamental manner and through some dimension of sport they earn redemption. Audiences seem willing to accept this myth when the central figure is imperfect–somehow viewers identify with this imperfection and seem to believe that if such a person can be redeemed, then we too are also redeemable.

[2] A redemption story that continues to resonate in American culture is the 1986 feature film Hoosiers. Released with little fanfare and receiving no major industry awards, the film has emerged as a powerful statement of sport, teamwork, and agrarian values. Many sources illustrate the film’s continuing impact upon audiences two decades after its release. For example a national survey conducted in 1998 revealed that Hoosiers was the American public’s all-time favorite film about sports[1] and in 2003, Sports Illustrated writers and editors ranked the film number 6 in their listing of the 50 greatest sport films ever made (2003). To celebrate its 25^th anniversary, ESPN asked both an expert panel and its viewers to select the best sports movie produced between 1979 and 2004; in both cases, Hoosiers was selected as the best film.[2] What distinguished this particular movie from others in the sport genre? Why has Hoosiers evolved from a simple, even formulaic, story about a high school basketball team to a message of inspiration more years after its release? We believe that Hoosiers reconstructs the sport film genre by altering the conventional narrative device of redemption, and that a rhetorical assessment explains the film’s cultural meanings. Although most observers acknowledge that the sport genre usually requires a redemptive action by the protagonist, their analyses stop there, failing to consider the process by which the individual and/or the team achieves redemption.[3] In the case of Hoosiers, redemption does not result from doing good works or by suffering, but instead by grace. The emphasis upon redemption by grace helps explain why audiences remain inspired by a film that appears, at least on the surface, to be another predictable movie about sports.

[4] Philosopher Kenneth Burke believes that humans seek order in their world and that when order goes awry, humans seek redemption—restoration of order—through the process of victimage. As Burke writes, “If order, then guilt; if guilt, then need for redemption; but any such ‘payment’ is victimage” (1989, 349). One must go through a process of sacrifice to cleanse the guilt, achieve redemption, and restore order (or a state of salvation). For Burke, rhetoric performs various functions, “but a major function is its capacity to effect redemption, rebirth, or a new identity for the individual involved” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 195). One means of achieving harmony and order is the act of redemption, which requires that an audience be taken through three steps: pollution, purification, and redemption. Pollution arises from guilt, the condition that comes from failing to uphold the rules and norms of society. In the Christian tradition, guilt is the result of sinful behavior, of human inability to fulfill all the commandments of God. Yet, just as “our language system creates our guilt, it is also the means through which we purge ourselves of the language-caused guilt” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 1991 196). Burke identifies two methods of purification, victimage and mortification. Victimage is the symbolic transfer of one’s guilt to some outside source. Historically, humans have used scapegoating as the primary method of victimage. The scapegoat is “selected to be the representative of unwanted evils and loaded with the guilt of the victimizer” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 1991 196). In contrast, mortification is “self-inflicted punishment,” the “process in which we make ourselves suffer for our guilt or sins” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 1991 197). Christians understand victimage through Jesus Christ, who was offered as a sacrifice for human sin; and they understand mortification through self-sacrifice and penance, as well as through indulgences and plenary indulgences. But for Burke, the ideas of guilt, scapegoating, and victimage, transcend theological meaning. Dramatism, Burke’s theory of rhetoric and human behavior, “asks not how the sacrificial motives revealed in the institutions of magic and religion might be eliminated in a scientific culture, but what new forms they take” (1989, 349).

[5] It may be that Burke’s explanation of redemption has dominated rhetorical interpretations of cultural texts because it represents a very Western and contemporary understanding of work and reward. In Burke’s view, redemption is a “temporary rest or stasis of some kind that represents symbolic rebirth” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 1991 197) but that at the same time is never permanent. The Puritan tradition, coupled with how Western societies have tended to view work, has taught that work is rewarded, and if one works hard enough, the rewards will be rich. Thus, viewing redemption through Burke’s lens would lead most interpreters to believe that if, when one sins, one compensates for the sin through mortification, then the sin will be forgiven—if not erased. Errors and offenses require apologies. Children learn that if they break a neighbour’s window with a baseball, they must replace the window with their earnings. We have laws, and breaking those laws requires incarceration, and/or community service, and/or monetary compensation. When payment or atonement has been made, then we claim the person’s “slate” is “clean,” although in reality former convicts have trouble finding jobs, and children can no longer be trusted to be careful. Achieving redemption demands that we must pay for our sins, but having sinned, we are always suspect. So in a sense, the human understanding of sin is that once it occurs in an individual’s life, that individual is forever more easily tempted. Hence, the Christian concept of “original sin,” that because Eve and Adam fell prey to temptation all succeeding generations are born “impure,” is consistent with this belief that atonement does not entirely cleanse the sinner. Burke suggests that humans are driven to find redemption, but having achieved it does not guarantee a permanent state of being. He argues that existence of the negative, which in itself exists only because of language, causes guilt, and guilt begins the process of victimage.[4] Thus, in a sense, every successful redemption begins the process again. Having once been shown fallible, a human is never completely cleansed. When dealing with other humans, one normally earns redemption through suffering and/or by hard work, but once having been shown as fallible, the human is forever suspect. In contrast to this secular human understanding of symbolic redemption is the Christian concept of grace.

