University of Richmond

From the SelectedWorks of Scott T. Allison

2020

Elisabeth Shue’s Heroic Transformation, as ToldThrough GracieSydney R. Shah, University of Richmond

Available at: https://works.bepress.com/scott_allison/108/

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24Elisabeth Shue’s Heroic Transformation,

as Told Through Gracie

s y d n e y r . s h a h

“This sounds so dramatic, but really, it happened -- when I first showed up to tryouts, there was a boy that came over to me, stole my ball, and said, ‘Girls can’t play soccer.’”

Forty-four years later, this is the story Elisabeth Shue told me in an interview I held with her over the phone (Shue, 2017). Intimidation, it seemed, was a recurring theme of her life, yet she never failed to overcome any obstacles that she faced. Whether it was playing soccer with the boys or being the successful actress that she is now, she has consistently proven wrong those who doubted her. She told me about the inevitable challenges she faced back then – some of which she still faces today -- crediting her older brother Will as her inspiration and own personal hero.

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She wanted to fit in with her family. She wanted the same level of respect that her brother was getting, the same level of respect that athletes were getting. And, for Elisabeth, soccer seemed like the most obvious choice, regardless of any gender barriers at the time. “[It] occupied practically every conversation at dinner,” she said (Shue, 2017). It was a given.

Based on her childhood struggles and experiences, Elisabeth co-produced as well as featured in the movie Gracie, directed by her husband Davis Guggenheim (Wikipedia, 2017). The movie illustrates how a fifteen-year-old girl living in the 1970s is faced with various challenges and tribulations while trying to live out her dream of playing high school varsity soccer. This was a dream that is driven by her greatest suffering: the tragic and sudden death of her older brother.

At first, I think Elisabeth was surprised that I had chosen to write about Gracie as my hero. And truthfully, I went back and forth on my decision. Compared to my classmates’ choices to write about Batman, Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, and dozens of other names recognized internationally, Gracie was unknown. An unsung hero, perhaps. Not everyone knows Gracie’s story -- which, ultimately, is why I wanted to tell it.

I explained to Elisabeth the natural transformation of a stereotypical hero: departure (the forces that set the hero’s journey into motion), initiation (the challenges, obstacles, and foes that must be overcome), and return (the hero comes back to his/her original, familiar world and helps transform society) (Allison et al. 2017). Immediately, my choice no longer seemed far-fetched. Elisabeth was able to relate numerous aspects of Gracie’s story to this proto-typical outline, helping me draw connections specifically to the call to action, social heroes, underdogs, mentors, and the ability of the hero to acquire her missing inner quality. In this chapter, I will explain why I believe Gracie’s fic-tional story to be an exceptionally heroic one, and the ways in which it related to a personal real-life hero of mine: Elisabeth Shue herself.

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DEPaRtuRE: thEcalltOactiOn

“I won’t be the shooter; my sister will be.”

These were the words uttered by Gracie’s older brother Johnny in the opening scene of the movie, just before she was called to kick an empty bottle off the hood of a car with a soccer ball from ten yards away (Gracie, 2007). This is the first glimpse that we, as viewers, get of Gracie’s life -- and even better, the first challenge we see her overcome -- as she, despite her brother’s friends’ torments and her own self-doubt, clears the empty bottle straight off the car. She brushes her talent off as if it’s no big deal, because how could a female soccer star exist in a 1970s world that has no place for them?

For a hero to begin her journey, she must be summoned (Campbell, 1949). Of course, this is not to say that her heroic calling is necessarily glorious, enchant-ing, or other-worldly. In fact, her calling is usually the opposite: upsetting, alarming, and earth-shattering (Allison, 2015; Allison et al., 2019). For Gracie, it was the death of her older brother Johnny. When Johnny dies suddenly in an accident, Gracie’s entire world is turned upside-down, to say the least. She loses one of the only people in her life who gave her unconditional support. This earth-shattering loss, however, was the driving point behind her heroic journey.

As Vandello et al. (2017) put it, “struggle is important for growth.” In a para-doxical way, the hero’s journey is impossible without some form of loss or suffering. The death of one thing -- whether that death be literal or figurative -- allows for the rebirth, growth, and development of another. The memori-als held for Johnny opened Gracie’s eyes to what life was like as an all-star athlete. Teammates came, along with their families, along with their coaches, along with members of the community who were simply just fans of the game. Soccer brought people together, and the players on the team were the main components that contributed to this unity. They carried higher standards of responsibility, leadership, and respect throughout their everyday lives. They lived the life Gracie knew she wanted; she simply didn’t have the right sources or skills to access it.

