documentary Archives - Not Even Past

Nature Boy, 30 for 30 (directed by Rory Karpf, 2017)

“Nature Boy” Ric Flair at the Hulkmania Tour in Melbourne, Australia in 2009 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Growing up, I enjoyed going over to my Uncle Glenn’s house on Saturdays. In the afternoons, he and my Uncle Jeff would tune trucks and fix lawn mowers, rototillers, and other machinery. I was too young to fix anything, but I wasn’t there to help my blue-collar uncles with these tasks. I came over to watch World Championship Wrestling’s Saturday Night. It was at my uncle’s house where I was introduced to the first “heel” I’d ever root for — “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

Flair’s personal life is the subject of ESPN’s newest 30 for 30 documentary, “Nature Boy,” directed by Rory Karpf. Flair, the consummate showman, lived the life he portrayed on television — a stylin’, profilin’, jet flyin’, kiss stealin’, wheelin’ n’ dealin’ son-of-a-gun. In the process, Flair captured the imaginations of wrestling fans around the nation. Yet, as “Nature Boy” shows, the pressures of living this life, which included heavy drinking and sexual promiscuity, weighed on Flair. “I always wanted to be The Man,” he says early in the film. “I could never live just being a man.” The result was a string of broken marriages and devastating alcoholism and depression.

Born in 1949, Flair, whose legal name is Richard Morgan Fliehr, was adopted. He fell in love with wrestling as a child, watching it on Saturday evenings. From a young age, Flair’s interests were not those he could share with his adoptive parents. In addition to loving wrestling, Flair was into sports. His parents, on the other hand, went to the theatre. Flair’s athletic prowess was on display as a high school athlete, ultimately landing him a spot on the University of Minnesota football team. But, the academic life wasn’t for Flair. He was always looking for more attention than hitting the books could’ve provided.

After leaving the University of Minnesota, Flair attended Verne Gagne’s wrestling camp. Here, Flair learned the basics of the art of wrestling. Gagne put his recruits through the wringer. As part of training, Flair recounts having to run up 21 flights of stairs, often carrying another wrestler on his back. Then, the pair would have to wheelbarrow up the stairs. These exercises helped recruits gain the physical and cardiovascular endurance to participate in the “fake” sport of wrestling. But, Gagne’s camp had other challenges. Even “hitting the ropes” involved endless practice. If done poorly, the ropes tore the skin off the wrestlers’ arms. On top of this, Flair and others had to learn how to fall on the mat. For the first six weeks of Gagne’s camp, Flair remembered how everything was black and blue. Flair had a knack for wrestling, something immediately apparent to everyone who saw him..

Ric Flair vs. Douglas Williams (via Wikimedia Commons)

Everything was almost taken away from him when, on October 4, 1975, Flair’s life nearly ended in an airplane crash. Flair broke his back in three places; his spine was smashed together. Not being able to exercise caused Flair’s body to wither from 225 to 180 lbs. He had to start working out again if he wanted to wrestle. This experience helped Flair understand who he wanted to be as a wrestler. “When I crashed in the airplane,” Flair tells Karpf, he realized that he “wanted to be blonde and a bad guy.”

The way “Nature Boy” documents the process of inventing Ric Flair is one of the documentary’s strengths. Leslie Jacobs, Flair’s first wife, saw a noticeable change in her husband as he began to live his wrestling persona. Flair purchased the items he’d often mention in his promos. This included his own limousine and the elaborate robes that he’d wear on his way to the ring. He wasn’t shy about how much his Rolex watches or leather shoes cost. Consumerism became a key part of his wrestling and personal life. Flair’s wrestler self, according to Jacobs, “got bigger and bigger.” Wrestling, which experienced a boom in the 1980s, provided Flair the opportunity to do anything he wanted to do. Separating “The Nature Boy” from Richard Morgan Fliehr became essential for getting what he wanted out of life. “I lived my gimmick,” Flair admits.