[6] Redemption can be achieved through another vehicle besides victimage or mortification; it can be obtained through grace. The concept of grace is familiar to those who live within the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the Old Testament, grace means “kindness and graciousness in general” while in the New Testament grace speaks of “God’s redemptive love” (Richardson 1950, 101). The “idea of grace more than other idea,” writes theologian Alan Richardson, “binds the two Testaments together into a complete whole” (1950, 101). He observes that the Old Testament connects grace to the covenant (or the law) between God and the people; while the New Testament reveals a new covenant, with Jesus Christ bringing grace to all people. Indeed, grace becomes fundamental to understanding Christ’s mission as conveyed in the New Testament. According to Richardson, grace is “the free gift of God not the outcome of man’s deserving” as well as the “determining factor in man’s turning to God” (1950, 102). Everything, concludes Richardson, “from first to last is by grace, whether of redemption (Romans 5:2, 1 Pet. 2:10) or of sanctification” (1950, 102). In the view of God as Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), the Holy Spirit is often explained as the “breath” of God, the “way in which God bestows upon his creatures an interiority and a selfhood of their own—the power to be something in themselves and to act as themselves,” but also the “power which comes upon men and women from time to time and enables them to rise above themselves to new heights of heroism and dedication” (Norris 1979, 175-176). According to theologian Richard Norris, Saint Paul explained that the “sure sign of the work of the Spirit” was “the love which held people together in Christ by making them a true community” where “the ‘other’ is affirmed by men and women who are patient and kind with one another; who make allowances and are not vengeful or mean; who look for the best and not the worst in their fellows (1 Cor. 13)” (1979, 179-180).

[7] Grace has three meanings, writes Norris, the first two of which are narrower and less general than the third. The first meaning refers to “the results” of “what the Holy Spirit does” (1979, 181), sometimes thought of as special gifts. The second meaning refers to the “active work of the Holy Spirit, enlivening people and helping them to grow into their identity in Christ.” The third meaning refers to “any attitude or activity in which one person shows favor to another. Such an attitude or activity is called gracious because it stems from uncompelled generosity and love” (Norris 1979, 182). The word “uncompelled” highlights the distinction between Burke’s explanation of redemption by works (whether victimization or mortification) and the Christian concept of redemption by God’s grace. Grace is not earned through deeds but is a gift given through pure generosity. As such, it cannot be repaid; and it is certainly not a quid pro quo. We may not fully understand the idea of God’s gift of grace, but we can experience a human version when another person does something for us that is generous and unexpected. As humans, we are not comfortable with accepting such gifts, perhaps because as adults we have learned we are not worthy or believe we must repay it in some way. Small children experience this grace fully; when forgiven after committing an offense, they are grateful with no apparent sense of guilt for not having “earned” forgiveness nor having something to “return” in exchange for the forgiveness. Adults have fully learned guilt and the negative, and thus have a harder time accepting others’ graciousness. And yet grace occurs.

