Field of Dreams Redux Rings True Today
Mike Nussbaum, the oldest professional working actor in the U.S., died on December 23 at the age of 99. Nussbaum still was playing in Hamlet at the League of Chicago Theaters in 2019 at the age of 95. Reportedly, he still was reviewing scripts a couple of weeks before his death.
Nussbaum enjoyed a career on the stage, as well as in film, including Fatal Attraction and Men in Black. But few may remember his role in the 1989 Iowa-based movie, Field of Dreams.
Hearing a news report of his death as our family gathered for the holidays, my daughter commented, “He played the school principal in Field of Dreams."
"Oh?" I replied. "There was a school principal in Field of Dreams?"
"Yes," she said. "Field of Dreams was about book-banning."
"It was?"
Of course, she was right. Am I the only one who had forgotten this?
Iowa, a State of Literacy
Woven into the fabric of this sports fantasy drama revolving around a 1919 “Black Sox” World Series baseball scandal, a broken relationship between a father and son, and the creation of a baseball diamond in a cornfield, a woman showed up at a school meeting to demand that a book be banned.
But the connection to books and to Iowa doesn't end here. Field of Dreams was based on a book called Shoeless Joe. Canadian novelist W. P. Kinsella began writing it in 1982 at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
Kinsella's working book title was The Kidnapping of J.D. Salinger. The movie's producers wanted to feature Salinger, but he wouldn't allow it, threatening to sue. Terence Mann became the fictitious author under scrutiny for writing the novel, The Boat Rocker.
Beulah Gasnick, the woman making her case before a packed room, asserted that the book was "smut and filth, and has no place in our school." (This scene was filmed at a school in Farley, Iowa.)
Nussbaum, in his role as the school principal, responded: "Mrs. Gasnick, it is not smut. The book you're waving about is hardly smut. It is considered by many critics to be the classic novel about the 1960s. Its author is widely regarded as the finest satirist of his time."
But Beulah Gasnick was not having it. She proclaimed that the novels written by this controversial author and activist of the 1960s "endorsed promiscuity, godlessness, the mongrelization of the races and disrespect to high ranking officers of the United States Army". She added, "And that is why right-thinking school boards all across the country have been banning this man's S-H-I-T since 1969."
Finally, Ray Kinsella's wife, Annie (played by Amy Madigan) had had enough. She rose from her seat, saying that the author was “a warm and gentle voice of reason during a time of great madness. He coined the phrase, 'Make love, not war.' While other people were chanting, 'Burn, baby, burn' he was talking about love, and peace, and understanding."
After Gasnick ridiculed Annie's husband, Ray, (played by Kevin Costner) for plowing up a cornfield to build a baseball field, Annie defended him, saying, "At least he is not a book burner, you Nazi cow."
Then, she proposed to the PTA board and members of the community: "Let's put it to a vote. Who wants to burn books? Who wants to spit on the Constitution of the United States of America? Anybody? Who's for the Bill of Rights? Who thinks freedom is a pretty darn good thing? Who thinks we need to stand up to the kind of censorship they had under Stalin? Let's see those hands?" After seeing a sea of raised hands, she concluded, "All right, there you go."
Solution in Search of a Problem
I'm relieved that U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher recently placed a temporary injunction on certain portions of SF496, the 2023 Iowa law banning books depicting sex acts, and prohibiting instruction on LGBTQ+ topics.. The injunction will block enforcement of the law until a decision is made regarding two federal lawsuits claiming that these provisions violate both the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
I taught high school English briefly, and also served on our local school board from 1996 to 2005. During that time, not one constituent approached me, or our board, asking to remove any book from the shelves.
Furthermore, a Des Moines Register survey of 327 Iowa public school districts last year found that in three years, only 60 books had been challenged. SF496 did not grow out of a groundswell for legislative reform, right?
No one advocates providing sexually explicit content to elementary students, or school library books that aren't age appropriate. But no parent (or legislator) has the right to dictate to other parents what meets this criteria. Instead, a book must be considered as an entire work, and challenges must follow the steps of a formal process. After taking a challenge to the school board, it's best left in the hands of school librarians and educators.
