Disablement in figure skating: Media, celebrity, spectacle

Abstract

Blood on the ice. Cheers when the injured athlete stands and limps off the field. Comebacks, backflips, and back injuries. Celebrity athletes are punished and rewarded for their abilities, including their ability to perform while injured or work through pain. Injuries, illness, disablement, and even death are not uncommon in celebrity culture broadly and the field of competitive sports more specifically. While critical disability studies often attends to disabled celebrities, less research and critical attention has been paid to the disablement of celebrity and the expectation and performance of injury or illness understood through the lens of ablenationalism. Focusing on international figure skating and the 2022 Winter Olympics, this paper offers a supercripping of athletic celebrity by interrogating how gender, race, age, and nationality impact a global audience’s view of vulnerability, risk, and harm. Analyzing media coverage of the event alongside popular discourse uncovers the impact of nationalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy on sports narratives and celebrity cultures of debilitation and disablement.