Football Counter-Programming 2025--Week 5: Rest in Peace

Recently, Robert Redford died. 

I don't have a very strong connection to Redford. As a child, I remember him in Out of Africa and The Natural. I've seen his version of Jay Gatsby. I certainly know him as S.H.I.E.L.D. director Alexander Pierce. But he hasn't been a huge acting presence in my life.

I know that so many people revere him, however. And when anyone of notoriety dies, the social media posts light up with praise and remembrances.

I want to highlight an observation that I liked from one such remembrance--via The Ringer. It posits that Redford shaped a new late 1960s & 1970s version of the male archetype as an in between space transitioning from the midcentury male who "bends but never breaks" [I'll suggest Captain Steve (America) Rogers, who can get up, dust himself off, and do this all day.] and the 1980s muscle-head who never stops inflicting himself and his pain on his target. [Here I'll point to Tony "Iron Man" Stark, who is a thinking version of Rambo--someone who always has whatever he needs to inflict him action on the enemy.]

Redford never came off as someone who would happily take a punch. He was too pretty for that. And he wasn't the angriest man in the room either.

I'm not a fighter. So, I could never pattern myself after a tough guy--either one of the Greatest Generation or of the Last Action Hero genre. But we need different versions of male attitude and action these days. If I have to pick, I'll pick Redford I suppose.

But, whomever you pick, don't pick College Football on a Saturday.

Thanks and see you next week.