BATTLE: Why do We Love it?
- Posted on 8th December 2015
- in Entertainment, entertainment books, Hollywood books, Hollywood High School, Hollywood memoirs
- by Ben
I’m reading an historical novel, the details of which don’t matter, and I came upon a chapter called
“BATTLE”.
It got me to thinking. And nowadays when I think, I type. (As in: “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”) I reckon it’s up to you to decide which this is.
Anyhow…
What is it about battle that we (particularly men) like so much? Immediately the scene from the movie Michael comes to mind; the one where Travolta, as the Angel Michael, leaps out of the car and runs into a field to face a bull. He grins broadly as he squares off in front of the snorting beast and with great pleasure says, “battle!”
Against all sane sense of self preservation we men love battle. Every war story has one or more characters who are frustrated because they are not on the front lines – where they’re likely to be killed. Insane! This is not a universally shared delusion of those who write such tales. It seems to be in the male DNA. I find myself fascinated by this seemingly self-destructive tendency resident in the very souls of us men folk and while I’m neither scientist nor philosopher, I feel compelled to share my thoughts on the subject.
When there’s no war available we play warlike, dangerous games like football and hockey, which is even more dangerous than football. There are weapons!
From the time when my physical skills were barely sufficient I played football. As a ten or eleven year old boy my neighbor Ron and I squared off in my backyard – he had a helmet, I had shoulder pads – and repeatedly crashed head-on into one another. We probably gave each other concussions but who knew and furthermore, who cared? We were boys. We wanted battle. Then in high school and college I played football. Sure, I ran track, was a diver and played water polo but football was the king sport.
In those days, the 1950s and ‘60s, we had “live” scrimmages two or three times a week. By that I mean we practiced against one another full out, as though we were in a game. Interestingly, I didn’t “hit hard enough” in practice and got a reputation for being “gutless”.
Author Ben Bryant: Hollywood High Fullback
My senior year when I was a burly 195 pounds of muscle, the third fastest guy on the team I was third string fullback, until our second game when the first and second string fullbacks were hurt. Here’s a brief excerpt from Three Stages:
I ran out onto the field and was not greeted with enthusiasm by my teammates. It was second down with short yardage and the obvious play was a fullback up the middle so I got the ball. I ran straight ahead, leveled both the linebacker and defensive back who tried to tackle me and, after about fifteen yards, was tripped by the safety. After that run there were looks of astonishment on the faces when we huddled up. … Without going into a play-by-play suffice it to say that I was a holy terror on the field. When I wasn’t the ball carrier I made my assigned block then knocked down another opponent or two. When I carried I ran over people, knocking one guy out cold. We scored and when I ran off the field Ernie Nauman grabbed me by the shoulder pads and said, “What the hell was that?” To which I replied, “Gee, Coach, I don’t know those guys so I’m not afraid that I’ll hurt ‘em.” It was an epiphany for both of us. I wasn’t gutless after all. I was afraid that if I went all out I’d hurt my friends! I was now first string fullback.
So inside that teenaged Tasmanian Devil there was a gentle soul who was reluctant to inflict pain on his friends. But I digress.
Football hurts. Young athletes develop an inurement to pain, especially football players. When I’m watching NFL games with Elizabeth (A big Eli Manning fan) and a player gets slammed into the ground she groans and makes pain remarks. I tell her that it hurts but somehow you don’t feel it. You just bounce up and get into the huddle hoping that the coach leaves you in the game.
Battle!
At Whittier College where, in my sophomore year, I was rightly (future NFL hall of fame) coach George Allen’s third string fullback I got “killed” numerous times three days a week and it never bothered me a bit.
Battle!
Google that word and you’ll get 814,000,000 hits. The bothersome thing about this is that 294,000,000 if those hits are about games, mostly computer video games. Forget the arguments about the violence of movies and TV, their influence is becoming less and less important by the hour. These unbelievably violent and seemingly realistic games permit our youngsters to actually engage in a kind of mindless yet skillful form of warfare, battle. The carnage is stupefying. Anyone can see this in the TV commercials for these repugnant products.
It doesn’t require a degree in psychology, merely common sense, to recognize that constant immersion in these realistic and ultra-violent cyber worlds influences and desensitizes young minds. Then some of these boys or their mentally unbalanced elder uncles, get their hands on an AR-15 and you know the rest of that tale. Football seems a pretty sane alternative.
The other thing that bothers me today is the asshole wimp politicians (you know who they are) that want to send our young men into Real Battle, the kind with lethal weapons from which you do not take off your headset and put down your controller (or bounce up and run into the huddle). That turns out to be no fun at all. Just talk to a young veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan.
Battle!
Click here to get Author Ben Bryant’s Memoirs 
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