Review of Secretariat (2010) by Shiira — 16 Oct 2010

Horses all over the world, thoroughbreds and non-thoroughbreds alike, humiliated by the sight of an ostrich outrunning their own kind in Sam Peckinpah's "Ride the High Country", could stamp their hooves and snort with pride when ESPN's "Sportscentury: 100 Greatest Athletes of th 20th Century", placed Secretariat ahead of sixty-five humans, men and women, among them, such beloved luminaries as Mickey Mantle, Julius "Dr.

J." Erving, Rocky Marciano, and Billy Jean King. Good for the horses, they wanted no part in Peckinpah's grand design to demystify the west, but sports fans, especially from the football sector, couldn't help but shake their heads at ESPN's decision to place Walter Payton(#37) a couple notches below the celebrated Triple Crown winner of 1973, as supporters of the former Chicago Bears running back were still reeling from the medical profession's inability to procure a liver for the Jackson State alumnus.

Since the nine-time Pro Bowler and first ballot Hall of Famer could no longer run, figuratively speaking, it was as if the doctors played horse doctor and put "Sweetness" out to pasture until the time arrived for them to put him down.

Payton died at the age of forty-five, that's fifteen in horse years, four years younger than "Big Red", who died in 1989, due to an incurable foot disease called laminitis. So for those who remember the list, and remember the debates as to whether animals are athletes, "Secretariat" is your litmus test: Does the film make a solid case for the American Thoroughbred racehorse's lofty position(eat it Man O'War, only #84) among the pantheon of athletic all-time greats? In my opinion: no.

A racehorse, even one with the potential to be a champion, is only as good as its jockey; racehorses, in essence, are idiot savants, all they do is run real fast. Jockeys do their thinking for them. Secretariat's first rider relegates the thoroughbred to the boneyard of the also-rans(hello, Jello Manufacturing Plant!), the horses with potential.

When Payton ran roughshod over opposing NFL team defenses, he did it without a little man strapped to his back; he did it by himself. Number "34" was no mount, like Charlie, the athlete in Carol Emschwiller's Phillip K.

Dick award-winning novel "The Mount", who wants to be the fastest runner in the world. It's as if a horse wrote the book. Our world, the hypothetical horse writer would point out, is their dystopia.

It's speculative fiction at its best, in which Emschwiller writes about enslaved mounts(read: horses) living under the totalitarian state mandated by the Hoots(read: humans), whose relationship with their captives is an unmistakable extrapolation of the peremptory servitude which horses are subjected to by their human keepers.

Penny Chenery(Diane Ladd), Secretariat's owner, may come to the table with an inspiring story(a housewife who saves her father's farm by reaching the pinnacle of a "gentlemen only" sport), but she would be a Hoot in Emschwiller's line of thinking, as the congenial, but ambitious, maybe even ruthless, horse owner, willingly hires a jockey who once ran a horse so hard, he burst his heart.

Through Charlie, the human animal, an athlete, clearly, meant to be taken in the horse racing vein, Emschwiller deconstructs the anthropomorphization of animals, in this case, horses, as Charlie, the horse-stand-in, possesses human attributes, because he is, indeed, human, an irony, since animals haven't evolved to the point of possessing human-like consciousnesses, such as the dolphins in Mike Nichols' "Day of the Dolphin".

Horses don't care about being the fastest, like Charlie does, and that, for all intents and purposes, includes Secretariat, too. Horse racing aficionados simply don't see a thoroughbred's world as being dystopian, since they think it's only natural for an animal to run around a track.

They buy into the fiction that a horse cares about winning, that Secretariat is posing, that the thoroughbred is self-aware of his pedigree and status as the pre-race odds-on favorite. Secretariat pees on a writer's shoes because the horse knows he's getting bad press.

Horse racing aficionados believe this. In all likelihood, Secretariat was no different than Charlie, who wanted a never-ending supply of apples and a nice comfortable stall to sleep in. Horses don't watch ESPN.

They don't turn on the television to watch their highlights.