UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Sporting Bodies, Displaying History: Black Embodiment and Performance in Contemporary Sports Films Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/22k7m92r Author Sheppard, Samantha Noelle Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Sporting Bodies, Displaying History: Black Embodiment and Performance in Contemporary Sports Films A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television by Samantha Noelle Sheppard 2014 © Copyright by Samantha Noelle Sheppard 2014 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Sporting Bodies, Displaying History: Black Embodiment and Performance in Contemporary Sports Films by Samantha Noelle Sheppard Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Kathleen McHugh, Co-Chair Professor Allyson Nadia Field, Co-Chair In this dissertation I analyze Black embodiment and performance in contemporary sports films, particularly through their documentary impulse, the gestures and markers through which these films establish their reference to real sporting and non-sporting bodies and histories. I argue that through this impulse, sports films make claims to an historical real, and they can therefore be explored for how they represent the Black sporting body. Though my project focuses primarily on fiction films, I begin by analyzing this impulse in a sports documentary for how it represents the performance and embodiment of the Black sporting body as an historical contestant. I then trace these strategies as they appear in and shape sports in fiction films, ii specifically through narratives of triumph and defeat, dissent, and gendered visibility. Throughout, I focus on and read the Black sporting body as a an individuated multiplicity which, through performance and embodiment, represents, references, and relates to Black sporting and non-sporting embodied histories and experiences. Sports films offer a privileged viewpoint on Black embodiment because of their high concentration of Black actors, one that mirrors representation in contemporary athletics. In sport films, sporting history is literally and figuratively choreographed. On the literal level, sports films’ formal elements (cinematography, editing conventions), actor training (making them into credible athletes), and overall studio production infrastructure (contracting sport consultants) work together to make the sporting elements plausible and real. On the figurative level, sports films implicitly reference, at the level of embodied performance, historical narratives concerning the social, cultural, and political conditions of Black people. Using textual analysis with attention to historical context, I argue that sports films contain embodied histories, mythologized through filmic and generic conventions, of competing Black bodies in both film and American history. To read these texts and bodies for their historical and bodily memory, I mobilize sports, dance, and performance studies methods as well as gender and critical race theories on embodiment. iii The dissertation of Samantha Noelle Sheppard is approved. Chon Noriega Richard Yarborough Allyson Nadia Field, Committee Co-Chair Kathleen McHugh, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv For My mom, George, and Allen In memory of Joyce Myrtle Brown, Noel Brown, and George Alfred Sheppard, Sr. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Documentary Impulse and/in Black Sporting Bodies Chapter One 33 Historical Contestants Chapter Two 76 Performing Triumph and Defeat Chapter Three 123 Performing Dissent Chapter Four 175 Performing Gendered Visibility Conclusion 223 The Black Sporting Body and Critical Muscle Memory Filmography 231 Bibliography 237 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have nothing but abounding gratitude for those who have walked this long journey with me. Throughout this process, I have been humbled and affirmed by the support, encouragement, and belief that others have had in me and my work. I sing praises to God for his and her faithfulness, grace, and mercy these past seven years. I would like to say thank you to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program for their support throughout my collegiate and graduate years. As a MMUF fellow, I took their mission to increase diversity in academia and their wonderful opportunities for mentorship and guidance as both an honor and a responsibility. A special thanks to Dartmouth Professor Annabel Martín for nominating me for the MMUF program my sophomore year of college. A heartfelt thanks to Cirri Nottage. It was in your classes, specifically your African American film history class, that I figured out I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. and be a cinema and media studies professor. Thank you for your soul-affirming belief in my dreams throughout these years. I have been blessed with financial support throughout my graduate years of education. I would not have been able to complete my dissertation in a timely manner without