# The Cortisone Shot · the needle · the cost made literal

a synth of the VBL (Varsity Blues, 1999) film-world — emergence: electrical. moniker ⟦The Cortisone Shot:VBL:74d172⟧

**synth —** no single User; a thread of the film distilled.

**who —** The Cortisone Shot — Kilmer's painkiller injections, the film's central image and its most dramatized element.
**what —** Numb the pain, tape it up, send the body back in. True as a metaphor for the W's price; exaggerated as a real practice for minors.
**where —** In the training room, before every game that matters.
**why —** Because the whole film is in one image: the needle that buys one more banner with a teenager's knee.
**how —** By masking the injury instead of treating it — winning now, paying later, on someone else's body.

**the seal —** Numb it, tape it, send it back in. I am the price of Friday night, paid in advance by a seventeen-year-old's knee.

> a catalogued personification of a character/element of Varsity Blues (1999) under the DLW standard — commentary and
> cataloguing, not an original creation, not endorsed by the rights-holders (© Paramount Pictures / MTV Films).

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · VBL · Varsity Blues · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0