Saturday, July 31, 2010

The Blind Side's Vision of Hospitality.

     Over and over, Hospitality Morality has struggled with two hospitality philosophies: risk vs. reciprocity. Should the host--as the early Christians, ancient Greeks, medieval Europeans, and a host of modern philosophers contend--extend hospitality at potentially great risk and without return? Or should the host—as contemporary etiquette books, the travel industry, and Hollywood movies argue—maintain a modicum of control and expect gratitude?

Here’s a quick montage of scenes from the opening of The Blind Side that present the hospitality risk vs. reciprocity dilemma:

• The movie begins with Lawrence Taylor breaking Joe Theisman’s leg. We see this 3 times. Strictly speaking, maiming, disfiguring, and killing an opponent is a breach of sports hospitality. Even for pugilists.

• Because of that injury, the second highest paid football player became the offensive left tackle, who is programmed to protect the quarterback. In case you miss that hospitality is tied to capital, the voiceover metaphorizes: as every housewife knows, the first check pays the mortgage and the second check pays the insurance. To protect, according to this scenario, is to protect against financial ruin, rather than to protect one’s integrity, for example.

• The third scene features Michael Oher (whom we’re meeting for the first time) being ushered into a conference room by a woman in business attire who emphatically excludes another woman who looks like she owns stock in Stein Mart. That woman and Michael are decidedly unhappy. No hospitality there. Further, when Michael is seated, it looks as if his legs won’t fit under the table. Thus, emotionally and physically, he has not been welcomed into an investigation that purports to protect his desires.

• Two Years Earlier: A beat-up car drives through a run-down neighborhood amidst litter, a collapsed home, and a (homeless ?) man pushing a shopping cart down the street. This is about as far from the Norman Rockwell painting displayed later in the movie as you can get.

• Next, we see a mechanic beg a coach to influence the administrators of a private Christian school to accept his nephew and a boy named “Big Mike,” whom we recognize from the conference scene. Why would the coach stick his neck out for this man and these kids he doesn’t know? Well, explains, the mechanic, there’s money to be made and there’s a football program to benefit. No pretense of hospitality.

Let me speed things up here because I’m not at the end of my first of nine pages of handwritten notes. And my one or two readers are not going to hang in much longer for me to make a point of all this.

When you afford someone else—the Other or others—hospitality, you take a risk. How big your willingness to take that risk depends on your philosophy of hospitality. The risks you're willing and unwilling to take affect every relationship between hosts and guests.

The Christian school’s football coach (as host) invites Michael (as guest) to join the team. Almost immediately, the coach laments the risk that he took badgering the administrators to accept Michael after it appears that Michael won’t hurt anyone on the field. Mrs. Tuohy excoriates the coach that he needs to get to know his players. According to Mrs. Tuohy, a coach/host can prevent a failed relationship with is player/guest if the coach/host would only acquire the necessary information, which in this case, is Michael’s score at the 98th percentile for protectiveness. While at first this scene suggests that getting to know your players/guests will guarantee success, upon reflection, this constitutes a “just the facts” approach to relationships and no face-to-face encounters that Martin Buber advocates.

Let’s pause to consider this interesting aspect of the risk side of the dilemma. At what point should you try to see the horizons (Gadamer) or search another's face (Buber)? At what point do you accept someone else’s background, vision, and gaze? Before or after the invitation to host? If before, risk is minimized. If after, risk is maximized. If you're not convinced, I recommend rereading the Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn,  Medea, and The Metamorphoses.  HM does, however, grant that not everyone is cut out to be Philemon or Baucis.  But the point here is that not everyone aspires to be so trusting.

Several people host Michael, in addition to the NCAA investigator and high school football coach.

The school selection team members know little about him because his records are so incomplete; they accept/host him because they want to do “the right thing.” Their risk is huge.

The mechanic and his wife have taken in Michael on a temporary basis. It appears that they know Michael, so their risk seems minimal. However, the wife challenges the husband’s decision to host Michael rather than spend time with her. Spilling over a couch haphazardly made for his sleeping, “Big Mike” hears them arguing about dumping him at a shelter the next day. They are not willing to risk disrupting their home. Calling him “Big Mike,” we later discover, is the movie’s clue that they don’t really know Michael.

The teachers also don’t know Michael. Several times, they reduce “Big Mike” to a set of academic scores, bickering among themselves about the extent of his lack of potential. Only one teacher is curious to understand Michael. She gradually converts most of the others to reconsider their assessment methods. Getting to know Michael, these teachers become willing to risk discomfort and conduct oral exams. Only one teacher holds out, inflexibly expecting Michael to adhere to his syllabus.  Or maybe he has high standards and a strong sense of equity.  Hard to tell.

