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Article Explaining sports fandom (philosophy of sports) - Printable Version +- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com) +-- Forum: Culture (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-49.html) +--- Forum: Games, Sports & Hobbies (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-53.html) +--- Thread: Article Explaining sports fandom (philosophy of sports) (/thread-15721.html) |
Explaining sports fandom (philosophy of sports) - C C - Apr 12, 2024 https://junkyardofthemind.com/blog/2024/4/6/explaining-fandom EXCERPT: . . . Kendall L. Walton (2015) thinks this puzzle of sports fandom parallels the paradox of fiction. “The fan imagines that the outcome matters immensely and imagines caring immensely—while (in many cases) realizing that it doesn’t actually matter much, if at all. She is caught up in the world of the game, as the spectator at the theater is caught up in the story. Afterwards, like the playgoer, she steps outside of the make-believe and goes back to living her life as though nothing much had happened—even if the home team suffered a devastating and humiliating defeat. It’s just a story; it’s just a game” (p. 77). Walton himself and other authors (Wildman 2019, Moore 2019) who have tried to explain this aspect of sports fandom have applied Walton’s theory in a quite limited way. These three Waltonians have an impoverished view of sports make-believe and sports fandom. There’s a better way to apply the Waltonian theory to sports. On Walton’s account, the prop in a fan’s game of make-believe is the sporting event: the game, the contest, the match. What’s the content of the sports fandom make-believe? Walton mentions a few specifics:
Two worries crop up [in this analysis].... (MORE - missing details) |