In a three week span, the San Francisco Giants’ Melky Cabrera, the Oakland Athletics’ Bartolo Colon, and Lance Armstrong have all been busted for using performance-enhancing drugs (PED). Cabrera and Colon, while guilty, illustrate the desire for relevance and the fear of physical decline, respectively. Cabrera had played for four teams: Yankees, Royals, Braves, and Giants. On the Yankees, he was mediocre, showing up at times during an at-bat. The Royals are a virtual death sentence in that they haven’t been relevant in thirty years – accept as a veritable farm system for other teams. The Braves have resurged in the last few years, but even Cabrera couldn’t find a place behind the likes of Jason Hayward. For the Giants, Cabrera was second in the league, batting .346 and winning the All-Star Game MVP. His use of PEDs was a stake in notoriety as well as the heavy paycheck that comes with it in professional sports. Drugs made him a commodity, put people in the seats in San Francisco, and kept them a top their division. For Colon, PEDs are a grasp at a promising youth that went away as his waistline expanded and his body aged. A former Cy Young winter, Colon had bounced around to a number of teams in the past few years, coming in and out of the league, and briefly appearing for a surprisingly adept start on the mound, only to revert to mediocrity shortly thereafter. PEDs were the fountain of youth, providing that stamina that flitted away. Granted, Colon wasn’t on his way to winning the Cy Young (he had an ERA of 3.43 and a 10-9 record), but he had regained his youth and held a secure spot in Oakland’s rotation.
As for Armstrong, there were no positive tests, and his stripping of seven Tour de France titles is predicated on a slew of people – including former teammates – willing to testify that he was doping during his run. But the eventual – and current – castigation of Armstrong elucidates the hypocrisy enveloping PEDs and other drugs: When do we deem it evil? When do we acquiesce? Yes, Armstrong won seven titles while allegedly doping – but he also made the Tour de France, and cycling, relevant. It finally received coverage. People outside of France followed it – and it was all because of Lance. Transitively, does the stripping of Lance’s titles require that all sponsors and television networks return the money that they earned by promoting a man who was doping – and his guilt is not a bombshell; it’s been presumed for quite a while. Can money makers be simply deemed naïve? – or are they merely advantageous?
More notably, Armstrong, a cancer survivor, teamed with Nike and raised millions of dollars through the sale of Livestrong bracelets.
The proceeds for these yellow silicone bracelets went to cancer research. In a sense, Armstrong has embodied the mythologized role of Robin Hood: generating a following, earning money, and giving it to the sick. So, perhaps he won’t be as chastised as Cabrera whose associates fabricated a website toting healthy supplements in order to take advantage of a loop hole in his union contract. (The loop hole is that major league baseball will consider overturning a positive test is the defendant can prove that he took a legal supplement with elements that might trigger a positive test result.)
So, with our chastisement of these athletes, why do we flock so readily to movies about phenomenal humans and super humans? Granted, some, like the X-Men are born into their plight / gifts. Others though are subject to the whims of man to make them who they are. Most notably, Captain America.
Originally appearing in March 1941, Captain America’s battles with the Axis powers appropriately articulated America’s anger and angst during World War II. At the same time, his conception is a bit more nefarious if we take a socio-political look at the trailer, which begins with a scrawny Steve Rogers waiting in a line at an Army recruitment office with brawny and muscular men who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the greater good and the betterment of the world. Thus, Rogers is instantly the outsider, connecting with those of us who don’t fit the archetype of “defender.” At the same time, the desire burns deeply within Rogers who pleads “just give me a chance,” but who is quickly dismissed by the doctor who asserts he is “saving your life” before pounding a giant red stamp on Rogers’ paper that now reads “REJECTED.” So, not only does Rogers not fit the archetype, but he has also been rejected, another occurrence that fosters emotional appeal, and places the viewer as collective battalion behind the young lad who just wants to stand up for what’s good and right.
What goes unsaid is that Rogers – because of his exaggeratedly diminutive figure – would be virtually useless in fighting a war and relegated to the position of human shield, so our compassion – and maybe even empathy – for Rogers stems from his dreams being deferred.
However, a silver lining presents itself when Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) offers an opportunity for someone in his unit to be the “first in a new breed of super soldier,” the one man who represents indestructability and who can “escort Adolph Hitler to the gates of hell,” a noble endeavor that only Tarantino has successfully illuminated on film.
Ultimately Rogers is chosen to become this ubermensch because “the weak man knows the value of strength, the value of power,” which is interesting inasmuch as, here, Rogers’ desire to serve and protect his country – which will ultimately bring him praise, acclaim, and possible fortune – is aided by a serum that creates a total body transformation from scrawny, mediocre weakling to a muscular figure with a superb physical and mental acumen to achieve the pragmatic goal of dominating the Axis powers. In a similar scenario, the aforementioned alleged PED users – and for the sake of argument, those who have already confessed to using or have tested positive – used similar serums (what else would you call a “cream and clear” regimen?) to achieve praise, acclaim, and fortune by dominating the opposition. If needed, we could take the argument further by using the “The Evil Empire” New York Yankees as stand-ins for the Axis Powers.
Sure, perhaps Captain America’s actions are justified because lives are at stake – as opposed to royalties and merchandizing rights – and perhaps this entire issue is negligible because he is, admittedly, a cartoon, but as Jason Dittmer posits in “Captain America’s Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post- 9/11 Geopolitics,” “the producers of comic books (and Captain America, specifically) view their products as more than just lowbrow entertainment; they view their works as opportunities to educate and socialize,” and if part of the education gleaned from such characters – along with positives – is to achieve success through unorthodox means because it’s for the greater good, who is to suggest this is a wonky perspective, particularly if – in the case of athletes – the greater good might be added philanthropy or positioning one’s family in the realm of the illusory American dream?
And, if Captain America’s “characterization as an explicitly American superhero establishes him as both a representative of the idealized American nation and as a defender of the American status quo,” then perhaps Armstrong, who made cycling relevant, generated millions of dollars for cancer research, and earned networks and his sponsors equally dense paychecks has every right to abhor his castigators who cheered him on with the ignorance of their own culpability.
