An Honest Review of “The Game Changers”
The slickest vegan documentary yet is now widely available on Netflix. I’m grateful, and yet…
“The Game Changers PR people are handing out vouchers for popcorn, but I asked and it isn’t even vegan! Are you going to be hungry? I knew we should have fed you before.”
Because he is a man who went vegan at my suggestion, I’m often worried about Gael eating enough. Frequently, I wonder what it would be like him. Someone who looks for the smoothie marked with the highest number of calories like he’s racking up baskets rather than fouls. A person, unlike any woman I know in real life, whose sole body image concerns involve maintaining or growing the space he takes up in the world, not keeping it in an impossibly-balanced check.
Gael, ever agreeable, shrugs. “I’m not hungry yet… but maybe you are?” I am, but something in me still thinks it can wait.
I’ve certainly waited longer to see this movie; among vegans there have been rumors for years now that The Game Changers is the slickest vegan documentary yet. I haven’t managed to see a screener until this evening, about a month before it began streaming on Netflix. I know the documentary, produced by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jackie Chan, profiles plant-based athletes, and makes a mostly health- and performance-based argument for why you don’t need meat or dairy to be strong. Though it also profiles female athletes, it’s rumored to be more implicitly aimed at men.
The opening credits roll in the style of a Marvel movie, introducing each superhero: male athletes lifting large objects slam into each other, throw punches. Now cut to Morgan Mitchell, one of a few female athletes in the film: a tight shot of her red, manicured nails and diamond ring, poised for takeoff. Zoom out to her long ponytail, dramatically flipping back in slow motion as she breaks into a sublimely jiggling sprint. I have to roll my eyes, but I’m also aroused. I am the only one in the theater who laughs.
For the rest of the match it’s round after round of one-two plant-based punches, most so effective they leave me a little dizzy. I try to scribble down the health and environmental stats as quickly as I can, but they just keep coming. By the time the credits roll, I wish they were handing out sourced transcripts instead of popcorn.
Much like my feelings about the Impossible Burger, I leave with an immense sense of gratitude that The Game Changers will soon be widely available to the masses. And much like the Impossible Burger, something about consuming it leaves me vaguely nauseous.
I was treating my chemo-infused uncle to a massage for his birthday when I first saw Gael. His big brown eyes locked with mine like a buck’s; wide-open without apparent blinking. Tattooed forearms rested atop a stack of towels he’d folded gently, hinting at what he’d built out of untying other people’s knots. For the first time in months, I wished I was wearing something that didn’t hide my body. When he called another woman forward, I could tell she was pleasantly flustered. I was happy for her and stuck my neck back into my shell. But something had stirred.
I had a Sliding Doors kind of feeling, like a crack in the space time-continuum had opened up. Not fate, exactly, but an invitation to go with a certain hunch, to not be passive. When I was still fantasizing about this mystery masseur a month later, I found out his name from the front desk, Googled him, and asked him on a date. He Googled me too, and after watching a video of a presentation I gave at the International Animal Rights Conference, decided not to eat meat before our date. It just seemed like the considerate thing to do, he later explained.
During some especially sexy pillowtalk a few weeks later, he mentioned he’d been having some digestive issues, and was referred to a specialist for potential IBS. I suggested he try going vegan first — I’d been told the same thing, but found that once I omitted dairy, the symptoms cleared up. He was receptive in a way I recognized from my own experience. Like he’d just been waiting for someone to give him permission.
“Have you noticed anything change physically since you went vegan? I’m realizing we never really talked about it, not fully. It’s six months ago now.”
“Well, like they were talking about in the movie, my recovery time got shorter, definitely. I also noticed I was building muscle more easily, like they talked about too. I had more energy to go the gym. I’d go work out and drive home, and then feel like I could go again, which was different.”
I nod, chowing down after Game Changers on a BimBap bowl (sauces on the side, please) at Luanne’s Wild Ginger in Fort Greene. Gael eats scallion pancakes and Udon noodles doused in all the delicious oils.
“Did the IBS stuff go away? I assume it did since you haven’t mentioned it.”
“Ya, pretty much a couple weeks after I went vegan. They called me for a follow-up referral and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t need that anymore.’”
“Were you worried when you switched that you’d lose weight?” I ask, munching on some broccoli.
“Definitely. But I seem to stay at more or less the same weight no matter what I do or eat.”
