Document Type
Article
Abstract
The popular FX show The League demonstrates the ubiquity of fantasy sports and, more importantly, fantasy sports trash talk. Through the use of exaggerated and extreme examples of trash talk The League seeks to create a representation of fantasy sports and the chatter associated with it as standardized depictions of the subset of American sports dialogue known as fantasy sports. This essay seeks to explore the ways that representations of fiction fantasy competition and trash talk create normalized expectations of what "competitive fandom" looks like in an era dominated by fantasy sports. We examine the implications that fictional exaggerations of fantasy sports might have on reinforcing male dominated sports arenas. The League's representation of trash talk as a reflection of societal expectations in fantasy sport create expectations of the type of fantasy participants that is comfortable with traditional trash talk and those expectations are necessarily coded to match particular gender norms.
Repository Citation
Davis, Michael, Alysia Davis, and Chang W. Woo. "The Trash Talk Is No Fantasy: The League as a Representation of Trash Talk in Fantasy Sports." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 17, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1–18. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol17/iss1/3