Injury videos and the affective potentials of User-Generated sports highlights

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, one of the historic foundations of sports media, the ‘highlight’, has been refigured as sports fans and other users have created and circulated videos outside of traditional media-institutional spaces. Indicative of this refiguration is the emergence of a new sub-genre of sports highlights: the gruesome injury video. Social networks offer videos that feature catastrophic events (visible bone breaks, etc.) and, in the process, venture into affective realms normally eschewed by mainstream sports media by conjuring the sort of affective excess more commonly associated with fictional ‘body genres’ such as horror and melodrama. With an eye to the context of digital sport media, this article uses close readings to suggest that by deviating from the traditional inoffensive exhilaration of the highlight genre, user-generated sports highlights carry the potential of fostering critical readings of sport typically discouraged by mainstream sports media. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Game recap: Brady Henderson, ESPN.com, January 9, 2022, “Seattle Seahawks free safety Quandre Diggs carted off after breaking right fibula and dislocating ankle’; https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33030492/seattle-seahawks-free-safety-quandre-diggs-carted-breaking-right-fibula-dislocating-ankle.2 Sources: gearmast3r. 2014. “Paul George Gruesome Leg Injury in Team USA Basketball Showcase (HD).” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYTA1dRVjnE; NaturallyWild. 2019. “Auburn Gymnastics: Samantha Cerio Breaks Both Legs.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dMYHLhi6QM; TheChickenFingerss. 2013. “Kevin Ware Injury - Louisville vs Duke 2013 Elite Eight.” https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=qoiaUV7fGEI; WatchMojo.com. 2016. “Top 10 Horrific Sports Injuries.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lvzHyOmdUA.3 The term “lowlight” has been used to denote negative sports events, as a kind of alternative to the implied positivity of “highlights.” In this paper we consistently use “highlight,” including in reference to injury videos, as such videos do in fact “highlight” (increase the visibility of) such events.4 Example: watke. Citation2022. “Gregg Berhalter’s behind-the-back passes.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5mfYm9Ijas.5 Example: watke. Citation2021. “Weston McKennie -- Most helpful soccer player in the world.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30AbGAJ5K8I6 As an indication of this event’s long-term resonance, NFL Films released a video, via YouTube, in which Theismann and Lawrence reflect on their collision. Source: NFL Films. 2022. Joe Theismann Relives the Biggest Moments in His Career | A Football Life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcN-miEBYUE7 Example: Don Mega. Citation2019. “Alex Smith Suffers Horrific Leg Injury HD.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qbP1oOypHU8 The comparisons in this article between injury videos and fiction films emerge partially out of necessity, as cognitive-affective approaches to media have largely focused on fiction and, in particular, narrative feature films (Brylla and Kramer Citation2018). However, as scholars like Ib Bondebjerg (Citation2014) have noted, “Cognitive, emotional, and narrative properties cut across the distinction between fiction and non-fiction” (14). To that point, George Larke-Walsh (Citation2021) also draws on Plantinga’s analysis of the relationship between empathy and the human face in examining the documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the Antonio Four. As Larke-Walsh notes, while Plantinga’s analysis focuses on fiction filmmaking, “the principals of sensory communication can be applied just as easily” to nonfiction (98).