Excellent and enjoyable collection, appropriately scholarly, utterly readable, and attractively wide ranging

Garry Whannel
University of Bedfordshire

This is a good collection which succeeds in being appropriately scholarly, utterly readable, and attractively wide ranging. The introduction contextualises the project admirably, laying out parameters for thinking through issues of nation, and identity in relation to sport films. In general, the project is framed by the work of Gellner, Hobsbawm, Anthony D. Smith, B. Anderson, Billig, and Nairn, regarding concepts of nation and identity as complex and contradictory constructions shaped by social and historical forces, that can be examined through the lens of particular and concrete instances.

The first part covers USA, the second Europe, and the third, entitled Beyond Hollywood and Europe, contains contributions on New Zealand, Brazil, Ethiopia and Taiwan. The majority of the contributions are case studies of specific films, groups of films, or specific sports, while a few are a bit more wide-ranging. The contributions, between them, discuss and analyse issues of gender, race and class as traced through representation. Very few chapters managed to do full justice to all three of this well-established trilogy of social stratification, and I am not sure that issues of gender and race are covered as well as they might have been.

The work of an editor is challenging, requiring well-judged choice of authors, and clear briefing of authors. The need for a diversity of instances, approaches and themes must be balanced by the need to maintain some overall cohesion. In this case the editor has performed these tasks adeptly. In just fourteen chapters, eleven countries (and all five continents) are represented. While there is a good spread of European countries, one notices the absence of any eastern European contribution – striking because of the strong development of film cultures in countries such as Czeckoslovakia, Poland and the USSR

The case studies cover eleven sports. Unsurprisingly, football is most prominent, but it is perhaps surprising that boxing did not feature more, given the drama of the stark brutality of one-on-one physical contestation, and its consequent appeal to the producers of fiction in search of dramatic metaphor. The job of the reviewer is also somewhat challenging. It is impossible in a short review to do full justice to all the contributions. I intend to spend some time discussing overall themes. Inevitably my choices are influenced by my own personal concerns, interests and yes, prejudices. So my apologies to any authors who may feel their contribution has been neglected – it is solely for reasons of space.

By contrast football, popular not just in numbers, but popular as it became a working class sport, spread everywhere, despite the growing hostility to it amongst the British ruling class, who came to favour the more “patriotic” rugby.

The sport and media theme introduces two additional difficulties. First, all sports have their own distinctive histories, practices, structures, institutional bases and representational traces. Attempts to generalise about “sport” cannot get us very far down the road; we need specificity, which will reveal both similarities and differences across the sport field. Yet in a single collection, some degree of generalisation is necessary. Second, sport historians and sociologists are not always familiar with media/cultural studies work, while media/cultural studies scholars not always familiar with sport work. I would add that publishers and their silo approach to promotion do not help – as sport and communication sections rarely combine to good promotional effect.

So, while reference to key concepts (e.g., invention of tradition, imagined communities, banal nationalism) are apparent across the collection, the shared sense of previous work on the film and sport theme is a bit more patchy. Baker’s (2003) Contesting Identities gets three mentions, but Out of Bounds (Baker and Boyd 1997) is not referenced. As far as I can detect, neither Visual economies of/in Motion, (King and Leonard 2006) nor Sport in Films (Poulton and Roderick 2008), are referenced. This, though, does not detract from the overall strength of the collection.

All the contributions were of interest (not always the experience of this reviewer). I both enjoyed and learned from them. Ellen Wright’s analysis of Esther Williams in the context of the vaudevillian roots of the aquacade was fascinating. The analysis of the complex relations of cycling, social class, linguistic community and politics in Belgium (Biltereyst and Winkel) was performed with skill and clarity. Thomas’s outlining of Amharic films in Ethiopia was a vital challenge to the Eurocentrism and anglophone bias of many scholars, myself included. Like all good writing it made me want to know much more about his topic. As Crosson identifies, sport film are often based around a narrative structure of triumph over adversity. I would suggest that some films (eg Raging Bull, Harder they Fall, Dawn, North Dallas 40) are based around a rise and fall structure, which also warrants some attention.

The rise of satellite-based channels, and global live transmissions has constructed a sense of sport as “global”, and it is important for analysis to retain a sense of local regional and national specificities. So I would take issue with one section of Crosson’s otherwise excellent introduction. On page 9, he refers to the crucial role of the British Empire in the spread and popularisation of popular global sports, such as rugby, horse racing and cricket. Yet surely sports that spread through imperial links were often limited to those links? Even now rugby and cricket are played at elite level largely by the old empire countries and not many other places. Certainly by the start of the dismantling of the British Empire in 1947, rugby and cricket were largely games played most seriously only in old empire colonies. The British Empire was commencing its terminal decline when television, which gave birth to modern globalised sport, was in its infancy. By contrast football, popular not just in numbers, but popular as it became a working class sport, spread everywhere, despite the growing hostility to it amongst the British ruling class, who came to favour the more “patriotic” rugby.

Political sociology and the key themes and writers identified by Crosson in his introduction are perhaps a bigger influence than the semiological tradition – only Buscemi references Stuart Hall, David Morley and Homi Bhabha, and only Garin references Barthes (he also cites film theorists such as Dyer and Elsaesser). Then again, semiological and socio-historic strands in critical theory have always co-existed awkwardly, even though I think it is clear that each needs the other.

In this era of streaming, when films are digital, and we do not necessarily watch them in cinema, it is valuable to have a collection that captures something of the irreducability of the cinematic film. With global television, streaming, and convergence of digital technologies, the categories are being eroded – indeed have been eroded. So it might have been good to have an afterword expressing some thoughts about the impact of all of this – for example, the growth of the multi-part sport documentary, common on streamed services, and often focusing on the life of a specific club. This, though, is a topic for another book. These are small comments when set against the general coherence, focus and readability of the book. The final note on this excellent and enjoyable collection should go to its editor who did such a fine job. As Crosson points out, “Sport films are rarely primarily about sport”.

Copyright © Garry Whannel 2022