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However, Gracie’s call to action was a little more complicated than her simple desires to fit in. Though not explicitly stated, it seems as though her primary motivation for playing soccer was not for a sense of belonging, but rather, as a tribute to her older brother. She knew that he would have wanted to see his team succeed, so she was determined to help make that dream a reality. Playing soccer was her way of paying her brother back, her way of thanking him. The other factors simply came as secondary motivations. And, let’s not forget, she swept that empty bottle straight off the hood of a car in one try. It only made sense for her to play soccer and excel at it.

in it iatiOn

Her father doesn’t believe in her, her brothers laugh when the idea is announced, and her mother doesn’t want her to get hurt. And at first, she believes them. She quits the idea out of fury, builds a hatred towards her interactions with her family, and ultimately resorts to drugs and alcohol in order to cope with her brother’s death. She breaks the law numerous times -- shoplifting and vandal-izing the tunnels in the streets by spray-painting Johnny’s name. To put an end to her bad behavior, her father eventually agrees to train her. Together the two of them work hard and train often, and despite the physical toll it takes on her, Gracie persists. However, the untouchable challenge remains: there simply isn’t a girls’ team for her play on. Thus, the school turns her away, and the coaches give her a hard time for even asking, suggesting she plays “field hockey,” a girl’s sport, instead (Gracie, 2007).

In response to this ridiculous suggestion, Gracie and her father decide to file for a Title IX investigation. This investigation allows her to try out for the boys’ team. Although she was not necessarily guaranteed a spot on the roster, this seemingly small victory is still an enormous milestone. She had been spending a series of consecutive months as a female soccer player without an official team to play for -- and though that time period certainly allowed her to showcase her dedication to the sport in general, she knew her talent was never going to be recognized without the official commitment to a team. But now, she had the chance to be a part of a group that brings her one step closer to reaching her goal. The boys prove to be especially rough during tryouts, throwing elbows

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and pulling jerseys, not only because they want to make the team, but more so because they don’t want her to make the team. For any boy on the team to lose his position to a girl would be considered a disgrace at the very least.

Gracie ends up making the junior varsity team, but she still is unsatisfied. She defies the rules of authority and shows up at the varsity practice instead, and she continues to train with them. She pushes the boundaries in order to do what she believes is best. This heroic trait of hers -- the ability to recognize potential outcomes that authority overlooks -- is a trait shared by Rick Rescorla, a hero from September 11th who worked in the Twin Towers for Morgan Stanley, a large and successful organization. Immediately after the attacks on that tragic day in 2001, the Port Authority issued a statement asking everyone in the tower to remain calm and stay put (Carole, 2013). However, Rescorla trusted his gut, and followed his own beliefs. He ordered the employees to evacuate the building, and as a result, saved nearly 3,000 people from burning to death. If he had remained submissive to authority, those 3,000 people wouldn’t have gotten the chance to live out the rest of their lives. In a similar manner, Gracie, like Rescorla, was able to trust her own instinct and do what she believed was best, and it ended up benefitting society more than she originally had imag-ined. It’s a crucial characteristic that both Gracie and Rescorla share; their heroic journeys would have not occurred without their willingness to defy the power of authority.

This defiance also contributes well to the recognition of Gracie’s “great eight” characteristics. As defined by Allison et al., there are eight defining character-istics collectively found among heroes: intelligent, strong, reliable, resilient, caring, charismatic, selfless, and inspiring (Allison et al., 2017). Gracie embodies strength through her physical toughness, care through her emotional response to her brother’s death, and inspiration through her immense dedication to her goal. But her most obvious characteristic is her resilience in response to the many challenges that come her way -- a characteristic that is clearly illustrated here, through her bold Riscorla-like heroic actions.

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REtuRn

Fortunately, Gracie’s gut instinct to break the rules ends up working in her favor. The varsity coaches find her perseverance and dedication extremely admi-rable. They, too, have enormous sympathy and sorrow regarding the loss of her brother. So, one of the coaches, after watching all of Gracie’s hard work in vari-ous practices, invites her to sit with the team at their next game, simply as a spectator. Neither Gracie nor the coach expects her to actually play.

On the night of the game, the coach hands her Johnny’s old jersey. When she walks out onto the field, she takes her place on the bench, but not without receiving menacing looks from a number of the boys on the team. She watches the game intently, as the game reaches sudden-death overtime. A few minutes in, there is a slide-tackle penalty made by the other team. A free kick is granted, and despite everybody’s expectations -- including her own -- the head coach calls upon Gracie to take it. It is in this moment that we believe our hero has made it. She’s on the field as the only girl among boys. This is her moment to prove to herself and to everyone that doubted her that girls can play soccer. But she misses the goal, only to hit the crossbar.

