Hi everyone,
My name is Yannick and I
grew up in Hamburg, Germany. I am a first-year master’s student in the Media
and Communication program with an emphasis in International and Intercultural
Communication, but I already hold a master’s in Popular Culture Studies from
BGSU. My main research interests are gender and bodies on television and in
sports.
My main sport growing up
was tennis. My parents loved the sport and took me and my brother to our local
tennis club every weekend. I started playing when I was five, and I played
until my junior year of high school. Since sports are completely detached from
school in Germany, I only played some competitive tennis in our local tennis
league. I also play a little bit of soccer.
For me, society is a
group of people that is physically or psychologically bound to a specific
geographic region. All individuals of that group usually share the same belief
systems, values, und ideologies. It is important to study the relationship
between sport and a specific society, because sport practices and discourses
about physical activity and sporting bodies reveal, reflect, and unravel the
values and ideals of that society. We can, for instance, learn a lot about a
society’s notion of gender ideals just by looking at athletes who play sports
that are considered “feminine” or “masculine” in that society (e.g. men in
football/women in cheerleading in the U.S.). As such, sport can be classified
as an arena in which individuals of a society construct their (gender, racial,
religious, sexual, and national) identities.
When it comes to sport,
I am most passionate about the sense of community a sport, sports team, or
sporting event (game, practice, etc.) can create. I love how sport has the
potential to unite people from diverse backgrounds. Also, I think it is
extremely interesting how people construct their identities through sports,
especially their gender identities. I am very interested in how certain
practices in and characteristics of specific sports can make individuals feel
more masculine or more feminine. In my graduate studies, I want to study these
practices as they relate to individuals’ constructions of their gender, racial,
sexual, religious, and national identities.
A sporting event that had
a great impact on my own sense of (national) identity was the Soccer World Cup
hosted in Germany in 2006. It was the first time that I experienced people
waving German flags, using other German symbols, and seeming to be proud
to be German. Growing up in a country that – due to its past – taught its
people not to be patriotic at all, I experienced a sense of inner German unity
for the first time.
In this course, I hope
to learn the basic theoretic concepts that illustrate the relationship between
sports and culture/society. I hope to do more work on the construction of
identity through and in sports. I am also planning to apply to PhD programs
with a focus in cultural studies of sport, and I see this class as a good way
to prepare myself academically for these programs.
I am looking forward to
being in this class with all of you this semester!
–Yannick
Brandon Silva
ReplyDelete9/2/14
Yannick, I enjoyed the section of your introduction about the 2006 World Cup. I love the World Cup in the U.S. because for one month, it captivates the country. Growing up in a country with so many competing sports (football, baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, etc.) it is nice to have people passionately supportive of U.S. Soccer. I found your post interesting because it brings a perspective that many in the U.S. may not have experienced. It seems that the U.S. has many opportunities to be patriotic within and outside of sport. In fact, being “proud” to be American is often a necessary trait for an American. Coming from such an athletic country, I found it interesting that you have not felt this sort of patriotism more often. My question is, is the enthusiasm for club soccer (Bayern, Dortmund, Hamburg, etc.) in Germany greater than what it has been for its national team? In other words, whereas people are not as patriotic due to their history, does the sense of community and unity through sport that you mentioned come from support of the club teams in Germany?
Thanks for your comment, Brandon! I think you are definitely right that in the U.S. it is very common for people to practice their patriotism in and through sports. It is very interesting that some practices that you probably take for granted (as part of your national consciousness) are not present in less patriotic countries. For instance, singing or listening to the national anthem is very common at most sporting events in the United States on the local and national level. In Germany, however, we rarely sing the German national anthem at local sports events (e.g. at the Bundesliga). Sometimes songs are sung that are considered representative of the culture of a local club, though. For instance, at soccer games for the Bundesliga team Hamburger SV, a local musician sings his tribute song to Hamburg (“Hamburg, meine Perle”/”Hamburg, my Pearl”) before every game. I would therefore definitely say that Germans have a very strong sense of community when it comes to their favorite (local) soccer club. I would even go so far to say that I think the feeling of unity is more present during the World Cup because the German national team unites players from multiple local teams.
DeleteYannick, I enjoyed your introduction, thank you for sharing. I find it particularly interesting how your passion for the sense of community created by sports relates with the nature of the sporting event you mentioned as having greatly impacted you.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, perhaps more than any sporting event, the World Cup has the effect of bringing together people from a variety of backgrounds. At times, the Cup has the potential to bring about the sense of community you mention as well, on a national and international level.
From my perspective, in particular, a host country for the World Cup is given a special opportunity to unite as a community, something it would seem your country took full advantage of in 2006. In hosting the Cup, that country is also given the ability to convey their attributes and connect on a global scale.
