ABSTRACT
The film Jerry Maguire (Brooks & Crowe, 1996) concerns possible selves-in particular, pursuit of the ideal self and dread of the feared self. The film’s protagonist is disillusioned with his career in sports management. During the opening credits, Jerry notes, “In the quest for the big dollars, a lot of little things were going wrong.” We see Jerry champion an athlete convicted of a sex crime; we watch him pressure an injured player to return to the game; we observe behavior driven by financial sponsors rather than love of the sport. He asks, “Who had I become-just another shark in a suit?” With increasing self-loathing, Jerry writes of his dream for a better life; what begins as a memo spills out of his PC as a protracted “mission statement.” He exclaims, “Suddenly, I was my father’s son again! I was remembering the simple pleasures of this job-the way a stadium sounds when one of my players performs well on the field, the way we are meant to protect them in health and in injury.… With so many clients, we had forgotten what was important. Suddenly, it was all pretty clear: The answer was fewer clients, less money … more attention, caring for them, and the games, too.… I’ll be the first to admit it was pretty touchy-feely. I didn’t care; I’d lost the ability to bullshit. It was the ‘me’ I’d always wanted to be.”
