Wendy Peffercorn

I need to start off with a confession. I have never seen The Sandlot. I know, I know I can’t believe it either, but it’s true!

Author

Tyler Clark
July 04, 2023

Good morning Consumers. This is please consume, the film newsletter that has more subscribers than Tony Montana has mountains of cocaine.

The Sandlot (1993)

I need to start off with a confession.

I have never seen The Sandlot.

I know, I know I can’t believe it either, but it’s true!

It’s one of my many cinematic blindspots. We all have ‘em, we all hide them ‘em, but at least I’m being honest about it.

In light of that, this scene analysis is from the perspective of a first-time viewer, so please go easy on me if you don’t like something I say. I have pretty bad opinions sometimes.

My Initial Response

“I need to watch this movie!” was the first thing that popped into my head as I began watching this scene. 80’s vibes just emanated from my screen and I could see the same sort of look that dominated most of that decade. I can’t believe it came out in 1993!

I also really liked the narration. While it never reaches the same weight or comedy that Stand By Me and A Christmas Story (the best Christmas film by the way) do, it still worked in a way that was reminiscent of those works.

I realize that these two points are rather mundane. I haven’t seen the movie so I am unable to comment on how impactful this scene is (although I recognized the name Wendy Pfefferkorn so that gives me some clue) or what it means in the context of the film as a whole. Simply put, I enjoyed the scene.

But I also had some problems with it. In the hopes of opening up some sort of discussion, or maybe just to get you thinking, I’m writing them below.

Some Bad Sh!t

The main joke here, that the kid pretends to have drowned in order to get the attractive lifeguard to perform CPR on him, didn’t sit right with me. It made me uncomfortable, actually, to consider this a humorous thing.

I get that this is a horny young boy and that they are capable of almost anything, but to use that as the fulcrum of a joke is just plain wrong.

What are the writers actually saying with this gag? It may not be conscious, but they are communicating that sex is a game or something to be won, almost like gold from a fierce dragon.

I can’t help but return to Stand By Me. That’s a funny movie, but the humor isn’t motivated by gags, it’s motivated by characters, and that makes the film so much more emotional and relatable.

The pool scene from The Sandlot is more along the lines of “let’s have a kid do something funny”, rather than, “what would this character do in this situation?”

To push the comparison a bit further, I would argue that Kiefer Sutherland and his gang of bullies in Stand By Me actually talk about women more akin to how the narration in this scene did. Just something to consider.

I’m not one to let a point like this taint the entire film for me-I still want to see it-but this was something that I felt I wanted to share. Let us know if you agree or disagree in the feedback section below!

Today’s Scene

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