It is a stark dichotomy that sport, the battlefi eld where casualties are measured only in bruised egos, is also asked to be a healing agent. It is supposed to unite disparate cultures, religions and political regimes, and sometimes it does. But, more often, it does no more than temporarily bring them together, allowing for the possibility that enemies might understand each other a little better, or at least stop hating. (Sports writer Kevin Mitchell, ‘Why I fear the dragon’s claws at my throat’, Observer Sport, 3 August 2008)
Introduction
With its visibility and focus on symbols, winning, competition, partisan fans – and in team games the necessity of collective struggle – few other cultural forms lend themselves as easily as sport to being used as an indicator of certain national characteristics and, by exten- sion, of being representative of a national identity. Examples include examining how the Gaelic games of hurling or football typify Irish character (Humphries, 1996, 2007); contrasting English and Italian cultural life through an analysis of their differing footballing cultures (Vialli and Marcotti, 2007); noting the integral position of football in Scottish culture (Cosgrove, 1998; Giulianotti, 2005a) or the extent to which sports such as cricket or rugby have come to symbolize a particular aspect of Englishness (Paxman, 1998; Marqusee, 2001;
Tuck, 2003). The ritual and ceremony of sport – particularly national and international sport – carry with them a symbolic signifi cance which far outweigh sport’s importance as organized play. Much of that symbolic importance is inherently attached to sport and its sub- cultures; however, as noted in Chapters 4 and 5, crucial ideological work is also carried out in the way that sport is both represented,
Games across frontiers 145 constructed and transformed through its contact with the various forms of media.
Newspapers, magazines and books, in conjunction with the visual and online media, help defi ne the social and political position of sport in society. They also act as the interface between sporting, political and ideological discourses of identity and meaning. Examples of this are not hard to fi nd. The success or failure of the British Olympic team appears, according to sections of the media, to act as a direct barometer of the position and state of Britain in the world. A sport- ing crisis for national teams or individuals representing the nation are often linked and connected with wider political or cultural shifts, so the abject failure of the Scottish national team at the football World Cup in 1978 is used to help account for the failure of nerve among the electorate in the subsequent devolution referendum a year later while the 2001 doping scandals at the Nordic World Ski champion- ships in Finland and the World Ski Championships in Italy two years later that saw seven Finnish skiers testing positive instigated a wider debate about Finnish national identity and ‘national shame’ in the media (Laine, 2006).
In Britain, sports coverage with a national dimension appears often not to be about sport. As Blain and O’Donnell (1998: 41) suggest, often it ‘seems rather to be an obsession with corporate national self, to which sport is virtually incidental’. However, before we begin to read sporting character and success or failure simply as attributes which can be easily infl uenced by or indeed can determine wider political and cultural characteristics, we need to examine the relationship between sport, media and national identity and outline and highlight some of the central issues. We then look at particular case studies that bring into focus some of these issues, before fi nally broadening out the debate to examine the increasingly important relationship between global trends in media sport and collective identities, an issue devel- oped in more detail in the fi nal chapter of the book.
Media, discourse and identity
Organized sport has been viewed by governments of all political per- suasions as an important sphere in the forging of ‘national character’, with this project often serving specifi c political ends (Cashmore, 1996:
235–57). This particular point is well made in the work of Houlihan (1994), which examines the relationship between sport, politics and international relations. He notes:
sport has always been a resource within the international system avail- able primarily to governments, but also to other non-governmental political interests and, while it has, on occasion, been the primary tool of diplomacy and policy implementation, it has more often been an element of a broader and more comprehensive political strategy.
(Houlihan, 1994: 209)
Examples are readily available. Duke and Crolley (1996: 24–49) docu- ment the politicization of football in Francoist Spain during the period between 1939 and 1975. Franco was not alone in attempting to align sport and, due to its universal popularity, football in particular with specifi c political regimes (Hoberman, 1984). This process takes place most notably at the level of international sport, and worldwide sport- ing competitions such as the Olympic Games or the football World Cup. The Beijing Olympics of 2008, for example, were clearly viewed by the Chinese government as part of its strategy to attempt to shift the global image of China, while sending a powerful symbolic inter- national message about that country’s dramatic economic rise within the world economy.
In the past countries such as the former Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic have directly linked the health of the state to its ability to perform successfully in the international sporting arena (Houlihan, 1997). This linkage of political discourse with that of sport is still evident throughout contemporary Europe and beyond (O’Donnell, 1994). In recent times the winning of the rights to stage major sporting events – such as Euro 2004 in Portugal (Boyle and Monteiro, 2005), the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the London 2012 Olympics and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow – have become increasingly important both politically and economically in raising the external image and profi le of a city or country, and signalling the key role that politi- cians now believe staging sports mega events play in programmes of economic and cultural regeneration (Roche, 2006; Newman, 2007;
Panagiotopoulou, 2007).
