I’ve spoken before about dramaturgy and the fact that we represent ourselves the way we want to be seen. I mentioned the NFL owners and unions who wanted to make sure that the other person is seen as the bad guy. But what about players? What kind of impression management do they participate in? Masculinity seems to be a big one. I was surprised by the number of stories that came out, one after another, about players not seeming tough or hard or participating in some kind of behavior that is deemed not manly enough. But there are other things. What about Jay Cutler not seeming upset when he couldn’t get back into the game? Or all the times announcers say that they can tell when the team or players aren’t into it? The most recent example was last night’s game. I heard on the radio that some people felt that LeBron’s pregame speech was faked, that he was playing to the cameras. Is this something else that athletes have to do? Do they have to take each game as life and death because we fans see it that way and we want to know that they do too? And when they don’t, when they seem tired or don’t play as we expected, do we decide that they don’t take the game seriously and will therefore not have success? I wonder if this encourages them to pretend and play their role so they audience will come to their games and buy their jerseys. And if it doesn’t, why not?
Making Private Public
C. Wright Mills encourages sociologists to make a connection between biography and history to be able to see themselves within larger societal structures. He specifically asks that social scientists connect private concerns with public issues in order to glance outside of the intricacies of individuals’ lives into the social institutions within which we exist. While the personal issues and concerns of athletes and sports teams are often aired in public, and public groups and authorities can get involved, we, as sports fans don’t make as many connections to public issues as we should. That is really much of the purpose of this blog, to bring us out of our own lives, teams and loyalties and to allow us to see the bigger pictures. Is Kobe’s homophobic slur only a public issue because it was accidentally overheard or does it represent the larger issues around sports and masculinity and the ways in which we equate homosexuality with the lack of such? Is the robot that will throw out the pitch at the Phillies game just a publicity stunt or an example of American society’s move into the biotech society that we have been promised, where we are able to use technology to overcome biological limitations? When your sociological imagination becomes second nature, we won’t have to ask these questions anymore.
Tears of a Man
I don’t know why but it’s been hard to get away from masculinity the last few posts. I’m enj
oying watching the NFL Draft (sadly, I have a Christmas-like enjoyment of the event) and I look up to the TV as I hear Chris Berman say, “It looks like he’s been selected. He’s crying in the back room.” Crying in a room, huh? Where have I heard that before?
Masculinity in sports is surprisingly contextual. There are things we accept, and places that we accept them, and there are things that we won’t. The Miami Heat players crying in the locker room is, in Brannon’s words, ‘sissy stuff’ but draft picks crying because they have made it to the NFL is okay for the ‘sturdy oak’. Barbosa and Evans holding hands after beating Orlando generates controversy within the NBA but butt-slapping during a football game, or even one time I remember Nate Robinson jumping on Steve Francis’ back and riding him like a horse, are perfectly accepted. Do new members of sporting society know what the rules are? Where the boundaries of their masculinity lie? Or do they get socialized through our reactions and hazing processes—taking them to the line which defines that which is deviant, and not masculine—and then dragging them back?
The Big Broken Wheel
The end of any season brin
gs with it player injuries. Whether the team can overcome them is often less important than whether the player can overcome them. Our first response to player injuries in all sports is “suck it up” and it is because of this response that games like Madden feel they have to promote the danger in playing with a concussion. While gender roles have changed over time, much of our perspectives on things like masculinity haven’t, especially not in sports. In the 1970s, we looked to Brannon’s characteristics of masculinity and, today in our sports, they are as true as ever. Our sports stars are always “the big wheel”—the successful individuals that we continue to look up to regardless of what they do. They “give ‘em hell” as we celebrate their aggressiveness, elbows to the face and bloody uniforms. We do not allow the “sissy stuff” and expect the “study oak” that represents being tough, hard and confident, and far away from anything that might be considered feminine. And so we expect Amar’e to play with back spasms and Kobe and Rose to play with sprained ankles. And we chastise Jay Cutler because he wasn’t study enough to not get hurt or giving them enough hell to force himself back into the game. Are our masculine expectations leading our athletes towards further damage? Or is that just the cost you pay to be the big wheel?