[8] The biblical qualities of grace provide insight into how it functions as a rhetorical archetype, a construct that has narrative power for anyone familiar with the concept of Christian forgiveness. One source that details such qualities is The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, which the American Bible Society recommends because it offers “balanced and complete treatment of textual, historical, theological, and archeological data that is most relevant to biblical study” (American Bible Society 2006). The dictionary lists five of these essential qualities. First, grace is a “free gift. It is never [one’s] due, nor is it conferred as a reward.” Second, grace is abundant and multiplies. “It exceeds expectation.” Third, grace emerges through faith. In other words, faith “enables grace to be effective” in the life of an individual. Fourth, grace is “an active and effective power from God.” It reveals the “energetic initiative” which God and Christ take to “repair the ruins in [one’s] soul. Indeed, there are passages where grace is almost equated with power.” Fifth, grace is a quality of the Christian character; it describes “one of those divine activities which can reproduce itself in the human lives of those who receive it.” Like the Christian conception of love, grace can be used to understand the “relationship” between humans. In this light, grace may reveal the “generous contribution which Christians make for the relief of their less fortunate fellows” (Mitton 1962, 466). Put more succinctly, grace “means favour freely shown, especially by a superior to an inferior,” or “the redemptive activity of divine love,” for “God is not moved to love us by our virtues, nor does he withhold his love from us because of our vices. He loves us freely, regardless of our deserts” (Watson 1969, 147-148).

[9] The powerful message of grace is that God gives humans this gift without conditions or costs. Suffering, sacrifice, or performing good works will not earn grace. Rather, it is given to all who are willing to accept God’s love. “God is gracious in redemption,” concludes Richard Norris, “because he lifts up the life which he has created to a new fulfillment in communion with his own.” Grace is the expression of love, “uncompelled, free, and spontaneous” (1979, 182). In recent years, some Christians have been urged to devalue grace and place emphasis upon our works. In a recent critique of Joel Osteen, one of the leading television evangelists in the United States, Jason Byassee concludes that Osteen does not preach “a gospel of grace, in which God acts in spite of our lack of faithfulness to redirect wants.” Rejecting Osteen’s theology of positive thinking, Byassee writes:

Instead this is a gospel of reward in which God does nothing until we get our act together. In traditional Christian theology, Protestant and Catholic alike, we can do nothing in and of ourselves to merit God’s favor. Rather, God comes to us in Christ when we are without merit, without ability to please God and without reason to think we can be saved or helped. Such a view of grace is surely part of the grumpy theology Osteen seeks to upend—but it is central to Christianity (2005, 22-23).

Hoosiers and Rhetorical Redemption

[10] The general plot line of Hoosiers is simple, and, most movie critics agreed, predictable. Critic Roger Ebert observed that Hoosiers utilizes the “broad overall structure of most sport movies.” In defining the genre, he noted that Hoosiers “begins with the problem of a losing team, introduces the new coach, continues with the obligatory training sequences and personality clichés, arrives at the darkest hour, and then heads toward triumph. This story is almost as sacred to Hollywood as basketball is to Indiana” (1987, 280). An aging coach with a mysterious past (Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman) is hired to replace the coach who has recently died, and arrives in the small town of Hickory, Indiana, to begin his work at the high school a week or so into regular basketball practice. Viewers gradually learn that Coach Dale was a successful college coach who was fired for hitting a player and then banned from college coaching. He spent the next thirteen years in the Navy, until called to Hickory. The town “fathers” are suspicious of his methods, and believe that the team is doomed unless the previous coach’s star player, Jimmy Chitwood (played by Maris Valainis), can be persuaded to rejoin to the team. A town meeting is called in order to discuss the coach’s dismissal, at which the player decides to return to the team, but only if the coach stays. The townspeople decide to support the coach, and the team wins the state high school basketball tournament.

[11] For many critics as well as the general public, a vital part of viewing Hoosiers is the shared knowledge that it is based on a true story. Indeed, the film’s star, Gene Hackman, observed , “The success took the distributor by surprise. The public responded to the truth of it. It was a true story very truthfully told” (Brady 1998, C1). The production of Hoosiers began with Pizzo and Anspaugh, college roommates at Indiana University who for many years had wanted to make the film. Growing up in the basketball-rich culture of Indiana, they heard the story of Milan, a rural high school of 164 students that won the state basketball championship in 1954 by beating an urban school with over 5,000 students. Milan surprised the entire state by surviving the 767 team tournament in which all Indiana high schools compete in a single division (Elliot A11,1987).[5] As a child in Bloomington, Indiana, Pizzo recalled that the “miracle of Milan” became an “inspiration for all the small teams around the state” (Fristoe 1986, C3). Importantly, the legacy of Milan’s championship continues to dominate high school basketball in the state. Ray Craft, a member of the 1954 Milan Indians, and an official in the Indiana High School Athletic Association, lamented that “unfortunately for Indiana basketball, we haven’t had a small team like Milan since” (Ketzenberger, B12,1986).