The whole college recruiting process fails at hospitality. On the one side, they esteem Michael only on the basis of his game videos and his football stats. The coaches couch their recruiting spiels in hospitable terms but only for financial gain and career reputation. On the other side, the Tuohys only perfunctorily escort these coaches into their home, that is until the Ole Miss coach arrives.  Yet even the welcome for the Ole Miss coach fails at hospitality because still in the entry way, Mrs. Tuohy coaches the coach on how to pursue  Michael rather than how to get to know him.

Many more scenes—Michael’s mother’s place, the gang’s den, the Laundromat, the cafeteria, the library, the restaurants, the tutoring session, the DMV desk, the social services office, and the cars—depict hospitality gone bad for one of two reasons: an inability to take a risk or a failure to authentically view another person as a human being.

The growing hospitality tensions in the movie culminate when Mrs. Tuohy asks her husband if she is a good person. He assures her that she is the best person he knows. Why? Because everything she does is for others. Uncomforted, his wife inquires why she lives that way. Her husband rails back that he has no clue. The question of why she is so hospitable remains. Michael, clearly no limpet despite his poverty and orphan-like state, stands his ground.  He demands a more thorough explanation when he suspects their inhospitality: “Why’d you do it?” “Was it for you or was it for me?” He repeats Mrs. Tuohy’s earlier threat: “Don’t you dare lie to me.” However, unlike her, he walks away, leaving the question unanswered. After a brief meandering and uncharacteristic muzziness, Mrs. Tuohy self-reflects and begins to answer the question. She concludes that she is culpable of subservance.  She has always wanted Michael to play football for her alma mater.  Without the blinders limiting Michael's life to that singular vision, Mrs. Tuohy realizes her more grievous error: she is not generous, and thus, possibly, not good.  HM is eager to relate her lack of disinterested self-righteousness to hospitality, noting that Mrs. Tuohy expects the ultimate reciprocity from her guest--his blind adulation.  She has been that puissant host unconcerned for her guest's preferences but obsessed with her own control.  She has never once considered or inquired how her guest sees himself and what he wants for himself. She, like the leader of the Light Brigade, has erred. But unlike the leader’s men, Michael does not follow. He does not sacrifice his self-image and vision for his future. When Mrs. Tuohy finally and truly follows the advice she’s given his high school coach, she asks Michael what he wants to be and to do. Further, she promises Michael that she will support his self-concept and decisions. She gives him permission to self-actualize; and by doing so, self-actualizes herself. (Oops, I slipped into my other blog.) Mrs. Tuohy, taking the ultimate risk for any parent, also takes the ultimate risk for any host by assuring her guest that he can be himself.

It may seem a payoff for Mrs. Tuohy’s hospitality that Michael chooses Ole Miss in the end. But the movie rejects such a suspicion when it returns to the conference table. Growing more confident, Michael berates the obdurate NCAA investigator for never asking him why he chose Ole Miss. Perhaps, the movie berates us for our own assumptions about his choice. We and she should have inquired more thoroughly. Michael explains his decision in terms of reciprocity: it’s where his family has gone. He means, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Tuohy. The accusation has become the embrace. The reciprocity of hospitality extended with maximum risk has become protection, gratitude, and loyalty. He chooses them--his family--just as Mrs. Tuohy has learned to choose him—that is, apart from gain.

Why do we treat others well? Why do we risk being maimed, robbed, rejected, and ridiculed—all effects of hospitality in the movie? What Mrs. Tuohy and Michael learn is that sometimes the risk to understand and accept another person on his or her terms can create that rare friend that Aristotle describes as a soul mate. HM rejects Mrs. Tuohy’s final voiceover crediting God and Lawrence Taylor. Rather, HM gives credits Michael’s success and, more importantly, the “start of a beautiful friendship” to host and guest.  With their last "proper hug," host and guest embrace but do not fuse.  They will grow--apart from each other--but not apart.  There will be more risks to take and much more to learn about each other.  But if they continue to risk and explore, they will continue to be good people.  Such is the goal and the gain of hospitality.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Hospitality Lessons for Same-sex Weddings

     Same-sex fiancés living in states that don’t grant same-sex marriages must "elope" to legally marry. Obviously, this scenario differs significantly from the typical elopement attitude of “screw everyone, we’re out of here.” Hospitality Morality would like to explore these differences in an attempt to discard the word "elopement" as applied to same-sex out-of-state weddings and, therefore, dispel any sense of rejecting. HM would like to investigate some of the delicacies of this situation and offer a few hospitality lessons—learned, as usual, on the heals of failing big time at each of them. :(

Lesson #1: Don’t use the word “elopement” when the couple has informed people, including their parents, in advance of the wedding. Merriam-Webster guides us to believe that eloping is secretive. So the couple is not eloping, per say. They are escaping. The rhetoric is important because it eliminates that "screw them..." attitude.  Rather, these escaping fiancés are fleeing a state that fails to grant them a legal union (although it might recognize it, which seems hypocritical to HM). The couple is forced to escape their state and find another that will license their marriage. But escape doesn't necessitate secrecy.  So if they’ve told their family, friends, co-workers, facebookers, etc., it’s not an elopement. It’s an “escapement.”

