Goal! and the global sports film

Abstract

The 2005 film Goal! exemplifies what the Hollywood sports film does best: it offers an emotionally engaging, utopian story of a talented athlete whose hard work and determination make possible the overcoming of social disadvantage to achieve stardom. Goal! also follows the pattern for most sports films by offsetting the overly simplistic formula for such success by to some degree realistically portraying the business of professional football – as well as its protagonist Santiago Munez's experience of immigration – that make up the world in which the story takes place. Goal! exemplifies the increased influence of globalization on commercial sports and movies. Its globalized appeal may have helped with football fans who understand the game as an international sport, but it may have also limited its access to viewers in the USA where globalization represents a threat to the cultural exceptionalism that the most popular American sports have long helped to define.

Notes

¹ Collins, ‘National Sports and Other Myths’, 353, 356; Markovitz and Hellerman, Offside, 38.

² My discussion of Foer relies on the Sandra Collins' analysis in ‘National Sports and Other Myths: The Failure of US Soccer’, 359.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Box Office Mojo, William C. Rhoden, ‘Can I Kick It? Yes, You Can’. The New York Times, 21 July 2007, D5. Collins, ‘National Sports and Other Myths’, 359.

⁵ Collins, ‘National Sports and Other Myths’, 359.

⁶ Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com (accessed 2 September 2007).

⁷ IMDB.com, www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross?region = world-wide (accessed 2 September 2007).

⁸ Giulianotti and Robertson, ‘Recovering the Social’, 169.

⁹ Ibid., 168.

¹⁰ Andrews and Ritzer, ‘The Grobal in the Sporting Local’, 141.

¹¹ nba.com, http://nba.com/players/international_players_2006-07.html (accessed 10 April 2007). Edward Cody, ‘The NBA Has Become a Leading Export to China’. Washington Post Foreign Service, 15 February 2006, E01.

¹² http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/50944258.stm (accessed 10 April 2007). http://nba.com/players/international_players_2006-07.html. Jack Curry, ‘On a Cold Day, Matsuzaka Justifies All the Hot-Stove Chatter’. The New York Times, 4 June 2007, C11.

¹³ Dyer, ‘Entertainment and Utopia’, 222.

¹⁴ Ibid., 228.

¹⁵ Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id = goal.htm (accessed 2 September 2007).

¹⁶ Miller et al., Global Hollywood, 3. Prior to Goal!, Cannon's best known film was the 1995 Sylvester Stallone action blockbuster Judge Dredd. From 2004 to 2007 he worked as Executive Producer of the hit TV series on CBS, CSI, New York, a programme known for its rapid editing, fast paced music, saturated colour and graphic violence, all central elements of a spectacular style that offers viewers a kind of visceral, dynamic entertainment that does not encourage critical reflection. Goal! borrows to a degree from such a spectacular style for the Newcastle game sequences.

¹⁷ Massey and Taylor, International Migration, 373.

¹⁸ Louis Uchitelle, ‘NAFTA Should Have Stopped Illegal Immigration, Right?’ The New York Times, 18 February 2007, 2. www.nytimes.com (accessed 22 May 2007). Brendan Case, ‘NAFTA & Globalization is Killing Mexico's Farmers’. The Dallas Morning News, 9 August 2001, 2. www.dallasnews.com (accessed 22 May 2007).

¹⁹ Passel, ‘The Labor Force Status of Short Term Unauthorized Workers’, 4, 12.

²⁰ Ibid., 5.

²¹ Ibid., 23.

²² Ibid., 27.

²³ http:// www.uscensus.gov/hhes/poverty/threshld/thresc4.html (accessed 2 September 2007).

²⁴ Dyer, ‘Entertainment and Utopia’, 228.

²⁵ The website for the British Embassy in Mexico City states that, to visit Britain to work an individual must show the ability ‘to maintain and accommodate himself and any dependants adequately without recourse to public funds’. http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/lawandpolicy/immigrationrules/ (accessed 2 September 2007).

²⁶ Rick Lyman, ‘Census Shows Growth of Immigrants’. The New York Times, 15 August 2006, 3. www.nytimes.com (accessed 6 May 2007).

²⁷ Ibid., 1. Passel, ‘The Labor Force Status of Short Term Unauthorized Workers’, 30.

²⁸ Ian McKinstry, ‘In Defence of the White Working Class’. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml = /opinion/2006 (accessed 1 September 2007), 1.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Ridge Mahoney, ‘English Tradition, Meet American Ownership’. USA Today, 17 May 2007, C 1–2.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Ibid.

³³ Weed, ‘The Pub as a Virtual Football Fandom Venue’, 401.

³⁴ Ibid., 403.

³⁵ Ibid., 410.

³⁶ Giulianotti and Robertson, ‘Recovering the Social’, 177.

³⁷ Giulianotti, Football, 127–8.

³⁸ Ibid., 133.

³⁹ Ibid., 135.