Tricia Jenkins

The Militarization of American Professional Sports How the Sports–War Intertext Influences Athletic Ritual and Sports Media

This article investigates how “war-speak” is incorporated into both sports media coverage and athletic rituals. It posits that while the militarization of American sporting events may help to comfort a nation in crisis and afford the Armed Forces a valuable recruitment tool, it simultaneously encourages a coercive patriotism that is morally problematic for many athletes and fans, especially during wartime. Likewise, although the use of war metaphors in sports media coverage provides exciting and dramatic language for players and sportscasters, it also devalues the war experience by trivializing its horrors and helps to sell the concept of war as sport.

Get Smart: A Look at the Current Relationship between Hollywood and the CIA

Government agencies have long employed entertainment industry liaisons to work with Hollywood in order to improve their public image. For instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation established its entertainment office in the 1930s and has used its influence to bolster the image of the bureau in radio programs, films and television shows such as G-Men (1935), The Untouchables (1959–1963), The FBI Story (1959), and The F.B.I. (1965–1979). In 1947, the Department of Defense established its first entertainment industry liaison, and now, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service, and the US Coast Guard all have Motion Picture and Television Offices or official assistants to the media on their payroll. Even government centers are now working with Tinsel Town, as evidenced by Hollywood, Health, and Society—a program associated with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Norman Lear Center and funded in part by the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health to provide the entertainment industry with information for health-related story lines. The Central Intelligence Agency, however, is relatively new to the Hollywood game, as it did not hire Chase Brandon as its first entertainment industry liaison until 1995 even though the agency has formally existed since 1947. According to Paul Barry, Brandon’s successor and the agency’s current industry liaison, the CIA was late in establishing the position because ‘culturally we have been an Agency focused on our overseas mission and most of our personnel work . . . outside of the public spotlight.’ ‘Our philosophy,’ he continued,

The Suburban Spy and the Rise of the New Right: Negotiating Gender Politics in Scarecrow and Mrs. King

This article analyzes how Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-87) negotiated the political values embedded in the New Right movement and the lived experiences of its female viewers, as divorce rates significantly increased in the 1980s and many women were raising children on their own while holding full-time jobs in the paid labor market. Ultimately, the article concludes that Scarecrow and Mrs. King successfully allowed viewers to adopt both a feminist and postfeminist relationship to the text, but the show privileged notions of sexual difference that bolstered ideologies of the New Right.

An Act of War? The Interview Affair, the Sony Hack, and the Hollywood–Washington Power Nexus Today

This article has been published in a revised form in Journal of American Studies https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875817000512. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works.

Feminism, Nationalism, and the 1960s' Slender Spies: A Look at Get Smart and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

Abstract: This article explores Get Smart and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. within the context of 1960s political and television culture, especially as they relate to the loosening of gender roles during the Cold War, the rise in consumer culture, and the anxiety surrounding sexual liberation.