Page 39 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

28 • Sport, Media and Society

of cultural difference, technocapitalism and British heritage, making links between
historic and contemporary victories of British people. The image itself, however,
was simultaneously unbelievable and convincing. Kennedy et al. (2006) argued that
the wheelchair was the most ‘jarring’ element of the image because ‘we normally
don’t see athletes with disabilities presented in the sport media’ (Kennedy et al.
2006: 10). Old and new technologies were also contrasted in the image. The specia-

lised wheelchair signified that contemporary Britain was a technologically advanced
society, set against connotations of the column’s evocation of the British Empire.
However, by representing a black athlete with a disability, both the Olympics and

British culture were figured as inclusive and meritocratic, overriding any associations
of the scene with the social inequality of Imperial Britain and elite sport. Kennedy
et al. (2006: 10) argued that it was the instability of the meanings and the clashes
and gaps between them that resulted in their affective force: ‘this image organises an
affectively “positive” set of connotations because Ade Adepitan is reasonably well

known in Britain and Nelson’s column is a heavy signifier of Britishness for large
swathes of the British population.’ The image’s ambiguous stylisation enabled mass
affective investment.
To understand the process of experiencing the sport spectacle in terms of affect
helps explain the passion that events such as the Olympics arouse. Sport spectacles
are sites of short-lived but intense affective investments, enabling spectators to swing
constantly between emotional highs and lows. Grossberg (1992: 229) described this
as an ‘occasion of an overindulgence of affect’. Our emotions are experienced as
more real because of their excessiveness. ‘That the excess is constructed precisely
through the unbelievability and unintelligibility of the message makes it all the more
powerful. In such practices, people get to live out affective relations which exceed
their lives and always will (perhaps because they will have already experienced them
on television)’ (Grossberg 1992: 229). Sport spectacles like the Olympics are con-
structed on an unintelligible, shaky foundation of contradictory values: competition
opposed to global participation; hierarchy and elitism opposed to unity and inclusive-
ness; equality of opportunity and fair play opposed to blatant privilege and visible
corruption; hegemonic masculine values opposed to feminist triumphs. It is possible
to understand these complex characteristics not simply as problems that the sport
spectacle needs to solve, but as the very essence of its affective appeal. The sport
contest at the heart of the sport spectacle crystallises the panoply of uncertainties and
ambiguities into an unpredictable affective event.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have described three approaches to analysing media sport.
Taken together, they form a step-by-step guide (see the chapter summary) and will