Personal Best: going from "period piece" to dated

Robert Towne's movie Personal Best came out in 1982.  Set between 1976 and 1979, it follows the efforts of two pentathletes as they pursue berths in the 1980 Olympics.  We know what happened there...the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and the U.S. boycotted the Moscow Games:  "All dressed up and no place to go."

The two athletes are lovers...until they are not.

from Personal Best (all the best first dates include arm wrestling)

At the time of the film's release, Coach Terry Tingloff's relationships with the women under his guidance just seemed complicated...sort of unusual, but pretty much shrug-worthy.  And his "I could've been a man's coach!" rant was just funny and true. Or at least truthy.

But then time passes and works its alchemy.  Now, Coach Tingloff taking a bowl of strawberry ice cream out of his charge's hands so he can lay down in her arms isn't compassionate, it's creepy.  Tingloff sneering, "Do you actually think that Chuck Knoll has to worry that Franco Harris is gonna cry 'cause Terry Bradshaw won't talk to him?" sounds whiny and bigoted 31 years later.

This can't be all in the ear that hears.  Taste changes, but these changes seem like something larger and more broadly cultural.

Moreover, the break-up of the women's romance has grown more inexplicable over time as their relationship moved from "necessarily" shadowy and ephemeral to something conceivably permanent.  The closetedness and evasions ring true from the era—trust me—but as a plot element, the relationship flimsiness their break-up depends on is sliding towards nonsense.

The Third-Way message that you can compete and try your best and yet be smart and strategic enough to be generous even as your killer instinct carries you to medal contention continues to resonate, but the sexism and homophobia and blithe predation seem to be going the way of the striped tube sock. A welcome extinction the day it actually happens.

Susana Darwin