Not Just Game Essay Example

Provided that it can be challenging to teach visual content and it can also be very difficult for students to end up recalling detailed information from having a general view on the video, the intention, in this case, is to offer one with an instrument in place to help the student, in terms of deepening and slowing down their thinking about the particular issue the video is addressing. From the past experience, we have been reminded again and again that politics and sports don't mix that games are identified to be games and athlete are supposed to just shut up and play. Looking at a greater focus in "Not Just a Game", based on The People's History of Sports in the United States, it is important to note that Zirin is raising an argument that is far from offering merely escapist entertainment, American sports have been identified to be at the center of some of the greater political struggles and debate of our period.

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Focusing at the bad, the ugly and the good side of American sports culture, it is important to note that the first race of Zirin, concentrate on how the American sports have played a significant role in glamorizing sexism, homophobia and sexism, then ends up in excavating a greatly forgotten history of some of the rebel athletes who delivered their best in standing for power and fighting for social justice not only on the field but beyond the field of play. Some of the end results has been an alternative history that involves political struggle taking place in the United States has seen through some of the games that the citizens have ended up playing.

Not Just A Game ends up the opening with one of the famous Olympian athlete Jesse Owens, demonstrating that, " To me, politics has no role to play on the field of competition and strife". However, based on some of the things that took place during this period, it totally disagrees with the kind of separation that he is working to establish between sports and war. In most cases, sports culture has historically and traditionally been identified as a male arena with the word masculine having great dominance by male spectators and male athletes. War has been the major motivation with some specific brand of masculinity are still pervading the sports world; immune to pain, hyper-masculine, pumped up, comfortable with violence and in opposition to demonstrating vulnerability. War is perfectly attributed in that most of the players who are participating in the National Football league are in most cases identified as soldiers or warriors and the general comparison made to football wars are mostly a common thing.

What is amazing is that even though no politics rules has been preached for a long period of time, the national football league has been making promotion to the American military with pre-game salutes to the armed services, flyover of military aircraft before games and some of the military personnel who are demonstrating their participation in the coin-toss of Super Bowl. On the other hand, militarism is also considered as one of the common features at Major League Baseball. One of the best examples is considered during one of the national games that Dave Zirin had to attended and what happened is that the former president George W. Bush ended up throwing the first pitch with the marine recruits ending up to be sworn in at home plate. From a general overview, it is important to note that the point is not that the sports leagues demonstrating support for the military are bad, however, such kind of display is considered to be portraying war and political at the same time. However, this seems to be little recognized but glaring and contradiction is that there is supposed to be no politics rules that are being applied in sports.

As reported by Zirin, it is also important to note the fact that this nature of politics that can end up bringing war is not identified as a result of how the ideology is functioning; generally it neutralizes and at the same time normalizes a narrow set of images and ideas while on the other hand deflecting some of the major attention away from some of the possible realities in place. It is also important to note that in such a case it is neutralizing some of the militaristic ideals and ideas that equally crowd out the anti-war attitude in American and the overall position.

Notably, on the level of identity, the glamorized and the narrow view of militarism ends up concealing some of the real-life consequences and cost of fictionalized ideal focusing on male invulnerability has presented in the culture of sports. war rule in the general nature of the play, with the statistics demonstrating that an average player who is participating in NFL will end up dying twenty years sooner than the total population with six to ten players suffering at least one serious concussion when still practicing their career.

Based on the story of Pat Tillman, it is important to note that one of the best examples is offered on how both the military and the sports culture are glamorizing a small set of cartoonish ideas and images of manhood that is often colliding with reality. In response to the terrorist attack that took place on September 11th, 2001, Tillman gave up on one of his successful NFL careers through joining the Army Rangers. However, through his death that happened in Afghanistan that is in the year 2004, it is significant to understand that Tillman got killed by enemy fire. He was awarded a silver star and heralded as a hero for his focus and strength in action, achieving popularity by his memorial service getting aired on national television.

Conclusion

The worst part of the Tillman story is that the investigation later revealed that the great part of the Tillman story that was actually circulating in the media faced fabrication by the military and that what actually happened is that Tillman got killed by what was identified as friendly fire. On the other hand, what is significant is that the media actually blitz after Tillman's death revealed the fact that before the death of Tillman, he completely rebelled and was against the fight that was taking place in Iraq. This was one of the sad stories since it was actually used to demonstrate how the war ideology is operating in nature. It demonstrates how some inconvenient facts to some level go missing if they are actually not fitting into the major storyline of culture. Finally, in the history of women, participation on sports, it is important to note that men tend to keep women out of the athletic domain and ends up justifying their prejudice through making an appeal to science or trying to sympathies' for the safety of women.