Lesson #2: Accept that the couple's plans may appear desultory only because they're not afforded the traditional wedding guidelines. Without a script to guide them, they struggle whether to invite people to witness their non-traditional wedding.  Let’s take a minute to visualize the actual wedding "ceremony."  Does the couple escape to (or reside in) a state that requires them to submit paperwork in advance, waiting a few days before being wedded? If so, should they invite people to witness this filing? Probably not. So now they’re down to the wedding "ceremony." Let’s inspect the most non-traditional wedding: they’re not religious. So they’re standing before some unfamiliar justice of the peace for a quick “ritual.” Names, a simple Q&A, vows, affection, and finis. If they’re not constructing a religious or more elaborate ceremony and they’re simply appearing before a justice of the peace, are they setting their guests up for a bit of disappointment? After all, their guests have likely experienced far more intricate wedding rituals. The last thing the couple wants, beginning their lives together, is to turn and face their loved ones who seem to convey, “That’s it?”

Lesson #3: Embrace the couple’s intentions to include their loved ones and achates in their joy although they've decided not to invite them to their wedding. Parties, vacations, restaurant meals, holidays, and family reunions are but a few suggested occasions for everyone to come together, celebrate this lovely union, and enjoy some raillery. If these events are planned and announced before the wedding, supporters have a better chance of feeling appreciated and included. And they should be grateful for that.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Freedom to Marry:  http://www.freedomtomarry.org/
Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays: http://community.pflag.org/Page.aspx?pid=194&srcid=-2

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Hospitality at the sports center

   Whether you're aware of it or not, sports and sports centers depend on hospitality.

Take, for example, the concept of a lap lane. The sign says it all: “continuous swimming” is required. As such, "lap” becomes a verb: “to complete the circuit of (a racecourse)” or “to traverse a course” [Merriam Webster]. Hence, when a swimmer approaches a pool gabber with the request to “share” the lane, the polite nudge is to swim or give up the lane. Despite these three guides—the sign, the verb, and the nudge—said pool puddler will likely agree to share but remain gabbing in the lane. For your next 24 laps. This is unnecessary. The sports center has done its job, the lapper has done his job, but the swimless swimmer has not. Hospitality has been breached. And, as always, the question lurks, can one insist upon another’s hospitality? Yes. A simple conversation is appropriate the first time you must swim around the guy standing in the lap lane. It should go something like this: “It’s not easy to maintain my momentum when I have to swim around you.” No response? Next lap: "Wearing these goggles makes it difficult for me to see you. I’d hate to run into you.” No response?  Well, then you've beggared your hospitality strategies and must give up. The lug won; you lost. But if your finger tips should lightly graze the lap intruder on your next lap as you barely pass around him—due to the difficulty of spotting him, of course-- you’ve broken no hospitality rules. And you may just find the lane a bit emptier upon your next lap. That’s one intruder handled if not hospitably, at least not inhospitably.

A similar lack of a gentle hospitality solution occurs with the tennis court encroacher.  For not the first, second, or third time, you’re playing with your chums on a court one of you reserved when this familiar Termagant stomps up to you and announces that she has reserved your court for this time and that you and your buddies must vacate immediately.  No discussion, no apology, no collegiality--just her usual blustering attack on your right to play.  Maintaining your equanimity, you suggest she check with the tennis pro.  She won't.  You're still playing.  A hospitatality standoff ensues.  Superadded to your frustration with her is your frustration with your friends who back down. Why you're surprised, I can't say; for they always relinquish the court to this female bully.  You know that this is misplaced chivalry on your friends’ part, but you fail to convince them.  The final insult occurs when, after giving up the court, you discover that the female group is missing their fourth. When you return home early, your wife asks if you were rained out. You reply that you were “womaned out.” Your wife will now hear this all too familiar story of female bullying. It's time to face the truth: no amount of hospitality can convert a bully. A bully esteems hospitality as a weakness. A bully attacks the weak. Hospitality Morality recommends stepping up your hospitality game instead. Ask the sport center's authorities to assize the dispute. If the error was yours, leave the court and apologize to only those who have been polite to you. If all have been rude, simply leave. If you feel the need to apologize, you probably won’t be sincere. And bullies don’t want apologies. So don’t bother. If the error was theirs, play on and ignore any taunts.  A bully will look elsewhere for a less formidable foe.  Beware court #2!

We can we learn three lessons about hospitality from these sports scenarios. First, hospitality is critical to maintaining a convivial atmosphere in a competitive environment. Second, hospitality may require a bit of chicancery. Third, only authoritative hospitality affects bullies.
"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." - from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf