Page 45 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

34 • Sport, Media and Society

Sport films have emerged as a recognisable category of film that focuses on events,

athletes and themes relating to sport, drawing on the excitement, challenge, drama and
tragedy of sporting experience. Rowe (1999: 15) differentiates between televised sport,
which attempts to recreate a sense of ‘reality’ in its portrayal of events, and fi lm, which
moves from ‘the “invention” of the fictional world to the “truth” of sport and human exis-

tence’. For a sport film to succeed, it must contain the elements that make other fi lms suc-

cessful, relating a story that can appeal to a broad audience. Sport films use sport as a way
of exploring relationships, values, identities, social issues and life dilemmas. To convey
the story, sport films draw on a set of recognisable techniques and codes. Analysing these

filmic techniques can help to unpack the manifest and latent meanings of the narrative.

The first part of this chapter discusses the ways signifying systems operate in sport
films. The importance of sound for rendering the power of sport through film is explored

with reference to Raging Bull (1980), the first of two film case studies. The second part

of the chapter addresses the importance of narrative and genre for making sense of sport

films, and the second case study considers baseball movies as a possible fi lm genre.
Signifying Sport in Film

Sport films use signifying systems that the audience is expected to understand from prior
experience of cinema-going. Audience members recognise the conventions used by fi lm and
develop competence in ‘reading’ film, which enables them to follow the narrative. The codes

are so well established and well understood that we expect film to convey reality in ways that
confl ict with our everyday experience of the world. For example, the entire sporting career
of baseball player Roy Hobbs is delivered in 118 minutes in The Natural (1984). A whole
lifetime is communicated through flashbacks, musical signifiers of changing eras and edit-

ing. Turner (1994) identifi ed five signifying systems which construct meaning in fi lm: the

camera, lighting, sound, mise en scène and editing.
The Camera

Turner (1994) suggested that the manipulation of the camera provides a complex set

of codes that convey meanings in film. Aspects of camera use that are exploited for
their capacity to signify include the film stock, angle, position and movement, focus

and framing. The choice between colour and black and white film stock immediately
evokes a host of associations that frame the events. Colour can render drama, ac-
tion, immediacy and realism and has become the expected format for contemporary
fi lm. Any Given Sunday (1999), a film set in the world of American football, uses

stark primary colours in the fi nal game scene. The blocks of bright red on clothing
worn by spectators in the crowd and the striking yellow and red of the uniforms of
the home team contrast with the green of the field and the black worn by the visit-

ing team. The use of colour helps convey the excitement and occasion of the sport

spectacle. The use of black and white (or sepia) film is significant because of its

difference from colour stock. In contrast to the contemporariness and immediacy