A Review of My Book 'SPORT AND FILM' by Professor John Bale

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Nat ional Universit y of I reland - Galway] On: 19 August 2015, At : 03: 05 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG Sport in History Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ rsih20 Sport and Film John Bale a a Keele Universit y Published online: 09 Feb 2015. Click for updates To cite this article: John Bale (2015): Sport and Film, Sport in Hist ory, DOI: 10. 1080/ 17460263. 2015. 1008311 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 17460263. 2015. 1008311 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . 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Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sublicensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. Term s & Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- and- condit ions Sport in History, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2015.1008311 Downloaded by [National University of Ireland - Galway] at 03:05 19 August 2015 Book Review Seán Crosson, Sport and Film (London: Routledge, 2014). Pp. 182. £26.99 (pb). ISBN 078-0-415-56992-7 Undergraduate students opening the pages of this book may put it down quickly when the names of Norbert Elias, Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci appear in the early pages of Sport and Film, a book by Seán Crosson, which he has contributed to the Routledge ‘Frontiers of Sport’ series. However, they will soon meet familiar figures such as Nick Hornby and David Beckham. While not explicitly addressing students and teachers of sports history, the book will be useful for scholars in numerous academic fields. It has brought a range of topics which will become valuable for those seeking more about studies in sport in film – and film in sport. The book has an American bias, understandable given the impact of Hollywood on the ‘movies’ – a phenomenon that has brought the moving body beyond the static body into the world of mobility. The book consists of six chapters and a conclusion. It is quasi-chronological, dealing with ethnicity, gender and national identity. The first two chapters deal with ‘reading the sports film’, suggesting that there is no single ‘film’. There are ways of seeing and Crosson provides a good coverage of ‘form and style in film’, narrative, ‘mis-en-scène’, ‘cinematography’, ‘sound’, ‘editing, ‘film theory’, ‘genre’ and ‘post-structuralism’. Those of us with a humanistic bent might be put off but will be pleased that this chapter includes material on the emergence of the early cinema and film. The historical dimension, though, seemed to me to be rather thin. There are some observations on the giants of the early movies, namely Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, both of whom ‘engaged in various activities from boxing to jumping’ (p. 30), but Marey and Muybridge take up only two pages, suggesting that Crosson wanted to get away from science, preferring to work on the cinema. Nevertheless, interesting comments on film stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers show how boxing, in particular, can illustrate the athletic form in motion. Likewise, films on football on the college campus were Downloaded by [National University of Ireland - Galway] at 03:05 19 August 2015 2 Book Review themes that were made famous in, for example, The Freshman by Harold Lloyd. Chapter 3 continues the focus on sports in US cinema and illustrates that by the 1920s attempts had been made to define a ‘sports film’. In this chapter titled ‘the sports film genre’, I suggest that Crosson comes somewhat dangerously close to ‘catagorizing’, taking a ‘lists’ or a ‘fundamental characteristics’ approach. Indeed, he illustrates his categories by ‘film biographies’ such as the Babe Ruth Story, devoting a page of ‘subgenres’ like the British films The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and This Sporting Life. Ellis Cashmore’s work is used to illustrate the documentary sports film, inevitably exemplified by Olympia, while chapters 4 and 5 concentrate on race, social class, and the ‘American Dream’ in the sports film. He contends that the sports film confirms that the history of the sports team has been both dominated by men and yet ignored at the same time. The former has illustrated masculinity and the latter the femme fatale. Here Crosson ranges from Elizabeth Taylor (National Velvet) to Kirsten Dunst (Bring it On). The sixth chapter is devoted to film in national culture and identity in sport. Again, the coverage is considerable, and includes the classic work of Jerry Leach and Gary Kildea on their work on cricket in the Trobriand Islands (Trobriand Cricket) at first incongruously placed with Chariots of Fire but exemplifying resistance in different ways. Here, the British reader can engage with resistance in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Bend it Like Beckham. Next are two short sections on Australian and Indian sports films and several allusions to German sports. Crosson’s work is, I believe, an ambitious path-breaking study; an impressive range of examples highlights aspects of sport and film, melding them with the recognition of the ideological base. He finishes where he started – at Gramsci and his concept of cultural hegemony. I have few criticisms about this book as I think that more could be considered on ethnographic film. The Trobriand film is noted but other ethnographic studies of film reviewing the colonial representations of sport are limited. Representing the colonized athlete was filmed as well as photographed – not necessarily for ethnography but also for athletic technique, and I think that more attention could have been paid to the moving body in athletic training and practice. Consider the use of film in the work of the British athletics coach F.A.M. Webster, who from the 1930s had seen the movie camera in track and field athletics as an aid (or supplement) to performance. He wrote: ‘equipped, one can make moving picture records of the action and physical skills’ of sporting stars to one’s own pupils (F.A. M. Webster, Why? The Science of Athletics (London: Shaw, 1937), 215). Sport in History 3 Downloaded by [National University of Ireland - Galway] at 03:05 19 August 2015 Finally, dare I note that there is no mention of the films of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon – makers of sports films at the end of nineteenthcentury Lancashire? Nevertheless, Seán Crosson can be deservedly said to have moved the ‘frontiers of sport’ and should inspire students to engage with both sport in film and film in sport. JOHN BALE © 2015 Keele University [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2015.1008311