The Reel Critic: 42

In his class "Segregation in America: Baseball’s Negro Leagues," Emeritus Dean of Advising and Assistant Professor of American Studies Karl Lindholm does not spend an inordinate amount of time discussing Jackie Robinson. Though he acknowledges the Robinson story is “the greatest there is,” he’s reluctant to devote it more time than is necessary. Lindholm’s reasoning is two-fold: first, there is little to add to the existing literature — an entire semester could be spent reading about Jackie Robinson; and second, because Robinson’s story is so often told and so well-known, the entire history of black baseball seems to be collapsed into the Robinson story.

42, the recently released biopic on Robinson, falls into this trap. Not only does the movie add nothing to our understanding of Robinson’s life, it also takes the simplest of paths to tell the story: Dodgers owner Branch Rickey has a plan to integrate Major League Baseball; Jackie Robinson is chosen to break the “color barrier”; Robinson faces racism; Robinson overcomes said racism. To further illustrate this point, in 42 there are three kinds of people: racist whites — many of whom quickly realize the error of their ways — benign whites, and blacks, who it is assumed are all supportive of Robinson. In fact, before Robinson even plays a minor league game, 42 coronates him as a hero to the black baseball community.

In reality, many Negro Leaguers saw Robinson as the wrong choice. At 26 years old, Robinson had yet to prove himself in the Negro Leagues while players such as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson — to name just two — had played their way into Negro League lore. Far from placing Robinson on a pedestal, therefore, many black ballplayers expected, and some perhaps privately hoped, that he would fail. Certainly Robinson’s success, and baseball’s eventual integration, sunk the thriving Negro Leagues, displacing many talented players who could not find work in integrated Major League Baseball, which was careful to limit the number of black players in the years following Robinson’s breakthrough. This is not an argument against integration, but rather a suggestion that the realities of integration, and black’s and white’s attitudes toward Robinson, were far more complicated than 42 acknowledged.

The movie’s greatest fault, however, is its failure to accurately convey the racial sentiments of the time. With a few notable exceptions, the ugly and systemic racism remains in the shadows, rearing its head just often enough to remind the audience that it exists, but without truly challenging viewers to confront their own perception of race relations during segregation. In the most disturbing scene, Robinson is showered with racial epithets by Philadelphia manager Ben Chapman every time he comes to the plate, eventually leading to an emotional breakdown in the tunnel below the Dodgers’ team dugout. Unfortunately, this scene ultimately serves to further the juxtaposition of white racism and white progressivism, as Dodgers owner Branch Rickey offers words of comfort and courage to Robinson who returns to the field to win the game for the Dodgers.

The film is an exercise in teleology; in 42 Robinson’s success and the eventual integration of baseball is pre-determined. In an impassioned speech, Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher warns his dissenting players that Robinson is just the first black ballplayer and “more will be coming every day.” In 2013 it seems natural that Durocher would make such an assertion. In 1947, Durocher was confident only in Robinson’s talent (and did challenge his mutinous squad to accept him or be reassigned).

Crediting him with foreseeing baseball’s successful integration before Robinson’s first major league game, however, is an example of just how far 42 bends the historical record in order to fit its narrative. Consider that the Boston Red Sox did not integrate until 1959 — more than a decade after Robinson played his first major league game with the Dodgers — and Durocher’s certainty seems far more likely to be the construction of a director who knows what will happen than the clairvoyance of a man attempting to rally his team.

Ultimately, Brian Helgeland, 42’s  screenwriter and director, is more concerned with how the film will be interpreted in 2013 than giving an unfiltered portrayal of what happened in 1947. Racism is used as a tool to define characters and how the audience should feel about them: The city of Philadelphia is racist, Brooklyn is not; teammates who don’t accept Robinson are traded to bad teams; and there is never any doubt that the goodness of equality will defeat the evil of segregation.

Though Jackie Robinson continues to inspire many to believe that a better life is possible, 42 never questions whether any other conclusion to the story was possible. In the seminal Rickey-Robinson moment, the Dodgers owner says he needs a player “who has the guts not to fight back” and explains that public perception will be just as important as Robinson’s performance on the field. Helgeland need not have taken the same approach to 42.