Culture on Ice

by Kestnbaum, Ellyn

• ISBN13: 9780819566416
• ISBN10: 0819566411
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-05-21
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

Figure skating is one of the most popular spectator sports in the U.S., yet it eludes definitive categorization. In this engaging new book, Ellyn Kestnbaum examines figure skating from multiple perspectives: as sport, as performance, and even as spectacle, guiding the reader through both the technical aspects of skating and the sometimes convoluted rules of figure skating competition. By careful readings of skating events at the 1994 and 1998 Olympic Games, she argues that figure skating is a language, one whose meaning is inflected by the culture at large. In particular, she looks at the ways in which race, social class and gender all disrupt, subvert or reinforce the practices of figure skating, and examines the influence of the media in shaping perceptions of the sport. As a skater, skating fan and scholar, Kestnbaum brings a unique point of view to this study, providing not only a history of the skating world but also a feeling for what it is like to be on the ice.

Author Biography

ELLYN KESTNBAUM has published articles in Theatre Topics and is a contributor to Women On Ice: Feminist Responses to the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Spectacle, edited by Cynthia Baughman (1995).

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Part One Meaning and Figure Skating
CHAPTER ONE A General Theory of Meaning	3	(18)
CHAPTER TWO Skating as a Signifying System	21	(36)
Part Two How Figure Skating and Its Meanings Developed
CHAPTER THREE The Beginnings of Skating on Ice	57	(15)
CHAPTER FOUR Issues in the Development of Figure Skating	72	(29)
CHAPTER FIVE Specularity	101	(26)
Part Three Cultural Meanings of Ladies' Figure Skating
CHAPTER SIX Critiques of Skating's Feminine Ideal	127	(24)
CHAPTER SEVEN Girls versus Ladies	151	(32)
Part Four Masculinity on Edge
CHAPTER EIGHT Figure Skating and "Real" Manhood	183	(19)
CHAPTER NINE Out of the Closet	202	(15)
Part Five Compulsory Mating Dances
CHAPTER TEN Defining Duos	217	(14)
CHAPTER ELEVEN Gendered Meanings in Crisis	231	(22)
Part Six Spectatorship
CHAPTER TWELVE Intimate Pleasures: Skating Fandom	253	(18)
Conclusion	271	(4)
APPENDIX The Technical Basis of Figure Skating	275
Notes	291	(44)
For Further Reading and Viewing	335	(12)
Index	347	(12)
About the Author	359