Running the Wrong Pattern: TVTV Goes to the Super Bowl

abstract:This article examines how the 1976 teledocumentary TVTV Goes to the Super Bowl subverts the accepted mythology of American football. Produced by the Bay Area collective TVTV, this intimate, behind-the-scenes look at Super Bowl X merges the perspectives of players, spouses, fans, and the press. My analysis proposes that TVTV's intervention destabilizes the dominant image of masculinity as embodied and expressed in popular football docufiction and broadcast-media coverage of the sport. I argue that TVTV's counterhegemonic vision is made possible by its status as an ethnographic art project that exists outside of the production model of sports entertainment culture. Thus, the video operates against the logics of bureaucracy, professionalism, and mastery. Shifting focus away from the story of the game to the images and subjectivities of those who play, TVTV Goes to the Super Bowl expands the horizon of masculine representation in body culture, offers an alternative means of identification, and reimagines football as a non-zero-sum game.