Whipped Into Shape: The Power Of The Sports Film

Seeing as the Olympics is currently taking place, this week seems like a great time to incorporate two of my great loves into a post: sport and film. This is a topic that I explored during my time in college, not only because one of my lecturers wrote a book on the subject, but also because I am interested in mixing both media.

Sport is a very emotive thing. Watching that young swimmer from Tunisia bring home a gold medal to his country and watching the reactions of friends and family back home certainly was enough to bring a tear to my eye, as I am sure it was for many others. That is why it seems like a great topic to incorporate into the film world.

If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times that a film should cause a reaction. It should make us feel something. That doesn’t mean you always have to be on the floor crying, but it should make you feel something. Sport makes us feel so much; both triumphant and devastated. We celebrate when our team wins, but, equally, we can empathise with the losing side as we know the heartbreak we can all feel. This is why I feel the two make a perfect pairing.

In college, we looked at sports films concerning gender, specifically the divide between the genders. Many will probably assume that that means girls are looked down on and not considered to be athletes, but sport in films evoke a lot of difficult emotions for men and it is not just as cut and dried as such films being sexist towards women.

Many sports films focus on masculinity. Characters like Rocky are championed. Their training and dedication are admired. Their bodies and discipline are the envy of many. Many men are attracted to such films as they show what ‘ideal’ masculinity looks like. It isn’t just women that constantly see idealised versions of themselves in the media. They are there for men too.

In many of these films, women are worshippers and are often why these men push themselves through such tough training and competition. They are the driving force. Continuing with the example of Rocky, these men go on a journey. This journey is not just one of physicality and changes in the body, but also a mental one. What men could see was that by taking on a challenge and changing yourself, you could alter how others see you and most of all how you see yourself. You can achieve great challenges and become a champion. You can become the man you want to be.

This is one of the reasons I always found this topic to be so interesting. All we hear about is unrealistic female representation, but it isn’t just about women. Is this always a bad thing though? Is the message that’s being lost not: if you are unhappy and want to change, you can? Surely there is a lot of power and reassurance in that?

Of course, there are sports films about women too. Many were comedies to deal with the anxieties some men felt watching women occupying the spaces they once dominated. Then, of course, there was the over-sexualisation of women in sport. Stick It was one of my favourite films growing up as it was about one of my other loves: gymnastics. It was a film I felt tried to do something great, but like so many others like it, it ended up caving in and giving into the classic ‘Chick Flick’ mentality. Often girls are shown in skimpy outfits doing more posing than competing.

So when I was studying this topic, I wondered if there was a film that had broken through. I think Whip It (2009) managed to do so. Written by Shauna Cross and directed by Drew Barrymore (a point we will come back to), Whip It follows a young girl's story as she competes in a roller derby. We watch her grow with her team and come into her own.

The women in Whip It aren’t over-sexualised. They play a masculine sport and embrace the more masculine side of their personalities. They are not guided but masculine, paternal figures.

Another core feature of sports films is that they:

“provide a space for resolution of family and gender problems” from (Tudor ‘Hollywood’s Vision of Team Sports 1997).

The idea that fathers and sons bond and feud over sports with an overly worried and hesitant mother is a prominent feature of the sports film. However, in the film's final moments, the family comes together, bonds and becomes whole again, all because of their son's success. Whip It changed this narrative. It took a mother who wanted her daughter to compete but embrace her femininity and a father who wanted his daughter to be happy. He supports her sport without guiding her.

The question that remains is: why or maybe how did this film manage to go against the grain and succeed? Maybe this has something to do with the fact that this film is written and directed by a woman. Maybe it isn’t as simple as that. Whatever it is, Whip It manages to see past the tropes of over-sexualised women - the women whose success is down to the guidance of the paternal figure - and, instead, champions a physically strong, aggressive and competitive woman. The issues in Whip It are not all resolved by their daughters sporting dedication, but it becomes the starting point for some understanding and we are given hope that each character will get what they both want and need.

Sport and film are great pairings. They provide the perfect narratives. Their sports uplift us; inspire us to work harder, be the best and become the best we can be. It is an arena where emotions and issues that affect both men and women can be tackled, wrestled with and hopefully dealt with. Films like Whip It show that traditional stereotypes can be bounded and yet can continue to progress. It is uplifting and exciting to see how an old genre that was always great can continue to get even better.

I can take losing the money. I cannot take losing the chance for our kid to be happy.

Crosson, Sean. Sport and Film. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Tudor, Deborah. Hollywood’s Vision of Team Sports. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1997.