| 1. |
- Tolvhed, Helena
(author)
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Popular Culture and Social Change : ACSIS Kulturstudiekonferens i Norrköping 2007
- 2007
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In my PhD-project I analyse coverage of the Olympic Games 1948 – 1972 in the popular press, combining a text-oriented analysis with social history's attention to historical context. In my conference paper I will focus upon how, in a "Cold War" context, Soviet athletes were represented in ambiguous ways, emphasizing alternately their distance and closeness, difference and similarity to "us". Furthermore, I argue that fears of sport's masculinizing effect on the female body and mind were negotiated by displacing images of unsexed, mannish women onto Soviet athletes. A specific conception of "Swedish femininity" was constructed: western, white, heterosexual and middle-class.
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| 3. |
- Tolvhed, Helena
(author)
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Sporting the Nation : Gender, Ethnicity and Whiteness in Swedish Media Coverage of the Olympic Games, 1948 – 1972
- 2007
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- My forthcoming dissertation is a study of how Swedish national identity is constructed culturally, in which I analyse coverage of the Olympic Games 1948-1972 in the popular press. Media representation (text and images) of sport was selected as an interesting basis for exploring ideas on “natural differences” between people and bodies, based on gender, “race” and nationality. Ideas of difference between people have historically been used to explain and legitimize power relations and to (re-)create the nation as an “imagined community”. The method seeks to combine a text-oriented analysis with social history’s attention to historical context. The study shows that representations of female athletes display a passive female body and uphold the boundaries between the sexes. Fears of sport’s masculinizing effect on the female body and mind were negotiated by displacing images of unsexed, mannish women onto Soviet athletes. In the Cold War context, a specific Swedish femininity was constructed: western, white, heterosexual and middle-class. A Swedish masculine ideal, on the other hand, was made clear by contrasting comparison with femininity, but also with subordinated masculinities such as the “black” male athlete. The study show that the athletic achievements of the “black” body had to be explained and presented as restricted to the area of sport. I argue that although Sweden had not been a prominent colonial power, whiteness was nevertheless an important aspect of Swedish national identity in this time.
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