“Days of Thunder” and “Top Gun” are the same movie. They’re the same. The role that should have gone to Robert Duvall in “Top Gun” went to Tom Skerritt instead, but old Tom did a pretty good job of it. Still, same leading man driving dangerous, expensive machines and getting into inappropriate relationships with intelligent women who seem to have their intellect overwhelmed by his musky allure. The action climaxes as Maverick / Cole overcomes a traumatic accident to seize the moment of glory. Along the way, he reconciles with the father he never really knew (in absentia) and forms a bond with an older mentor.
Watching these movies as a teen ager and young adult, I was both repelled and inspired by tales of tenacity and triumph. Overcoming the odd, the hero prevails and gets the girl. (There’s no doubt that he would know what do to once he got her. The movie makes it clear that if our hero is anything, he is a stud.) This is true of the third in this trilogy too,”Jerry Maguire.” Since that story was about a sports agent, it was in many ways the meta-narrative of the other two.
The real meta-narrative, however, is Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly. In it, Brown talks about shame and our culture’s triggers for, and defenses against, shame. I’m willing to bet that every one of the defenses Brown elaborates can be illustrated with a piece of dialouge from Maverick, Cole, or Jerry.
It’s not the defenses we are looking for though. According to Brene Brown, we get trapped behind our defenses as much as we are protected. The things which we believe we need to defend against are often not the threats we believe them to be, and those that are do not have nearly the power we suspect. But if you want an illustration of what it looks like when we use them, just check out a Not Very Safe For Work scene from “Days”