Institute for Travesty,
Comedy, and Humor Studies
Comedic Subgenres
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A League of Their Own: Reconciliation Comedy
By Paul Grawe and Robin Jaeckle Grawe
Work in progress
© 2024
We, as the Institute for Travesty, Comedy, and Humor Studies (ITCHS), consider here Reconciliation Comedy as a special-form sub-genre of comedy. Many such sub-genres of comedy are well known: War Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Situation Comedy are all well-publicized—but never clearly defined. Most of these special-form sub-genres are recognizable in that they do not emphasize light comedy’s dependence on eliciting outright laughter in response to specific jokes. (For an in-depth analysis of working partnership of humor and classical comedy, see Comedic Tenor, Comic Vehicle and its Shakespearean analog, Cheshire Smile.) In a good many special-form works, outright laughter is replaced by an underlying good-humored smile continuous more or less throughout. Humor as the special language of the sub-genre is minimized or disappears and is replaced by a special language appropriate to the special form.
Taking War Comedy as a quick example, Hogan’s Heroes is arguably about high-tension, high-stakes, high-intrigue action behind enemy lines with heroes under enormous duress. One can argue it, but, of course, that would be an absolute travesty as a description of Hogan’s Heroes. Hogan’s Heroes has plenty of outright jokes and out-loud laughter, but more than that, it has the consistent good-humored smile throughout. War Comedies at the humorous extreme are as outright funny as Hogan’s Heroes, but the spectrum extends through more serious presentations like Black Sheep Squadron to entirely non-humorous work like To Hell and Back.
In defining Reconciliation Comedy, we move away from the centrality of humor. Reconciliation Comedy may have humor, but it often doesn’t. ITCHS has already defined Redemption Comedy and Romantic Comedy, which as special-form sub-genres are only incidentally humorous. Instead, at the essential level, Reconciliation Comedy, along with Redemption Comedy and Romantic Comedy, rely not on humor but on specialized language appropriate to the sub-genre itself.
A Three-Disc Analysis
All of these sub-forms must be ultimately Comedy. None of them need be ultimately light or funny. Instead of definitions relying on humor, for Romantic and Redemption Comedy we relied on a robust “3-disc” extension of Aristotle’s original attempt at genre definition in The Poetics. (See Four Seasons: Variations in American Vitalist Film Comedy and Exploring Shakespearean Tragedy for full discussions of this 3-disc method.) For our purposes here, we can move directly to the fundamental definitional needs of Reconciliation Comedy, the need for defining its “comedic line,” and the need for defining its 3-disc character, that is, its range of special language, oppositional forms, and spirit.
To define a sub-form of comedy, we first need to define comedy. ITCHS has defined Comedy as the representation of life patterned to demonstrate or to assert a faith in human survival, often including or emphasizing how that survival is possible or under what conditions that survival takes place.
The comedic line for the Reconciliation sub-genre of comedy, then is a patterned action which repeats instances of success or survival reliant on humanity’s ability to undertake and succeed at reconciling efforts, and through this repeated success or survival, Reconciliation Comedy expresses a faith in humanity’s survival based in reconciliation.
In Aristotle’s Poetics, the tragedic line is described in terms of an action but also of a character, someone greater than ourselves with a single fatal flaw. Technically, a comedic line should deal with character as well as action, but what we can say is that the comedic line allows for a very wide range of characters.
In a film like A League of Their Own, the flexibility of character is exemplified in allowing for an analysis of the whole work as a double comedy. One of these comedies centers not on an individual but on a social unit, not just a single team but, in fact, a whole new league of “just American” specially gifted athletes building a pioneer success for the recognition of women in sports. The other comedy, a much more serious comedy, is the comedy of a very outstanding woman and sports star who has always played for much higher stakes than a mere game and who exemplifies that very different form of survival success throughout life. The second comedy is darkened in that the absolutely superlative abilities and calling of Dotty Hinson consistently isolate her even as she leads others to successes of their own.
As we move into considering a 3-disc analysis of Reconciliation Comedy, we will often use war as an analogy for understanding the special language, opposition forms, and spirits of Reconciliation Comedy. Reconciliation Comedy is not war comedy. But the dynamics of striving toward reconciliation in war are useful analogs for the dynamics of reconciling hostilities, conflicts, and competing needs and desires in non-war Reconciliation Comedy. While we will not characterize the conflicts in League as “wars,” it is noteworthy that the film takes place in the context of World War II—in fact, the league issued from the exigencies of the War—and the War intrudes on the plot more than once.
Special Language of Reconciliation Comedy
We then move on to the first of our three discs, the special language appropriate to Reconciliation Comedy. (Aristotle actually posited special language and appropriate additional features, embellishments, like choreography and costumes as a single category—especially in film versions, these embellishments become part and parcel of the analysis of “special language.”)
Starting however with script language itself, what are appropriate topics for a Reconciliation production? Since we are writing within “quadrilateral analysis,” we can restate this question more specifically: what four forms of language are most centrally appropriate to and encompass the large majority of Reconciliation language?
Reconciliation is a reuniting. When a former unity has broken down into outright hostility, reconciliation becomes necessary.
The first need of Reconciliation is to get out of direct destructive conflict, at minimum to cease fire, possibly including disengagement, getting off the field of battle. Cessation becomes a good name for this kind of special language and accompanying movement. It can easily include embellishments like a change in posture, a standing down.
In any case, stop shooting.
