Football at Shatner's or Diner from Heat?

The ideology of non-ideological spaces

Everybody bangs on about Heat being a bona-fide classic but time has not been kind to it. There's something deeply silly about the crime epic's stoical men and dysfunctional women. The women tend to be alcoholics, adulteresses or depressed to a degree of self endangerment. Meanwhile the men frown, shout about big asses and shoulder their emotional burdens in solitude.

Much is made of how indistinguishable the robbers are from the cops, with their fraternal bonds and tearless bereavements. In the moments before a clinch between Robert de Niro's McCauley and his younger love interest, Eady, she asks him if he's alone. He replies,

"I'm alone, not lonely. You?"

"I get lonely," Eady confesses.

McCauley is played as stoical and strong but Eady is at the mercy of her emotions. I should also mention that the bluescreen backdrop of a twinkling nocturnal LA vista in this scene makes the rooftop from The Room look like Avatar 2.

I still like Heat, it's a fun watch. The bank robbery scene holds up to its reputation as a benchmark of the genre. The face-to-face parley between the master criminal McCauley and his police detective nemesis, Al Pacino's Vincent Hanna, is just as iconic.

While it's still imbued with the same stoical, alpha male intensity that threatens to tip the whole film over for its duration, there's no denying that the two leads make the most of the little, intimate moment with huge implications for what's to come.

During the course of the meeting the men muse on their mutual qualities and their unassailable differences. Hana’s recollection of his recurring nightmares to McCauley is probably the closest he will ever get to seeking some much-needed therapy. They drink coffee together and part, knowing that their next encounter won't be so convivial.

There's something else about this meeting that hits differently in the years since I first watched it. But before I get to that, I'll take a quick detour concerning another member of the film’s cast, one who refused a stunt double because he saw getting pushed through a plate glass window by Al Pacino as a badge of honour.

Henry Rollins, who plays Hugh Benny in Heat, has a great story about his friendship with William Shatner. Affable Canadian that Shatner is, he'd invite people of different social and political leanings to his annual Superbowl watch party to partake of food and merriment together. This proved to be a bridge too far for Rollins when he found himself introduced to the Far Right commentator, Rush Limbaugh. Rollins must have fixed Limbaugh with quite the glare because he remembered the look of shock and fear in Limbaugh's eyes before he turned, left the party and drove home. After a few moments had passed, Rollins answered his phone to an anxious Shatner who wanted to know why he had left. When Rollins spoke of his all consuming dislike for Limbaugh, an inconsolable Shatner pleaded, "But Henry, we're just a bunch of guys watching the game!"

I think about that story a lot. I muse on the concept of ‘Football at Shatners’ as a place where ideological differences are cast aside so that a bunch of guys can embrace their common humanity while enjoying food, drink and safety-Rugby. This kind of space can be contrasted with the ‘Diner from Heat’ where acknowledged adversaries take a stab at some kind of common ground.

One important difference between the two is that 'Football at Shatners' seems to take place in a state of innocence until the spectre of ideological division materialises with all its attendant animosity and tension. By contrast, 'Diner from Heat' is a place where acknowledged adversaries come together to find some common ground, even if it's to agree on their rules of engagement. Sometimes a space can be 'Football at Shatners' until conflict arises and then there's a choice between continuing the conflict or aiming to establish a 'DIner from Heat'.

Here’s an example of that kind of transformation. I’m not the most sociable of parents. I tend to look at my phone or play on my retro handheld while my youngest gallivants about with her classmates at the park after school. I find that most of the parents that form cosy social clusters and chat away are the same kind of people that enjoyed high school. The ones Steven King told us not to trust.

Anyway, every now and again I might find myself in conversation with another insular parent, normally after contact is clumsily brokered by our kids. One of these parents is a pleasant and intellgent man that I really hit it off with. We'd converse about the weather, technology and local vegan friendly eateries. Our day-to-day chats became so relaxed and convivial that I mindlessly stated something about “Tory scum”.

Dear reader, he was a Tory.

The playground was no longer "Football at Shatners". The ideological innocence of the civic space had been shattered by my annoying habit of slipping from quippy small talk into bloodshot pontification. As he pointed out that he was a Tory, he did so with a degree of dignity, seeing as I’d indirectly referred to him as scum.

I backpedalled a bit, speaking about how my beef was more with the politicians than the voters. Part of me already accepted that some people voted Tory for what they saw as pragmatic reasons, fearing that the utopians and idealists would throw out the baby with the bathwater. This might have held water before the birth of Trussonomics.

My interactions with the other Dad became the Diner Scene from Heat. We acknowledged our differences and often revisited them in our chats. There was no set up for a climactic confrontation. The word “scum” remained holstered. We still seemed to have enough in common beyond the boxes that we ticked every couple of years.

That said, this wasn't always the outcome of this kind of ideological outing. I really like my postman but there was a time that I was behind him in the queue at the local shop and I noticed him buying a copy of the Daily Mail. Weirdly, it didn’t create any tension. Our little niceties at the doorstep still felt like Football at Shatners.

