Disclaimer: the theories postulated in the following article are far too ridiculous to be accurate. In reality, Nike had about as much to do with the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team’s doping regime as the Looney Tunes had to do with Michael Jordan’s return to basketball.
Part 2: Blood And Balls
Blood and balls
Pass that thing and watch me flex
Behind my back, you know what's next
To the jam, all in your face
Wassup, just feel the bass
Drop it, rock it, down the room
Shake it, quake it, space KABOOM!
So sing the Quad City DJ’s on Space Jam’s title theme. The message is impossible to ignore: pass me the inhibited performance-enhancing substance, I will hide it while defiantly denying every allegation, and then I will take it, along with a cocktail of other substances, ensuring my victory. To make it easier to see I will italicise the message between each line:
Pass that thing and watch me flexGive me the drug which enhances my ‘flex’, or muscular performance
Behind my back, you know what's nextI will hide it
To the jam, all in your faceNext I will take it, whilst staying defiant in the eyes of authority
Wassup, just feel the bassWe will then take the drug together – ‘drop’, ‘rock’ and ‘down’ are all slang words for ‘take’
Drop it, rock it, down the room
Shake it, quake it, space KABOOMI will mix, or ‘shake’, it in a cocktail with other drugs and ‘KABOOM’: my performance will be greatly increased, hence ensuring my victory.
The dance in the “Space Jam Theme” music video is provocative and hypnotic.
The secrets buried within Space Jam’s message are extremely complex, let alone those hidden in the theme song. I will attempt to break down each message in its entirety, as well as the significance each message had to the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team, as best as I can.
I will start at the start.
Space jam, the concoction which gives the film its name, is a legal drug: a cocktail of nuts and spice rack powders. The film is named after a legal cocktail because, despite the specifications of cycling’s governing body, Nike wanted every member of the US Postal Service Team to believe that what they were doing was in no way against the rules.
In his interview with Oprah Winfrey, Lance Armstrong describes the ‘cocktail’ of drugs he was taking during his time with the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team. It included blood transfusions, EPO and other banned substances, the most prevalent of which was testosterone.
In Space Jam, the Nerdlucks, extra-terrestrial antagonists bent on enslaving the Looney Tunes, are challenged by said cartoon characters to a basketball match – a match which, due to their diminutive stature, they have no hope of winning. So, instead, they cheat. In disguise, the Nerdlucks infiltrate an NBA game, stealing the abilities of five professional basketball players and secreting them in a magic basketball. After touching the ball, the Nerdlucks are transformed into monstrous, basketball experts, each wearing the number ‘0’ on their jerseys.
The Monstars all wear the number ‘0’ on their jerseys.
The fact that every Nerdluck – known as the Monstars in their monstrous form – wears a ‘0’ is vitally significant to the first part of the US Pro Cycling’s team ethic, ‘unity is strength’: Nike needed the US Postal Service team to understand that, when doping and when riding, they operated as one unit, that by themselves they were insignificant – a big fat zero.
The ball is the most significant symbol in Space Jam. It is emblematic of testosterone, blood transfusions and, to a lesser extent, EPO. It is emblematic of recovery. It is emblematic of ability. It is emblematic of the duty to one’s team and the duty to the sport. It is, quite simply, the emblem of victory, constantly repeated and emphasised throughout the film.
The relation of the ball to blood transfusions is obvious: the Nerdlucks steal the talent of NBA stars, secreting it in the ball and then absorbing it into their own bodies, just as pro athletes used hyperoxygenated blood (either their own or someone else’s) to reinvigorate themselves after one competition in preparation for another. EPO has a similar impact on the human body, increasing red blood cell production – the cells that carry oxygen – by stimulating the bone marrow.
The relation the ball motif in Space Jam has to testosterone, however, is both simple and extremely complex. Obviously, testosterone is produced naturally in the testicles or, in common parlance, the balls. On a more subtle level, both testosterone and the testicles are symbolic of manhood and, by association, identity. A man’s testicles are his most prized possessions: they make him the man he is. Many would argue that his member has more significance, but this is incorrect: take a man’s member away and he is still a man, just memberless; take a man’s balls away and he ceases to become a man, he becomes a castrati, lacking in the sex drive, desire and testosterone-fuelled self-belief that made him a man.
Testicles, however, need to be protected. Their soft fleshy exterior is all that protects a man’s ability to procreate. They need to be hidden away, especially in the world of competitive cycling where a misaligned saddle or an uncomfortable crash can damage them beyond repair. The US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team riders were forced to worship the testosterone supplements they were given, as they worshiped their own testes, hiding them away from the world. The concealing of testicles and testosterone also reemphasises the suppression of one’s identity: each rider working as one for the good of the team.
The US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team, Lance Armstrong front and centre.
For one man on the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team a better symbol of power and identity could not have been chosen – its captain, Lance Armstrong. “I almost justify [using testosterone]”, says Lance Armstrong in his interview with Oprah Winfrey, “because of my history, obviously, with testicular cancer and losing [a testicle]. Surely I’m running low.” Armstrong lost a testicle to cancer in 1996. He incorrectly believed that this had a severe impact on his testosterone levels, his desire to compete and his ability to perform. In fact, the body is quick to compensate after the loss of a testicle: the remaining testicle, having received a chemical message from the pituitary gland, increases its own testosterone production. In Armstrong, Nike had the perfect captain: a man who believed he had everything to prove and was willing to do anything to prove it, but, in reality, was at the peak of his physical ability.