It seems reasonable that the next step is for one side or the other to give something for a continuation of non-destruction. Somebody has to give a little, someone has to come up with some Concession somewhere. Often the Concession can be a physical gesture that speaks. An army may pull back from an exposed promontory which has some strategic value but also costs a great deal to hold. It is an action, but it is an action that speaks volumes as Concession. Alternatively, one side or the other may propose in language to exchange prisoners, release hostages, give leave for caring for casualties or the like. These are speech acts, and they also speak volumes, volumes of Concession.
Concessions may be proposed, but they aren’t worth much unless they are accepted, and such acceptance constitutes an additional special language, the language of Agreement.
Cessation, Concession, and Agreement may all be major blessings to forces bled white in conflict. But there is still something missing. An Agreement may last long enough for everyone to bury their dead. But such Agreements can move back to fierce fighting the next morning.
Reconciliation is never fully accomplished unless there is a real assurance of continuation throughout an indefinite future. We tend to think of such assurance as something in writing and signed by all the parties guaranteeing the terms of continuation. In other words, special language is often concerned with Covenant.
Negotiation language using all these forms moves toward Treaty.
So as the language appropriate to Reconciliation, we have found four clearly separately definable realities: Cessation, Concession (often represented in Compromise, mutually exchanged Concessions), Agreement, and Covenant.
As we have presented it here, there seems to be a natural sequential ordering of these four languages, beginning with Cessation and ending with Covenant. To the extent that this ordering is necessary and inherent we are dealing with an exceptional special language quadrilateral in that most quadrilaterals are like the four directions—North, South, East, and West—in which no particular ordering is inherent or implied and in which each of the four variants seems to be entirely itself and free-standing from the other three. This oddity becomes the “special wrinkle” of sensitive critical understanding of the Reconciliation Language Quadrilateral. We can, however, simply state here that as much as possible, we want to consider Cessation, Concession, Agreement, Covenant, as such free-standing directional alternatives.
As free-standing directional alternatives, we can construct a quadrilateral special language disc representing the range of Negotiation and Diplomacy language, which coincidentally is also the range of Reconciliation language.
And we can visualize that quadrilateral as a circle (thus disc) graph as follows:
We construct a circle divided into six equal wedges or sections radiating from the center. And in each section, we put the names of two of our four analytics of Reconciliation language so that we end up with six sections each with a different combination of analytics. Three of the four analytics can be made to appear in consecutive sections. The fourth analytic then appears in alternate sections. We present below what we consider the Natural Order quadrilateral for Reconciliation Comedy. Key to that order is that there is a half circle of segments containing Agreement that leads from Truce to Treaty. Here that half circle is the “lower half circle.” Contrastively, Covenant is the consistent element in the “upper half circle,” in other words, represents a Covenant path from Truce to Treaty. (See Figure 1 below.)
It is also worth noting that the alternating analytic we call the Natural Intensifier of the system. The Natural Intensifier is the “odd man out” that doesn’t appear in adjacent segments but instead appears in alternate segments. Here Cessation has been nominated as Intensifier which is particularly apt since Cessation is an absence and therefore disappears leaving its companion dominant analytic seemingly alone and in its most concentrated, emphasized—and therefore, intensified—aspect.
Reconciliation Comedy Special Language Circle
Figure 1
At mid-right, we find Concession and Cessation. Fighting stops because both sides concede to a ceasefire and Truce. In popular thinking, things move rapidly from there to Concession and Agreement, where both sides now agree to observe the ceasefire. They are in a stage of Accommodation, allowing both sides to tend to the wounded, bury their dead, and the like. From there agreement leads to a working together so we can call this Collaboration.
And when Collaboration has shown its worth, why not make the whole thing permanent by adding something to the agreement that gives it binding duration. The modern sense is that Covenant requires signing a document. The signing is an act which speaks and directs duration and continuance. There are, however, other act-speeches that can represent Covenant. In ancient Israel, for example, a man who had agreed and wanted Covenant, took off his sandal in the presence of elders and presented it to his former adversary or competitor, signifying a completed “deal.”
We have arrived at Treaty
Please note, however, that we have not considered the full circle, and that there is an alternate path between Truce and Treaty, an upper path. This path leads first to Covenant and Concession. As a first step, then, people make a duration agreement to stop shooting, typically involving some giving of concessions in the process.
Then, people get around to stopping shooting and perhaps expanding the Covenant already arrived at.
The first of these steps is progression—typically Progression toward ending the fighting. The second is Fruition. The progress moves on to getting something good, first fruits at least, from the end of fighting, and maybe considerably more that can be covenanted.
It is important to notice that at least in theory, stopping the fighting and reaping the fruits of non-hostility can be achieved without a full Treaty that normalizes human relationship.
But it can be hoped that people who have achieved some of the fruits of non-hostility can be moved toward Agreeing with each other so that full reconciliation, reunion, to the extent that reunion is humanly possible, is achieved in Agreement and Covenant simultaneously. And thus, ultimately, Treaty is reached by an upper rather than a lower path.
It is possible, however, to move toward treaty but stop short of it. The Korean War can be described as such an uncompleted treaty. Presumably both sides had to concede one thing or another in order to get to a written document allowing representatives of both sides to meet on a regular basis at Panmunjom. The written document had binding force. But it wasn’t binding force to end the war. So technically, there never has been to this date a Treaty to end hostilities in Korea. And occasionally if not continually, we are reminded of that unstable reality.
Our consideration so far has centered on the anomaly of a popularly-understood ordering of our analytic Special Language elements. Trying to explain the relevance of both the anomaly and the complexity of the quadrilateral we have developed has brought in attempts at reconciliation during both the Viet Nam and Korean conflicts. And we have at least recognized that these elements are not only our concern but also are of major concern in negotiation, diplomacy, rhetoric and finance. We should then expect that when we finally exemplify all these ideas in a specific literary creation like Much Ado About Nothing or a recent film like A League of Their Own, the analysis will deal with profound rather than trivial aspects of the work.
