Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The mismeasure of masculinity: the male body, ‘race’ and power in the enumerative discourses of the NFL Draft

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0031322042000250475

1461-7331

Thomas P. Oates, Meenakshi Gigi Durham,

Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

Abstract The athletic male body has long been idealized in western culture, and its dimensions are a key aspect of its iconic status. Oates and Durham examine the discourses of the athletic male body as it is presented in media discourses surrounding the NFL Draft. They focus specifically on the enumerative strategies used to define and delimit the racialized bodies of football draftees. Through a close textual analysis of publications that deal with the Draft, they uncover three main themes in the discursive construction of the athletes' bodies: the delineation of the body in terms of its dimensions; the assessment of the body's performance; and the body's productivity in terms of mastery of the sport. In characterizing the athletic body strictly in terms of its relationship to physical space, the discourses invoke aspects of hegemonic masculinity related to size, strength and the successful use of force. In addition, in the deployment of quantification by white team-owners and managers in the evaluation of mainly non-white players of a lower class position, the numeric logics of the Draft reinscribe power hierarchies of 'race' and class. Keywords: corporeal theoryeugenicsfootballgenderideologymasculinitymediaNFL Draftpowerracesport Notes Kenneth Dutton, The Perfectible Body: The Western Ideal of Male Physical Development (New York: Continuum 1995). Thomas P. Oates recently received his Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Iowa where he has taught courses on media history, popular culture and critical theory. Meenakshi Gigi Durham is Associate Professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa. She has published extensively on the subjects of gender, sexuality and the media, and is the co-editor (with Douglas Kellner) of the reader Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks (Blackwell 2001). George L. Hersey, The Evolution of Allure: Sexual Selection from the Medici Venus to the Incredible Hulk (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press 1996), 45. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton 1981). Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996). Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press 1999); Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press 1993). Jill Lieber, 'Audience adds kick: thousands of fans throw a party at Garden', USA Today, 17 April 2000, C1. Susan Jeffords, Hard Bodies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 1994); Jackson Katz, 'Advertising and the construction of violent white masculinity', in Gail Dines and Jean Humez (eds), Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 1995), 133–41; Susan Bordo, The Male Body (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2000); Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995). Robert W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press 1995), 77. Tim Curry, 'Fraternal bonding in the locker room: a pro-feminist analysis of talk about competition and women', Sociology of Sport Journal, vol. 8, no. 2, 1990, 119–35; Michael Messner, 'When bodies are weapons: masculinity and violence in sport', International Review for the Sociology of Sport, vol. 25, no. 3, 1990, 203–20. Katz. Messner. Harry Edwards, 'The collegiate athletic arms race: origins and implications of the "Rule 48" controversy', Journal of Sport and Social Issues, vol. 8, no. 1, winter/spring 1989. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge 1990); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex' (New York: Routledge 1996); Bordo, Unbearable Weight; Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume One: An Introduction (New York: Vintage 1978); Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon 1980). Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sally Shuttleworth, 'Introduction', in Jacobus, Fox Keller and Shuttleworth (eds), 6. Paula A. Treichler, 'Feminism, medicine, and the meaning of childbirth', in Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sally Shuttleworth (eds), Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (London: Routledge 1990), 113–38. Robert Rydell, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1984); Christopher A. Vaughan, 'Ogling Irogots: the politics and commerce of exhibiting cultural otherness, 1898–1913', in Rosemarie Garland Thomson (ed.), Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (New York: New York University Press 1996), 219–33. Quoted in Rydell, 166. 'A novel athletic contest', World's Fair Bulletin, vol. 5, September 1904, 50. 'A novel athletic contest', World's Fair Bulletin, vol. 5, September 1904, 50. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage 1977), 190. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982), 159–60. Ian Hacking, 'How should we do the history of statistics?', in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1991). See Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2001). Appaduri, 118. Appaduri, 119. Appaduri, 120. Richard M. Lerner, Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice, and Genocide (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press 1992). Banet-Weiser, 55. 'NFL Network to provide unprecedented coverage of the NFL Scouting Combine', 12 February 2004, available at www.nfl.com/nflnetwork/story/7083320 (viewed 5 May 2004). William Rhoden, 'NFL meat market opens for business', New York Times, 25 February 2001, A24. William Rhoden, 'NFL meat market opens for business', New York Times, 25 February 2001, A24. Tim Green, The Dark Side of the Game (New York: Warner 1996), 6–7. Tim Green, The Dark Side of the Game (New York: Warner 1996), 7. Pierce Scranton, Playing Hurt: Treating and Evaluating the Warriors of the NFL (New York: Brasseys 2001), 7. Vince Carucci, 'Sizing up prospects is a year-round job', NFL Insider, April–May 2000, available at www.nfl.com/ce/feature/0,3783,5192903,00.html (viewed 4 May 2004). Warren Anderson and Tim McClellan, 'Combine crunch', April 2000, available at www.momentummedia.com/articles/tc/tc1203/crunch.htm (viewed 4 May 2004). Vince Carucci, 'Sizing up prospects is a year-round job', NFL Insider, April–May 2000, available at www.nfl.com/ce/feature/0,3783,5192903,00.html (viewed 4 May 2004). 'Outside the lines: does character count in the NFL draft?', transcript of ESPN broadcast, Sunday, 9 April 2000, available at http://sports.espn.go.com/page2/tvlistings/show2transcript.html (viewed 4 May 2004). 'Outside the lines: does character count in the NFL draft?', transcript of ESPN broadcast, Sunday, 9 April 2000, available at http://sports.espn.go.com/page2/tvlistings/show2transcript.html (viewed 4 May 2004). Joel Buchsbaum and the editors of Pro Football Weekly, Pro Football Weekly 2002 Draft Preview (Northbrook, IL: Pro Football Weekly 2002); Mel Kiper, Mel Kiper Jr's 2002 Draft Report (Jarrettsville, MD: Mel Kiper Enterprises 2002); Sporting News Pro Football Draft Guide 2002 (St Louis, MO: Sporting News 2002). Buchsbaum et al., 2. Buchsbaum et al., 41. Buchsbaum et al., 178. Buchsbaum et al., 178. Kiper, 119. Kiper, 119. Kiper, 41. Kiper, 69. Kiper, 9. Sporting News, 10. Sporting News, 10. Jon Entine's bestseller, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk about It (New York: Public Affairs 2001), is a good example of this kind of engagement with race and sport. Jon Saraceno, 'Keeping score', USA Today, 2 October 2002, 3C. Leola Johnson and David Roediger, 'Hertz don't it? Becoming colorless and staying black in the crossover of O. J. Simpson', in Toni Morrison (ed.), Birth of a Nation 'Hood: Gaze, Script and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case (New York: Pantheon 1997), 197–239. Leola Johnson and David Roediger, 'Hertz don't it? Becoming colorless and staying black in the crossover of O. J. Simpson', in Toni Morrison (ed.), Birth of a Nation 'Hood: Gaze, Script and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case (New York: Pantheon 1997), 230. Sut Jhally, 'Cultural studies and the sports/media complex', in Lawrence Wenner, Media, Sports and Society (Newbury Park, CA: Sage 1989); George Sage, Power and Ideology in American Sport: A Critical Perspective (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics 1998). Luke Cyphers, 'Hot startups', ESPN: The Magazine, 17 April 2000, 81. Bordo, Unbearable Weight. Katz. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: BBC and Penguin 1987). Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 192.