Act IV, Scene iii of Shakespeare's “Timon of Athens” contains a heated dialogue between the generous but now ruined, Timon, and his cynical acquaintance, Apemantus. Timon says, “To such as may the passive drugs of it freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself in general riot, melted down thy youth in different beds of lust, and never learned the icy precepts of respect, but followed the sugared game before thee.” This “sugared game” Timon, and thus Shakespeare, refer to applies conveniently to American materialist society today. Similar to the thin, sugared crust of certain confections, American values and those especially communicated through the media are shallow, frail and easily dissolved.
To those included in these groupings, the word depth holds one dominant meaning: “the distance from the top or surface of something, such as water, to its bottom.” Depth of thought, however, is a process or pursuit many tend to avoid; choosing to follow the few, the majority of society walks blindfolded through life like catatonic, mental patients. Whether this intellectual coma is a result of nature, nurture or an even balance of both, expanded musings into the phenomenon called life are dispersed scarcely among an extremely select few who have rejected the status quo and consciously chosen to think new thought. These few explorers of meaning are not, however, stuck at the opposite end of the spectrum than everyone else. They are, as most things tend to be, in the middle - a balanced existence consisting of both shallow, base and effortless judgments and deep, profound and effortful thinking; one compliments and enhances the other. Balance, as repeatedly discovered by leading thinkers in our world, is key if one desires both happiness and purpose in life.
The greatest wisdom and most efficient behaviors are usually infinitely transferable to any walk of life; balance and profound thought, in this case, are no exception. In the field of Kinesiology, and more specifically, the Sociology of Sport, the dominant teachings revolve around an expanded perspective of sport-specific situations. Professors encourage students to adopt a “sociological imagination,” or a connotative and unbiased analysis, when discussing and researching pertinent topics such as gender bias in sport. In Sport Psychology, performance theories such as the Inverted-U Arousal/Performance Theory are vital in understanding how to successfully coach an athlete and help him or her to perform optimally in a high-pressure situation. Similar to these principal fields of study in Kinesiology, two specific authors, Stephen King and Dave Barry, make use of expanded thought and wisdom as well. Both writers utilize a sociological imagination by exploring in-depth, alternate meanings behind seemingly trivial aspects of society. However, King's main intention is to promote a balanced lifestyle by defending horror films as a form of cathartic release while Barry's main intention is to dispute an unbalanced lifestyle by criticizing beer commercials as a product of hegemony in the media.
King and Barry attempt to utilize the other 85% of the human brain by adopting a sociological imagination and thus extending past the borders of mundane complacency in examining the often overlooked meaning of horror films and beer commercials. Rare are the times when audiences spend hours of contemplation conducting in-depth content analyses of the possible intentions and underlying messages in films or plays - they come, they watch, they leave. It is thus left up to others, such as King and Barry, to apply the microscope to these mediums of entertainment. King and Barry's essays, “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” and, “Red, White, and Beer,” respectively, are the result of both authors' meticulous gaze through a magnified lens of observation. Instead of remaining purely reactive and thus vulnerable to forms of media such as horror films and beer commercials, King and Barry choose to embody a more proactive persona. For example, both authors explore questions such as, “Why do patrons find horror films enjoyable?
What needs, if any, do they fulfill? Are beer commercials simply reflecting the values of society or are they distorting reality? Do people really view stereotypical and one-sided attributes as socially attractive and/or desired?” Inquiries such as these lead directly to the complex truths that most tend to avoid due to a fear of overexertion. It is these types of questions that are vital to sport sociologists if they truly wish to understand more than just the denotative, or surface, implications of events or circumstances in their field. King and Barry, although probably unknowingly, have stepped into the shoes of sport sociologists and simply substituted sport for their own topics of choice, horror films and beer commercials. Although both essays employ a sociological imagination by illustrating King and Barry's keen insight into the inner-workings of society, both authors favor different packaging and tactics in doing so.
