“I don’t know who got here up with that,” says Caroline Sunvold, a former D.C.C., within the collection. “That’s what sort of rips up individuals’s hips.” She ought to know. Ms. Sunvold, nonetheless in her 20s, has undergone hip and knee surgical procedure, and in some scenes, depends on a walker as she recovers.
But she misses the crew sorely, and appears a bit misplaced in her post-cheering life. “It’s like D.C.C. land is that this legendary, magical world,” she says. “And when you begin sipping that Gatorade, you do not need to return out.” Ms. Sunvold even gives D.C.C. audition teaching to her youthful sister, Anna Cate, who’s overjoyed when she, too, makes the crew.
Past all the opposite attributes, the D.C.C. — and this collection — promotes the dancers’ historically female sweetness, helpfulness and household values. Cheerleading is, by definition, dedicated to celebrating the success of others.
“Pondering of others, it’s what cheerleaders do,” Ms. Finglass reminds her dancers.
It will also be a household custom, and we meet a number of ladies whose moms additionally cheered for the D.C.C. many years in the past and stay deeply invested within the group. The emphasis on altruism and custom recurs usually, as do references to Christian religion. Dancers are filmed chatting warmly with residents at a senior citizen house, praying earlier than meals and attending an evangelical church service (the place the pastor cries out, “God loves the Dallas Cowboys!”). The present devotes appreciable airtime to rookie dancer, Reece Weaver, a soft-spoken former Miss Florida’s Excellent Teen who says she dances solely to “give glory to God.” Ms. Weaver was engaged throughout the collection, and her fiancé (now husband), she says, was the one younger man she ever permitted to place his arm round her shoulders.
This insistence on old school, girlish innocence seems even within the collection’ title. The D.C.C. calls its members “America’s sweethearts”— an antiquated time period that speaks volumes. “Sweetheart” conjures an ingénue in a Fifties film — one thing like a girlfriend, however minus any grownup sexuality. With this retro title, the D.C.C. declare themselves the chaste helpmates of not solely the Dallas Cowboys (whose gamers they’re contractually forbidden up to now), however of all America.
Can we reconcile the “sweetheart” vibe with the D.C.C.’s bombshell look and come-hither strikes? Probably not. The inherent contradiction of ladies making an attempt to uphold apple-pie wholesomeness whereas sporting so little and dancing so provocatively lies on the coronary heart of this collection, a reminder that the Madonna-whore dichotomy continues to be alive and um, kicking, in fashionable tradition.
