Manly Displays: Exhibitions and the Revival of the Olympic Games

This article explores the shift from international exhibitions to the Modern Olympic Games as the preferred site for the public performance of manly character. As fin-de-siecle European and American societies increasingly grew concerned about the waning vitality of men and the individual's marginalization in a mechanized world, they sought out a new form of mass spectacle. National tensions grew that would eventually lead to WWI, and citizenry previously enraptured by the displays of state-directed competition at the international exhibitions were attracted to a venue in which the performance and effort of the individual was the central focus. The Games, particularly in the emergence of the marathon as the showcase event, became the preferred location for the performance of active masculinity that did not involve aggression but, instead, individual excellence achieved through discipline and the adherence to rules.

Notes

[1] General information on the exhibitions and world's fairs is drawn from Finding, Encyclopedia of World's Fairs and Expositions; Smithsonian Institution Libraries, The Books of the Fairs; and Allwood, The Great Exhibitions.

[2] Tosh, ‘Domesticity and Manliness’, in Manful Assertions, 65–8.

[3] Horne, ‘The Age of Nation-States’, 28.

[4] Holt, ‘Contrasting Nationalisms’, 40; Mangan, and McKenzie, ‘The Other Side of the Coin’, in particular 76–7; but also various other examples in Mangan, Making European Masculinities; Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 194.

[5] I would argue that the class tension surrounding field sports detailed in Mangan and McKenzie, ‘The Other Side of the Coin’, supports this assertion.

[6] All references to de Coubertin's attitudes and strategies, unless otherwise noted, come from de Coubertin, Memoires Olympiques.

[7] Krüger, ‘Buying Victories’, note 25.

[8] De Coubertin, Memoires Olympiques, 9.

[9] Lockroy, ‘Preface’, L'Exposition Universelle de 1889, vol. 1, xxxi.

[10] Nord, The Republican Moment, 7.

[11] Rydell, ‘The Literature of International Expositions’, 9.

[12] Sieburth writes that the exhibitions were thought of as ‘utopias of transparency and equality … (inasmuch as [they] project both an archaic fantasy of the classless prehistory of society and a wish-symbol of the future):‘Introduction’, ix.

[13] Details of the organization and planning of the 1889 Exposition Universelle can be found in Monod, Exposition Universelle, vol. 1.

[14] Silverman, ‘The 1889 Exhibition’, 73, and Art Nouveau, 43.

[15] Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 270.

[16] Bennett, ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’.

[17] Rydell, ‘A Cultural Frankenstein?’, 143.

[18] Jones, World's Fair: Chicago, 1893, 110.

[19] Guy de Maupassant, quoted in Silverman, ‘The 1889 Exhibition’, 78.

[20] Mangan and McKenzie, ‘The Other Side of the Coin’,76–7.

[21] Mangan, Athleticism, 36–42; John Tosh references this same phenomenon when he discusses the evolving cultural designations of ‘gentlemanly’ and ‘manly’ through the second half of the nineteenth century: Tosh, Manful Assertions, 65–8.

[22] Mangan, Athleticism, 202. Mangan quotes Welldon explicitly deriding working-class lack of appreciation for the importance of ‘pulling together’ or ‘playing the game’ that he designates as ‘public school’ values.

[23] For a variety of examples, see Mangan, Tribal Identities.

[24] Baker, ‘Making of a Working Class Football Culture’, 244.

[25] For American attitudes towards sports, see MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 113–128, where he details de Coubertin's 1889 trip to the US; for de Coubertin's ideas about what sports were supposed to stave off, see Weber, ‘Pierre de Coubertin and the Introduction of Organised Sport in France', 16: ‘Industrial civilization stood for the four Sancho Panzas of the Apocalypse: greater comfort, specialization, exaggerated nationalism, and the triumph of democracy'.

[26] MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 155.

[27] Silverman, Art Nouveau, 75–106.

[28] Valbert, L'age de Machines, quoted in Silverman, Art Nouveau, 44.

[29]Le revue des deux mondes, 1 June 1889; Punch, 29 June 1889.

[30] De Coubertin, ‘The Olympic Games of 1896’.

[31] Rydell, ‘A Cultural Frankenstein?’, passim.

[32] Whitman, quoted in Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. 4, 508; Punch, 8 June 1889.

[33] The ‘union of hearts’ quote is from an anonymous contributor to the St James Gazette, quoted in Moore, ‘“Love of Fair Play”’, 73.

[34] Cooper on ‘race of sportsmen’, Greater Britain, 15 July 1891, quoted in ibid.; for details of the Pan-Britannic effort, see ibid., 72–3; for Cooper quote on ‘babel gathering’ see MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 168.

[35] Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 197.

[36] Dawson, Soldier Heroes, passim. Tosh proposes the ‘flight from domesticity’ in ‘Domesticity and Manliness’ in Manful Assertions; and Dawson explores in ‘The Blond Bedouin’ that the public substantially redirected its gaze towards empire in the search for opportunities to exhibit and witness examples of appropriate masculinity both prior to and immediately after the First World War. Both are found in Roper and Tosh,Manful Assertions. The specific quote is from Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 197.

[37] Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 207.

[38] Mandell, The First Modern Olympics, 85–9.

[39] MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 174.

[40] De Coubertin, ‘The Olympic Games of 1896’, 115.

[41] etails of the first Modern Olympiad are taken from: de Coubertin, ‘The Olympic Games of 1896’; Walechinsky, The Complete Book of the Olympics, 47; and MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 226–36.

[42] Silverman, Art Nouveau, 53; Mandell, Paris, 1900, 113.

[43]Le Rire, 15 Dec. 1900.

[44] Guttmann, The Olympics. 22–4.

[45] Details of these games come from Walechinsky, The Complete Book of the Olympics, xxi, and 48; and Large, Nazi Games, 17.

[46] All of the details of the St Louis Games, come from Guttmann, The Olympics, 25–6.

[47] Putney, Muscular Christianity, 6.

[48] Hicks quoted in Guttmann, The Olympics, 49.

[49]Illustrated London News, 18 May 1908.

[50] Details of the London Games come from Walechinsky, The Complete Book of the Olympics.

[51] From the level of training and number of participants, it is apparent that the United States took the Olympics seriously as a nationalistic pursuit earlier than other countries. For a detailed examination of how quickly the two are combined elsewhere, see Krüger, “Buying Victories is Positively Degrading,” in Mangan, ed. Tribal Identities..

[52] Olympic/Exhibition supplement to Illustrated London News, 1 Aug. 1908, as well as 18 and 25 July editions.

[53] MacKenzie, ‘Heroic Myths of Empire’, 134.

[54] MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 261.

[55]Punch, 29 June 1889.

[56] De Coubertin quoted in Mallon and Widlund, The 1912 Olympic Games, 27.

[57] MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 271.