It is well then to emphasize with repetition that the Reconciliation Special Language Quadrilateral is a ground-breaking assertion. We are essentially asserting that a single quadrilateral may be considered as free-standing analytics for some critical purposes while also representing an ordered set, often in a less-than-fully-articulate general consensus. Such a double perspective on quadrilateral analytics may pay large dividends in something like a quadrilateral understanding of the artistic language of Jane Austen.
Forms of Opposition to Reconciliation
The Special Language of Reconciliation Comedy is especially difficult compared to Special Language for other sub-genres like Reconciliation and Romantic Comedy. Happily, the complexity does not persist in considering the Forms of Opposition to Reconciliation.
At highly abstract levels, what are the four predominant forms of opposition to ending hostilities and achieving Reconciliation?
Injury is perhaps the most visceral. I have been hurt. I went to war because I was hurt (and probably got even more hurt in the process). I’m not going to quit until I have gotten revenge for the injury, “getting back some of my own” as Eliza puts it in My Fair Lady.
Principle is just about as easy. I went to war because some principle of mine has been violated. My principle may have something to do with being in the right or it may be something very practical that I believe I have to have, for example Britain’s long-term principle of protecting the Low Countries, particularly from domination by France, which Britain took to be an existential threat to itself.
Wont is a little harder to understand, but only a little. I’ve gone to war, I’ve found out that it hurts me to be at war, so a good part of me would like to get to Reconciliation. Unfortunately, another part of me, quite possibly a worse part of me, just can’t bring itself to ending hostilities. It has become my wont to be at war—and, of course, begs to notice that “I won’t do what is necessary.”
In mid-summer, 2022, does Russia have every good reason to wish to end hostilities in Ukraine? Virtually everyone else in the world thinks so. But Russia has had an expansionist policy toward virtually any of its neighbors from at very least the time of Peter the Great on. It has become the wont of the Russian people to think of themselves Messianically in expansionist foreign affairs.
And finally, there is the catch-all idea of Competition. Once hostilities have begun, losses are inevitable. Nevertheless, it is an ill wind that blows no one good. And there are few wars that don’t work to someone’s advantage. So those who would compete with those who are at war find it easy to egg on the war already started. And they unfortunately also find it easy to side with one or other of the contending parties following the principle “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
So, while the combatants themselves may be praying for an end to the hostilities, there may be other forces that are quite willing to work, even work long and hard, to keep the hostilities going.
We here in Figure 2 present a Quadrilateral of Dominant Pairs of Reconciliation Oppositions:
Reconciliation Comedy Oppositions Circle
Figure 2
Around this Quadrilateral Circle, we have inserted Rubrics that suggest what kind of tone or texture or “feel” each combination of dominant oppositions creates. We recognize in advance that the assignment of rubrics is always tentative and subject to adjustment if practical criticism indicates a need for the same.
Spirits of Reconciliation
Oppositions to Reconciliation, working against Reconciliation or frustrating it, are easily understood being so much part of everyone’s human world.
The Spirits of Reconciliation move back toward complexity reminiscent of Reconciliation Special Language, but the complexity need not concern us from the start.
What Spirit guides people through a perhaps arduous Reconciliation process? What four variations of Spirit as a quadrilateral cover the waterfront of Spirits appropriate to Reconciliation? In general, the Spirit of Reconciliation rues continuing hostility, finds hostility pointless or worse, longs to get on with something more constructive. The variations in this Spirit derive from the type of more constructive is envisaged in hope.
What, then, can be hoped for in undertaking a process of Reconciliation?
The most obvious answer is Peace, popularly defined as the ceasing of hostility. But more technically, Peace is a condition of amity or at least of positive indifference, a freedom not to consider either potential or actual hostility and not to be more than prudently defensed against a possible breach of peace.
Another possible Spirit variant is Exchange. When hostility comes, Exchange often becomes entirely impossible or so constricted as not to count as Exchange. Russia had been doing a great deal of business in Germany and Western Europe generally, particularly in oil and natural gas. When Russia invaded Ukraine, both Western Europe and Russia were likely to lose some of the value of this Exchange. As things worked out, it became more and more impossible to continue such Exchange while the two parties to the Exchange were on opposite sides of the Ukrainian conflict.
At the same time, the West imposed many economic sanctions against Russia. The sanctions, at least in theory, provided a potential reward for Russia to withdraw from the Ukrainian conflict and allow these many economic Exchanges to recommence.
A third Spirit variant is Productivity. Wars are often brutally efficient. But the efficiency does not help the Productivity that people want for themselves and their society. It is routinely very easy to see that the ersatz efficiency of hostility could easily be done without and that everyone is suffering from failures of constructive Productivity because of the hostility.
And finally, if even Productivity goes down the drain in favor of hostile efficiency, genuine Progress as opposed to progressive mayhem goes down the drain as well.
That then is the easy part of Reconciliation Spirit, four variants of Spirit differentiated on the basis of what can hope to be achieved. In 2022, the world easily saw that the Ukrainian conflict destroyed Productivity and made ending the war a worthwhile goal in order to replace carnage with reviving Productivity.
But could the world at large really hope for Peace between Russia and Ukraine? Could it believe in Progress if only some Reconciliation took place? Did anyone really believe that Exchange could any time soon resume what it had been? It is not hard to understand the difference between these questions and not particularly difficult to realize that the one you believe in creates a Spirit in which Reconciliation is sought.
What is difficult is to determine whose Spirit are we talking about, whose Spirit counts? Does Russia’s spirit count? Does Ukraine’s Spirit count? Does Western Europe’s or the United States’ or the world’s count?