[12] Although Hoosiers is clearly in the sport genre, Pizzo wanted to create a film that had a life message. In writing the screenplay, he placed a sign above his desk that said, “This is not a sports movie. This is a movie about people.” In Pizzo’s view, “redemption” is the central theme in Hoosiers: “It’s about people who overcome obstacles and are able to move from a place where they’ve been stuck” (Fristoe 1986, C4). In an interview with an Indiana newspaper, Pizzo suggested that the film transcends winning and losing; “it’s about redemption and second chances—with the help of friends, family and community” (Knipe, B14,1986). He told another interviewer that “the Milan legend coupled with Hoosier fanaticism about basketball formed a structure on which to hang other things—like the idea of redemption” because the main characters “all get a second chance at life in different ways” (Matter 1986, C1).

[14] In his review of Hoosiers, film critic David Ansen asked the question that faced many viewers as they entered the theater: “[H]ave the post ‘Rocky’ clones—all those by the numbers inspirational sagas of underdog competitors dreaming the impossible dream—so polluted the genre that it is past revitalization? Or can these same cliches, if handled with care and intelligence, rebound with cinematic life?” (1987, 73). Another leading critic, Stanley Kauffman, posed a similar question in his review. “The test of this genre is simple: Knowing exactly what we are watching, are we nevertheless swept up? Hoosiers passes the test easily; we get taut, tearful, gleeful” (1987, 26). The critical and popular reaction to Hoosiers indicated that most viewers were pleased (and often surprised) with the film and its retelling of a rural high school basketball team seeking a state championship. Most film reviewers followed Ansen and Kauffmann’s lead, evaluating Hoosiers by using the touchstone of the sport film genre. Not only was the film well-received by critics and the viewing audiences when released in 1987, but it continues to be an important expression of sport, teamwork, and agrarian values.[7]

[15] Most film critics praised Hoosiers when it was released nationally. A common theme in the reviews centered upon the film’s paradoxical ability to be both predictable in its plot and yet present an inspirational message at the same time. “We often expect what will happen next as a coach, a town, and a team struggle for fulfillment” observed the Milwaukee Journal reviewer. Yet the film had the ability to “affirm the familiar” and “offer comfort in such sureness” (Armstrong 1987, G5). In a mixed assessment of the film, the Seattle Times reviewer noted that nearly “every character is an underdog who’s going to get a second chance at life and become a winner.” The result was a “movie that works you over so effectively that you may find yourself responding and at the same time becoming embarrassed for responding” (Hartl 1987, G4). The critic for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune observed that although the film was based on a “seemingly endless string of cliches” and was “burdened with an overabundance of corniness,” Hoosiers was “so engaging and so genuinely warm that most people probably will have a hard time not excusing those flaws” (Strickler 1987, E14). Writing in the Detroit News, Susan Stark typified critical reaction to the film:

The material couldn’t be more familiar to modern moviegoers. It’s the David and Goliath story all over again, played out in the favorite Hollywood metaphor of sport. It’s Rocky. It’s Breaking Away. It’s The Natural. It’s The Bad News Bears. Yet Hoosiers, which chronicles a ragtag basketball team’s triumphant trip to the 1952 Indiana state finals, is the most engaging of movies (1987, E13).

[16] The New York Tribune critic explained that Hoosiers was not a sports movie, but was “as much about his [Coach Dale’s] personal redemption as it is about basketball.” The reviewer concluded that the “plot is predictable, not tremendously original. But I hope I never grow bored with the story of the triumph of the human spirit long as it is told with freshness and sincerity” (Ryan 1987, F5). The Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger film reviewer also called the film “predictable,” yet said it “goes beyond the simple underdog motif of the Rocky movies.” The reviewer reasoned that Hoosiers transcends the sport genre because it explores “reclamation of self-respect, not only for Coach Dale and Shooter, but for a team and town” (Pettis 1987, F4). The Atlanta Journal review agreed that Hoosiers is essentially the story of redemption, that it is “wall to wall with comeback kids,” including Hackman, the team, the principal (Cletus Summers, played by Sheb Wooley), the female teacher (Myra Fleenor, played by Barbara Hershey), and Shooter (played by Dennis Hopper) (Ringel 1987, E12). Giving the film four stars, his highest rating, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called Hoosiers a “comeback movie, but it’s not simply about a comeback of this small team.” It is also about the comeback of Coach Dale, Shooter, and in fact, “everybody in this movie seems to be trying to start over in life, and, in a way, basketball is simply their excuse” (1987, 280).

