Field Of Dreams: A Bid To Replace The Corniness With Corn

The iconic baseball diamond from Field of Dreams has been put up for sale. Over at Boston.com, Charles P. Pierce believes it should be dug up and given a second life as a corn field. He does not like this movie. There is one point I understand:

[E]ven if you buy the conversion of the novel’s J.D. Salinger character into the reclusive black-activist played by James Earl Jones, having done so, do you think that character wouldn’t have noticed that there didn’t seem to be any room for Josh Gibson, or Cool Papa Bell, or Buck Leonard out there beyond the cornfield?

This certainly is lamentable. The best explanation I can offer, as well as some issues with Pierce’s critique, are after the jump.

The film features Shoeless Joe Jackson and an assortment of other Black Sox, but it doesn’t feature Ted Williams, because that would have been beside the point. Of the names Pierce dropped, only Cool Papa Bell played within a few years of the Black Sox scandal. Anyway, I see his point, but what if Bell were on the field with a bunch of white players from 1919? If they become fast friends, it’s a somewhat insulting glossing-over of historical truths. And if the players treat a black counterpart as they realistically would have, that spins off into a narrative that, while certainly worth exploring, isn’t germane to what the film is getting at. That needs to be its own film.

On to some other points:

This is supposed to be a film about fathers and son, and the connective generational tissue that is baseball. As such, it can’t even get Shoeless Joe Jackson hitting from the correct side of the plate? Nobody thought to check?

Yes, I wish they could have gotten this right. But this casting gaffe rend baseball’s “connective generational tissue”? All right, then.

it’s nothing more than unusually stupid Our-Daddys-Are-Dying propaganda

Y-you mean the film is a cynical ploy to get us to love our fathers? Drat! The Dad Lobby is at it again! Get those self-serving jerks out of Hollywood!

its apparent nod to that mythical beast, The Sixties, is Amy Madigan’s half-mad farm wife who spends the entire film in what is obviously a very bad acid flashback.

She’s a somewhat eccentric, passionate advocate of admirable ideals. Hippie!

Field of Dreams is a very cheesy movie. If I had simply read the film’s Wikipedia article rather than watching it, I would walk away laughing at how stupid it is. Kevin Costner... goes back to 1972... his daughter chokes on a hot dog... doctor uses his doctor skills to save her and doom himself... he plays catch with his dad, who is younger than him... what?

But the story, when digested in its proper context -- the movie itself -- provides a pleasant episode of escapism. The messages aren’t complicated. Baseball is awesome. The father-son relationship is something to be cherished. That’s it! My two cents: we should spend more time appreciating things for what they are, and less time being disappointed in what they aren’t.