Flair’s persona, not to mention his style of wrestling, was a natural fit in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (WCW), both of which were marketed for blue-collared men (like my uncles) who wanted to see a fight. (What these companies presented contrasted sharply with the cartoonish gimmicks the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) offered its young audience.) The different styles of wrestling meant that Flair could have intense — and violent — rivalries with some of the best wrestlers of the 1980s. This included longstanding feuds with Dusty Rhodes and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, two of Flair’s favorite opponents. Flair’s association with NWA and WCW, though, limited him as a regional wrestler. Until he joined the WWF in the early 1990s, Flair’s fame remained restricted to parts of the South and the Midwest.

Instead of focusing on Flair’s in-ring career, “Nature Boy” spends considerable time on Flair’s weaknesses — sex and alcohol. In interviews with Karpf, Flair is open about his inability to be monogamous, claiming to have slept with as many as 10,000 women. Often, women and alcohol went hand-in-hand. Flair tells a story about how he visited a sports psychologist who asked him about his sex and drinking habits. In this confessional, Flair admitted to drinking at least 10 beers and 5 mixed drinks every day for nearly 20 years — from 1972 to 1989. During this span of time, Flair remained a functional alcoholic, showing up for his matches and remaining dedicated to the sport he loved.

Ric Flair after winning a Hardcore match in 2010 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Wrestling couldn’t provide Flair with everything he wanted. Flair’s candid about how he was never home, pretty much neglecting his children from his first two marriages. In addition, Flair’s parents were not impressed by their son’s rabid consumerism. Flair recalls how excited he was to show his parents the $2 million house he bought. Instead of being impressed, they asked why anyone would need such luxuries in their life. Despite being one of the most recognizable faces in “sports entertainment,” Flair never received the recognition he wanted from his parents.

The most devastating part of “Nature Boy” deals with the death of Flair’s son, Reid. Reid, a successful amateur wrestler, idolized his father growing up, even mimicking his father’s famous “Woo!” in WCW promos in the late-1990s. Flair fostered Reid’s interest in professional wrestling, taking him to Japan to earn some money and gain in-ring experience. Although Flair was spending time with his son, he showed another weakness — his inability to be a father. Reid was masking his problems much in the same way his father had done — with alcohol and drugs. When Reid was trying out for the WWE, Flair was told by Paul Levesque (better known as Triple H) about his son’s drug habit. Yet, Flair, a “consummate liar,” according to Levesque, couldn’t face the truth and, on March 29, 2013, Reid died from a heroin overdose. In mourning, Flair drank. It was the “[o]nly way I could get away from it,” he says.

In “Nature Boy,” Karpf fully captures the ups-and-downs that have characterized Ric Flair’s life. It’s an emotional documentary that underscores how fragile the human experience can be. As a biographical account of Ric Flair, “Nature Boy” succeeds. Still, I found myself wanting more from a 90-minute film. There’s mention of Flair bouncing back-and-forth between WCW and WWE, but “Nature Boy” offers little regarding Flair’s status as a wrestler in the 1990s, a period where these two wrestling companies duked it out in their famed Monday Night Wars. In addition, there’s little about the homosociality of wrestlers. At one point in “Nature Boy,” Sting, a WCW icon, remembers, “I’ve never seen a guy with his pants pulled down more than Ric Flair.” With all the mention of “locker room talk” over the past fifteen months, “Nature Boy” never really answers the main question it raises: What is a man? Additional commentary on this point, including more pointed questions from Karpf to Flair about manhood and masculinity, would’ve made a good documentary even better.

Also by Christopher Babits on Not Even Past:

“Doing” History in the Modern U.S. Survey: Teaching With and Analyzing Academic Articles
Finding Hitler (in all the Wrong Places?)
The Rise of Liberal Religion by Matthew Hedstrom (2013)
Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self by Jessica Grogan (2012)
Another perspective on the Texas Textbook Controversy

The Battle of Chile

“Where is that terrible beauty we planted so long ago?”

-Santiago del Nuevo Extremo

Rodolfo Müller is almost a hundred years old, now. He still lives in the same house as always, off Simón Bolivar, between Hamburgo and Coventry. That’s in Ñuñoa, a township on the near west side of Santiago. It’s a big house, and very nice but unpretentious. If he had wanted, he could have picked a more prestigious address further north, in Providencia, or up higher, in Las Condes. But he didn’t.