In my old blue-collar working life, I used to sit with men whose spectrum of reading material ranged from The Sun to Razzle (if you don't know what it is, for the love of all that is holy, don't google it). They belched out racist, sexist and homophobic epithets to the degree that they would often tell each other, "Don't go talking with him about that, he loves 'em" whenever I was around.

I was also in the strangely privileged position that many lefty types don't get to occupy, the ability to watch a human being absorb the contents of The Sun newspaper with no resistance, scepticism or criticality. Unless it was a loudly bylined columnist, there was no curiosity about who wrote the article or what their motives were for writing it. Their thoughts marched in lockstep to the tempo of the tabloid's artful artlessness.

I never called them scum but I challenged them every step of the way. I still would. But despite the remnant tension in the air, we were able to get on with cutting a long hedge along the entire circumference of a public garden in Ealing. The air seemed capable enough of clearing itself.

One difference between then and now, however, is the ubiquity of the internet.The only reason why I pulled my phone from my pocket back then was to play a game of snake. The time I spent online at internet cafes was too precious to waste on debates or hate follows.

Nowadays, we constantly reach for our little screens in any environment to summon our restless internet selves into the thick of whatever civic space we find ourselves in. What used to exist as a curious box plugged into a phone line in a physical room has now become a functional, ideological overlay in a 'real world' that didn't always need such a redundant designation. For all the uncanny bells and whistles of the upcoming Apple Vision headset, we're already living in augmented reality.

In this context, the ubiquity of the internet has moved civic spaces from seeming to be ideologically innocent (Football at Shatners) to ideologically fraught (Diner from Heat).

But civic spaces have always been fraught, it's just that many demographics are ignorant of that fraughtness. Ignorant, not innocent. It is very possible for two people to meet in a civic space and for one of them to feel like it’s 'Football at Shatners' and for the other to feel that it’s 'Diner from Heat'. It could be the presence of a woman among a bunch of guys just watching the game or a Tory voter within the liberal orthodoxy of an inner city playground.

The term “public square” has been bandied about ad-nauseum by libertarian billionaires of late. The term harkens back to the ideal of the Agora, neutral ground where opposing ideals can be aired. We have such a place like that in London, it’s called Speaker’s Corner and it’s populated by bellicose ideologues, spitting their irreconcilable differences into the wind.

We also have democratic government chambers where two sets of benches sit in opposition, the space between them dictated by the necessary distance needed to impale one’s foe with a rapier. But, despite these theatrics, there are a number of bills that pass with common consent, mostly due to the common ground that is found within the less theatrically divided spaces about the building.

My main point isn’t one about the possibility of a neutral public space that can accommodate schisms and divisions. I don’t think there is one. But two people can always be brought together by their commonalities before they need to acknowledge their differences. The Socratic method requires that two parties start off at a mutually acknowledged truth before examining how that truth follows on to their less mutual beliefs. This strikes a contrast to the idea of a public square that is defined by ingrained ideological division.

Dear reader, you may indeed be a Tory. You may think North London is better than South London. You may think that Britpop was a good thing. You may think that the SNES is better than the Megadrive (okay, I might have to concede this one). Perhaps you agree with my points about the impossibility of the neutral civic space while maintaining that Heat still stands the test of time alongside all of its totemic pronouncements of stoical masculinity?

But I also acknowledge that if you have read anything that I have written all the way through, you have already encountered personal differences that our commonalities have helped you to steer through.

If that is the case, then you have my gratitude. You're still wrong, but you're alright.

Thank for reading this!

Once again, I’m posting an essay that I wrote a good few weeks back. I held back from publishing it when war broke out between the Israeli State and Hamas.

I have made a point of veering away from political commentary on the socials, not because I don’t have views but because I’m very sceptical about my ability to change anybody’s mind in such antagonistic online spaces. It only seems to benefit the people that make money from engagement on their sites. It’s always worth considering whether your cries into the void are simply micropayments for a tech bro’s viagra subscription.

At the same time, I could see this essay being seen as a justification for fence sitting. My issue with fence sitting is not that I think everybody should pick a side but because, in terms of discourse, there doesn’t need to be a fence.

That’s not to say that I won’t talk about the conflict in the weeks, months and years to come. I’ll tackle the subject when I think I have something to say, some semblance of a novel understanding of what is happening beyond my role as a powerless spectator.

For now I can only repeat the call many are making for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. That all civilian life is equally valuable and that one form of mass slaughter is not more agreeable or ethical than another. To echo the words of Douglas Rushkoff, I’m on Team Human.

Anyway, there will be another podcast coming up in the next week for anyone that would like to hear this in podcast and the next essay should be landing not too long after that. I’d really like to get back to posting one of these things a week but I’m wary of making such promises because I have a chequered history of breaking them.

What to you think, should I re-calibrate the quality/quantity scales in the service of regularity or continue dropping them at arbitrary and unpredictable rates? The comments are open as usual, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Niall