But since this law was signed by our governor last year, schools have been pressured to pull hundreds of books from shelves: timeless classics, historical volumes, and award-winning novels. (SF496 exempted the Bible, despite its numerous sexual references.) But, for the moment, it appears that Iowa educators and librarians have a reprieve.
Who would have imagined that in 2023, Iowans would be living under a regime of book banning imposed by our state legislators and governor? Some argue that the pendulum surely will swing back. However, what is new today is that transgender and LBGTQ issues are at the forefront. And, our current book battles are being waged against an unprecedented authoritarian backdrop. This translates into aggressive tactics by state government to control teachers and educators. It's a sad state of affairs.
Hypocrisy at the Highest Levels
But there's reason for optimism. Women, specifically mothers, like the fictional Beulah Gasnick, often are propelled into the front lines of moral leadership. But I haven't heard much about Moms for Liberty lately, have you? It seems that one of the co-founders of this national self-appointed vigilante group, a Florida woman named Bridget Ziegler, is caught up in a scandal involving a consensual three-some including her husband, her, and another woman.
The other woman subsequently has made serious accusations against Ziegler's husband after he unexpectedly arrived alone at her home. He is facing removal as chair of the Florida Republican Party on January 8. (He has denied the accusation and has not been charged.) Bridget Ziegler no longer is a national officer for Moms for Liberty, but so far, has refused to resign from her position on the Sarasota County School Board.
Most school board candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty in Iowa lost their races last fall, and in other states. Its power and influence to wage culture wars at schools may be waning.
You Want to Protect Kids?
My family has visited Field of Dreams near Dyersville twice, once in 1990 and again a fewer years later. Apparently our governor has a high regard for this film and its potential as a tourist site. She awarded $12.5 million from Destination Iowa funds, created in part from the American Rescue Plan, to build a permanent stadium.
The film also has received recognition at a national level. In 2017, Field of Dreams was selected as one of 25 annual additions for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Like this revered movie, the state of Iowa also should be known for much more than its role in an iconic film about baseball:
· In 1846, Iowa was the second state to allow married women to own property, and in 1857, the first state to fully admit women at a public university and study the same programs as men.
· In 1868, Iowa was the first state to outlaw segregated schools – 86 years before the rest of the U.S.
· In 1851, Iowa was the second state to legalize interracial marriage -- 100 years ahead of the rest of the U.S.
· In 2009, Iowa became the third state to recognize gay and lesbian marriage.
· The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, founded in 1936, was the first creative writing degree program in the U.S.
"By 1900, Iowa was tied with Nebraska as the most literate state in the nation, having ranked in the top five most literate states since 1870s," writes Jeff Bremer in A New History of Iowa.
Iowa has a proud legacy as a progressive state, and Iowans deserve enlightened legislative leadership to move us forward.
Book banning is a cynical political distraction. If Iowa legislators truly wanted to protect our school kids, a sixth-grade boy at Perry Community Schools might have survived his second day back in the classroom after the holidays.
Instead, guns are the second leading cause of death of children and teens in Iowa. Last year, legislators in the Iowa House passed a law allowing people to carry firearms in their vehicles on school grounds.
No book ever was used as a weapon to kill a child. Iowa needs to reclaim its tradition as a state characterized by common sense policies based on respect for educators, schools, and parents, and firmly grounded in the U.S. Constitution. Our kids deserve to be educated and equipped for the world they will live in --not some make-believe, sanitized 1950s version.
The impassioned argument in Field of Dreams against the carte blanche banning of books rings as true today as it did 35 years ago. Why not download or rent it for your Iowa legislators, as a reminder that Iowa once was known as A State of Minds. Tell them to stop leading this state backwards.
Thanks, Dave. I needed my daughter to remind me of it! But it certainly is worthy of an encore in Iowa today. Yes, one would wonder if the governor ever saw the movie, or has blocked that scene from her memory?
Thanks, Denise. I appreciate your endorsement!