March Madness and Movie Magic: A Deconstruction

Jonny Walls

When I play video games, I experience thousands or millions of lines of code. There are no creatures, no characters, no spaceships, no swords, no glistening lakes, no foreign planets or magical forests. Just code.

When I read a book, I'm looking at thousands of letters grouped together in particular sequences on multiple pieces of paper. No people, no stories, no feelings, no dialogue. Just ink and paper.

When I watch a movie, I'm witnessing the result of light hitting a sensor and burning into a piece of film. No explosions, no kisses, no life or death scenarios, no sexy glances. Just film.

When I watch basketball, I'm seeing a bunch of guys I've never met, who were in elementary school when I was in college, playing a game. I'm watching them throw a rubber ball through a metal hoop, and hoping one group of kids manages to do it more than the other. No warring cities, schools, or states. There is no actual school or state pride on the line. Just kids, rubber, and metal.

These assessments may seem harsh, but they're generous by deconstructive standards. Like it or not, it's cold truth.

How about this? When I watch a basketball game and my blood starts pumping and I know in my heart that I will be genuinely disappointed if the game doesn't swing my team's way, I am knowingly basing my own happiness upon whether or not the collection of particles that make up the people who wear the collection of particles that form my team's uniforms can throw the collection of particles that takes the form of a ball into the collection of particles that is a rim more times than the opposing group of particle collections.

But that doesn't feel right, does it? That completely true description paradoxically fails to tell the truth of the life that we know. Whether it's video games, literature, film, or basketball, the elements of this life take on greater meaning than the sum of their individual parts. We "irrationally" relate to the characters on screen or the players on our favorite team because there is something in them that is also inside us, be it an eerily familiar disposition or the simple willingness to represent one's home state.

Relate to Scott Padgett or he will eat you.

Hoops and Hollywood

When a great basketball team is firing on all cylinders, it becomes like a living, organic, flowing being, greater than the sum of its parts. Each part of the organism plays its role to perfection, and the result is like Life. But we must suspend our disbelief just a touch to see it. If we don't, we'll see nothing more than boys in uniforms throwing a rubber ball.

For a film to make us forget the real world, all of the pieces must work together seamlessly: lighting, choreography, acting, sound, costumes, makeup, etc. If it fails, we see actors in front of a camera surrounded by a crew, but when it works, it becomes surprisingly easy to suspend our disbelief.

Funnily, we tend to selectively align our skepticism and liberality of belief with what most pleases us, and are quick to scoff at those who align it differently. I know people who have cried watching a person they know to be a living actor pretending to die in front of a camera as a different person, then turn around and ridicule sports fans for caring about the outcome of a sports match. I have likewise known avid sports fans to ridicule fiction and story lovers for their so-called love of escapist fantasy.

Is it really so different if a Red-Sox fan suddenly sees Johnny Damon as a different entity when wearing Yankee Blue? Is it not a similar phenomenon when a film lover sees a different Matt Damon when he's playing the angel Loki and when he's Jason Bourne?

The Answer Was Inside Us All Along

We get to be genuinely, emotionally moved by films and truly excited and elated (or disappointed, forlorn...crushed) by sports by suspending our disbelief, but neither would work if they didn't tap deeply into the intricacies of our inherent natures. Selflessness, beauty, struggle, physicality, desire, agony, defeat—these powerful aspects of life are on display in every decent film and every worthy game of basketball, so we can be forgiven when we conveniently forget that we're not actually part of the team we adore, or that Frodo is really some kid from Iowa.

Art and sports work because, literally, we have infused them with meaning. It's a certain fluid, flexible, lowercase meaning, but it's meaning nonetheless.

Look at yourself and your loved ones. A collection of separate particles, every one of you. But we have meaning because we have been infused with it. Deconstruct us all you want, down to the last quark, but almost no one would disagree that we are greater than the sum of our parts, and I say it's because we were made so.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

An important caveat lies simply in the word "imitate." Art and sports work because they imitate, but they fall short for the same reason. As ridiculous as it may sound, it's quite easy for, ahem...certain types (read: myself and most of my friends) to lose sight of the line between imitation and real life. I've lost myself in a novel or video game world for days at a time, and I've lost sleep over more than one impending UK basketball game. In fact, as UK's monumental Final Four match-up with Louisville looms, I have found myself fighting off pangs of anxiety with a steady stream of self-reminders: "It's just a game. It's just a game." In truth, it's more than a game, but it's still just a game. You know what I mean? Paradoxical, perhaps, but then again, that's life.

This weekend, if you tune in to the Final Four, go ahead and suspend your disbelief. Relate with your team and choose to get caught up in the drama. Hope your team wins. I know I will. But don't kid yourself; it's only an imitation.

By Jonny Walls


For more on basketball and life, check out my Dad's new book.