Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 8 July 2022
- ISBN 9780197624937
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages296 pages
- Size 152x226x20 mm
- Weight 431 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 118 halftones; 20 color 235
Categories
Short description:
In Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream, author Grant Wiedenfeld argues that sports films are a progressive critique of anti-democratic tendencies in the post-Civil Rights era and a site of multiculturalism's origin.
MoreLong description:
Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs an unexpected current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and therefore represent the nation to itself in idealized form. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism's fantasies of an atomized society, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success, for in every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.
Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Films and the American Dream is a critical study of six major sports films that re-tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption in the latter third of the 20th century and rewrites contemporary understandings of the sports film. For author Grant Wiedenfeld, the mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984) and Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions and point to the limits of inclusion and participation in the post-Civil Rights era.
Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform Wiedenfeld's original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture as he insists on the cinema's capabilities as an engine for democracy untethered from more conventional 'democratic' institutions. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial and renews the political efficacy of one of the most popular genres in film history.
Wiedenfeld has produced a sustained, provocative reestimation of the Hollywood sports movie. From his rediscovery of the progressivism of Rocky's underdog status to his tour-de-force readings of League of their Own and Ali, he strives to think alongside?not against?these films and their politics, rallying with them and their heroes. For Wiedenfeld the sports movie is not merely a genre but a mode of civic participation, and this book amounts to the opening salvo of an Arendtian film criticism.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: America's Civic Screen
2. Rocky (1976): Tenderhearted Community and Racial Moderation in Bicentennial America
3. Slap Shot (1977): Deindustrialization, Goon Masculinity, and Yankee-Doodle-Disco Patriotism
4. The Natural (1984): Farm Crisis and Minority Culture in a New Deal Legend
5. White Men Can't Jump (1992): "Winning and Losing is One Big Organic Globule"
6. A League of their Own (1992): Egalitarian Women and Sideline Men
7. Ali (2001): Actions of the People's Champion
8. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
