Abstract
This chapter proposes a two-level typology for the analysis of modern sports heroes, their public persona, and their cultural impact, with a particular focus on personalities from the USA. This typology is based on Friedrich Nietzsche’s model of heroes in classic drama, coupled with a modern understanding of ethnicity as the key to many developments in US cultural history, and particularly sports. Grounded on discourse analysis of representative personalities from the US sports scene, this chapter shows that an adaption of the Nietzschean framework suggests why different sports personalities (in terms of race, gender, class, etc.) have cultural effects, and vice versa. Finally, this chapter explores the application of this two-level typology to culture-comparative analyses.
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Senkbeil, K. (2016). Black Apollo, White Dionysus? A Two-Level Approach to Sports Heroes in Western Cultures. In: Arapoglou, E., Kalogeras, Y., Nyman, J. (eds) Racial and Ethnic Identities in the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56834-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56834-2_7
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