Subverting the Male Gaze in Televised Sports Performances Shannon L
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2005 Unsportsman-like Conduct: Subverting the Male Gaze in Televised Sports Performances Shannon L. Walsh Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THEATRE UNSPORTSMAN-LIKE CONDUCT: SUBVERTING THE MALE GAZE IN TELEVISED SPORTS PERFORMANCES By SHANNON L. WALSH A Thesis submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2005 The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Shannon L. Walsh defended on April 6, 2005. ______________________ Carrie Sandahl Professor Directing Thesis ______________________ Mary Karen Dahl Committee Member ______________________ Laura Edmondson Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii To my husband and loving family. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would most especially like to acknowledge Carrie Sandahl for her feedback on this project over the last two years. You gave me invaluable guidance and advice as I constructed this thesis. I could not have asked for a better advisor or friend. I would also like to acknowledge Debby Thompson. I wouldn’t be where I am without you. Thank you for helping me discover my love for theatre studies. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................... 1 Description of Project.............................................................................. 3 Theoretical Underpinnings and Methodology .......................................... 4 Traditional Representations of Women in Sports Narratives .................... 9 Chapter Breakdown................................................................................. 14 1. KICKIN' IT TO THE MAN: TRANSGRESSIVE INTERVENTIONS BY WOMEN 19 Transgressive Athletic Bodies ................................................................. 21 Sporting Reporting .................................................................................. 24 Female "Lookers".................................................................................... 28 2. SISTER ACT: THE DOUBLE-BIND OF THE MALE IMPRIAL GAZE ... 35 Stereotypical Representations of Black Women....................................... 36 Resisting Representations........................................................................ 41 3. COMING OUT OF THE LOCKER: LESBIAN (IN)VISIBILITY IN SPORT 50 The Lesbian Boogeywoman Stereotype................................................... 51 Invisibility Politics .................................................................................. 54 Visibly Resisting Compulsory Heterosexuality........................................ 58 Reinforcing Heterosexuality.................................................................... 61 Lesbian Spectatorship.............................................................................. 62 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................... 66 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................... 68 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ........................................................................... 73 v ABSTRACT This thesis takes as its foundational assumption that televised sporting events are not mere documentations of games as they unfold, but carefully crafted performances whose conventions are geared to its ideal spectator – the white heterosexual man. While this assertion is axiomatic, it does not explain televised sports enormous popularity amongst women. According to a 1999 article in The New York Times on the Web of the 130 million viewers that watched the Super Bowl that year, 43 percent were women (Kane par. 24). Why do women want to watch a performance that is so clearly geared to white, heterosexual men? According to one recent editorial in the Elizabethtown College paper, “we watch for the “tight ends,” and I do not mean the field position. There is just something special about tight, padded spandex football pants. Amen” (Jacobs par. 7). Corporate sponsors of sports such as football have seen the statistics and are increasingly gearing their commercials towards women. This acknowledgement within the televised performances of sport lends a new type clout to women viewers. Now that sport programmers and advertisers know women are present, they need to keep them tuned in. As a white, heterosexual female gazer, I find myself being hailed by commercials within the sports narrative with increasing frequency, not only with the products being pitched, but in how they are marketed. I also find this hailing at work within game coverage through the inclusion of female sportscasters and the increasing coverage of women’s sports. Male athletes are beginning to occupy positions as sex objects as well, as the media focus on their athletic bodies. Each of these shifts indicates the broadening of the sports narrative to include multiple identities and subjectivities. However, the unequal power dynamics working in the sports narrative often serve to recontain these identities and subjectivities within the confines of white hetero-male gazing structures. Female viewers, although hailed occasionally, often find themselves complicit in the objectification of women working within the narrative. Women’s bodies continue to be common currency in sports. Although women’s sports are becoming increasingly visible, they are often ghettoized in non-mainstream magazines such as Sport Illustrated for Women, websites, such as ESPN Page 2, and television, such as ESPN2. Sporting narrative representations also materialize through the eye of the camera, and often multiple cameras, which direct and exercise control over the view of the female spectator. These cameras exercise surveillance over transgressive vi gazes and actions. Transgression and interventions by multiple subjectivities into established white hetero-male gazing structures are quite often recontained. This recontainment apparatus is never quite absolute, producing gaps through which resistance is a possibility. An analysis of sports reveals an active site for feminist performance, particularly performances that resist the constraints of the male gaze. These radical oppositions are performed by female athletes and broadcasters within the televised sporting performance, as well as by the female spectators watching the televised event. These two areas of performance, from within the representation and from the outside looking in, resist the male gaze in separate, but complementary ways. Representations of female athletes and broadcasters’ bodies within the sporting narrative work as a type of textual performance that refuses the objectifying gaze of the male spectator, while female spectators watching representations of the narrative may use what bell hooks refers to as an oppositional gaze that challenges and deconstructs the narrative’s attempts to cater to the male gaze. I will use the tools of feminist performance analysis, cultural studies, media studies, and sport studies to explore how these performances are pitched to the white heterosexual male spectator and how heterosexual women, women of color, and lesbians within the structures of patriarchal sport trouble the dominant constructions and readings of sporting narrative representations. vii INTRODUCTION TROUBLING SPORTS MASCULINE HETEROSEXUAL MATRIX In the world of professional football, Monday Night Football is king, a microcosm of the Super Bowl appearing across the United States on a weekly basis. Monday nights during football season feature only one game, allowing it to be broadcast nationally and attracting the most skilled broadcasting performers. I found this skill to be lacking while watching the first Monday night game of the 2003 season, when I was dismayed by the exotic and objectified appearance of the new sideline reporter, Lisa Guererro. She was dressed in a pastel purple chiffon dress that hit above her knees with a matching scarf that flew up with the slightest movement. Her long, excessively styled dark hair flowed over her right shoulder. To add to the effrontery of this exoticized image, her reports were dull, short, and lacked confidence. As a female spectator I was disappointed by this image, which made me feel complicit in the objectification. I began to pay careful attention to the way women are represented in future football viewings, in beer commercials, shots of cheerleaders, and women in pre-game shows. I found myself in a similar position to Jill Dolan’s theatre spectator who see women relegated to supporting roles that enable the more important action of the male protagonist. She sees attractive women performers made-up and dressed to seduce or be seduced by the male lead. While the men are generally active and involved, the women seem marginal and curiously irrelevant, except as a tacit support system or as decoration that enhances and directs the pleasure of the male spectator’s gaze. (2) I began to instinctively deconstruct these images, analyze them, and confront them utilizing what I would come to learn has been variously called an oppositional, a deviant gaze, or a resistant reading.1 Along with these