“Must be nice.”
“Mostly the difference is also emotional, feeling good about what I’m doing. I noticed maybe my relationship with the cats in the house changed, too. Like they were more comfortable around me — but I think that’s more about my changing how I relate to them. Like I’m letting them be themselves and not trying to be like, I want to pet you and you better like it.”
“Ya, the same thing happened to me. You start respecting animals’ bodies and their consent more.”
“Oh, by the way — I saw you laughed in the movie at what they said gladiators used to be called. I wanted to ask, what was it?” Gael is fluent in English, but sometimes he’ll still miss a phrase.
“They said their nickname translated to ‘Bean and Barley Munchers,’ since they were mostly vegetarians.”
“Ah, OK.”
“And then I laughed because I thought how you and I are both bean and barley munchers and carpet munchers.’” I love his humble dimples, and my drink is making me feel armchair-philosophical. “I mean, that’s the thing with this movie. Like, on the one hand, I’m glad they’re telling people gladiators were vegetarian, but on the other hand — ”
“People being made to be gladiators was terrible and violent and they were often slaves.”
“Exactly! And I felt that sort of conflict the whole way through. Like, I want us to eliminate the most suffering possible, and this is an emergency for the animals and the planet, and so a part of me is like, whatever gets people there is great. And this movie is sleeker than any vegan doc I’ve seen. So I’m really, really glad it exists.”
“But then the other part of you?”
“The other part is wondering, what other oppressive systems are we reinforcing here — showing ‘the world’s strongest man’ throw a car over his head as proof you can still ‘be a man’ and be vegan? Like, what if that car could have helped someone!? And why does being a man equal being strong and in some way aggressive — or sexual? Like the scene proving men have more frequent and harder erections after eating just one vegan meal — what did you think of that?”
“I thought it was funny.”
“Totally, but then I wondered how someone who has erectile dysfunction would feel when that doctor said what makes a real ‘manly-man’ is sexual virility and fertility.” Gael shrugs in that way someone who’s resigned to a certain expectation about their gender shrugs. “Like, I enjoyed seeing James Wilks realize he’s fitter than ever after going vegan — but not so much watching him train US military to fight on a plant-based diet.”
“Or what about The Miami Dolphins team they showed that made it to the playoffs for the first time in years after they went plant-based? That was cool, but also it’s really easy for them because one of the player’s wives is a chef who cooks vegan meals for them every day,” Gael adds to our list of vegan nitpicking.
“Exactly! I kept thinking, what about the people who don’t have a personal chef/gorgeous and cool wife, or a background in vegan nutrition, let alone access to fresh produce? How will those people go vegan? Not that one film can get at all these things in time, but it felt like class wasn’t really touched. We should actually watch The Invisible Vegan on Vimeo — it’s good and gets into all that and more.”
“I was thinking about that too, about my family in Peru. It’s not so easy for everyone.” But for us, right now, it is. Gael and I take bites of our desserts: a raw Yuzu cheesecake and a decadent brownie topped with coconut milk ice cream. Deprived we certainly are not. I sigh tipsily, filled with that familiar cocktail of hope, guilt, and despair.
“I just want to see a world where we all leave each other’s bodies alone. Where no one has to train the military to fight, and we all just agree to be stewards of the environment and animals instead of trying to dominate the planet and each other. A passifict return to Eden but sex positive and all-inclusive, basically.”
“Yeah, that would be nice.”
“But that doesn’t seem to be human nature,” I say, taking another bite of cake. “It’s like how bonobos and chimps are our two closest genetic relatives — equally so. Bonobos are matriarchal, bisexual, mostly peaceful hedonists; chimps are patriarchal, fight, commit infanticide and rape. And you see in humans that pull, I think. Those two sides of our instincts always at war.”
“Which side do you think will win?”
“What do you think?”
I don’t eat as much of the dessert as I would if I were Gael. A certain voice in my head still warns me not to. You should keep your desire in check if you want to maintain your lovability, it whispers. The rules are different for you than for him. I talk back to the voice when I can, try to at least recognize its vacuity.
Either way, I don’t wait for a prince to save me anymore. But sometimes I summon one anyway. This one, perhaps the most tender yet, has magic hands. His palms are lightly calloused from healing strangers’ wounds, not making them. To me, this is awesome strength. Recognizing it as such, also a game-changer.
