Max Levitt
November 1, 2007
Valery’s Ankle, an Agent of Blindness
In Brett Kashmere’s documentary, Valery’s Ankle, he talks about the connection between “nationality and sport”, discussing how violence in hockey has defined Canada. Hockey, being a very large part of Canadian culture, is notorious for its brutality, and Kashmere uses many clips involving acts of violence in hockey to make his point that hockey violence provides a cultural identity for Canadians. In this documentary, Kashmere fails to respect the other qualities these hockey clips show. These clips show passion, a willingness to succeed, and a strong sense of loyalty. Kashmere ignores these positive traits, and manipulates the clips to make it seem that these hockey fights are based on violence alone. He does this in order to support his point about Canadian nationality. Roland Barthes, in his essay ‘The Blue Guide’, talks about how “The guide becomes, through an operation common to all mystifications, the very opposite of what it advertises, an agent of blindness” (Barthes 76). Similarly to this ‘guide’, Kashmere’s accusation that hockey fights provoke a negative view of Canada, acts as ‘an agent of blindess’ to the reality that passion and loyalty are also displayed by these actions.
In the documentary, Kashmere begins by telling us how important hockey is in Canada. He describes how he was virtually forced to play ice hockey, as was everybody else living in Canada. He then introduces us to the centerpiece of his film, the 1974 Canadian hockey team, and specifically Canadian hockey star, Bobby Clarke. Kashmere sets the stage for a best out of seven games set with the Soviet Amateur team. He progresses talking about how the Canadians were down in the set, until Bobby Clarke slashed Soviet star Valery Kharlomov’s ankle, shattering it, and seemingly displacing him from the set. From that point on, without their leader, the Soviets found that the Canadians were unstoppable, as they went on to a legendary triumph. This triumph is still proudly talked about throughout Canada, because of a brutal slash laid out by Bobby Clarke. Kashmere decides to focus on this act as his main point of how this violence in hockey defines Canadian culture. By doing this, Kashmere is following one of Barthes quotes from ‘the Blue Guide’: “To select only monuments suppresses at one stroke the reality of the land and that of its people, it accounts for nothing of the present, that is, nothing historical, and as a consequence, the monuments themselves become undecipherable, therefore senseless” (Barthes 76). Barthes is saying that by only paying attention to what is in front of a person, such as a monument, one is suppressing everyone else to everything else surrounding it, such as the land and the people. This idea is very similar to what Kashmere is doing. He is manipulating these images so that we only see the brutality, and not everything surrounding it. We do not see how this act by Clarke was him showing passion for winning and representing his country. In all sports, hitting someone is always a way to pump ones team up. Clarke most definitely did not mean to break Kharlomov’s ankle, but he surely was trying to give his team some life, as they were losing at the time. It is known in sports that these actions are meant to give the team life. Hitting a batter with a pitch, a late hit in football, and a coach cursing at the referee and being thrown out of the game, are all ways of hidden motivation in sports. Kashmere manipulates his clips to make it seem that these actions were made in cold blood by just showing the hit, or as Barthes says “the monuments”, and nothing else.
Manipulation in theater is very easy to do, because as Michael Fried says:

“Theatrical art communicates to viewers through formal cues that make them conscious of the fact that their ostensibly transcendent encounter is in fact highly conditional—that aesthetic meaning is not immanent in the physical object but is created through and by their very situatedness in space and time before it” (Kester 47).

Kashmere does a very good job in his documentary of doing exactly this. He knows that his compilation of clips depends “on the staging, the conspicuous manipulation, of its relationship to an audience” (Kester 48). With this in mind, Kashmere was able to stage the clips with him giving explanations in the background in order to manipulate our minds.
When we see a hockey fight, and hear Kashmere’s voice, talking about how this violence defines Canadians, we are easily manipulated. This method used by Kashmere is an example of a documentary motive discussed by Robert Sklar in his essay about artifice in documentaries. He talks about how critics of documentaries focus on what is called “the documentary motive in mass communications media, and they suggest paradoxically that in nonfiction communication—as in fiction—the operative word may not be artifact but artifice” (Sklar 299). This criticism I believe rings true for Valery’s Ankle. Kashmere is trying to present an artifact in his example of Bobby Clarke vs. Valery Kharlomov, but instead he is presenting artifice. He talks about how this historical event that has in a way defined Canada is littered with violence, when in fact he is presenting artifice. His documentary is duping us into thinking what Bobby Clarke and many other Canadians doings are acts of violence, when in reality they have a deeper meaning. When looked at in context, they can be seen as acts of heroism, as they successfully pumped up their team and geared a comeback. In my personal experience, I went to a University of Maryland college basketball game. Maryland at the time was losing and playing with little excitement, when suddenly their coach started arguing a call with the referees. He began to scream and curse at the referee, while pointing his finger. At the sight of this act, the Maryland fans went crazy, cheering and chanting the coach’s name. If one looked simply at this action they might decide that this coach is out of control, and the fans should be defined as disrespectful, inappropriate people. When one looks at the entire context of the event, they would see that this was an act meant to fire up the team. Sure enough, from that point on Maryland played with excitement and emotion, and eventually came back and won the game. This idea of looking at the whole sequence, and not just the sole action is exactly what Kashmere does not do in his documentary. Michelle Amanda Grue, in her book “The Use of Archival Footage in Documentary Rhetoric”, talks about this issue saying “all evidence is subject to interpretation and argument. Once archival footage is placed into the larger context of a documentary film to support or refute an argument about a particular historical event, it becomes artistic proof” (Grue). Kashmere uses his short clips as an artifice, instead of an artifact. He is manipulating us into believing that these hockey players are violent people, when instead they are just passionate athletes, who want to win. If he listened to what Grue is arguing, he would understand that his documentary is a manipulation instead of an “artistic proof”.
As this shows, Kashmere has used common methods of manipulation to mold our minds into believing that these hockey players are simply being violent. He also leads us to believe that this defines Canadians, because they celebrate these acts of violence. By doing this, Kashmere has successfully created “an agent of blindness”, to the fact that these acts promote passion and loyalty to the people of Canada, not violence.




CITATIONS TO COME……..