However, for the hero, this is only a minor setback. The game resumes, and she is forced to leave her mistake behind and keep playing. She still has a chance to prove her worth, and she is not going to throw away her opportunity to do so. She continues playing, getting pushed around by her opponents. The crowd is in awe that the coach hasn’t taken her off the field at this point. But then, hope rises. Gracie steals the ball and begins taking it down the field. She dribbles past one player, then another, then a third, until she’s met with an opportunity for redemption. She makes a move on her final defender, using a trick her father had taught her during training, and scores the winning goal for her team. It is now that our hero has reached her full transformation. All the time she spent training, not to mention the time she dedicated to the various challenges that simply are associated with being a girl in high school, has finally paid off.

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thESOcialhERO

Although they are not usually involved in physical danger, social heroes are associated with “considerable risk and personal sacrifice in other dimensions of life” (Franco et al., 2011). It has even been argued that the social hero is more heroic than those who concern themselves with physical danger, as the costs associated with social heroism are almost certain to occur. It’s rare to see a social hero that did not have to lose or sacrifice something important to them. For Gracie, it was her social life.

She begins her training months before tryouts begin. From waking up early to go for a run to practicing her penalty shots late at night, there’s not a moment she isn’t focused on her goal. She’s completely dedicated to soccer. There’s a specific scene in the movie where her best friend even goes so far as to call it “social suicide” (Gracie, 2007). But the attitude of a social hero doesn’t focus on all that she must give up in order to reach her goal. If she focused on these taxing everyday sacrifices, they would inevitably dilute her motivation and ultimately weigh her down. These social heroes must always keep their goals in mind in order to achieve them. Their goals are what make the sacrifices worthwhile.

The social hero is also often seen as suffering “serious financial consequences,” “loss of social status,” or “social ostracism” (Franco et al., 2011). Gracie is cer-tainly ostracized, first by her family for making such a rash decision, then by the girls in her school for pursuing such a “masculine” activity, and finally by the boys on the team that are driven solely by competition. She has almost no one rooting for her -- that is, until her father comes around and chooses to help her on her heroic journey. And, for the social hero, just that little bit of support can go a long way.

The social hero also unfolds over a much longer time period (Franco et al., 2011). The same holds true for Gracie’s story; a full year goes by between the time that her brother passes away and the time that she gets to play on the team. In other words, her initial calling takes place long before her heroism comes full circle. The time that passes throughout her heroic transformation simply helps illustrate her perseverance and commitment to soccer, and her determination to live out her older brother’s legacy.

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thEStORYOfanunDERDOg: thEODDSbEatER

Gracie’s parents initially shut her down. Biology simply wasn’t in her favor. And even if she could play soccer, her school didn’t have the outlets. She completely defied the odds and paved her own pathway to success.

There are a few subtypes of what we consider to be a “social hero,” one being the “odds beater,” also known as the underdog (Davis et al., 2011). The odds beater is an individual who “overcame… adverse conditions and succeed(s) in spite of such negative circumstances,” and can “provide a social, moral model for others” (Franco et al., 2011). Again, Gracie proves to be the perfect example of this hero subtype. Not only did she have to cope with the death of the only family member who seemed to have undying faith in her ability, but she had to fight her way onto the boys’ team, through Title IX investigations and aggres-sive tryouts.

Though these battles were tough, they only help prove her worth as a social hero. As discussed by Franco et al. (2011), the true power and final measure of success for the social hero is whether or not her actions can speak for them-selves. And in this case, it is clear that they do. Gracie never refers to herself as a hero; it is her actions that allow her spectators to do so. She remains humble but determined, and her actions never fail to follow the promise of her words (Worthington & Allison, 2018).

mEntORS

Underdogs cannot attain their goals entirely on their own -- at least, not in most cases. Gracie certainly could not have been as successful as she was without her mentors. A mentor can be a friend, a coach, a teacher, or a family member. The role of the mentor “is to help the hero discover, or recover, the missing quality that is needed to overcome challenges and obstacles on the journey” (Allison, 2015; Allison & Smith, 2015). For Gracie, her mentor was her father.

Her father, though doubtful and pessimistic at first, eventually agrees to train her. He shares his knowledge with her through intensive training sessions, giving her the skills and soccer moves she needs to keep up with the boys.

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There is one scene that is especially mentor-like, when he teaches her how to cradle a soccer ball through the use of raw eggs. This technique, in a nutshell, is supposed to teach her just how delicate her foot should be when catching a soccer ball out of the air; it should be a soft enough landing that even a raw egg wouldn’t crack on it. He demonstrates to Gracie by dropping the egg from about waist-high onto his foot. It stays.

Gracie attempts the task, but of course does not perform it as effortlessly as her father. She cracks about two dozen eggs before she finally lands one suc-cessfully. However, her consistent failure to cradle the eggs is what turns this seemingly insignificant task into such a powerful teaching moment. Even though most soccer coaches wouldn’t use raw eggs in order to teach young athletes how to cradle a ball, Gracie’s father’s abstract teaching method is extremely mentor-like, because it possesses a certain unique creativity that can come only from him. Mentors are also strikingly similar to the archetype of the “wise old man,” as discussed in Allison et al. (2017).

