American Football Culture
Topic: Cultural
Texts
Sources:
ANTHRO,
Robbins Ch. 1 (pg 18-25) “Deciphering the Balinese Cockfight”
“Football in the USA”
“Advertisers pay a premium to put their spots in the
Super Bowl, and it’s just not worth it.”
Description:
Since I was young I have recognized the importance of
football in many families, including my own. In my early childhood I was the
only daughter to a single father, and he did not leave me out of his love for
the 49ers or his football excitement. I remember our neighbor was a Raiders
fan, and I could hear the dueling shouts for victory from my Dad and our
neighbor as I played outside. I was never very fascinated by football itself, I
was more of a soccer fan, but I did always enjoy the Super Bowl commercials ,
and singing along with Hank Williams Jr. on Monday night Football. But with huge
men running into each other, tiny cheerleaders shaking their butts, and
thousands of screaming fans, what does this say about us and our culture?
Discussion/Analysis:
The Super Bowl has basically
become a national holiday in the United States. The grocery stores are filled
with food and event merchandising displays advertising the event and the
excitement of how their bean dip, potato chips and coke will make your
Super Bowl experience so much better than it was without it. There are
commercials on television that use the Super Bowl to advertise their totally
unrelated products, like candy bars and dog food, because the Super Bowl sells.
Then you have the Super Bowl
itself; with men wearing pads that give the illusion of enlarged muscles, as
they tackle one another, and the delicate women wearing skimpy outfits while
cheering on the football teams. Then at halftime you have popular music artists
doing extravagant shows, and businesses that are willing to pay $3.5 million to
have 30 seconds of advertising that plays during the commercial breaks of the
Super Bowl. Is this a direct representation of the average American culture? It
has been ingrained into us that football is for boys and cheer leading is for
girls, and often if you do see women playing football they are wearing barely
any clothes and they are playing in the mud. There are serious women's football
teams, but they are far less popular, and can often be seen as a joke because
groups like the Lingerie Football League.
I don’t personally feel that football is bad, but I do feel
that it does directly represent a portion of our culture. A portion that was at
one time was even considered the ‘norm’, a somewhat sexist, and militant way of
life. Nowadays with times changing these ‘norms’ are changing along with them,
but even still football has stayed incredibly popular and is still seen as the
great American sport.
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