The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture
Michael Serazio
Apr 2019 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Kyle Tait
headphones
Audiobook
11 hr 11 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
Want a 1 hr 7 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September, more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That timeless, live quality makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and noisier. More importantly, sports are sold as an oasis of community to a nation deeply divided: They are escapist, apolitical, the only tie that binds. In fact, precisely because they appear allegedly "above politics," sports are able to smuggle potent messages about inequality, patriotism, labor, and race to massive audiences. And as the wider culture works through shifting gender roles and masculine power, those anxieties are also found in the experiences of female sports journalists, athletes, and fans, and through the coverage of violence by and against male bodies. Sports, rather than being the one thing everyone can agree on, perfectly encapsulate the roiling tensions of modern American life.
About the author
Michael Serazio is an award-winning author and former journalist. He is a faculty member in the Department of Communication at Boston College. His books include Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerilla Marketing. He has written for the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Salon, and others.
Kyle Tait is a professionally trained voice actor and narrator in Atlanta, Georgia. His first brush with a microphone came in sports radio, calling baseball in the Atlanta Braves' organization. He started voicing audiobooks during the off-season; a few years later, he left baseball to work as a narrator full-time.
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