The fact that her father can perform the task so well certainly gives him this wiser edge, showing that he has obtained much experience and knowl-edge accumulated over his lifespan (Allison & Smith, 2015). Additionally, her father’s position as mentor would not be completed without helping Gracie discover her “missing quality.” Specifically, he taught her the move that she used to win the game in overtime. But by doing this, he gave her so much more: self-confidence, recognition from her community, and respect from her family. Without his knowledge and wisdom, Gracie’s heroic transformation would not have been possible.

EliSabEth’S REal-l ifEStORY, aS it cOmPaREStOgRaciE

As the only daughter in a family of three sons, one might say that Elisabeth Shue always had a way of standing out. However, for the first nine years of her life, “standing out” wasn’t entirely what she was aiming for (Shue, 2017).

Elisabeth was a soccer player. Her two little brothers were soccer players, her father played for his college team, and, if that wasn’t enough, her older brother

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Will was the captain of the Columbia High School varsity soccer team in 1978, and led the boys all the way to the New Jersey state championships.

So, yes, Elisabeth was a soccer player, but she certainly faced difficulty being recognized as such. She was a girl soccer player, which was a role in the 1970s that society didn’t entirely embrace. Nevertheless, she was determined to follow in Will’s footsteps, regardless of the endless comparisons that society would inevitably make. So, at only the age of nine years old, she made the decision to play on a local all-boys soccer team, and thus became the first girl in the South Orange and Maplewood areas of New Jersey to do so (Wikipedia, 2017). When I asked what Elisabeth’s inspirations were to try out, she gave the majority of credit to her brother. She said he was incredibly “hard working,” always on top of things -- so much so that he earned the nickname “the net” (Shue, 2017). No wonder her brother Will became the inspiration for Johnny, a character with a tremendous amount of faith in his sister.

I chose to specifically focus my paper on Gracie and her fictional transforma-tion because her story includes all the stereotypical parts of the hero’s jour-ney. However, Elisabeth’s story is undoubtedly heroic on its own merit as well. Although she quit soccer after only a few years after playing with the boys, she still broke the barriers of gender stereotypes. “The movie is really what would’ve happened if I hadn’t quit. I quit because of what people would think of me. The pressure from the boys. The awkward development of my body. I really, really regret it. I wish I’d been brave enough” (Wikipedia, 2017).

Now, Elisabeth spends her days as a well-known actress, continuing to work on new projects. She calls herself the “reluctant hero.” Though she began her heroic journey a decades ago, she simply hasn’t yet gained all the necessary sources and resources to complete it. Though she has been in the industry for years, she claims that she is still shy in front of the camera. She doesn’t love it when all the attention is on her, making her a humble hero (Worthington & Allison, 2018). Thus, she claims to still be searching for her “missing quality,” although, as a student studying heroes and their natural transformation, I disagree. She falls into many different subcategories of heroes, making her a transcendent hero (Allison et al., 2017). Like Gracie, she has devoted her life to a cause much bigger than just her own. She makes movies that tell stories that deserve to be heard. This devotion, therefore, makes her a social hero as well.

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Elisabeth made the decision to play soccer among boys, drawing attention to herself. After all, she would have been the only person on the field with a ponytail. Everyone would have been able to recognize her. Likewise, being a successful actress comes hand in hand with being recognized; you cannot have one without the other. So, although she claims to be shy despite her many years as an actress, she continues to put herself in positions that borderline on “uncomfortable.” She continues to put herself out there, even though it makes her nervous. I’d like to think this willing-ness to step out of her comfort zone is her missing quality. Although she might get nervous, it’s her conscious choice to act in spite of her fears that is not only heroic, but inspirational.

cOncluDingthOughtS

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.” – Joseph Campbell

According to Joseph Campbell, the best way to be truly heroic is to “follow your bliss” (Popova, 2017). Much can be said about the genius and authenticity of this statement, as seen through both Gracie and Elisabeth’s story. Gracie’s bliss is soccer; Elisabeth’s bliss is acting. The more a person holds onto the source of their unconditional happiness, the more he or she can achieve.

Gracie and Elisabeth have both accomplished so much, both in the real world and our imaginations, proving themselves to be effective women heroes. Their stories have the power to inspire the girls and women of our current generation to not only be curious of our own potential, but to take the necessary actions to reach it. Gracie and Elisabeth are true humble heroes (Worthington & Allison, 2018). They show us that being in the spotlight won’t highlight our flaws; rather, it can bring light to our lives and propel us along our own heroic journeys.

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