In any Reconciliation work of art, there is an artist who decides whose Spirit counts and whose doesn’t.
A bigger question is, how many Spirits count? Again, the artist creator will decide.
But because the decisions in both cases will be artistically created, criticism will have to deal with all the possibilities—and that very easily becomes very complex.
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Which Spirits Count
We can start to simplify the problems of Reconciliation Spirits by noting that there is no prohibition against absolutely everyone having one and the same Spirit variation moving toward a Reconciliation process. In our example of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, one can hope that in mid-2022 virtually everybody could agree that Productivity worldwide was being negatively affected by the conflict. Everyone had Productivity interest in the resolution of the conflict. Everyone having the same Spirit of Reconciliation may or may not result in actually accomplishing anything reconciliatory, but one can hope and hope along with everyone else.
Much more common, perhaps, is that the conflicting parties do not share the same Spirit. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Reconciliation can’t happen. If one side wants and thinks Reconciliation might achieve Productivity and the other conflicting party thinks Reconciliation might achieve Progress, then both sides have something to motivate them, and perhaps in going after different kinds of Reconciliation they can find ways of working together to achieve both Productivity and Progress.
Thus it is entirely possible to have conflicting or at least separate Spirit variants to work with critically. And that suggests that we again make a quadrilateral diagram (see below Figure 3) which includes leading pairs of Spirits that may together be dominant for certain kinds of considerations. In Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, do Beatrice and Benedick share the same Spirit of Reconciliation? Do Hero and Claudio? Do the two couples share single Spirits but contrastive to the other couple’s? The dominant-pairs diagram may speed our investigation of such practical critical issues.
But then, is there some single dominant Spirit variant for Much Ado as a whole? For Romantic Comedy and Redemption Comedy, we have asserted that such single dominance is routinely expectable, the single Spirit dominance of the artistic work as a whole. Much Ado might test whether we can be as confident of a single Spirit-variant of the work as a whole in Reconciliation Comedy.
By having a normal quadrilateral diagram that focuses on dominant pairs, we are ready for any eventuality in practical criticism provided we say clearly what we are talking about. Are we talking about a single dominant Spirit variant for the work as a whole? Then we can dispense with the pairs diagram. Are we talking about the critical relationship between Beatrice and Benedick with respect to the Spirit in which they may entertain Reconciliation? Then we may have intense use for the pairs diagram when it turns out that the two parties don’t share the same dominant Spirit.
In order to be prepared, then, for potential questions in practical criticism, here is our Natural Order Circle for dominant pairs of Spirit variants in Reconciliation Comedy:
Reconciliation Comedy Spirits Circle
Figure 3
A League of Their Own: Negotiation and Sometimes Reconciliation
While Much Ado about Nothing is a fine example of Reconciliation comedy—as well as a very complicated Reconciliation Comedy—we will, instead, be using A League of Their Own to exemplify the theory of Reconciliation Comedy discussed above. But simply mentioning the two examples in the same breath is highly instructive. Reconciliation Comedy goes way back; Shakespeare’s is a stunning but not an early example. And Reconciliation Comedy has had major box office successes in recent years; A League of Their Own (2008), which paid off 3-to- a high-budget 1 for investors also became the prototype for an Amazon serial production.
As we begin investigating A League of Their Own, we should keep in mind the close connection between Negotiation theory and our theory of Special Reconciliation Comedy language. The two are so closely related that it may at times be almost impossible to say which is which. But Negotiation is a rhetorical process, and Reconciliation is a reuniting that which has been broken into disunity, contention, chaos, animosity, and the like.
A Film of Negotiation
A League of Their Own depicts one negotiation after another and even features a professional negotiator, Ira Lowenstein, as one of its key players. (Mr. Harvey, standing in for the Chicago Cubs’ Mr. Wrigley, is perhaps an even more thorough negotiator, though in a cameo role.)
Furthermore, Mr. Lowenstein clearly does not enjoy the benefit of having a written contract, a certifiable covenant with Dottie Hinson, his star player. As a result, when things go wrong enough between Dottie and her sister, Kit, Dottie can arbitrarily announce that she is leaving the team. Somewhat later, she rejoins the team for the crucial, final game of the first professional women’s league World Series entirely without contract or covenant. And that leaves Jimmy Dugan with a free coach’s decision whether or not to let her back on the field. Dottie, in fact, quits the team three times, once with Lowenstein, once before the Series in the face of Dugan’s assertion that “hard” is the essence of professional baseball, and once after losing the face-off at home plate and with it the whole World Series.
Throughout the film, Dottie has never been enthusiastic about playing professional baseball, never been committed to the game. She has never been under any internal covenant with the game, her team, or her employers.
And that final idea, the idea of never having been under an internal covenant is the rabbit’s hole through which we can fall into the wonderland of artistic reconciliation, which because it is artistic is routinely disguised and removed from negotiation theory into the realm of particular, concrete human reality. If a covenant is a signed agreement, how in the world can we even imagine an internal covenant? Negotiation theory might move to entirely deeper levels if it tried to answer that question for A League of Their Own.
Viewing the World as Negotiations
Having recognized the obvious, that Dottie is not under a covenant or contract, let’s backtrack to the beginning of the film to see it constantly emphasizing—and talking about—negotiation processes.
The story of the league starts at a women’s fast-pitch softball game in Oregon. Kit is coming up to bat with the game at stake. Big sis Dottie pulls her aside to enjoin her against going for high pitches. We can assume she has a catcher’s eye for spotting a batter’s weakness. But Kit refuses to listen, the sisters end up calling each other “Mule” and “Nag,” Kit makes a fool of herself taking swings at high pitches, and the game is left undecided as Dottie comes to the plate.
