Remasculinizing American white guys in/through new millennium American sport films

Abstract

In this essay I analyse the cultural politics of the white masculinities constructed in new millennium American sport films. Specifically, I situate the production and consumption of these films in a historical conjuncture marked by an alleged crisis of masculinity for American men and the revitalization of a new conservatism in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001. Produced within this social milieu, several new millennium American sport films offer narratives featuring white everymen experiencing various crises where sport provides a masculinizing solution to their anxieties (at least momentarily). Thus, I illuminate four representational strategies common in a number of these films in order to read new millennium sport films as key cultural sites disseminating and popularizing a set of conservative ideologies and logics about gender, race and class, whose effect, if not intent, is the re-centring of white masculinity in post-9/11 American culture and, by extension, refortifying white male privilege in American society.

Notes

¹ Baker, ‘Sport Films’.

² Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 7.

³ Baker, Contesting Identities, 218.

⁴ Neil Sinyard cited in Kibby, ‘Nostalgia for the Masculine’, 16.

⁵ Examples of this steady stream of sport-related films are: Color of Money (USA, 1986, Martin Scorsese), Bull Durham (1988), Eight Men Out (1988), Major League (1989), Days of Thunder (1990), Rocky V (1990), White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own, (1992), Babe (1992), Ladybugs (1992), The Sandlot (1993), The Mighty Ducks (1992), Rudy (1993), D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994), Little Giants (1994), Hoop Dreams (1994), Cobb (1995), D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996), Angels in the Outfield (1996), The Fan (1996), Jerry Maguire (1996), Prefontaine (1997), BASEketball (1998), Without Limits (1998), Varsity Blues (1999), He Got Game (1998), among others. In the 2000s, I have documented at least 53 sport-related films produced in the United States for American audiences. For an insight interrogation of the seductive politics of whiteness operating in Rudy, see Leonard, 2006.

⁶ R. Corliss, ‘Nice Guys Finish First’. Time 143, no.15 (April 11 1994): 70.

⁷ McCallum, ‘Reel Sports’.

⁸ Giroux, ‘Private Satisfactions’, 15.

⁹ Savran, Taking it Like a Man.

¹⁰ See Malin, American Masculinity under Clinton; Pfeil, White Guys.

¹¹ Berlant, The Queen of America goes to Washington City, 12.

¹² Kellner, Media Culture, 3.

¹³ Giroux, ‘Private Satisfactions’, 5.

¹⁴ See Beynon, Masculinities and Culture; Ducat, The Wimp Factor; Faludi, Stiffed; Giroux, ‘Private Satisfactions’; Malin, American Masculinity under Clinton.

¹⁵ This point becomes apparent when one looks closely at the forces and conditions said to be responsible for this often purported crisis of masculinity over the past 15 years. See Faludi, Stiffed, as an excellent ‘crisis of masculinity’ text which attempts to mask the particularity of this alleged crisis of masculinity – that is, how it features the stories and voices of white men of various class backgrounds to advance its claims. Of course, the voices and experiences of people of colour and gay men can be included in such ‘crisis of masculinity’ narratives, but only to the extent that they corroborate, as opposed to, complicate and/or challenge the purported validity of such crisis of masculinity narratives. So, for the purposes of my argument here, the phrase ‘crisis of white masculinity’ is meant to be shorthand for a perceived crisis which mainly white, straight men of various social classes allege is eroding their cultural normativity and social authority.

¹⁶ Beynon, Masculinities and Culture; Faludi, Stiffed; Savran, Taking it Like a Man.

¹⁷ Ashcraft and Flores, ‘“Slaves with white collars”’; Fine and Weis, The Unknown City; Savran, Taking it Like a Man; Wellman, ‘Minstrel Shows, Affirmative Action Talk, and Angry White Men’.

¹⁸ See Bordo, The Male Body.

¹⁹ See Gates, ‘White Male Paranoia’; Kincheloe and Steinberg, ‘Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness’; McCarthy, ‘Living with Anxiety’.

²⁰ See Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; Beynon, Masculinities and Culture; Robinson, Marked Men.

²¹ Robinson, Marked Men, 10.

²² Robinson, Marked Men, 10

²³ Malin, American Masculinity under Clinton.

²⁴ Ducat, The Wimp Factor.

²⁵ Robinson, Marked Men.

²⁶ For more indepth discussion of these films, see Kusz 2002; 2006.

²⁷ Kincheloe, The Southern Place and Racial Politics, 33.

²⁸ Ehrenreich, ‘Masculinity & American Militarism’.

²⁹ Mailer, ‘The White Man Unburdened’.

³⁰ Ducat, The Wimp Factor.

³¹ Farrell, ‘Peggy Noonan's Pearl Harbor’.

³² Farrell, ‘Peggy Noonan's Pearl Harbor’

³³ Giroux, ‘Private Satisfactions’, 32.

³⁴ This figure is compiled from information found on film websites: www.netflix.com, www.mrqe.com and www.wikipedia.com.

³⁵ By ‘conventionally masculine’ I mean men being portrayed as either strong, tough, disciplined and disciplinary, athletic, in control of self and others, stoic, providing for dependent others, confident, secure, self-assured (but not cocky, boastful or arrogant), virtuous at the core, and not presumptively superior or oppressive to others.

³⁶ Somerson, ‘White Men on the Edge’.

³⁷ Flax, The American Dream in Black and White.

³⁸ Dyer, White.

³⁹ Somerson, ‘White Men on the Edge’.

⁴⁰ Connell, Masculinities.

⁴¹ Jimmy is played by Leonard Flowers, a decorated Special Olympian in real life whose sporting accomplishments earned him a place on a Wheaties box (Wheaties is a US brand of breakfast cereal known for featuring American athletic champions on the front of the box).

⁴² See Malin, American Masculinity under Clinton; Ducat, The Wimp Factor; and Kusz, Revolt of the White Athlete, 173–87.

⁴³ Tillman died from ‘friendly fire’ while serving in Afghanistan. But his death sparked much controversy as the United States military initially reported that he died in a hostile ambush. Subsequently, evidence has shown that various Army officials sought to cover up the real details of his death; that is, that Tillman died from friendly fire from his own men. Prior to his death the Army and American media glamorized Tillman for turning his back on his comfortable career as a pro athlete to serve his country. Tillman not only consciously refused to be complicit in this valorization of him and his decision, but recent evidence reveals his own objections to the Bush Administration's execution of the ‘War on Terror’ while he served his duty.

⁴⁴ Kusz, Revolt of the White Athlete, 137–87.