To view this use of sport as some form of simple political manipu- lation by powerful interest groups in society to which people readily succumb is both simplistic and patronizing, and ignores the contradic- tions, tensions and struggles that exist within all supposedly national cultures. Sports can be an arena of cultural struggle, which oppressed groups use as a form of symbolic resistance. The turning of that most imperial of English games, cricket, by the West Indies (and other
Games across frontiers 147 former British colonies) into an expression and celebration of indig- enous culture is one such example (Malac, 1995).
Political scientists such as Hoberman (1984) argue that sporting activity in itself is not intrinsically ideological. However, sport as a cultural form based on competition is uniquely open to political and ideological manipulation. In contemporary societies this process is mediated through the media’s close link with elite sport. This media relationship with modern sport has also helped transform our understanding of this particular area of popular culture. Mediated sport can be an important cultural arena in which ideas about various aspects of social relations can become naturalized. Today most sport- ing cultures are to some extent mediated through television, radio, print or online media. As has been argued elsewhere, in this process of transformation not only are discourses of identity mediated or simply transmitted, but in many instances they can be constructed or even at times invented, if the political or economic climate is suit- able (Whannel, 1992; Blain et al., 1993; Brookes, 2002; Blain and Boyle, 2009).
This is particularly true in the fi eld of international sporting com- petition, where sport can become a symbolic extension of various col- lective identities. International media sport can also become an arena in which the supposed superiority of one country, or ethnic group over another is celebrated. As Hugh O’Donnell has noted in his study of the construction of international sporting stereotypes:
[Sport can] function on an international level as a site in which advanced countries can and must act out their preferred myths through self – and other – stereotypes, and celebrate those qualities which, in their own eyes, make them more modern, more advanced, in short superior . . . This process routinely involves downgrading other national groups.
(O’Donnell, 1994: 353)
While much of this process of myth reinforcement is conducted in the media’s transformation of sport, a note of caution regarding the origins of many of these discourses needs to be introduced.
Firstly, media institutions are themselves subject to a range of eco- nomic, cultural and political pressures which in turn heavily infl uence how they choose to frame or make sense of events. For example, the Sun newspaper in England may report a riot involving England sup- porters differently than the edition of the same paper aimed at a Scottish readership, as they address different culturally defi ned markets.
The popular press’s at times overtly racist treatment of, say, a German motor-racing driver may differ from that found even on a commercial broadcasting channel such as ITV (where any racist over- tones will be much more subtle). In other words, the mobilization of particular discourses of identity is partly determined by a range of factors such as the audience being targeted, the specifi c media institu- tion and how it is funded, as well as current political and social atti- tudes. In this context Rosie et al. (2004) have argued that such is the importance of national (Scottish, English) ‘frames of reference’ for the newspaper industry in a politically devolved UK that the diversity of stories about differing parts of the UK have in fact declined, as increas- ingly newspapers aimed at specifi c media markets speak only to their immediate constituents.
Secondly, it is worth emphasizing the point made by Schlesinger when he argued: ‘not to start with communication and its supposed effects on collective identity and culture, but rather to begin by posing the problem of collective identity itself, to ask how it might be ana- lysed and what importance communicative practices may play in its constitution’ (Schlesinger, 1991: 150). It can be misleading to place the media at the centre of the process of identity formation. While they may be a key site in constituting and reconstituting various discourses (and indeed in many instances both legitimizing and marginalizing ideas and value systems), they are not necessarily the primary defi ners of either discourse or aspects of identity.
Thirdly, while the internationalization of the media in recent decades has meant that global sporting events are given even more exposure than ever before, the reporting and framing of such events is far from universal. More often than not, international events are made sense of through a national media lens that is attuned for specifi c com- mercial and cultural markets (Boyle and Monteiro, 2005).
Finally, while the symbolic nature of these international media events can be important, in certain circumstances reinforcing or even challeng- ing national and cultural myths and narratives of identity, they can’t be divorced from broader political or economic context (Alabarces et al., 2001). An example of the overt linking of sporting activity to political rhetoric was evident with the re-entry of South Africa into the world sporting community, and in particular its successful staging of the 1995 Rugby World Cup. President Nelson Mandela explicitly associated himself with the Springboks team, projecting it as a symbol of the ‘new’
multi-racial democratic South Africa (this despite the fact that there was only one black player in the team). As one newspaper noted:
Games across frontiers 149
‘One team, one country,’ is the adopted motif of the Springboks’ World Cup campaign. For once it seems to be more than just a PR gimmick.
President Mandela spent three hours with the squad on the eve of the match and delayed his intended departure from the match yesterday so that he could be sure that ‘his boys’, as he calls the team, hung on for victory. ‘Our loyalties have completely changed,’ said the president. ‘We have adopted these young men.’ (Guardian, 26 May 1995)
Throughout the tournament, which South Africa would win, Mandela lost no opportunity to use the team’s success both as an indicator of the positive and dynamic political changes taking place in that country and as a vehicle with which to project a positive image of the country to the world through the international media coverage of the event.
