![]() If it was going to save us, wouldn’t play have done so already? It will come out of the realm of play." As the film demonstrates, humans have played even as they’ve created pollution, over-population, global warming and so on. He says, "We will come up with some idea to rescue us. Among the commentators who feels that play will “save” us from the world’s problems is editor and political writer Lewis H. It's really at the core of that game.īL: "Bounce" bounces in a different direction at the end. That process of discovering it really brings together a number of elements that define not only the game, but its symbolic relationship to nature, and to culture, and to human intervention. As David points out earlier, the genius of Mesoamerican culture was to figure out not only how to use rubber to make something, but how to vulcanize it. Oh, my God!"īeyond the sheer exhilaration of a bouncing ball, the rubberized spheroid was an important historical development as well, right? "Imagine! You’ve spent millennia as humanity, kicking pebbles and skulls, and something bounces. Here he is talking about the great leap forward that occurred when the people of South America discovered how to incorporate the sap from the rubber tree into their ball-making process: ![]() Sociologist David Goldblatt is prominently featured in "Bounce." (Courtesy photo)īL: One of my favorite moments in the film features sociologist David Goldblatt, the author of several excellent books involving soccer. The fact that, the rules are arbitrary, that it's only a game, and that, at the same time, we take it incredibly seriously. JT: There's a paradox at the core of all ballgames. So in that way, it does sort of represent this microcosm of who we are as a society. There's always other dynamics at work - whether it's politics, whether it's race, gender - those are the things that are being negotiated in the act of playing. There's something else mental about that that I think is still with us today, where games that we play and watch are more than just what's happening in a game. So, the ancient Maya, for example, believed that the ball was like the sun and the moon moving in the sky, and by playing the ballgame, they were perpetuating the universe. JF: As far back as we can remember, the ballgames we played were tied to our belief in the universe. It’s the place where we can act out the drama of human existence.” Can you elaborate a little on that idea? We went to, in the end, to about 10 different countries, and went as far back as a couple million years in history to try and answer this question.īL: John, you say in the film, which you co-wrote, “The ballgame is a microcosm of our lives. So, that led us to the Democratic Republic of Congo, led us to India - look at cricket there, film kids playing marbles there as well - Bonobos playing with balls, also in Congo. We didn't want history or geography to be any kind of impediment, so we were really open to going anywhere, and filming just about anything to get at some of the core ideas of the film. We really looked at this concept of the ball and how it teaches us to play, how it inspires us to play. JT: It might be quicker to give you a sense of where we didn't go - we went so many places. "Part of the point of the film in the end is to say there’s a lot involved in free-play that’s essential to being human." John Fox And what we try to get at is why? A lot of it is the cognitive development, the way as a conveyor of social dynamic, and ultimately also just an expression of joy. And those sequences show that dolphins and chimpanzees not only play, but they play with objects, including balls, with the same degree of delight. As we say in the film, we didn't invent play we just added to it. What can animals and children teach us about how the ball taught us to play? Fox and Jerome Thelia, the documentary's director, joined Bill Littlefield.īL: John, the film includes dazzling footage of chimps playing with a ball, kids in Brazil kicking around a ball that’s been made of scraps of plastic and cloth bound with twine - even dolphins learning to swim with a soccer ball underwater. "Bounce" was based on a book by John Fox titled " The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game." He’s also the film’s co-producer. In the new feature documentary " Bounce ," juggler Michael Moschen rhythmically bounces three balls inside a large triangle. Like much of the movie, this sequence is pure fun, but the film’s real purpose is expressed in its subtitle, "How the Ball Taught the World To Play. (Courtesy Photo) This article is more than 7 years old. According to author John Fox, humans "didn't invent play we just added to it" - especially with the invention of balls that can bounce.
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