Is there a squabble going on, a disuniting? Suddenly we are back to the obvious at the bottom of the rabbit hole.
Is there any move toward reconciliation? Unfortunately, even the following scene shows the sisters with an even more totally fractured relationship based in Kit’s inferiority complex beside her stellar sister. Taken together, the first two scenes are scenes of an underlying rift that is, if anything, intensifying. “Mule” and “nag” are special language alright, but special language of a heated feud without a truce in sight.
Happily, milking cows evidently suppresses hostile operations. And into that pregnant lull in the fighting comes yet another negotiator—admittedly a small-potatoes negotiator, the league talent scout, John Ernie Capadino. Capadino has watched the game and knows that the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League needs Dottie. It turns out to be a very hard sell with disinterested Dottie, the married woman awaiting her husband’s hoped-for return from combat in World War II. Kit doesn’t need to be sold at all. But Capadino, having seen Kit mess up in the softball game, is not interested in her.
Feeling the strength in Kit’s right arm however, and being an astute if bit-time negotiator, Capadino proposes mutual concession: he will concede a ticket to Chicago for Kit if Dottie concedes to go to Chicago and try out as well.
Capadino is a low-level negotiator, but a crucial one. At the end of the film, he appears smoking a cigar and considering a picture of himself in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Remarking on the same picture, Marla Hooch exclaims that Capadino was “the man who changed my life.” And of course it was Ernie Capadino who “discovered Kit,” the winning pitcher of the final World Series game and the winning-run scorer of the same game.
At negotiation, Ernie Capadino is a big-time success. That is without question. Where he fits into reconciliation is not, however, clear from what we have already said.
We’ve only gotten through two scenes, but all the clues should be there for finding negotiation and maybe reconciliation with it throughout the film. From that base, then, we can move on to consider the reconciliations which, again, are reunitings of what has been broken into some sort of ongoing contention.
The Conflicts Needing Reconciliation
We’ve considered the negotiations of the first flashback scenes of A League of Their Own.
The first scene of the film, however, occurs decades later with Dottie refusing to make the trip to Cooperstown to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame! The discord in the “Queen of Diamonds” refusing induction hints of deeper dissention and conflict. Dottie’s daughter acts as surrogate for Major League Baseball in fighting it out with her mother. Happily, like much in Dottie’s life, she finally gives up her diffidence in favor of going along with those she loves.
Dottie may be a push-over in this opening skirmish, but that doesn’t say anything about her as a competitive athlete. Her remarks to her grandsons shooting hoops outside do speak to a killer instinct that Dottie has always had once actually involved in the game.
There’s a rather subterranean struggle of Dottie trapped in herself, coming to Cooperstown as that isolate, not as a team member. The love of her teammates for her wins this battle almost before it can be pitched.
And then the flashback puts us square in the middle of the Kit-Dottie feud. And the minor sideshow of getting Dottie out of a battle of wills with Capadino and onto the train.
A similarly small skirmish breaks out between the girls and Capadino in Fort Collins, Colorado, where Capadino is unwilling to take on Marla Hootch the masculinized opposite to the fashion-model athlete he is looking for. Marla can, however, hit the ball (right- or left-handed) and against top-flight minor league males. Dottie and Kit aren’t about to accept this kind of showman discrimination, and Capadino quickly collapses, another conflict reconciled.
We could go on. But several points have been established. In League: there are a great many conflicts and disputes, a great many reconciliations, and a great many that are really only background to the major conflicts that centrally inform the movie.
Turning to the Major Conflicts
First, there is the conflict of the Sisters.
Second, there is the conflict for Major League Girls’ Baseball.
Third, there is the conflict within Dottie’s Soul, put otherwise, the conflict between Dottie as Mrs. Bob Hinson and Dottie as the Queen of Diamonds of the AAGPBL.
We’d also suggest a fourth conflict which resolves only in Cooperstown, the War for Marla Hooch’s true self.
Like its great antecedant, the comedies of William Shakespeare, many fine modern American films, certainly including A League of Their Own, are deliberately multi-plotted, and their artistic success is something more and deeper than any one of the central plots. Since all of the major plots in League are about conflicts and their resolutions, we should be prepared to analyze its success as Reconciliaton Comedy.
The Language of Reconcilation
Covenent
Looking more closely at the specific language of the film, we note that while the film has many conflicts and many negotiations, often those negotiations are resolved with few words. If, however, we look for words of Cessation, Concession, Agreement, and Covenant, we quickly find that there are frequent references to Covenant, that is, the sports contract which does not exist.
We have already noted the challenges to players, managers, and negotiators created by a lack of contract. Lack of a contract makes the future of the league—perhaps even the next game—uncertain.
There are no governing rules to create expectations. Surprise! Players are to wear short-skirted uniforms and to endure charm school. When the players join with Lowenstein to attract a fan base, it is entirely on an agreement basis, not on a contract basis. While the word “contract” comes up often, it points directly to the fact that the league exists only by agreement, and often minimally articulated agreement at that.
Furthermore, lack of a contract invites wordless concession because there is no contractual basis for argument.
Even though there is no contract, frequent and compellling references to the contract or lack thereof by itself would argue for Covenant as a primary special language form.
And then there is the marriage covenant.
Whatever internal covenant Dottie may have with herself, she has a spiritiaul and legal covenant with her husband. Dottie’s persistent objection to joining the leage in the first place is, “I’m married.” Because she is married, she does not join the team at the road house, she is quite prepared to leave the league to allow her sister to play ball without her, she walks out on the world series when Bob comes home, and she does not plan to return the following season. Because she is married, Dottie is also in a position to play housemother to Dugan, taking away his hard liquor and replacing it with a Coke. The marriage license holds a lot of sway.
Marla takes a clue from Dottie and gets married in the middle of the season, promising to return the next season. The wedding scene carries all the words of marriage covenant that we need.
So in analyzing the rhetoric of covenant, we must notice the powerful sway of marriage covenant.
We have already noted that the dynamis of league progress is agreement. But what of the language of aggreement?
Agreement, again, is often demonstrated rather than articulated. Dottie and Kit, despite their persistent squabble, dramatically agree—simply by sitting down in unison—agree not to get on the train without Marla. When Jimmy Dugan shows up drunk for the first game without having assigned players to positions, Dottie easily in a few words assigns positions, to which the team members easily agree by not objecting. When Lowenstein says the team will have to fold unless a fan base can be produced, the women by their actions agree to put on a dazzling show, led by Dottie’s catching a ball while doing the splits.
Sometimes team agreement is contrary to “the rules,” as the venture to the road house, which takes some discussion and planning and, it turns out, a look-out in Dottie, who is not interested in going to the road house herself but is quite willing to warn the miscreants and do what it takes to retrieve Marla, who by now is drunk and letting loose the feminine passion she never knew she had.
It takes considerable discussion to get Lowenstein to agree to a trade as proposed by Dottie, an agreement which turns into a switch-up. But we did see a verbal agreement. Given that the team runs on agreement and that necessary cessations and concessions happen with few words, any articulated language of agreement becomes significant.
But is there language of Cessation and Concession? The story of the sisters as well as the story of the league begins with a lengthy, articulated negotiation ending in Concession. Capudino uses a lot of words to try to convince Dottie to try out for the team while leaving Kit behind, and Dottie articulates her reluctance: she is a married woman. Kit negotiates with Dottie. Capudio finally verbally concedes to pay Kit’s train fare if Dottie will concent to try out too. We know that Dottie has conceded when we see the two run to catch the train. The concessions are starting to be expressed in action.
In Fort Collins, the negotiation is beteween Capudino and Marla’s father, who pleads for a concession, a chance for Marla. But when Capudino moves to leave Fort Collins without Marla, a fantastic ball player, because she is not sexy enough, Dottie and Kit simply sit down.
In the next scene Marla is giving tearful good-byes to her father at the train station. Capudino has conceeded and the women have won that one without a word. Similarly, when the chosen league members are told they must all wear short-skirted uniforms, they vow never to comply. But in a later scene, we see them wearing the uniforms: without discussion, they have lost that one. Charm school takes up a long scene; the women lost that one too. They have conceded without a word. We can find many examples of actions speaking concession. Concession is dramatized, rarely articulated.
Cessation language, or rather language urging cessation, comes up largely with respect to Jimmy Dugan’s loser habits. Various team members shame him over his drunkenness, mock his practice of spitting, scold him for yelling at women, and maternally substitute a Coke bottle for hard liquor. Over the course of the film, Dugan’s loser practices cease as his attitude is transformed.
It should be noted that cessation and concession frequently flow into agreement. Ungrudging concessions lead quickly to agreement and success: Dottie concedes to go to Chicago and then puts her full effort into playing a dazzling game. The women concede to their uniforms and then put on a great show and a successful season. Through the cessation of his loser habits, Dugan is able to connect with the enthusiasm and talent of his team, so that by the end of the film he does not want to return to regular major league baseball. Cessation and concession are springboards for agreement.
As noted before, the progress of the league is driven by agreement: agreement to play well, to act as team, and to aim even higher for a contract. In that light, we must argue that the two dominent forms of reconciliation language are Agreement and Covenant. By our circle, the synthesis of Agreement and Covenant is Treaty. The first year of play ends with a treaty: that the the league will have a contract, that Jimmy Dugan will joyfully manage his team, and that it is possible for a stellar player to leave the team in deference to her marriage contract. This treaty is honored years later when at the Hall of Fame induction, Dottie is welcomed back by the team and into an embrace with her sister.
Forms of Opposition
Turning then to forms of opposition, we earlier explicated four key forms of anti-reconcilition: Injury, Principle, Wont, and Competition. Given that the game of baseball depends on competing teams, it might seem that competition would be a major blocking force to reconciliation. Yet within the league, competition seems rather to energize and enhance reaching the goal of the formation of an ongoing league. Competition is the form through which agreement drives productivity.
On the other hand, the league seems to be most hindered by Principle and Wont. There is considerable sociatal opposition on principle to women playing baseball when they “should be” in the home. And in Dugan’s foot dragging, one could argue for Wont—he not being a man of much principle anyway, he’d rather not. Mr. Harvey is capricious if politiclly rational in his support of the league; he is wont not to back it a second year. It is notable that these oppositions are forces close to but not part of the team itself and in a sense outside of it. Thus dedication, energy, and talent can plow through the opposition.
Turning to the sisters, while we see much competition, the overwhelming opposition form is Injury. Kit feels very much injured by having to live up to a sister who is “always right,” always better, always cool, longer-legged, and married! This sense of injury spews forth when things get tough. And it is this formidable sense of injury that leads Dottie to ask to be traded so that Kit can come into her own and perhaps the two can be reconciled. Dottie’s offer to be traded to another team is costly; her later withdrawl from the league entirely when Bob comes home is much easier.
It should be noted that Dottie does have her principles: she does not play baseball poorly in order to make Kit feel better. But that would probably add insult to injury. In the last play at home plate, it is possible that Dottie lets go of the ball she has caught, but this would be a violation of her principles. it is also quite possible that the force of Kit’s ramming into her at home plate knocks the ball out of Dottie’s grip. The film does not make the call. Later when Kit apologizes for her own forceful action, Dottie refuses the apology. Thus we would argue that between the sisters, Principle is not really a blocking force and quite possibly is necessary for Kit to own her own strength. The primary blocking force to the sisters’ reconciliation is Injury.
But what about Dottie herself? At the opening scenes of the film, we see a woman clearly reluctant, and we learn that she is reluctant to make a trip, it turns out to Cooperstown, to join former teammates to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. What is the real opposition to her being reunited with teammates, and thus reconciled to years of separation and going in different directions? She says she doesn’t belong. Doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame? She was the Queen of Diamonds. But taking her at her word, it would seem that the block is Wont. She gave up the custom, the practice of playing baseball long ago; her catcher’s glove is put away and badly in need of oiling. She hasn’t thought much in terms of the game. And she has not matured along the same lines as the other players.
It takes considerable pushing, urging, and nudging from her daughter to get Dottie out the door, into the car and to the airport. But that’s what it is. There are no principles to be struggled with, injuries to be healed, or competitions to be contemplated. Once in Cooperstown, Dottie is recongnized by teammates and warmly welcomed. And she recognizes that while she made a different choice, old friendships die hard.
Considering all the possible anti-reconciliation forces, we would argue that the primary opposing force in the film is Injury, which threatens throughout the film to destroy the sisterly relationship. It is only in the final scenes that we are confident that injury has been healed and reconciliation achieved.
Oppositions vying for secondary predominance are Principle, reflecting attitudes which we as audience have long ago rejected, and Wont, which is either humorously attacked or sumarily pushed aside. It’s a close call. Both Principle and Wont are easily overcome by the women’s talent, dediction, enthusiasm and minds to agree. The combination of Injury and Principle is Vindicated; of Injury and Wont, Propelled. With the attention of the film focusing far more on Jimmy Dugan’s foot-dragging than on the women-in-the-home faction, we would argue for Propelled. And it is, after all, an action movie about highly motivated and athletically talented women propelled to find a place in professional American sports.
Spirits of Reconciliation
Recalling Reconciliation spirits, Peace, Exchange, Productivity, and Progress, we can argue that the film A League of Their Own heavily exudes the Spirit of Productivity. Potential recruits are gathered, teams are formed, early animosities are abated, balls are pitched, pitches are hit, games are won, publicity is generated, fans are charged up—all of it moving forward to the creation of a new women’s league. It is a Spirit of Productivity that propels the team to agree to short-skirted uiforms and charm school; they accept such humiliation cheerfully in order not only to play professional baseball but further to be the essential element in creating a women’s professional league.
In this spirit, team members expeditiously accept Dottie’s coaching leadership when their manager Jimmy Dugan shows up to the first game drunk, and in that spirit they continue to work around his crude language and behavior. When their owner, Walter Harvey, decides to terminate the league at the end of the season, It is a Spirit of Productivity that prompts the women to provide an even splashier show, led by Dottie Hinson’s catch while doing the splits. A sudden increase in fan popularity gives Ira Lowenstein ammunition for negotiating an on-going league and even with contracts. The induction into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown testifies to the amazing productivity of these players, and the film demonstrates the Spirit of Productivity.
We can see this Spirit of Productivity operating in invidual characters as well. Jimmy Dugan who comes to his position of manager as a washed-up alcoholic is swept up in the women’s producticity to become a driving yet sensitive coach determined on another great season.
On a different level, there is an undercurrent of Progress, though not in the women’s playing abilities. The women are portrayed as being great ball-players from the start. Rather they progress both in confidence and in athletic feminity. For example, Marla Hooch, an ambidexderous slugger raised by a widowed father, finds her passionate female side.
But progress is generally overshadowed by productivty. One might argue that the team progresses toward becoming part of a permanent league. But in fact, Mr. Harvey has demonstrated that such progress is illusory if the teams cannot produce results. We witness not a spirit of getting better little by little but of doing what it takes.
Similarly, there is little spirit of Exchange. We do not see the talk of give and take, this for that. Demands are met or refused, but the drive of productivity runs over exchange.
The Other Conflicts
But this anlysis leaves out the first two conflicts mentioned: the feud of the sisters and the struggle in Dottie’s soul. The relationhip between the sisters has a much more stuttered rhythm than the amazing productivity of the newly formed girl’s league. The two sisters seem to be getting along better as long as Kit plays well. But as Dottie’s natural leadership and talent put her more and more in the public spotlight as well as in a motherly role within the team, even toward Jimmy Dugan, Kit’s competitive insecurities grow.
Just at the team has secured a place in the world series, the simmering tensions between the sisters erupt. The strain is not relieved by Dottie’s lack of passion for baseball: she shrugs, “it’s a game.” It seems to take Dottie’s resignation from the league to create even the possibility of reconciliation between the sisters. As Dottie makes her final departure for Oregon, she and her sister seem to be reconciled. Their earlier barbs have become friendly banter. Kit is charged up for another productive season and freed to excel without her sister’s tutalege, and Dottie is happy leaving the league to live as a married woman. This reconciliation occurs at the cost of Dottie leaving the league, but since she was never sold out to baseball, the cost is negligible.
Which brings us to the struggle in Dottie’s soul. Dottie seeks Peace. When Capadino approaches Dottie to recruit her, she is at peace milking cows in Oregon, playing baseball as a pasttime, and quite specifically at peace being a married woman waiting for her husband to return from the war in Europe. She is also at peace coaching her kid sister—or nagging her, as Kit puts it.
