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Title: Sport, Film, and the Modern World

Sport, Film, and the Modern World

by Neil Archer (Author)
©2024 Textbook XIV, 236 Pages
Media and Communication
Series: Communication, Sport, and Society, Volume 11

Summary

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively ‘modern’ genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity.
Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows how film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport’s wider place in modern life.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Modernity, Sport, and Film – Starting Line
  • Chapter 1 From Cars to Chariots and Back Again, via Le Mans: The Modernist Impact of Sport and Film
  • Chapter 2 Cities and Bodies in Motion: Modernist Trajectories in the Parkour Film
  • Chapter 3 Winning Ugly: Moneyballing the Sports Film
  • Chapter 4 Winning Uglier: Ethical Dilemmas in the Sports Biopic
  • Chapter 5 Subjectivity in the Twenty-First-Century Sports Documentary
  • Chapter 6 Going Solo: Ecocritical Approaches to the ‘Extreme’ Sports Film
  • Afterword: Film vs Sport – Endgame
  • Index
  • Series Index

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Archer, Neil, author.
Title: Sport, film, and the modern world: aesthetics, ethics, environments
/ Neil Archer.
Description: NewYork: Peter Lang, 2024. | Series: Communication, sport,
and society; vol. 11 | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024008491 (print) | LCCN 2024008492 (ebook) | ISBN
9781636677958 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781636677941 (paperback) | ISBN
9781636677965 (ebook) | ISBN 9781636678344 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Sports in motion pictures. | Sports films– History and
criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.S67 A74 2024 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.S67
(ebook) | DDC 791.43/ 6579– dc23/eng/20240401
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024008491
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024008492
DOI 10.3726/ b21640

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
The German National Library lists this publication in the German
National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG

ISSN 2576-7632 (print)
ISBN 9781636677941 (paperback)
ISBN 9781636677958 (hardback)
ISBN 9781636677965 (ebook)
ISBN 9781636678344 (epub)
DOI 10.3726/ b21640

© 2024 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne
Published by Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York, USA
info@peterlang.com - www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilization outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the
publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and
processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Neil Archer is Senior Lecturer in Film at Keele University (UK). He is the author of eight previous books, including Twenty-First-Century Hollywood: Rebooting the System (2019) and The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 (2022).

About the book

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively ‘modern’ genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity.

Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows how film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport’s wider place in modern life.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1. ‘Op Art’ abstractions of light and speed in Le Mans (dir. Lee H. Katzin, National General Pictures, 1971).

Figure 1.2. The athlete as machine: Sam Mussabini tinkers with Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire (dir. Hugh Hudson, 20th Century Fox, 1981).

Figure 2.1. Architecture as videogame platforms: reimagining the National Theatre in Jump London (dir. Mike Christie, Optomen Television/Channel 4, 2003).

Figure 2.2. Transforming the city’s image: Sébastien Foucan, handstand with backdrop, in Jump London (dir. Mike Christie, Optomen Television/Channel 4, 2003).

Figure 2.3. David Belle jumps into the ‘void’ in District 13 (dir. Pierre Morel, EuropaCorp, 2004).

Figure 3.1. Photographic aid to measure optimal performance: Chariots of Fire (dir. Hugh Hudson, 20th Century Fox, 1981).

Figure 3.2. Mathematics as part of an ‘action sequence’: Bill James’ formula, up-close, in Moneyball (dir. Bennett Miller, Sony Pictures, 2011).

Figure 3.3. Representation beyond ‘representativeness’: a pixelated Chad Bradford in Moneyball (dir. Bennett Miller, Sony Pictures, 2011).

Figure 3.4. Sufficiently imperfect visuals: checking out Kevin Youkilis in Moneyball (dir. Bennett Miller, Sony Pictures, 2011).

Figure 4.1. Repetition and automation: Björn training in Borg vs McEnroe (dir. Janus Metz Pedersen, Nordisk Film, 2017).

Figure 4.2. An ideal model of sports parenting (?): LaVona pushes for her daughter’s place on the ice, in I, Tonya (dir. Graig Gillespie, Neon/30 West, 2017).

Figure 5.1. Zidane looks up toward something in the stadium heights …

Figure 5.2. … and a reverse shot shows his ‘point of view’. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (dirs. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Universal Pictures, 2006).

Figure 5.3. Representing ‘memory’: Maradona’s voiceover describes his birthplace, as the player closes his eyes …

Figure 5.4. … and then the film cuts to a period image of this same town. Diego Maradona (dir. Asif Kapadia, Altitude Film, 2019).

Figures 5.5–5.7. Impressions of foresight, via intercutting, in Senna (dir. Asif Kapadia, Universal Pictures, 2010).

Figure 5.8. The mysteries of interior life: silent subtitling in Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (dirs. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Universal Pictures, 2006).

Figure 6.1. Object-oriented point of view in 127 Hours (dir. Danny Boyle, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010).

Figure 6.2. Aron (faintly visible in center), displaced by the deep space and time of prehistoric geography: 127 Hours (dir. Danny Boyle, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010).

Figure 6.3. Drawing attention to performance: Alex Honnold grins for the camera in Free Solo (dirs. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, National Geographic Documentary Films, 2018).

Figure 6.4. Feeling gravity’s pull: ‘inverted’ shot framing in Free Solo (dirs. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, National Geographic Documentary Films, 2018).

Figure 6.5. Feeling the fingertip margins between success and death: Free Solo (dirs. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, National Geographic Documentary Films, 2018).

Acknowledgments

Thanks to everyone at Peter Lang, and to the editors of the Communication, Sport, and Society series, for their enthusiastic support of this book, and helpful suggestions along the way.

Special thanks as usual to my family, and especially to Steve and Mags Archer for encouraging an early interest in sport, both as a participant and a viewer. In a way, this book has been gestating for over four decades, so I hope it’s worth the wait.

Details

Pages
XIV, 236
Year
2024
ISBN (PDF)
9781636677965
ISBN (ePUB)
9781636678344
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781636677958
ISBN (Softcover)
9781636677941
DOI
10.3726/b21640
Language
English
Publication date
2024 (June)
Keywords
Sports film philosophy of sport psychology of sport film aesthetics genre
Published
New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2024. XIV, 236 pp., 25 b/w ill.

Biographical notes

Neil Archer (Author)

Neil Archer is Senior Lecturer in Film at Keele University (UK). He is the author of eight previous books, including Twenty-First-Century Hollywood: Rebooting the System (2019) and The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 (2022).

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Title: Sport, Film, and the Modern World