Are Sports Icons Frauds?
Popular culture is the here and now lifestyle of our generation, and the things or people within it serve as a basis for what it's all about. When things get popular people use them; and likewise, when people are popular other people look up to them. Looking more specifically at some of these people, such as sports figures, they appear to be so popular and so much better than us that they deserve special treatment and attention. Why are these sports figures perceived as such celebrities and given such treatment? How do they get to be put up on that pedestal in the first place? And do they actually deserve it? I am proposing this debate in order to see if these sports figures of today are truly that much better than us that they need to be given this high status and this special treatment by the everyday common person. With the help of John Storey's "What is Popular Culture?", Dwight MacDonald's "A Theory of Mass Culture", and Garry Whannel's "Media Sports Stars", we will try to further understand why these sports figures are what they are in today's society. Also, it will give us more insight as to if they really deserve all of the credit they get for what they do. Overall, I think it should instill a better understanding
It may create good guys or bad guys by showing anything, no matter what, the athlete still will get his publicity and get into the heads of the consumers. MacDonald explains to us how "Modern technology also created new media such as the movies and television which are specially well adapted to mass manufacture and distribution" (59). Also, many new leagues, associations, and championships were created for a new sudden popularity in sports, so therefore many more athletes were needed which gave an even better chance for these stars to emerge. This can be related to what Dwight MacDonald says when he talks about the times fifty year ago. There were sports prior to it, but when all is said and done sports grew and thrived to the popularity it is today because of mass media. Whannel states that television created our star athletes due to exposure and "the conventions of television, particularly narrativisation, had a transformative impact on athletics" (130). The media publicizes stars, but doesn't necessarily make them feel like stars. For example, take most athletes who have committed or been accused of a crime. They were put up on the pedestal by the constant media attention and special treatment. The media gave the common people something to do and something to want to know. To find the first traces of a sports star, we have to go right to the very beginning of the nineteen hundreds when there were certain things which sparked the first stars. This popularity or celebrity status was all thanks to the mass media. Once on this pedestal, it gives sports stars a sense of separation from the masses and makes seem better than the average person. This helps make their views a whole lot stronger than when the media perceives them as having, now they actually think they are better because of what treatment they get.
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