A scholarly, often lively if inconclusive treatise that suggests
that "there is an inherent erotic element" in sports and that we
should be candid about it, as were the ancient Greeks. Guttmann (A
Whole New Ballgame, 1988, etc.) examines the Panhellenic sports
festivals and the Greek gymnasiums for their "erotic ambience" and
looks at Rome via Ovid and Juvenal, whose writings on the
gladiators reveal that "aristocratic women . . . found male
athletes sexually irresistible." His discovery of the erotic in the
tournaments of the Middle Ages is a little more ill-defined, as
Guttmann assumes a "relationship between feats of arms and the code
of courtly love." Women, he notes, were "both spectators and
prizes." Guttmann then takes a look at a few writers who, like the
French novelist Henry de Montherlant, unabashedly "celebrated 'the
sensuality and eroticism' of sports." Hemingway, in The Sun Also
Rises, left it "to his readers to infer the presence of eros from
the nuances of his prose." He peruses a few films, most notably
Raging Bull (the fight scenes, Guttmann says, are instances
of"erectile pride") and Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia: "There is no
more erotic sports film than Olympia," writes Guttmann; he lamely
attempts to defend her numbness to Hitler's horrors by stating that
"the fault was in her lack of political awareness and not in her
love of powerful bodies." He concludes with a well-conceived debate
with the Freudians, nco-Marxists, and radical feminists and finds
himself most in agreement with the latter, though he argues that
"sports voyeurism," the appreciation of scantily clad, well-muscled
athletes, should not be subjected to the same level of criticism as
pornography or the pseudo-erotica of exploitative ads. As an
opening sally in a much-needed debate, this bears reading. But it's
not always clear what Guttmann is arguing for or against. (Kirkus
Reviews)
In The Erotic in Sports, Allen Guttmann illuminates a topic
commonly hidden in the shadows, drawing upon literature, art,
modern mass media, and traditional historical sources to describe
and comment upon its importance across nearly three millennia of
Western history. Investigating aesthetic ideals that romanticize
the lithe, agile fencer at one historical moment and the massively
muscled football player at another, surveying ancient legends and
products of pop culture, Guttmann's groundbreaking work uncovers a
vast array of evidence that cultures across the ages have
celebrated, glorified, censured, and denied the erotic aspects of
sports.
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