The US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team riders were, undoubtedly, forced to watch Space Jam over and over again, until they knew the film and its messages inside and out. Every single time a ball came on screen, they were probably reminded with an adrenal boost or an electric shock so that the image became synonymous with power and awareness. During this process the second part of the adopted Livestrong motto was reinforced: ‘knowledge is power’.
During his short-lived baseball career, a catcher helps Michael Jordan cheat after he receives a signed ball from him. Jordan decides not to cheat and loses. The implication is twofold: you must never give away the ball – testosterone, power, identity – to anyone, let alone the opposition, especially when it bears your signature, another symbol of identity; you have to cheat to win.
Michael Jordan is scrunched into a basketball by the Monstars.
At first, Jordan is unwilling to help the Looney Tunes defeat the Monstars. However, he is persuaded when the Monstars scrunch him up into a basketball shape and bounce him around the court. Again, the implication is twofold: if you become the ball, hence rediscovering your identity, you will be defeated; your will to win, however, will come after you emerge from the constraints of the ball, or, in other words, your identity.
Indoctrination, indomitability and impossibility
In order to fully indoctrinate the US Postal Service riders into the Space Jam programme, Nike needed to create a belief system tantamount to religion. They needed to mythologise the act of taking performance enhancing drugs so that it became a ritual, so that every single member of the team knew that it would only ensure them victory if they protected it from the outside world with cult-like secrecy.
In order to reinforce the idea that the US Postal Service cyclists had to protect their doping programme from the outside world, Nike first had to create an inner sanctuary for them to inhabit: a place where they could feel impervious to the inevitable allegations of substance abuse that would come their way after victory sevenfold. Nike turned to old friends Warner Brothers to help create this world, who they had already worked with in 1993 to produce a Nike Air Jordans advert featuring Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan.
In the Looney Tunes cartoons, the characters are completely impervious to harm. They can be blown up, crushed, stretched and fired into space in every episode, but the episode after they will inevitably return completely unscathed. Warner Brothers and Nike created an entire Looney Tunes universe for Space Jam, inhabited by every single one of the famous ‘toons. In the film Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester J. Pussycat, Foghorn Leghorn, Wile E. Coyote and Taz the Tasmanian devil, to name just a few, coexist in a Looney Tunes land buried deep beneath the earth.
Wile E. Coyote defies death in every episode.
Protagonists are not only immortal in the Looney Tunes universe, they never lose. Bugs Bunny outsmarts Elmer Fudd over and over again, in each instance displaying the same devil-may-care attitude. Do not forget, ‘attitude is everything’. Of course, there are characters that, because their opponents always win, have to lose repeatedly, characters like Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote and Sylvester J. Pussycat. They seem ignorant of defeat, however, striving for the same goals time after time. In Space Jam’s version of the Looney Tunes universe all the characters are striving for the same goal: winning the game. The confidence of the Looney Tunes’ protagonists is combined with the never-say-die attitude of their antagonists, cooking up an indomitable sense of self-belief and determination.
Even humans who entered the Looney Tunes universe were imbued with the powers of its inhabitants. Michael Jordan is dragged into the parallel, subterranean world after following a golf ball down a hole. Again, the ball is significant: chasing it takes you to the inner sanctuary of self-belief. When in the world, humans develop the same superpowers as its inhabitants. Jordan is crushed into a ball shape but recovers almost immediately. His publicist Stan is blown up, crushed and inflated like a balloon, but he still recovers. Jordan not only displays the imperviousness of the Looney Tunes, he also gains the ability to morph his body into previously impossible shapes. In fact, the game is won with Jordan’s final second dunk when, despite hovering around the halfway line, he manages to stretch his arm an extra twelve metres to throw the ball down through the basket.
The riders on the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team were each indoctrinated into Nike’s Space Jam belief system, brainwashed into believing that they had developed the same imperviousness and super powered ability displayed in the film. Nike’s representatives still had one extremely important task, however: to associate their own brand with the US Postal Service’s newfound sense of invincibility. It wasn’t enough that Nike’s star man Michael Jordan appeared in the film, or even that the film itself was based on a Nike commercial; Nike needed to cement the belief in the cyclists’ heads that if they wore Nike clothing they couldn’t lose.
Before playing in the NBA, Jordan was North Carolina’s star player.
In Space Jam, Michael Jordan insists that he is unable to play without his lucky shorts and sneakers. The shorts in question are the ones he wore while playing at college, the shoes are a pair of Nike’s Air Jordan XI. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck go to great lengths to get the clothes and, with the help of Jordan’s kids, get the shorts and shoes to him in time. Jordan, of course, goes on to dunk the winning basket. Just as the ball became a totem – a religious artefact worshiped, if not fetishized, as the symbol of victory – for the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team, so the shorts and Nike shoes, as well as the Nike brand itself, become symbols of protection and indomitability.
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