A Course on Spectator Sports
1977; National Council of Teachers of English; Volume: 38; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/375956
ISSN2161-8178
Autores Tópico(s)Digital Games and Media
ResumoTHOUGH I MIAKE MY LIVING as a teacher of literature, I have taught a course on mass spectator sports for the last four years. I intend to teach the course again. My reasons for doing so are serious, and derive from my political concerns as a socialist. I want to educate myself, to begin with, about an important area of culture: polls show, after all, that most people read little more than the sports section in their newspapers; I, for one, eagerly scan the latest sports results before I turn to the front of the paper. I also want the opportunity to talk to students I ordinarily don't get to talk to: those who may not have the slightest interest in literature or high culture, but are passionate about sports. Mass sports-both spectator and participatory-play an important role in our culture and in the political economy. Playing in a softball league may be one of the few ways of getting away from the miseries of the office, the factory, school, or one's family. How many boys from low-income families clutch to the reality of the American dream in the form of the multi-million dollar contracts signed by the likes of Catfish Hunter, Joe Namath, and Julius Erving? And why the millions of fans? Rooting for one's favorite team is among the few ways left for anyone to show group loyalty. But that yearning for group loyalty also allows enterpreneurs to exploit the culture of masses of people. In the current stage of capitalist development, sports is one area of the service sector still capable of expansion. Several years ago, Fortune reported that Japanese capitalists are now stressing quality of life investments. The qualities referred to are illustrated by the more than ten-thousand bowling alleys built in Japan in 1970. In the United States there is now a booming business in tennis equipment. To create the boom, working class prejudices against tennis had to be broken down; furthermore, spectator etiquette had to be transformed from a norm of restrained clapping for a well executed shot to one of raucous applause for one's favorite player or team. How were such transformations engineered? Teaching this course, I hoped, would lead me to some answers for such questions. I also meant to learn something about myself. I'm a professional: an intellectual with a proper degree of skepticism. Yet sports has a nagging hold on me. It played a significant role in shaping my consciousness as I grew up. I can't shake
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