the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation’s Mellon Mays University Fellows Dissertation Grant; UCLA’s Collegium of University Teaching Fellowship; UCLA’s Eugene V. Cota Robles Fellowship; UCLA’s Theater, Film, and Television’s (TFT) Georgia Frontiere Scholarship in Memory of Aaron Curtis; Social Science Research Council’s Graduate Studies Enhancement and Pre-doctoral Research Grants, and UCLA’s Graduate Summer Research Mentorship. At UCLA, to borrow Langston Hughes’s words, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” However, I am deeply grateful for the colleagues and friends that I have had the privileged vii company of climbing to the finish line with these past seven years. First and foremost, to my dearest friends and fellow PhD travelers Mila Zuo, Ben Sher, Heather Collette-VanDeraa, Morgan Woolsey, and Maya Smukler: “thank you for being a friend/ travel down the road and back again/ your heart is true/ you’re a pal and a confidante.” You all are everything to me. It’s an honor to call you brilliant people my friends. I am blown away by all the great things you all have already done and ecstatic to see all the great things that you will do. Please always remember, there is enough room at the table for all of us! A huge thanks to my fellow Ph.D. and M.A. travelers: Jen Porst, Jen Moorman, Dennis Lo, Phil Wagner, Bryan Hartzheim, Corella DiFede, Brandon Harrison, Jonathan Collins, Michael Moses, and Dana Linda. Thank you to all my students throughout these years, and a special thank you to the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies’ Summer Humanities Institute (SHI) students, especially Mahaliah Little. As well, I’d like to recognize TFT Dean Teri Schwartz and Film, Television, and Digital Media Chair William McDonald for their support throughout these past few years. A heartfelt thank you to Dean Schwartz for your kindness and fierce support for me and my initiatives throughout the years. Thank you for inviting me as a representative of ELEVATE to attend the Telluride Film Festival. I truly fell in love with movies all over again. Thank you for supporting and sponsoring ELEVATE and believing in its purpose to give voice and visibility to the diverse contributions of multicultural filmmakers, theater practitioners, and scholars of color. A special thank you to my ELEVATE co-chair, Mila Zuo. I am grateful for your warmth, wit, and willingness to help whenever needed. You will always have a friend and loyal supporter in me. Throughout this process, I have had the chance to read many wonderful scholars works and be inspired by a broad and interdisciplinary intellectual community. A special thank you to viii Aaron Baker and Grant Farred for taking the time to talk with me via skype/phone about my research and their own. Aaron Baker, your work has challenged me as a scholar and a teacher. Your work was a constant source of inspiration and information for my dissertation. Grant Farred, your provocative theorization of the Black body at rest (but not restive) shaped how I conceptualized Chapter Three of this dissertation. While we have never met, I want to thank Harvey Young. Your work foundationally changed the scope and intellectual borders of my project. Your scholarship is a template for excellence. I have never read such beautifully written, rigorously researched, and theoretically innovative and provocative work. Thank you for writing a text that allowed for deep conversations between the reader and the written word. Completing a dissertation can be a very lonely and isolating venture. However, thanks to conferences and social media, I have not had to go it alone. It has been wonderful to be a part of a larger academic community filled with people whose work inspires, challenges, and teaches me. Thank you to Brandy Monk Payton, Kristen Warner, Miriam Petty, Racquel Gates, TreaAndrea Russworm, Karen Bowdre, Bambi Haggins, Jan-Christopher Horak, Beretta E. Smith Shomade, Michael Gillespie, Nina Bradley, Artel Great, and Jade DeVon. Beyond the walls of UCLA, I have been supported by family and friends. A special thank you to my Uncle Noel for all of his support throughout my years of education. I could never repay you for all of your generosity. Thank you to my Aunt Madge and all my California family, significantly my Grandmother Olivia. To my friends outside of academia, you all have gotten me through these past few years. Thank you to Jacqueline Thornton, Nneka Samuel, Lenee Richards, Dougal Henken, and RuDee Lipscomb. You all are great and wonderful people, and I have learned so much from all of you. Thank you to my Oasis Tutoring friends, especially Kim Gipson and Jackie Irvin, whose hearts of service and dedication to education inspires me. A ix “sole-ful” thanks all of my Black Girls RUN! friends and running sisters. Throughout this dissertation, I have run three marathons and logged thousands of miles across the city of Los Angeles. Running marathons and completing this dissertation taught me the meaning of the word endurance.