Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on ScreenSporting Blackness examines issues of race and representation in sports films, exploring what it means to embody, perform, play out, and contest blackness by representations of Black athletes on screen. By presenting new critical terms, Sheppard analyzes not only “skin in the game,” or how racial representation shapes the genre’s imagery, but also “skin in the genre,” or the formal consequences of blackness on the sport film genre’s modes, codes, and conventions. Through a rich interdisciplinary approach, Sheppard argues that representations of Black sporting bodies contain “critical muscle memories”: embodied, kinesthetic, and cinematic histories that go beyond a film’s plot to index, circulate, and reproduce broader narratives about Black sporting and non-sporting experiences in American society. |
Common terms and phrases
Abdul-Jabbar African American Agee American cinema athletic genders athleticism ball basketball player Ben Carrington Bissinger Bissinger's Black athletes Black body Black male Black sporting body Black sports documentaries Black women athletes Boobie Boobie Miles Boobie's Cahn camera Carlos championship Coach contemporary contested court critical muscle memory depicted diegetic femininity figure film's filmmakers Fleetwood football frame Friday Night Lights genre Haile Gerima Harlem High Flying Bird high school hip hop Hometown Hero Hoop Dreams Hoop Reality Hour Glass Jamal Juwanna Mann L.A. Rebellion Ladies Last Poets League Love and Basketball lynching masculinity Michael Monica narrative Olympic Panthers play political professional basketball protagonist Quincy race racial iconicity racist Rens representation revolt Routledge scene screen Serena Williams sexual Shoulders of Giants Smith social sonic spectacle sporting blackness sporting performance sports films sports history story Stringer television tion Tommie Smith transmedia visual women's sporting York