[17] Several themes emerge in the critical reaction to Hoosiers. Most critics were positive in their reviews, often praising the film’s ability to transcend the limitations of the sport film genre. Moreover, most critics overtly recognized the dynamic connections among the film, the legend of Milan, and the status of basketball in Indiana. In this manner, the film is a text that achieves meaning by its connection to past and present, and thus becomes a rhetorical statement for the future. The deeper meanings of the film are explained by looking at redemption and the way in which Hoosiers uses grace rather than victimage in portraying its narrative.

[18] When we examine Hoosiers as a rhetorical text that speaks to the human condition, redemption by grace seems to be the underlying message of the film, and helps to illuminate the actions and attitudes of the various characters, as well as explaining audience reaction to the story. Turning to narrative structure of the film, religious symbolism appears at a number of levels as well as in a complicated web of interrelated acts of grace. No one act appears to call forth any other, yet all fit together in such a way that the viewer is left with a feeling of hope and generosity. Although examples abound throughout the film, the more significant acts of grace include the high school principal’s decision to hire the disgraced coach, the town drunk’s dismissal of the need to share information about negative aspects of the coach’s background, the coach’s request of help from the town drunk (who is, coincidentally the father of one of the players), the teacher’s decision not to share negative information she’s discovered about the coach, the player’s decision to return to the team, another player’s admission of love for his father despite his drunkenness, and ultimately, the team’s success which redeems the aspirations of all small town basketball teams. The two most undeserving members of the community, the town drunk and the new coach, are the recipients of the most expansive graciousness, which come from the least likely sources. Although grace does not necessarily beget grace, it is certainly true that when we have been treated generously, we feel more likely to treat others generously. Yet, in Hoosiers, individual acts of grace, as suggested by The Interpreter’s Guide to the Bible, were given freely, were abundant and seemed to multiply, arose because of faith in the other person, became active in allowing the individual to grow, and seemed to reproduce themselves in the lives of individuals who received them.

[19] Basketball is a winter sport, and games typically begin sometime after Thanksgiving and continue through late February or March. The opening scenes in Hoosiers indicate fall, and the school year has already begun when Norman Dale arrives in Hickory. Season practice begins at the end of the corn harvest, an appropriate time for the stories in the film, a harvesting of souls. As the team begins the season steeped in conflict and controversy over the new coach, the season changes from fall to winter, with a clear sense that life is colder, harsh and more difficult. More importantly, the film’s chronological structure carries the team through its own struggles as winter sets in and the corn fields are barren.

[20] Religious images abound throughout the film, particularly in scenes where redemptive rhetoric and actions occur.[8] The team travels to games in the local minister’s bus, which is painted red (the color of Pentecost) in the summer for tent revivals and white (the color of purity and of Christ) in the winter for basketball trips. Prayer is offered in the locker-room before each game and one player, Strap (the minister’s son), regularly drops to one knee in prayer as the rest of the team warms up prior to the beginning of the game. When this player has an exceptional series of shots and rebounds, Coach Dale asks, “What has gotten into you?” Strap replies, “the Lord, I can feel his strength.”

[21] In one of the most powerful displays of religious imagery, the town meeting called to discuss firing Coach Dale takes place in a church. The “congregation” consists of townspeople interested in the outcome and/or interested in speaking their piece. Most statements and announcements are made from the pulpit (representing authority and power), yet Coach Dale’s self-defense is made from the pews as an inferior would petition a superior. The time is night, so the lights from the church blaze forth, and it appears as if the whole town is there. But during this town meeting viewers see two significant acts of grace that are freely offered to Coach Dale. First, Myra Fleenor decides at the last minute not to tell the townspeople of Dale’s controversial coaching career. Before the meeting she had confronted Dale and told him she had discovered the story of his past. Yet as the meeting progressed, she kept the damaging information to herself, and ultimately asked the town to give Dale another chance. Second, from out of nowhere (for the audiences has no hint this will occur), Jimmy Chitwood enters the meeting and announces he’s decided to play basketball, but with the condition that “I play, Coach stays. He goes, I go.” Immediately, the vote-counting is finished and announced: Coach Dale has been dismissed. A member of the congregation calls for a re-vote. With only a very few vocal nays, Coach Dale is asked to stay. Coach Dale had had only one conversation (and that very one-sided) with Chitwood one afternoon while Chitwood was shooting hoops and in which Dale told Chitwood, “I can tell you this. I don’t care if you play on the team or not.” In the same conversation, however, Dale also articulated the film’s most obvious example of Norris’s first description of grace, the gift “given for the sake of the community, for the sake of service to others” (1979, 183). Dale says, “You got a special talent, a gift. Not the school’s, not the townspeople, not the team’s, not Myra Fleenor’s, not mine. It’s yours.” Yet we also know that Dale is subtly asking Chitwood to share that gift, for otherwise it does not meet the criteria of “ways in which people can exhibit the mutual love and dependence which mark them out as persons who share in the life of Christ” (Norris 1979, 183). There is no other conversation or contact between them portrayed, although on two separate occasions, we get brief glimpses of Chitwood standing unnoticed in the background while he watches the team practicing or Coach Dale discussing something with the team. So Coach Dale (his job and ultimately his soul) is saved because of the graciousness of two individuals who had earlier rejected Dale’s presence in the community.