Rodolfo was born in Germany in about 1920. Before World War II, he came to Chile with his parents and his brother. They were just teenagers. I met him when he was almost sixty. He still looked very German after all those years: tall, blond, and blue-eyed. But he was a Jew. That’s what people said, anyway. Maybe, just on his mother’s side. They came to Chile to escape from Hitler. They left in time and made new lives in South America.

Rodolfo was a violinist and a pretty good one, apparently. Until he lost a segment of his little finger in an accident. If it had been his right hand, it wouldn’t have mattered as much, not for the violin. But it was the left. Violinists use that a lot. Rodolfo was a mechanic. It was a work-related accident. Machines are cold-hearted and unforgiving in that way.

He drove a ’64 Volvo. It was old, even then, but it ran like a Swiss watch. He did all the work on it personally. Rodolfo was not the mechanic at the shop on the corner. He was the ace; the mechanical surgeon. A horse-tamer for steel and steam. When big industrial contraptions at local factories broke down, they came and got Rodolfo. He understood machines.

When he gave up the violin, Rodolfo started playing the accordion. You can’t have music from Chiloé without an accordion. Besides, after Beethoven’s quartets, the melodies from Chiloé were simple, comrade. He played in a group was called Aydar. His wife, Irma Silva, was the director.

Jorge Müller shooting for the film The Battle of Chile — Jorge Müller shooting for the film *The Battle of Chile* (via Patricio Guzmán)

Chiloé is an island in the south. Potatoes, sheep, and seafood. Theirs was a picturesque culture and they had a music all their own. Aydar comes from the local vocabulary. It’s a contraction of ayudar, to help. Solidarity is fundamental for survival in a place like that. It was primitive island communism. It’s just how it was.

Irma and Rodolfo were members of the Association of the Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared, (Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos). Aydar was not the official group of the Association. There was one. But this was Irma’s project, where Inelia sang and danced the cueca with Lucho from Lo Hermida. It’s where I met Pepe and Alfredo, Victor and Jaqueline, Sonia and the unforgettable Miguel Marín. I played guitar and sang backup vocals. I could do harmony. People liked that. Everyone there had been hurt by the Pinochet regime in one way or another. It was our protest group. They couldn’t kill the joy.

Irma was a professional folklorist. She even taught folklore at the University, before the coup. After the coup, folklore was considered suspicious. Too many leftists.

Irma and Rodolfo were the parents of Jorge Müller, the filmmaker. He disappeared on November 29, 1974, along with his girlfriend, the actress and producer, Carmen Bueno. Inelia’s boy, Tito, had been gone four months by then. Miguel Angel, Doris Meniconi’s boy, just ten days.

Jorge Müller and Carmen Bueno were clandestine members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, also known as MIR. Before the coup, they had worked for Chile Films. With director Patricio Guzmán, they made the documentary, La batalla de Chile –The Battle of Chile. It was about the historical process in Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government. It was meant to be a memoir of the revolution, but it devolved into a denunciation of the coup. Jorge was the cameraman. The whole world can now see the coup unfolding through his eyes.

Jorge Müller and Patricio Guzmán (via Patricio Guzmán)

Now, if MIR wanted a documentary about the Popular Unity government, it wasn’t to come out in support of the idea that the ballot box was the right way to have a revolution, comrade. MIR wasn’t a part of the Popular Unity coalition. They believed in violent overthrow or nothing at all. The theory was that if you tried to take over the means of production nicely, there will be a coup. They were right about that. But Chile Films was more than just MIR, and documentaries are more than just propaganda. In the long run, The Battle of Chile got out of control. Now, it’s a classic.

The unedited footage was smuggled out after the coup. That cost Jorge his life. Irma was inconsolable. She was a high society lady, deep down. She liked things done properly, efficiently and on time. She joined the Association when Jorge disappeared. Later, she created Aydar.

Folklore from Chiloé was raucous, sentimental, and fun. Someone would speak briefly, at the beginning of our presentations, to say who we were and why we were there. Then, it was strictly repertoire from Chiloé. Some of the songs talked about lovers lost at sea, or travelers who never came home, but the listeners had to make the connection themselves. It was a challenge to the regime, but an indirect one. A clever one.

