Michael Vick, Escape Artist Extraordinaire

Michael Vick

Michael Vick

Why do I find myself rooting for someone guilty of an abominable crime? And yet this Sunday, when the Philadelphia Eagles play the Jacksonville Jaguars, I will find myself cheering for Michael Vick.

The stories of the dog fighting ring run by Vick will turn any stomach. He went to jail for it and now is attempting to resurrect his career with the Eagles. When starting quarterback Keven Kolb went down with a concussion, Vick took the field. It was the first time he had started a game in four years. He then proceeded to dazzle us all.

I think Vick captures our imagination because he is the ultimate escape artist. At one point in a game against the Detroit Lions, he did a 360-degree turn to escape a Detroit defender who was about to hit him from his blind side. I still haven’t figured out how he pulled that off. You can see that play and others like it here. (The play I have in mind is the fourth one on the video.)

But I get a better sense of why he rivets us when I compare him with some of the great escape artists in literature. Any list has to start with Odysseus, who is so good at getting out of tight spaces that he is seen as the favorite of Athena, goddess of wisdom. Then there is Br’er Rabbit, the invention of African American slaves.  Their stories about the trickster’s ingenious escapes from Br’er Bear and Br’er Fox were coded protests against their masters (and also secret wish fulfillments).  Joel Chandler Harris, who collected many of these stories, was from Atlanta, which allows me to make a playful connection with Vick. After all, Vick used to play for Atlanta and had a deep rapport with many of the city’s African American citizens.

The literary escape artist I want to focus on today, however, is John Gay’s Mac the Knife. Gay, plugging into London’s seamy but colorful underworld, created the theatrical sensation Beggar’s Opera in 1728. Macheath is the romantic highwayman who can’t stay away from women, who gets caught twice in the course of the play, and who always gets away.

His last escape is particularly unexpected. All hope appears to be lost, and Mac even appears to accept his hanging as an escape from his six wives, all of whom have shown up.  At this point, however, one of the spectators (within the play) turns to the beggar playwright, and the two have the following interchange:

Player: But, honest friend, I hope you don’t intend that Macheath shall be really executed.

Beggar: Most certainly, sir.  To make the piece perfect, I was for doing strict poetical justice.  Macheath is to be hanged; and for the other personages of the drama, the audience must have supposed that they were all either hanged or transported.

Player: Why then, friend, this is a downright deep tragedy.  The catastrophe is manifestly wrong, for an opera must end happily.

Beggar: Your objection, sir, is very just, and is easily removed; for you must allow that in this kind of drama, ‘tis no matter how absurdly things are brought about.  (He spots one of the prisoners off-stage to the left; he claps his hands to get his attention.)  So—you rabble there! Run and cry a reprieve!—let the prisoner be brought to his wives in triumph!

We the audience are not put off by this contrivance. Indeed, it makes the play that much more delightful.

Vick did not wriggle out of a jail sentence—so some poetical justice was served—but he appears to have wriggled out of the doghouse (please excuse the metaphor) of public censure. Now he is escaping 250-pound linebackers as he runs and throws for first downs and touchdowns. And there was another escape as well. This past Monday, Eagles coach Andy Reid assured the world that Kolb was his starting quarterback. Then, the following day, he changed his mind, stunning the experts when he announced that Vick would start instead.  So we had another unexpected reversal of fortune.

Furthermore, for Vick to have this kind of success after three years away from football and one year as a back-up suggests that he has escaped Father Time as well.  According to a recent Sports Illustrated article, even Atlanta fans who feel betrayed can’t avert their eyes.

Perhaps there will be a few dog lovers who will watch Sunday’s game and hope to see Vick get pancaked. Of course Jacksonville lovers and Eagle haters will want to see him fail.  But I and many others will be breathlessly hoping for yet another series of Houdini escapes.

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