Diamond-shaped American Dreams: Race and national identity in contemporary baseball films

Since its invention in the late-nineteenth century, baseball has maintained an important role in American culture. In its hundred-plus year history, baseball culture has explicitly examined conceptualizations of nationhood, otherness, and the American Dream. Frequently revered as the American pastime, baseball culture has actively engaged the mythos of a unified national identity. As the game and the professional leagues have evolved, baseball's role as the American pastime has been highlighted in discourses regarding national identity and cultural assimilation. Within this nationalistic culture, fictional baseball films have been a particularly important method for disseminating the ideals of the American Dream.; Although baseball has been the subject of many popular and scholarly texts, there are several gaps in the existing literature. Several baseball historians examine how the game influenced social changes in U.S. culture; other historians examine how the representations of baseball in film demonstrate changing cultural values. However, the intersection of social issues and filmic representations has yet to be adequately studied. This project examines how fictional baseball films use conceptualizations of the American Dream to address issues of racial, ethnic, and national diversity in contemporary U.S. society. The author argues that in these films, baseball is more than a narrative device but a platform to comment on shifting trends in U.S. culture. Furthermore, the author explores the ways in which contemporary baseball films define the American Dream and reify accepted hierarchies of class, race, and gender through their narratives. Through textual and ideological analysis of baseball movies from the mid-1980s to present, this project attempts to answer all of the following questions: How do baseball texts address race, gender, and class diversity? How is the American Dream "colored" within baseball discourses? How are heroes and masculinity represented within baseball discourses? How is nostalgia used to construct the relationship between baseball and the American Dream? Through constructions of baseball heroes, diverse teams, and specific types of U.S. landscapes, the author argues that these films explicitly comment upon the fears and desires of a changing nation.