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Machiavelli and Tolstoy: “Cool Guys”
Thoughts on “Mike Tyson Film Takes a Swing at His Old Image” by Tim Arango, in the New York Times.
“I don’t know who I am,” he said in an interview in his Las Vegas home, one of the few extensive interviews he’s given in the last few years. “That might sound stupid. I really have no idea. All my life I’ve been drinking and drugging and partying, and all of a sudden this comes to a stop.” He speaks in his familiar high-pitch voice with a trace of a lisp, but there is no menace as he frames his past as a series of mistakes. It is easy, sitting next to him as he speaks softly and contritely, to forget how feared he was.
With Ali it’s possible to see a narrative perfectly defined by race. A black man competing at the top of a physical sport many people consider to be barbaric, speaking with an accent while making remarks very easily characterized as stereotypically black, undergoing a religious conversion to a strange and threatening (some would say racist) faith, fighting the white government by refusing to fight in its war, becoming a figure of defiant American blackness, then gradually succumbing to the Parkinson’s disease, his outspoken personality and physically imposing presence reduced to a bumbling, nearly mute, birthday-party magician brought around for photo ops with Fidel Castro and the Olympic torch – a sort of disabled, emasculated Uncle Tom. When Ali was painted in the media as a bad-boy, for dodging the draft, for his multiple marriages and promiscuity, it was minor and it seemed always somehow to be symbolic of something: Ali’s race, the 60s, Malcolm X. And now that he’s a good guy, it’s just that the symbolism has changed: America, the 60s, a tragic hero or a martyr to less civilized times.
Mike Tyson was different. He wasn’t outspoken, he didn’t pay lip service to being any sort of community leader, when he talked about religion it came out more like drug addled nonsense than conviction, and when he was convicted, he was really convicted, incarcerated, and written off by everyone. There was no moral high ground. When he was painted as a bad-boy it was usually because he was, at least in the sense that he did bad things like rape people or beat them up outside of clubs.
In that context it was fun for some people to play Tyson as an inhuman killing machine, an animal, a brute force. He was a boxer, and it’s hard to deny the existence of this sort of mentality, if not it’s implications in regards to his personality or intelligence, for Tyson. But anyone familiar with Tyson outside of the boxing ring knows that while he may not exactly be erudite, it’s not entirely surprising to hear him use the word “erudite” in conversation or, in this case, an interview. As a boxer, though, he was able to keep this side of himself out of the public consciousness, and as long as he was a boxer he was to be feared. As long as he was a boxer he was able to capitalize on that fear.
But now, Tyson doesn’t box anymore. He’s broke. He needs to play on his past glories to pay his debts and he’s roped Ali’s marketing team in to do the job. Even with the face tattoo, the force-of-nature Iron Mike angle isn’t gonna work anymore, so it’s time to play up the soft spoken, intelligent, down on his luck, Great American Boxer angle, and hope that the public buys it.
Given these circumstances, the question is, should we be concerned with the idea that Mike Tyson might turn into the next Muhammad Ali? A once-mighty personality turned into a meaningless spokesman? Only if he has the lack of foresight to let his handlers have their way with his image. Tyson doesn’t have Parkinson’s, and he never was stupid. Essentially, nothing has changed for him now, except that he doesn’t box or take drugs anymore. Unfortunately, these were the two things that comprised Tyson’s public image as a dangerous man. If Tyson is still a public figure, it’s no longer as a menace or a symbol of the rage of inner city youth. Unlike Ali, Tyson can’t really signify anything anymore. I wouldn’t catch him carrying the Olympic torch anytime soon.
RELATED Tyson vs. Colay and a typical post-fight interview.
Remarks: 1 of 1
Remark · Richard · 15 May 2008
I recently finished a collection of those essays by Oates the Times article cites, On Boxing. Her thoughts on Mike Tyson were both interesting and frustrating, in that the piece predates his downward spiral. She writes with excitement and a keen interest in the man. He was twenty at the time, this was as his career was peaking, I guess.
She painted him as charismatic, intelligent, and all-consumed by boxing. In other essays she discusses former champions, largely in the context of race and this or that dichotomy. From what she says there I’d venture to say that Tyson lacks some of the crippling flaws of his predecessors, and he clearly benefits from living in a time when celebrities can and do bounce back from ridiculous and inexcusable pasts.
Maybe Tyson will try to push the Tyson Oates interviewed at twenty, as the Tyson We Forgot, so to speak.
http://dailyscreenshots.de/screenshot/mike-tysons-punch-out/nes-1873781
(the ultimate and unforgettable Tyson)