It is for peace with Kit that she agrees to go to Chicago, for peace that she offers to be traded to Racine, for peace that she chooses to go back to Oregon with Bob, and it would seem for peace of mind that she returns to play the last game in the series. Dottie has cooperated with the strenuous Spirit of Productivity for most of the season, but with the falling out with Kit and then the return of Bob, her need for peace, both with Kit and with herself, overrides Productivty.
What is jarring, and what we are presented with in the opening scenes of the film is that decades after her decision to leave the league, Dottie, the celebrated Queen of Diamonds has great dis-ease about going to Cooperstown. She says she doesn’t belong. As the complexity of her unconfidence is not spelled out in the film, psychoanalysis and speculation would be inappropriate. However, the enthusiastic welcome of her former teammates and notably of her sister, Kit, dramatizes reunion and seems to allow for inner reconciliation for Dottie, bringing peace over a decision made long ago.
Two Dominent Spirits
Thus we have two dominent Spirits, A Spirit of Productivity which easily engages our enthusiasm for the new league, and a Spirit of Peace, or perhaps longing for peace, which haunts us even as we cheer on the new league. While it is not common for a film to have two dominant spirits, in this case we must insist on it. The two spirits work hand in glove to create a multi-plotted reconciliation comedy. The driving Spirit of Productiity ushers in a new league, reconciling America to women’s sports. Dottie’s need for Peace leads her to lend her talents to that effort as long as Bob remains overseas but also to leave the league when it benefits Kit. The interplay of Productivity and Peace allow for the league to overcome numerous obstacles under Dottie’s unofficial leadership and and for individuals to mature. And simultaneously they lay the basis for a possible reconciliation of the sisters, a reonciliation which is dependent on Kit’s coming into her own in an emerging baseball league while Dottie returns to Oregon.
The combination of Productivity and Peace is Industry, perhaps thought of best in its adjective form, Industrious.
Puttng it all together, in A League of Their Own, we see women athletes inspired by two independent Spirits, Productivity and Peace, which working together create a spirit of Industriousness. The major actors are propelled to overcome the opposition in the form of deep Injury and Wont. They work by Agreement and hope of a Covenant in the form of a contract which acts as a Treaty reconciling American tradition to professional women’s athletics. Moreover, the resultant All-American Girls Professional Baseball League contract documents in writing the parting of the sisters’ paths, a necessary step for their personal reconciliation which is verified if not actualized in the final scene.
Which Path to a Treaty?
But what about the directionality of the language of reconciliation? It is worth recalling that the circle for the language of reconciliation anticipated a movement from Truce to Treaty. And it further provided two alternates. In a multi-plotted drama, is there movement in two different directions? And for reconciliation, does a negotiation have to move all the way to treaty?
The Agreement Path
The league, we have argued, has prospered by Agreement. The circle above shows three contiguous segments containing Agreement, thus allowing a consistent progression from Truce through Accommodation and Collaboration to Treaty, always with Agreement. We have called this path, the lower path. We have noted in earlier discussion the pattern of repeated concessions, often wordless, by the team as jump-offs toward productive agreement. We can note the cessation of competition between most team members, again in the interest of agreement. This lower path well describes the movement of the team toward Treaty.
Interestingly, it also fits Kit individually. Interesting, but hardly surprising since playing professional baseball is where she comes into her own. Her truce with her sister starts with Dottie’s concession to go to Chicago and Kit’s cessation of grievance-airing. Kit moves through the same Accommodation by concession/agreement pattern as the rest of the team through Collaboration with the team and managers by Cessation/Agreement and finally to Treaty: Kit will have a contract and will have no reason to feel intimidated or dominated by her sister.
The Covenant Path
But what of Dottie? Dottie enters the league already committed to her marriage covenant, and she maintains that commitment throughout. She never did really “belong” to the league. She was essential for the success of the league, but she was never sold on baseball for herself: “It’s a game.” One might say that she had ulterior motives. From a Truce with her sister, she moved on the upper path through Progression of the team to the World Series and Fruition of her goals—the establishment of an ongoing league, a place in the world for her sister, and cessation of injury and rancor with her sister. Yet under and through all these steps, guiding and limiting them, is her intent to return to Oregon, marriage, and family. She is under contract—not a league contract, but her marriage contract, a covenant made prior to her participating in the league. Covenant is always operative, first with her Concession to work with the team and then in her Cessation, her leaving the team for peace. We see the Fruition of her goals and possibly reconciliation within herself and with her sister. But it is questionable if she and Kit have a treaty.
Dottie as Western Hero
When we recognize the difference in direction of reconciliation processes and the possibility of non-treaty reconciliation, we can see Dottie as a classical Western hero. Yes, a Lone Ranger. She comes in from the outside as a rescuer. She rescues Kit from a frustrating life in Oregon, she rescues the team from a drunken manager, she rescues her teammates from impending disaster if they are caught at the road house, she rescues Jimmy Dougan from himself. She tries to leave the team for the sake of her sister, either by quitting the league altogether or being traded to Racine. She rescues the team by returning for the last game of the series. And she rescues her sister by purposefully or inadvertently dropping the crucial catch, letting her sister become the MVP.
Then Dottie rides off into the (western) sunset. She has fulfilled her marriage covenant and brought about the cessation of wrenching sibling disputation. By our chart, she has reached Fruition. But it is questionable whether she has reached full Treaty. She is an outsider, never seeking to be party to the league contract.
Thus, we see in A League of Their Own, a complex multi-plotted story, demonstrating dual paths toward reconciliation and the possibility that Fruition may be an acceptable end.
See also Stagecoach, John Wayne, and Redemption Comedy
See also Romantic Comedy: John Ford/John Wayne’s Hondo