[22] Dale was hired for this job by an old college friend, Cletus Summers, the principal at Hickory High School. When Dale sees his old friend for the first time in twenty years, the principal observes, “It’s been a while for you” in reference to Dale’s coaching career. He replies, “Yeah, I really appreciate what you’re doing, I . . .” and is interrupted by the principal: “Let’s not be repeating ourselves. Your slate’s clean here. We’ve got a job to do. So come on, Coach, let me show you around.” Viewers don’t know why Norman Dale received the job other than that we can assume the principal had faith that he could do a good job and needed a second chance. The importance of the opportunity is affirmed later at the principal’s farm where Dale is staying. Looking across a fence as nightfall descends, Cletus turns to his new coach and says, “I think it’s gonna work out.” To which Dale replies, “Well, it’s gotta work out this time or that’s it for good.”

[23] At another level, Shooter (the town drunk and father of one of the players, Everett) offers his own message of grace to Coach Dale. Walking into Dale’s dwelling early in the film, he picks up a framed photograph of a basketball team and coach and says, “That’s a hell of a good team you had there.” Clearly surprised by the comment, Dale asks, “You knew that team?” Shooter replies, “I know everything there is about the greatest game ever invented.” Pointing to himself Dale asks, “Did you know about. . . .” and is interrupted by Shooter, “Yeah, but that don’t matter. A man’s got to do what he’s got to do.” In this subtle exchange, the town drunk who holds no status in the community offers grace by forgiving Coach Dale for his transgressions and indicating that Dale’s past will not be shared with anyone else.

[25] Shooter’s son, Everett (played by the only professional actor on the Huskers team, David Neidorf), confronts Dale after class one day and says, “Coach, what you’re doin’ with my Dad—I’m not seeing it.” “Why not?” asks Dale. “Cuz he’s a drunk, he’ll do something stupid,” Everett answers. “When’s the last time somebody gave him a chance?” Dale asks. “He don’t deserve a chance,” answers the boy. But why does Dale offer the chance? We assume he believes Shooter can do a good job, although we are not told this. But through the coach’s intercession with Shooter, the father and son are reconciled when the father is eventually committed to a state hospital to “dry out” after showing up drunk to a game. In the hospital scene, just before the team goes to the state championship, Everett tells his father, Shooter, that he loves him and they will get a house together and take care of each other. Viewers had little doubt in the film that the son loved the father, but the son was unable to accept his father for what and who he was until Coach Dale interceded. Roger Ebert also sees grace in Dale’s behaviour toward Shooter. Although Dale knows that his efforts to rehabilitate Shooter will likely not succeed, “by involving Shooter once again in the life of the community, he’s giving him a reason to seek the kind of treatment that might help” (1987, 280). Everett’s and Shooter’s reconciliation, and Dale’s growth as a caring coach are examples of Norris’s second description of grace as the “interior power through which people learn to know themselves in Christ and are strengthened to grow up into his life” (1979, 182). As the coach offers Shooter a chance to rejoin the community, Shooter eventually learns to value himself and his son enough to agree to treatment for alcoholism. Everett allows himself to acknowledge his love for his father; and Coach Dale’s faith is redeemed by the others’ efforts. Throughout the film, we also see Coach Dale responding to others’ gifts to him by treating his players more as human and less as machines. For instance, Everett is seriously injured at a game because he gets into a shoving match with another player; the shoving match occurred because he was reacting angrily to Shooter’s having shown up drunk to the game. In a key scene during one of the basketball playoff games, Everett is hit and his stitches open up. Clearly, Coach Dale intends to keep him in the game, but after some thought, he pulls the player out of concern for the injury despite the fear that they will lose without Everett on the court. Knowing what we know by this point in the film, we believe that had Dale been true to form, he would have kept the injured player in the game. The fact that he pulled a key player suggests that he was growing, that he was responding to how others had been treating him, and that he was beginning to allow himself to really care for others.

