The Neoliberal Disciplining of LeBron James and Kevin Durant: Sports Media Discourse on NBA Free Agency as Ideological Critique
2020; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/0193723520973454
ISSN1552-7638
Autores Tópico(s)American Sports and Literature
ResumoThrough content analysis of sports media commentary focusing on the high-profile free agencies of NBA stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant, the author demonstrates how commercial sports media discourse responding to these critical exigencies strategically reinforces neoliberal ideology and parlays its disciplinary rhetoric into a derogatory ideological critique of James, Durant, and their contemporaries. The analysis demonstrates how media discourse surrounding James and Durant covertly but significantly reinforces cultural myths of rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, and competition as concomitant with success and self-worth while exalting idealized constructions of the prior generation of basketball icons, particularly Michael Jordan, whose mythic self-reliance is metonymic of an influx of nostalgic discourse which framed today’s players as constitutionally inferior to the stars of the 1980s and 1990s.
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