Document Type
Review Essay
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Aaron Baker's Contesting Identities: Sports in American Film is an indictment of the key American myth that anyone can succeed through self-reliance. Baker finds that sports films, in general, comprise a site in which the myth is represented and reproduced. Baker's focus, though presented from multiple analytical perspectives, is singular in its purpose. That said, Baker does concentrate on what he considers the four core American sports: football, baseball, basketball and boxing. Approximately ninety movies, from the silent era to the present day, provide the content of the analysis, but several are exemplary and are cited repeatedly in the book's introduction, four chapters and conclusion. Each chapter comprises one category of analysis: history and identity, Hollywood and the black athlete, gender and class (in boxing).
Repository Citation
Ouellette, Marc. "On Aaron Baker's Contesting Identities: Sports in American Film and Stephen C. Wood and J. David Pincus's Reel Baseball: Essays and Interviews on the National Pastime, Hollywood and American Culture." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 4, no. 1, 2004, pp. 1–4. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol4/iss1/9
Included in
American Film Studies Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Sports Studies Commons