The Basketball Film
Description
The Basketball Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History reveals how stories about the game extend far beyond the court. From classic Hollywood dramas to independent documentaries, basketball films capture the rhythms of play while reflecting deeper struggles over race, identity, community, and aspiration. This groundbreaking study examines the basketball court as both a stage and a mirror for American life—where questions of belonging, opportunity, and cultural power are played out on and off the court. Moving across film, television, and video games, the book traces how basketball's visual culture has evolved alongside the sport's rise to global prominence. Through close readings of both celebrated and overlooked works, The Basketball Film offers an expansive and engaging portrait of how basketball has been imagined, represented, and mythologized across popular culture, revealing what the game continues to mean to audiences and players alike.
More details
Person
SAMANTHA N. SHEPPARD is an associate professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. She is the author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen and co-editor of the collections Sporting Realities: Critical Readings on the Sports Documentary and From Madea to Media Mogul: Theorizing Tyler Perry.
Content
Contents
Introduction: Storied Courts
1 The Genre that Hoop Dreams Built
2 Buzzer Beater Histories
3 Decades of Changing the Game
4 From Starter to the Sidelines
5 Name, Image, Likeness
Conclusion: Growing the Game, Globalizing the Genre
Appendix: List of Basketball Films and Television Shows
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index