However, Steenveld and Strelitz (1998: 625) in their examination of this media event caution against ascribing too much long-term power to the images of unity generated by the success of South Africa. They suggest, ‘if there was a coming together during the tournament, it was a temporary phenomenon and in no way laid the foundation – as the media and the government politicians would have us believe – for the creation of a collective self identity.’ Twelve years later, when South Africa defeated England in the 2007 World Cup fi nal, the team contained only two black South Africans (one more than in 1995), emphasizing that in modern South Africa white and back citizens ‘still largely inhabit separate worlds’ (Russell, 2007). Yet the 2007 victory was celebrated in the black towns of South Africa, much to the sur- prise of many commentators, suggesting that the cultural power of sport to offer highly symbolic moments, however transitory, remains compelling.
When the Iraq national football team defeated Saudi Arabia in the fi nal game of the Asian Cup in Jakarta in July 2007, there was an out- pouring of Iraqi nationalistic celebration on the streets of that country that is rarely seen (not least given the internal ethnic tensions within the country). However, this celebration of a unifi ed Iraqi national team that saw Shia supporters chant the name of the Sunni goalscorer Younis Mahmoud was short-lived (The Economist, 4 August 2007). A few days later sixty people were killed in two bombings in Baghdad and despite a very brief respite to rally behind the football team, politi- cal deadlock and strife returned to the county.
However, it can also be argued that to deny the possibility that such events, in some contexts, can both shape and refl ect broader shifts in
the related social, political and economic arenas is also wrong and is to underestimate the power of the symbolic in a material world.
At the very least, in specifi c contexts they may contribute to cre- ating what we have called in an earlier chapter a ‘climate of opinion’
within which more deeply rooted structural changes can more readily occur. What is argued is that it is important to situate media cover- age in detailed contexts of interpretation. This does not negate the power, importance and role that the media can play in helping to make sense of a group’s collective identity (usually by a process of bound- ary marking), but simply alerts us to the fact that this infl uence will vary depending on the specifi c infl uence of a range of other factors at particular moments in specifi c social circumstances. We concur with Adrian Mellor when he argued:
People make their own cultures, albeit not in circumstances of their own choosing. Amongst these circumstances – within and towards which their activity is directed – are structures of representation; but so too are structures of class, ethnicity and gender, along with deliberate economic and political strategies that bear upon these. These things are real. They do not merely exist in discourse. Their reality and their consequences exceed their representation. But people are not merely constructed by them. (Mellor, 1991: 114)
Sport, media and identity in devolving UK
Within the UK’s sporting environment, there exists the problem of mediating the complicated political and cultural relationship between the different component parts of the UK (for example, Scotland and England) – a situation which a decade after the establishment of a Parliament in Scotland and Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland has become acute in the reporting of news and current affairs (BBC Trust, 2008; Fraser, 2008).
Due in part to the universality of sporting activity, sport has been an important cultural arena through which various collective identities have been articulated within the UK. Richard Holt (1990) has documented how the political history and economic relationship of Scotland and Wales with England has been mediated through sporting occasions:
Sport acted as a vitally important channel for this sense of collective resentment . . . Football gave the Scots a way of fi ghting the ‘old enemy’, whilst addiction to rugby came to be one of the major ways in which
Games across frontiers 151 the English defi ned the Welsh and the Welsh came to see themselves.
Cultural identity was a two-way process. (Holt, 1990: 237)
This viewing of cultural identity as a continuous process that is subject to political, economic and cultural constraints and pressures is impor- tant. It also emphasizes how the concept of localism is relative. Within Scotland, for example, the national press can mean the Scottish, not the London based UK press, and the idea that the British media’s coverage of sport unproblematically reproduces the British ‘nation’ is depend- ent on how that nation is defi ned and from what cultural and class position the viewer/reader is engaging with this discourse.
This is not to argue that television’s transformation of sport as a cultural form does not have a role to play in cultural identity forma- tion. What is being suggested here is that to view this process as uni- directional is to underestimate the other factors that shape collective identities and the degree of resistance that may exist among certain groups to any ‘offi cial’ discourse.
While discourses of sporting national identity do differ across sports, depending on whether they are individual or team games, what class connotations are attached to individual sports, and their profi le within the media arena, the contradictions and tensions that exist in any ‘national culture’, are rarely articulated at the international sport- ing level. As Schlesinger comments:
National cultures are not simple repositories of shared symbols to which the entire population stands in identical relation. Rather, they are to be approached as sites of contestation in which competition over defi nitions takes place . . . It may also reproduce distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’
at the intra-national level, in line with the internal structure of social divi- sions and relations of power and domination. (Schlesinger, 1991: 174) Thus it appears useful to view the media as one important part of the process of identity formation, but not to start from a media-centred view of society.
Sports fans and national identity: Scottishness/
Englishness
In the fi rst edition of Power Play we examined how an evolving politi- cal relationship between Scotland and England was being mediated through media coverage of the Euro 96 football championships that