Among the mothers in the Association, Irma was one of the youngest. She died of cancer in ’94. Pinochet was no longer in power, but there was still no news of Jorge. Rodolfo was left alone. A grandson went to live with him. And there are many friends from the old days. He hasn’t been forgotten. His son was an artist. One of the best Chile has ever known. But there can be no poets in Plato’s Republic, comrade. As it turns out, the real battle of Chile was one that we would lose. The whole project of a world that is fair, just, and free has collapsed.

The Battle of Chile movie poster (via Patricio Guzmán)

They started filming in May of ’72. The tale had begun, but no one knew how it would end. Víctor Jara had a song about that, from before. After the coup, Santiago del Nuevo Extremo gave us the verse, where is that terrible beauty we planted, so long ago? Nostalgia, comrade.

The revolution failed, but the film is still a treasure. It has its rightful place today in the shantytowns of poor Chilean youth, the ones who never knew that once there had been a dream.

Irma and Rodolfo had a house on the coast, at El Quisco. That was a beautiful beach and, in its heyday, pretty elegant. Now, it has sort of come down in the world. People with money don’t go there anymore. They prefer Algarrobo, Papudo and Zapallar. Not because the beaches are any better, only because the crowd is more exclusive.

Irma and Rodolfo’s house was up on a cliff, right near the shore. It was a wooden house, red and white, with a huge pine tree in the front. The beach was about five hundred feet away, but to get there, you had to take the stairs. It was about two-hundred feet down. Which was why the view from the back porch was so spectacular. There was a well that never went dry. In a coastal town with a chronic water shortage, Irma and Rodolfo’s house was the oasis.

Deep down, Jorge liked the good life. Given a choice between a political demonstration downtown and a day at the beach with his friends, he preferred the day at the beach. El Quisco was his beach. I bought that house in 1987. Irma and Rodolfo sold it because they needed the money and because they weren’t going very often anymore. It was hard, because it was Jorge’s house, too. It was as if his footsteps could still be heard there. As if his heart were still beating there. Something about the smell. When I went, which was quite often, it was as if I dreamed his dreams and saw his visions. Irma and Rodolfo wanted the house to stay in the family. It was a simple place, but enchanting.

Aydar performed from ’76 until ’88, more or less. Those were glorious years, tragic and triumphant. Irma and Rodolfo had another child, a daughter, but Jorge was their pride and joy. And they were right to be proud. Repressive government doesn’t work out when people can see the truth.

The DINA took Jorge Müller and Carmen Bueno at 9:30 am on the corner of Bilbao and Los Leones. They had been to a party with the cast and crew of another film that had opened the night before at Cine Las Condes. They were on their way to work at Chile Films, but they never made it there. Agents appeared in civilian clothing, driving a grey Chevrolet pick-up. We have seen them before. They tried to rip out the people’s eyes and ears, comrade, but we still have the film. That’s not ever going away.

Perhaps, Jorge and Carmen died believing that victory was imminent. That’s what MIR had taught them. Song, poetry and cinema are more powerful than bombs and bullets. Maybe they are, but sometimes, they are not powerful enough.

For more on Chile’s disappeared ones, see www.memoriaviva.com.

La Batalla de Chile is available on Youtube, linked here is part one of four.

Also by Nathan Stone on Not Even Past:

Rodolfo Valentín González Pérez: An Unusual Disappearance

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Monica Jimenez reviews Remembering Pinochet’s Chile
Jimena Perry on memory and violence in Colombia
Elizabeth O’Brien reviews Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1970

Elevate (2012)

By Danielle Sanchez

Anne Buford’s documentary Elevate focuses on several Senegalese youths and their attempts to make it out of Senegal through basketball. Through the compelling narratives of each of the Senegalese students portrayed in the insightful documentary, we witness the trials and tribulations of urban youths trying to move beyond the difficulties that they face in their daily lives in Senegal. The documentary begins at the SEEDS Academy, the project of Amadou Gallo Fall, a personnel director for the Dallas Mavericks. Essentially, the SEEDS Academy is described as an attempt to create a boarding school for Senegalese youths to hone their basketball and academic skills and eventually (hopefully) receive a scholarship to play basketball at a prestigious prep school in the US. Beyond this, each of the young Senegalese students profiled in the ESPN funded documentary hope to play college basketball and eventually make their way to the NBA.

