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Sport, Landscape, and the National Identity: Representations of an Idealized Vision of Nationhood in Slovenian Skiing Telecasts

2007; Wiley; Volume: 7; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1525/jsae.2007.7.2.19

1556-5823

Vlado Kotnik,

Media Studies and Communication

The paper explores the role of the televised landscape in presenting alpine skiing as a Slovenian national pastime as well as being distinctive TV sport. Alpine skiing is one of those sports where the Slovenian nation‐imagining has been exercised extensively throughout the last decades. In Slovenia, alpine skiing with its related natural scenery, sporting events and national heroes, is one of the main sports arenas in which the recent Slovenian emancipatory nationalism has been significantly negotiated. After Slovenia's political secession from Yugoslavia, with the so called “ten‐day‐independence‐war” in 1991, the new nation‐state also needed a new national landscape. Many tourist resorts, natural monuments and sights and places perceived as well‐known Slovenian identification symbols since the 19 th century, were noticeably revitalized through live sporting and cultural TV broadcasts. Our findings show the ways in which skiing and its natural setting have been utilized by Slovenian National Television to establish and reproduce an idealized vision of nationhood and national identity in past decades, but particularly in recent winter seasons.