Context and Greatness

“Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.” ― 
Robert M. Pirsig


For a generalist like me, specialization always presents problems. Genre is maddening, because it somehow implies immediately lower or raised standards. Gangster movies and Westerns can be great, while Rom-Coms and Sci-Fi are limited; fantasy fiction can never be as good as literary fiction, or, even worse, mediocre literary fiction is more worthy of analysis because it shows greater ambition than even the best fantasy fiction. I actually believe these tropes, because, for the most part, they are borne out in the record. There are more stone classics in the Gangster and Western genres than there are in the Rom-Com or Sci-Fi genres. If an author has ambitions towards canonization, she will usually write literary fiction rather than fantasy. What about the exceptions that prove the rule? Does one just use that old line and write off Annie Hall or A Song of Ice and Fire? What about other masterpieces that arise from disreputable genres? Calvin and Hobbes, London Calling, The Wire, are these also rule-proving exceptions or is there something wrong with the rule?


This has been on my mind because of Mariano Rivera and Terminator 2. Mo just broke the all-time saves record. Terminator 2 just happened to be available On Demand the other night when I was bored.


Saves are probably the stupidest statistic in baseball, which is a sport rife with stupid statistics. In order for a pitcher to earn a save, he must record the last out having entered the game with a lead of no more than three runs (if he pitches a full inning) or with the tying run on deck (if he pitches less than one inning) - to put that a little more simply, you earn a save if you get more outs than you allow runs. If starting pitchers were given a reward for the same criteria, they could pitch two innings and give up five runs.


At the same time, Mariano Rivera is the greatest relief pitcher in the history of baseball and if the metric we use to rate him is flawed, that should take nothing away from the consistent and singular greatness that he has shown over the years. He is a joy to watch, because despite the fact that the service he renders the Yankees is wildly overvalued and ridiculously measured, he is the best at it. There is a grace and an economy to his performance that we associate with greatness. It is not only his success, but the ease with which he accomplishes it.


Terminator 2 should not rank very high in my esteem. It is a straight action movie, which is not a genre that produces films with interesting themes or artistic ambition. Included in the required suspension of disbelief is the good-killer-robot-from-the-future's Austrian accent. The movie was marketed to children and teenagers despite its stupefying violence. The video games based on it were pretty fucking dogshit. Danny Cooksey's insufferable mullet was given star status on Salute Your Shorts because of his three-minute appearance in T2.


That's a litany of sins to have to live down, but fuck if Terminator 2 doesn't remain one of the absolute best movies I've seen. The last 40-45 minutes is basically a single sustained action sequence, consisting of three bravura setpieces (the CyberDyne break-in, the highway chase and the steel mill finale) that develop the characters, advance the plot, are clearly staged, shot and edited and culminate with the most ridiculously wonderful action movie catchphrase and pathos for the Austrian-accented-good-killer-robot-from-the-future. In addition to that astonishing third act, though, we also get Cameron's extended and relatively subtle layering of metal and machine and technology as aids to violence (think of the strangely-accented Terminator mangling the payphone to get John Connor some quarters or the T-1000 ripping apart the elevator in which Our Heroes are escaping), some fun visual puns (John playing Missile Command in the arcade, the T-1000 taken aback by the silvery female mannequin) and Sarah Connor's Vision of Judgment Day. The movie works its themes into every level and holds up to repeated viewings not because it Blows Shit Up Real Good (though truly, Shit has never been Blown Up quite so Good as it is here) but because it has compelling characters and has so much layered in to every visual that it can be analyzed as microscopically as Citizen Kane.


So is Mariano less excellent a baseball player because of his role or Terminator 2 less amazing a movie because of its genre? Well, yes, I think so. A great closer in baseball can only become great if there is a great baseball team playing in the innings prior to his entrance. Without a lead to protect, a victory to preserve, a closer loses his perceived value and aura. Mariano Rivera does a very specific job better than anyone ever, while Derek Jeter, say, does a more general job better than quite a lot of people. Nevertheless, if you were assembling a baseball team, you would pick Derek Jeter before Mariano Rivera because the job that Jeter is less dominant at is way more important than the job at which Rivera is transcendent. Similarly, Terminator 2 is the best action movie ever made, and I wouldn't dispute its inclusion on any comprehensive list of great films, but even if we grant that Cameron pulls it off in the moment, no one can step back from "Hasta la vista, baby" and not find it laughable.