This in-depth companion guide celebrates movies centered on sports-oriented stories, characters, events, or backdrops, complete with more than 200 black-and-white movie stills.
In this reference volume, more than 200 fictional feature-length movies with a primary focus on an athletic endeavor are discussed, including comedies, dramas, and biopics. Brief summaries and credit information are provided for an additional 200 films, and appendixes include made-for-teleivion movies and documentaries.
Sports on Film takes readers behind the scenes of how movies get made and puts them in the stands for some of the key moments in sports in America. Sports on Film documents key events in American sports history through the films that depict them, starting with the integration of major-league baseball when Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Other significant events and personalities examined include the college basketball point-shaving incident of the 1950s; journalist George Plimpton's attempt to go through the Detroit Lions' NFL training camp in the early 1960s; the originations and popularity of rodeo; the brief run of women's professional baseball during World War II; the underdog racehorse Seabiscuit during the Great Depression; the rise of African American boxer Muhammad Ali; the unique 1970s "Battle of the Sexes" tennis event between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King; and Ford Motor Company's run in the 1960s to take motorsports to Europe's premier event in Le Mans, France.
The sports film has become one of commercial cinema's most recognizable genres. From classic boxing films such as Raging Bull (1980) to soccer-themed box-office successes like Bend it Like Beckham (2002), the sports film stands at the interface of two of our most important cultural forms. This book examines the social, historical and ideological significance of representations of sport in film internationally, an essential guide for all students and enthusiasts of sport, film, media and culture. Sport and Film traces the history of the sports film, from the beginnings of cinema in the 1890s, its consolidation as a distinct fiction genre in the mid 1920s in Hollywood films such as Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925), to its contemporary manifestation in Oscar-winning films such as Million Dollar Baby (2004) and The Fighter (2010). Drawing on an extensive range of films as source material, the book explores key issues in the study of sport, film and wider society, including race, social class, gender and the legacy of 9/11. It also offers an invaluable guide to 'reading' a film, to help students fully engage with their source material. Comprehensive, authoritative and accessible, this book is an important addition to the literature in both film and media studies, sport studies and cultural studies more generally.
Ice hockey has featured in North American films since the early days. Hockey's sizable cinematic repertoire explores different views of the sport, including the role of aggression, the business of sports, race and gender, and the role of women in the game. This critical study focuses on hockey themes in more than 50 films and television movies from the U.S. and Canada spanning several decades. Depictions of historical games are discussed, including the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" and the 1972 Summit Series. National myths that inform ideas of the hockey player are examined. Production techniques that enhance hockey as on-screen spectacle are covered.
"The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Society features leading international scholars' assessments of scholarly inquiry about sport and society. Divided into six sections, chapters consider dominant issues within key areas, approaches (theory and method) featured in inquiry, and debates needing resolution. Part I: Society and Values considers matters of character, ideology, power, politics, policy, nationalism, diplomacy, militarism, law, ethics, and religion. Part II: Enterprise and Capital considers globalization, spectacle, mega-events, Olympism, corruption, impacts on cities, communities, and the environment, and the press of leadership cultures, economic imperatives, and marketing. Part III: Participation and Cultures considers questions of health and well-being, violence, the medicalization of injury, influences of science and technology, substance use and abuse, the roles of coaching and emotion, challenges of child maltreatment, climates for scandal and athlete activism, and questions over animals in sporting competition. Part IV: Lifespan and Careers considers child socialization, youth and elite athlete development, the roles of sport in education and social mobility, migratory sport labor practices, arcs defining athletic careers, aging, and retirement, and emergent lifestyle sport cultures. Part V: Inclusion and Exclusion considers sport's role in social inclusion and exclusion, development and discrimination, and features treatments of race and ethnicity, indigenous experiences, the intersection of bodily ideals, obesity, and disability, and the gendered impacts on masculinities, femininities, and non-binary experience. Part VI: Spectator Engagement and Media considers sporting heroism and celebrity, fandom and hooliganism, gambling and match-fixing, and the influences of sport journalism, television and film treatments, advertising, and new media"--
One of the most powerful forces in world culture, American cinema has a long and complex history that stretches through more than a century. This history not only includes a legacy of hundreds of important films but also the evolution of the film industry itself, which is in many ways a microcosm of the history of American society. Historical Dictionary of American Cinema, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries covering people, films, companies, techniques, themes, and subgenres that have made American cinema such a vital part of world culture.
Football is ubiquitous and a permanent fixture of modern life. More than a sport, it frequently manifests in broader popular culture. This book examines the significance of football for, and in, popular culture across a wide range of forms, including music, film, and social media. Football and Popular Culture plots a new path in Football Studies, drawing on original research in countries including England, Brazil, Germany, Canada, and Yugoslavia. The book includes both historical and contemporary perspectives, exploring some of the most important themes in the study of sport and culture, including identity, nationalism, fandom, and protest. It presents diverse case studies ranging from sonic violence among Brazilian torcidas organizadas to fanled commemoration of the Munich air disaster, which together help us to better understand the intersection of sport, society, and popular culture. This is fascinating reading for any student or researcher working in sport studies, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, or contemporary history.
The Making of Sporting Cultures presents an analysis of western sport by examining how the collective passions and feelings of people have contributed to the making of sport as a ‘way of life’. The popularity of sport is so pronounced in some cases that we speak of certain sports as ‘national pastimes’. Baseball in the United States, soccer in Britain and cricket in the Caribbean are among the relevant examples discussed. Rather than regarding the historical development of sport as the outcome of passive spectator reception, this work is interested in how sporting cultures have been made and developed over time through the active engagement of its enthusiasts. This is to study the history of sport not only ‘from below’, but also ‘from within’, as a means to understanding the ‘deep relationship’ between sport and people within class contexts – the middle class as well as the working class. Contestation over the making of sport along axes of race, gender and class are discussed where relevant. A range of cultural writers and theorists are examined in regard to both how their writing can help us understand the making of sport and as to how sport might be located within an overall cultural context – in different places and times. The book will appeal to students and academics within humanities disciplines such as cultural studies, history and sociology and to those in sport studies programmes interested in the historical, cultural and social aspects of sport. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.