[26] After winning a series of tournament games, the Hickory Huskers make it to the state championship game in Indianapolis. Going against the bigger high school from South Bend in a field house that seats 15,000 fans, the Huskers appear overwhelmed by their presence in the state final. In the locker room prior to the big game, a series of exchanges among the players and coach reveal that love has become the outgrowth of grace. Coach Dale asks the players if they have any final words and three players speak up:

Merle: “Yeah, let’s win this one for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here.”
Everett: “I want to win for my dad.”
Buddy: “Let’s win for Coach, who got us here.”

[27] At its best, redemption through grace is about being offered a chance or an opportunity regardless of what we have done in the past rather than because of it. And in this regard, Hoosiers offers hope to those of us who know we are not perfect, offers hope that we will be honoured not because we have done great things, but because there is hope in us and in those regarding us. All the characters in Hoosiers were offered a second chance, not because they had proven themselves worthy of the opportunity, but because someone in their life had faith, or hope, or graciousness toward another human who has experienced trouble. The principal had charity toward someone (the coach) he once knew, who, in turn (although not necessarily because of it) had charity toward someone he met (the father). The player had charity toward the coach. The teacher eventually had charity toward the coach. All these people had charity toward the coach, who clearly did not deserve it, for he had once hit a player (“my best player” he recalled); and through Coach Dale, a flawed character, another flawed character (Shooter) is redeemed. Through the innocent players, the town is redeemed (“and all the small towns in Indiana”), and in turn, the principal’s faith in the coach is redeemed.

[28] In discovering the film’s portrayal of redemption, each of the five qualities of grace discussed in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Mitton 1962, 466) appears in the narrative structure of Hoosiers. First, grace is a “free gift” and is granted without condition or obligation. Each act of grace in the film is freely bestowed and no one suggests a reward or punishment. Second, grace is abundant and multiplies. In Hoosiers the principal’s simple act of grace toward Coach Dale grows as the team, the town, Shooter and his son, and Myra are changed through the actions of others. Third, grace requires faith; each character can only rely upon the honesty and integrity of the person redeemed. They must have faith in those to whom they offer grace for the act to be life-changing. Fourth, grace is energetic and can “repair the ruins in [one’s] soul.” The hurting souls in Hoosiers (Coach Dale, Myra, Shooter, Everett, Jimmy Chitwood, and the town itself) are uplifted and changed by acts of grace. Fifth, grace is a divine activity that “can reproduce itself in the human lives of those who receive it.” Although the characters do not seem locked in a spiritual struggle with themselves and with others, the act of grace uplifts them in a spiritually changing manner.

[29] Several others readings of this film are possible. It can be read as a quest, where a hero (the coach) seeks a valuable goal (the state basketball championship) and is aided on his way by particular helpers (the principal, town drunk, and female teacher) (see Stelzner 1970). But this reading does not account for the acts of kindness generated along the way by the coach and on behalf of the coach. It could be read as a metaphor for the Christian “saviour” story where the female teacher serves as the “Virgin Mother Mary” (Myra) to the Christ-like figure (Jimmy Chitwood, who is the only player regularly referred to by both his first and last names, whose initials are the same as those of Jesus Christ; see Koslovic 2004, ¶68). When Jimmy Chitwood decides to play, this can be interpreted as his first independent, and hence adult, choice (Jesus’s decision to pray in the temple). This choice redeems both those who had faith in him as their (basketball) saviour—the townspeople, the high school students, and possibly the other players—and those who believed in him after his revelatory playing. Jimmy Chitwood’s decision to play basketball was the key to the team’s beginning to win, the coach’s job being saved, his integrity being redeemed, his and Myra’s romance blossoming, and small towns’ proving they are as good as big towns. This reading gives the viewer a sense of how important Jimmy Chitwood is to the town, but such a reading would require more of the film’s focus to be on his actions. As written, Chitwood’s character is important because of his giftedness in basketball.

