The Power of Sports

Media and Spectacle in American Culture

By: Michael Serazio

Narrated by: Kyle Tait

Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's Summary

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.

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Michael Serazio Should be Read Far and Wide!

Serazio likens the ritualistic nature of sports fandom, and the spectacles those fans attend, to a totemic allegiance quite similar to the allegiance many deeply religious people feel towards their God (or Gods), and the community of believers they are a part of by virtue of their shared allegiance to team and city (not necessarily in that order).

He also provides astute analysis of why trends in sports business, mass media, & pop culture matter far beyond the games themselves and affect people in a myriad of ways regardless of whether they watch sports religiously or couldn't tell you the difference between a field goal and a punt. Serazio succeeds throughout the book in constructing his analysis in large part by drawing from the insightful responses he received from a wealth of interviews of with key figures across the U.S. sporting landscape such as former NBA commissioner, David Stern, and many more.

Kyle Tait does a nice job with his reading of Serazio's book; he enunciates words clearly and succeeds in making the listener feel like the reader understands the book itself and reads it in a way that doesn't distract one's focus from anything other than the text itself.

I wholeheartedly recommend "The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture" with enthusiasm!

Political football

Politics of sports is one that is hidden, its silence is due to those with power wanting the silent conservatism to be the norm. This book covers this and goes over so many issues we accept to simply be the economics of sports or the nature of sports, yet its intentionally set-up that way, a way that mirrors society and all of its flaws. Serazio perfectly captures this, this book and Dave Zirin’s work are my favourite go-to analysis about the politics behind sports, an area that the left choose to conscientious abandon and the right make a taboo topic.