Nate – thanks for your comment! Your comment definitely hints at how sports can sometimes be political in a national context. And while I do agree that by hosting the World Cup a country has the great opportunity to unite as a community and to convey their attributes and values to the rest of the world, I think that the attention drawn to a country can also be damaging to that country. With the World Cup in Qatar, for example, the country got a lot of negative attention for disrespecting human rights – which, of course, is a good thing to note. Similarly, Russia (host of the 2018 World Cup) is heavily criticized for its current practices in Ukraine, and several politicians of the European Union have asked participating European countries to boycott the World Cup held in Russia.
DeleteYannick — I entirely agree with that assessment. I also believe that a potential host nation’s current international standing should play a more significant role in its candidacy for the World Cup. That being said, as things currently are, I think the negative attention you speak of can be seen from a glass half full perspective. Shining a light on the negative practices of World Cup hosts such as Qatar and Russia provides another forum for international discussion of the issue at hand. Similarly, I believe the Olympics can provide a unique forum for such discussions as well. In turn, hopefully these discussions can be a small part of reaching a resolution to global problems.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Yannick,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed and related to your post in a number of ways. As you know, I am in my second year of the Popular Culture Studies master’s program, and I am also interested in constructions of gender in sport in addition to the depiction of “grotesque” bodies in sport media (specifically ESPN Magazine’s The Body Issue). Given that we come from the same critical and cultural studies background (and are pursuing similar interests in our graduate studies), I was wondering if you had any insights regarding why sport is ignored (and I would even go as far to say actively avoided) in cultural studies classes. I think this vacancy within the program is detrimental to our understanding of society and popular culture in general. Further, I can’t think of a more fitting example of a “fandom” than professional sports teams’ fans. For this reason, “Taking Sports Seriously” by Gorn and Oriard was a major relief to me in that others saw the major lack in American cultural studies (I have most of the article highlighted and “I know!” or “Yes!” written by the majority of the paragraphs). Even though it was written in 1995, the same notions exist within cultural studies today (unfortunately).
--Bri
Bri - Thanks for your insightful comment. You bring up a very good point about the position of sports academia. I think that one reason why sport is widely ignored in cultural studies, and academia in general, is the constant distinction between high culture and low culture. Most critics classify sports (and popular culture as a whole) as low culture which is "less worthy" of being studied than high culture. I also think that there is a certain hierarchy between different forms of popular culture within cultural studies. Most forms have in common that they have an author ("creator") and an audience. I believe that texts that have a clear author (e.g. movies, television shows, music, etc.) receive more attention within academia for this exact reason, as some degree of excellence and creative genius can be attributed to them, which makes their text worth studying. Sports, on the other hand, as Gorn and Oriard point out in "Taking Sports Seriously", are "essentially unscripted" (1995, p. 4). It might be that a combination of these two phenomena play into the problem that sports is not taken as seriously in the academic world.
DeleteYannick,
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I have been involved in some research that looks at gender representations among female athletes so I find your interests in sports to also being interesting. I also find that sport is so connected with how people present themselves to society and what being a member of a sports team means to every individual differs from person to person. When it comes to gender representations and media I find it interesting to look at the differences between masculine and feminine sports and how the media can reinforce our society’s ideas of what it is to be masculine or feminine. I think that we as a society like to think that we are changing the way we portray everything (it is okay to be gay in men’s sport etc.), but I am not totally convinced that actual changes are being made. However, I do enjoy discussing the topic.
Campbell - Thanks for this comment, and I definitely agree with you. While society seems to be more tolerant of diverse gender/sexual/racial/religious identities, to me it seems that sport is an area in which these changes do not occur as obviously; they are "a little behind". We still see the blunt promotion of hegemonic masculinity and hegemonic femininity in the realm of sports as well as in representations of athletes. With that being said, I also think that sport can be a place where athletes can negotiate their gender/racial/sexual/etc. identities. Especially for female athletes being on a sports team in a rather masculine sport can be very beneficial, as most members of that team probably have similar struggles and concerns.
DeleteYannick,
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent introduction and obviously evoked good discussion from other members of the class. Your observations about the pride you had in seeing Germany win the World Cup will be interesting to discuss in class. I remember whenever the World Cup was being played during a major tennis tournament, Boris Becker had to watch since he was a huge fan of Germany's soccer team. I wondered how you felt about Jurgen Klinsmann coaching the U.S. team. I also wondered how the popularity of women's soccer compares to that of the men's team in Germany.
With your background in cultural studies and your interests in construction of gendered identities, I believe you will add much to this class. I look forward to reading more of your future entries.
Dr. Spencer