The Circus Is in Town

Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle

Lisa Doris Alexander, Joel Nathan Rosen, Lisa Doris Alexander, Joel Nathan Rosen

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781496836557
  9781496836502
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496836519
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Contributions by Lisa Doris Alexander, Matthew H. Barton, Andrew C. Billings, Carlton Brick, Ted M. Butryn, Brian Carroll, Arthur T. Challis, Roxane Coche, Curtis M. Harris, Jay Johnson, Melvin Lewis, Jack Lule, Rory Magrath, Matthew A. Masucci, Andrew McIntosh, Jorge E. Moraga, Leigh M. Moscowitz, David C. Ogden, Joel Nathan Rosen, Kevin A. Stein, and Henry Yu

In this fifth book on sport and the nature of reputation, editors Lisa Doris Alexander and Joel Nathan Rosen have tasked their contributors with examining reputation from the perspective of celebrity and spectacle, which in some cases can be better defined as scandal. The subjects chronicled in this volume have all proven themselves to exist somewhere on the spectacular spectrum—the spotlight seemed always to gravitate toward them. All have displayed phenomenal feats of athletic prowess and artistry, and all have faced a controversy or been thrust into a situation that grows from age-old notions of the spectacle. Some handled the hoopla like the champions they are, or were, while others struggled and even faded amid the hustle and flow of their runaway celebrity. While their individual narratives are engrossing, these stories collectively paint a portrait of sport and spectacle that offers context and clarity.

Written by a range of scholarly contributors from multiple disciplines, The Circus Is in Town: Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle contains careful analysis of such megastars as LeBron James, Tonya Harding, David Beckham, Shaquille O'Neal, Maria Sharapova, and Colin Kaepernick. This final volume of a project that has spanned the first three decades of the twenty-first century looks to sharpen questions regarding how it is that reputations of celebrity athletes are forged, maintained, transformed, repurposed, destroyed, and at times rehabilitated. The subjects in this collection have been driven by this notion of the spectacle in ways that offer interesting and entertaining inquiry into the arc of athletic reputations.

INDEX

• Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem (Lew Alcindor), 121, 183
• Abdul-Rauf, Mahmoud (Chris Jackson), 89
• Achilles tendon, xviii, 95, 196
• A.C. Milan (Associazione Calcio Milan) (Serie A), 36
• Adams, Victoria (Posh Spice), 37, 52
• Adidas, 193, 213, 217
• advertising, xxii, 3–5, 21, 63, 67, 73–74, 93n37, 181, 183–84, 187, 263, 274n34
• Afghanistan, war in, 125, 131
• Agassi, Andre, 145
• Akers, Michelle, xxviii, 210–26, 227n12, 227n26, 227n29, 279
• Akron, Ohio, 3–6, 8–11, 13, 15–16, 18–21, 23–26
• Akron Beacon Journal, 5, 11, 15, 18
• Alamillo, José, 271
• Alarcón, Daniel, xxv
• Aldo, José, 233, 238
• Ali, Muhammad, 46, 67, 77, 89, 128, 186, 203, 250
• Almada Quirós, Baldomero Melo “Mel,” 257, 273n8
• Almasy, Steve, 176
• Alouettes (Montreal), 171
• Amaechi, John, 176
• Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), 9–10
• Ancona, Ronni, 52
• antapologia, 101
• Antebellum South, 64, 78
• Anthony, Carmelo, 33n88
• Anthony, Greg, 200
• apologia, xxvii, 9...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: Looking inside the Cave … and Out
• Introduction: Notes from under the Big Top
• “You Must Believe Me”: Northeast Ohio and the Promise(s) of LeBron James
• I Desire Him So Much He Repulses Me: The Transcendentally Disappointing Fantasy of David Beckham (Or Why There Is Only One David Beckham)
• The Apotheosis of Tiger Woods: Monetizing Racial Transcendence and Sexual Transgression for a Quarter of a Century
• “She’s a Princess, and I’m a Pile of Crap”: Retroactive Apologia and the Tonya Harding Olympic Debacle
• Symbolic Rupture: “Take a Knee” and the NFL as Commodified Spectacle
• “Russian Sensation” or “Mean Girl”?: Maria Sharapova, Drug Bans, and Schadenfreude
• Jason Collins, Michael Sam, and the Challenge of Coming Out in Men’s Team Sport
• Shoot-Pass-Slam: Reconsidering Shaquille O’Neal
• The Lion Queen: Michelle Akers and the Pride of US Women’s Soccer
• A Notorious Spectacle: A Critical Media Analysis of the “Money” Fight between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather
• Reading Fernando Valenzuela and Fernandomania: Broadening Americanness One Pitch at a Time
• Afterword: Bread, Circuses, and Desolation Row
• Contributors
• Index