TY - JOUR
T1 - Sport or Spectacle? The Harlem Globetrotters’ 1955 Visit to Israel
AU - Carmi, Udi
AU - Levy, Moshe
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/8/31
Y1 - 2022/8/31
N2 - The Harlem Globetrotters basketball team visited Israel as part of its 1955 world tour. As representatives of American culture, the US team challenged the leaders of Israeli sports culture who sought to maintain a tight alignment between local sports, Zionist values, and political interests. This paper uses Debord's society of the spectacle theory to analyse the public criticism of the Globetrotters’ visit to Israel. The analysis finds that the critique, which extended beyond strictly sports criticism, reveals the zeitgeist of Israel’s first decade of independence and its prevalent attitudes toward body culture norms, and illuminates the role assigned to sport in Israeli ethos.
AB - The Harlem Globetrotters basketball team visited Israel as part of its 1955 world tour. As representatives of American culture, the US team challenged the leaders of Israeli sports culture who sought to maintain a tight alignment between local sports, Zionist values, and political interests. This paper uses Debord's society of the spectacle theory to analyse the public criticism of the Globetrotters’ visit to Israel. The analysis finds that the critique, which extended beyond strictly sports criticism, reveals the zeitgeist of Israel’s first decade of independence and its prevalent attitudes toward body culture norms, and illuminates the role assigned to sport in Israeli ethos.
KW - Americanization
KW - basketball
KW - Harlem Globetrotters
KW - Israel
KW - spectacle
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85137054036&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09523367.2022.2112672
DO - 10.1080/09523367.2022.2112672
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:85137054036
SN - 0952-3367
VL - 40
SP - 142
EP - 157
JO - International Journal of the History of Sport
JF - International Journal of the History of Sport
IS - 2-3
ER -