While soccer is the predominant leisure sport in much of West Africa, efforts like that of Amadou Gallo Fall are making basketball appear to be a gateway to prestige and socio-economic advancement for individuals like Assane, Aziz, Dethie, Byago, and their Senegalese peers. Thus, youths who have never played basketball before are beginning to pick up the sport in increasing numbers. In the documentary, viewers see the immense amount of training and preparation leading to evaluations that eventually decide whether these hopefuls receive a coveted scholarship position at a U.S. prep school. Despite this, the students portrayed in the documentary were often unprepared for what they would experience in America. Feelings of isolation were prominent throughout the documentary, especially among Senegalese students when they were the only “outsider” in a school filled with socio-economically privileged American students.

Anne Buford, a first-time documentarian, does an exceptional job of capturing the students’ discomfort in their encounters with the American academic system and predominantly white youth culture. In the course of the film, we see students fighting to bear the cold weather, trying to “fit in,” and struggling in their coursework due to

the fact that these students primarily speak French. Some of the most intriguing moments in the documentary involve issues of religion and alienation in the new environments that surround these young students. Both Assane and Aziz are Muslim and it is evident that in both of their respective schools, practicing Islam is not well understood by their peers. This is particularly poignant in a dining hall conversation that Aziz has with one of his schoolmates who knew little about Ramadan, but was curious why Aziz was abstaining from eating during their mealtime. We later see Aziz breaking fast alone in his dorm room. Buford also captures a sense of Assane’s religious isolation in her juxtaposition of school-wide church services in the religiously-affiliated prep academy and his solitary prayer sessions in his dorm room. Despite these difficulties, at one point, Dethie lands a position at the same school as Assane. As a result, Assane is able to guide him through such a large cultural, physical, and mental transition. In the end, we are left with a bittersweet message of hope. All of the students in the documentary continued their education in the United States and played basketball at the college level at schools ranging from Carroll College in Montana to the University of Virginia where Assane was a starting center.

The documentary could have delved more into socio-economic inequality, especially regarding neocolonialism and limited opportunities for advancement in the post-colony. While we briefly witness the Senegalese communities from which Assane, Dethie, Aziz, and Byago emerged, I would be interested in seeing more about the Senegalese education system and avenues for advancement outside of sports as a way of contrasting this with the relatively new establishment of the SEEDS Academy.

Ultimately, however, this film captures an intriguing cultural exchange that embodies our era of globalization. What may seem like a documentary on a seemingly universal sport ultimately emphasizes understandings (and misunderstandings) of both the west and Africa. Even the sport of basketball is a different game in the United States, where there is a greater emphasis on shooting instead of defense. Nevertheless, these Senegalese students have quite a bit in common with other student athletes from throughout the United States — they are all searching for opportunities for advancement despite seemingly impossible odds. Despite the odds, their dreams of success in the NBA and hopes of bringing their families to America or their wealth back to Senegal live on.

Photo Credits:

Manute Bol, a Sudanese born center for the NBA’s Washington Bullets, stands next to his teammate, guard Muggsy Bogues, during the 1987-88 season. Bol and Bogues were, respectively, the tallest and shortest players in the NBA at the time. (Image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons)

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

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This recent NPR story about Sudanese teenagers moving to Illinois to play basketball

Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (2002)

By Daina Ramey Berry and Jermaine Thibodeaux

This film tells the story of Nat Turner’s 1831 Virginia slave revolt. For years, historians have grappled with the details of the affair and debated about the ways Nat Turner should be remembered. For some, he was a revolutionary hero; for others, Turner was nothing more than a deranged, blood-hungry killer. After all, it was Turner’s rebellion that sent the South into a frenzy forcing southern legislatures and planters to harden their stances (and laws) on slavery. This PBS movie blends documentary narrative, historical re-enactment, and scholarly reflection to examine the various renditions of the revolt and to uncover the many faces of Nat Turner and slave resistance in general. Directed by Charles Burnett, this is a film worth watching for those interested in slavery, public history, and the history memory. As part of the Independent Lens series, the PBS website provides a wealth of historical material on Nat Turner, slave rebellion, and historical treatments.

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