Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs an unexpected current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and therefore represent the nation to itself in idealized form. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism's fantasies of an atomized society, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success, for in every case, off-field relationships take pre...