[30] In yet another reading, the film could be criticized for idealizing a period of time when women knew that their place was to support their men, and when whites encountered blacks only in big-city sports. Myra Fleenor first opposed Norman Dale’s intrusion in town, but only because she feared for Jimmy Chitwood’s well-being and future. When she realized Dale was not going to compete with her for Chitwood’s loyalty, then she began to support Dale’s efforts, even speaking out on his behalf at the town meeting. Her mother, Opal, supported Dale because she loved basketball and her son had played. Other females are virtually invisible in this film, except as basketball cheerleaders, cheering fans in the crowds, or as the quiet but caring wife of the principal. The first non-white encountered in the film is at the state tournament in Indianapolis, when the other team had two black coaches and a number of black players.[9] But this reading is not explanatory of the film’s success, only descriptive of its content. And while one could criticize the film for pandering to a contemporary white audience’s desire for the “good old days” when racial issues could be ignored, a fair reading of the film suggests no sense of trying to create a “better” world. Nor can the film be appropriately criticized for downplaying women’s influence—the film is about a boys’ basketball team in the 1950s. In fact, an alternative gendered interpretation could suggest that the coach learns compassion and tolerance as the film progresses and thus becomes feminized.

[31] While most film critics claimed that Hoosiers utilized a predictable plot line, we have argued that it was predictable only when viewed as a sports film. When analyzed in greater depth, the film portrays redemption from a Christian interpretation of God’s offer of grace rather than the perspective that redemption must be earned through works of suffering and atonement. Those in this story who were offered grace did not “deserve” it, whether by works or repentance; nor did those who offered grace feel compelled to make the offer. Rather, the individuals portrayed in this film formed a “true community” where they “affirmed” each other by being “patient and kind” by making “allowances” rather than by being “vengeful or mean” and “who look[ed] for the best and not the worst” in others (Norris 1979, 179-180).

[32] An important dimension of the rhetorical meaning of Hoosiers lies in the film’s commentary on sport and culture. At one level, the film tells the story of a central event in Indiana, and by extension, American sport history: the 1954 victory of Milan High School. At another level, the film celebrates the single class basketball tournament and the cultural meanings of egalitarianism, opportunity, and the Puritan work ethic symbolized when the smallest school in the state competes against the largest school. And finally Hoosiers becomes the text that recalls the final battle to save class basketball, and its elimination by Indiana high school principals in 1997. In July 1999 twenty “experts” voted on the 10 most important events in Indiana sport history. Not surprisingly, Milan’s 1954 victory was rated as the “most memorable sports moment in Indiana history” (Prado 1999, 1). Reporter Bob Hammel concluded that this game “had more of an effect on the entire state than any other event in my lifetime. . . . It was the symbolic moment of what was the best high school basketball tournament in the country” (quoted in Prado 1999, 1). Ironically, the eighth most memorable event in Indiana sport history was the 1996 decision to eliminate the single class basketball tournament. One reporter concluded, “This is like Milan in reverse. It eliminated the possibility of another Cinderella team. To me it was tampering with a longstanding tradition” (quoted in Prado 2). In this way, Hoosiers becomes a way to recall past glory and simultaneously lament our contemporary rejection of traditional values in a quest for modernization. UCLA’s legendary basketball coach, John Wooden, publicly opposed the end of the single class tournament. “Although there is no progress without change, all change is not progress,” Wooden said. Quoting Cervantes, Wooden, concluded, “The journey is better than the inn” (quoted in Gildea 1997, 232). Thus another door to find grace, the chance for David to battle Goliath, is closed and victimage and scapegoating may be the only direction remaining to achieve redemption through sport (or vicariously through the sport film genre).

[33] An enduring ideal for most people is the hope that, despite personal flaws and failings (or our “fallen nature”), our efforts in life will be recognized and rewarded in some way. But more than that, most of us hope that our good character will be not only acknowledged and affirmed, but that some power beyond us will value us for what we are, not for what we try—and fail—to be. Cultural critic Robert Rinehart observes that in the contemporary sports arena, “we no longer enjoy the simple, childlike way we might have before (or the way we might have been told we did).” Instead, Rinehart concludes, “We seek an idealized, nostalgic past—and are frustrated by our inability to find it” (1998, ix). Hoosiers is a film that allows vicarious fulfillment of that hope. Despite the recognition of our flawed character and without our self-interested efforts, our intrinsic worth is confirmed by viewing this film. And it is this deeper message about redemption that continues to make Hoosiers a meaningful cultural text many years after its theatrical release.

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Abstract

Notes