Seabiscuit
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In 1938, the Great Depression was still taking a toll on the jobs and savings and lives of working- and middle-class white people--not just socially marginalized minorities. The confidence and ballyhoo of the Roaring Twenties had long since disappeared (Tallack 86-87), and the social-welfare safety net that was the hallmark of the New Deal was only just taking hold on one hand, and on the other was the subject of fierce attack by anti-New Deal policymakers (Leuchtenburg 131 et passim). At a time when the difficulties of the Depression were visited on most of the population, the American masses turned a great deal of attention to the fortunes of the racehorse Seabiscuit. In her book about the horse's career, Hillenbrand says that Seabiscuit "was nothing short of a cultural icon in America, enjoying adulation so intense and broad-based that it transcended sport" (xvii). Like 1930s America, Seabiscuit was down and out, but he overcame obscurity and became a folk hero.The motion picture Seabiscuit is a metaphorical presentation of the idea that, in a metaphorical sense, Seabiscuit prefigured America's triumphant rise over the course of the rest of the 20th century. All of these cultural dynamics appear thematically and in the mise-en-scFne by way of a narrative structure that intertwines Seabiscuit's biography with the biographies of his human family--his owner Tom Howard, his trainer Tom Smith, and his primary jockey Red Pollard. How the owner discovered the trainer and the tr
. . .
oward to retain Red as Seabiscuit's jockey and support him through multiple injuries, including the blindness in one eye that causes him not only to lose a race but also to attack another jockey, defines Howard as something of a surrogate father to a damaged stepson. By reason of laconic social distance and supreme competence, Smith is treated by Howard as a trusted colleague, with Howard actually courting Smith when Red's blindness in one eye is revealed.
The three characters are, each in his way, outsiders in the racing-world milieu where they come together. While that is a rich man's environment that Howard owns, Smith and Red better understand it. That dynamic runs in parallel with the outsider status of Seabiscuit, related to the mighty Man o' War but relegated to the backwaters of horsing because he has the wrong look. Just as Smith becomes part of the peculiar working family belonging to Howard, Smith creates for the excitable Seabiscuit an unlikely animal family--a companion horse and a dog--which enables Seabiscuit to relax. The comradeship of humans and animals visually fitting awkwardly together nevertheless (or for that very reason) bring out the champion spirit in Seabiscuit.
That spirit, in turn, awakens the spirit
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1510
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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