Play Ball! Sports As Paradigms of Masucline Performance In
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
PLAY BALL! SPORTS AS PARADIGMS OF MASUCLINE PERFORMANCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY UNITED STATES by GEOFFREY AARON DOUGLAS (Under the Direction of DAVID SALTZ) ABSTRACT This study examines the culture of baseball and football as paradigms for masculine performativity. The goal is to establish a new way to examine the construction of masculine behavior in United State popular culture. After establishing how both baseball and football present distinct performative images of masculinity, a materialist reading of plays and films representing both sports will reveal how images of gender identity extend into the United States’ popular culture. INDEX WORDS: Gender, Masculinity, Performative Acts, Baseball, Football, Western, Film, Drama, Theatre, Babe Ruth, Grantland Rice, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Walter Camp PLAY BALL! SPORTS AS PARADIGMS OF MASUCLINE PERFORMANCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY UNITED STATES by GEOFFREY AARON DOUGLAS BA, SAMFORD UNIVERSITY, 2006 MA, TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2017 © 2017 GEOFFREY AARON DOUGLAS All Rights Reserved PLAY BALL! SPORTS AS PARADIGMS OF MASUCLINE PERFORMANCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY UNITED STATES by GEOFFREY AARON DOUGLAS Major Professor: David Saltz Committee: John Bray Jepkorir Rose Chepyator-Thompson Christopher Sieving Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2017 iv DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my parents, who encourage me to love an accept everyone. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are too many people, without whose support and expertise this study would not exist, to list. Suffice to say, this dissertation is a product of the collaboration, and patience of many people more intelligent and wise than myself. The following bear specific mention because of their significant influence: David Saltz’s eternal patience and other worldly ability to decipher my ramblings into coherent thoughts gave my work shape and direction. Fran Teague, whose wisdom and educational care kept me on track as a professional and as a human being. Seth Wilson, who let me ask questions to which I should already know the answers, had a direct impact on the success of my work. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1 Performing Masculine Qualities ..................................................................4 Sports and Masculinity ................................................................................5 Literature Review .........................................................................................9 Methods......................................................................................................11 2 BASEBALL .....................................................................................................17 Baseball and the American Dream ............................................................18 Baseball’s Beginnings ................................................................................22 The Greatest Baseball Player .....................................................................26 The Ball-Player as a Paradigm for Masculinity .........................................34 Complicating Baseball ...............................................................................40 3 BASEBALL FICTION ....................................................................................46 Baseball as Simulacra ................................................................................47 A Million Dollar Arm with a Five Cent Head ...........................................49 You’re Killing Me, Smalls .........................................................................57 You Gotta Have Heart ...............................................................................64 The Game that Does Not Exist ..................................................................71 vii The American Dream Exposed ..................................................................73 “The Onliest Thing I Can Do is Throw” ....................................................74 Back Back Back .........................................................................................85 How Can You Not Be Romantic About Baseball? ....................................94 Creating Baseball .....................................................................................100 4 FOOTBALL ...................................................................................................102 Origin .......................................................................................................104 Innovation and Americanness ..................................................................107 Necessary Roughness ...............................................................................110 An Ideal Football Player ..........................................................................112 Violent Performance ................................................................................116 Ends and Means in Football .....................................................................122 Football Players as Cowboys ...................................................................124 5 FOOTBALL FICTION ..................................................................................138 Glorifying History ....................................................................................139 Football as a Haven for Masculinity ........................................................144 I Don’t Want Your Life ...........................................................................146 Win or Lose Like a Man ..........................................................................154 YOU CANNOT HURT ME ....................................................................164 6 CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................175 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................198 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Judith Butler’s seminal essay “Performative Acts and Gendered Construction” introduced a new concept in gender identity: gender performativity.1 Butler argues that gender is constructed performatively and must be contingent upon historical context. She suggests that performative acts constitute identity, rather than the reverse. Continuing the work of previous feminist scholars by separating gender from sex, she identifies how conceptions of the feminine are constructed and explores how they can be constructed differently. We can surmise that if feminine identity is the product of performative acts read in a historical context, the same must be true for the construction of masculinity. My goal is to examine performative masculinity in twentieth century United States. What social performances are specifically associated with masculinity? How do those performances help to shape contemporary masculine identity? While there is significant work on the construction of masculinity, there does not seem to be a clear or consistent definition of what constitutes masculine identity in contemporary U. S. culture. Most recent scholars who discuss the performance of masculinity in contemporary culture cite Peter Stearns’ 1979 book, Be a Man! Males in Modern Society as a theoretical foundation upon which to construct their own examination of masculine identity.23 In a review of Stearns’s work, William O’Neil identified Be a Man as the first book length study of masculine identity in western culture.4 Stearns surveys perceived masculinity across modern western history into his contemporary time. The introduction 2 to his survey is anthropological in nature, tracking masculine behaviors through the progression of western culture. While his thesis claims to track the inconsistencies in accepted masculinity of western society, it’s ultimately a very positivist examination. Stearns presents broad and sweeping generalizations about masculinity, as he sees the multiplicity of masculinity in the west as a problem to be solved, rather than a trait to be studied. In his attempt to consolidate different cultural images of masculinity, he constructs a linear evolution of behavioral cause and effect. Searching for thread through each era, Stearns refers to the completely undocumentable concept of a prehistoric hunter gatherer society. The most troublesome aspect of his work is that it seems to approach identity in the opposite way that Butler suggests. Stearns examines the performance of masculinity as determined by identification: because I am a man I must do these things. Stearns seems to want there to be a platonic image of masculinity, and while he presents some logical connections, such an essentialist view is not helpful in contemporary gender studies. Despite the outdated approach to gender identity, other scholars cited Stearns’s description of social expectations for the masculine in western society as typical qualities of masculinity. Citations of Stearns’s work on masculine identity, and passive agreement with the qualities associated with masculine behavior still do not produce a tight definition of masculinity. Even