A Necessary Signifier: The Adaptation of Robinson's Body-image in 'The Jackie Robinson Story'

“What You Want Me to Be”: Documenting Muhammad Ali, 1970 to the Present

“…The ongoing "canonization" of Ali positions him as both a survivor of America's "past" racism and a symbol of collective national transcendence of that past. In this regard, Ali's legacy echoes that of his predecessor Jackie Robinson, whose "bodyimage," Alessandra Raengo (2008) has argued, became shorthand for America's nascent "integration story" (p. 2). However, where Robinson's body image symbolized the tip of integration's spear in a postwar America still 7 years from Brown v. Board of Education, the metonymic significance of Ali as embodiment of liberal progress and American exceptionalism emerged long after his career had ended.…”

“…He represents the triumph of liberal progress over racial intolerance and injustice, a teleological narrative reflecting a broader teleology of American exceptionalism. This recalls Raengo's (2008) articulation of Early's (1998) take on the film The Jackie Robinson Story, as a "tale of success of the disadvantaged that never challenges the systemic inequalities creating such disadvantageand as conveying the triumph of a self-redeeming Western liberalism: America takes notes of the injustices of race and corrects its past mistakes" (p. 21). The result is a kind of sanding down of Ali's biography, where what does not comfortably fit ideologically and/or narratively is diminished or elided.…”

Boobie Miles: Failure and Friday Night Lights

“…Most notably, Jackie Robinson portrays himself in Alfred E. Green's The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), adapted from the book of the same name by Brooklyn Dodgers publicist Arthur Mann. Alessandra Raengo (2008) describes Robinson's body-image as both source material and adaptation. "Unlike other biopics," Raengo (2008) notes, "by having Robinson perform himself, the film conflates the usually visible distinction the actor and the character in a tightly sutured and suturing text" (p. 88).…”

“…Alessandra Raengo (2008) describes Robinson's body-image as both source material and adaptation. "Unlike other biopics," Raengo (2008) notes, "by having Robinson perform himself, the film conflates the usually visible distinction the actor and the character in a tightly sutured and suturing text" (p. 88). The real and representative Boobies in Friday Night Lights function in a similar matter, though the real Boobie's authenticating presence requires additional spectatorial knowledge of not just who he was then (the skilled 6-foot teenager who could run the 40 in 4.5) but more about who he is there/now (the overweight, grown man sidelined by forces out of his control).…”