New age spectacles: Understanding the semiotics of cricket through Roland Barthes’ ‘The World of Wrestling’

ABSTRACTThough written in 1957, Roland Barthes’ ‘The World of Wrestling’ from Mythologies resonates with sports even today. As a choreographed fight between a pre-assigned hero and villain, wrestling plays out the archetypal moral narrative using the bodies of the participants. With exaggerated gestures and expressions, these bodies send clear messages to the surrounding audience, who aggressively cheer them on even as they know the fabricated nature of the entire event. This paper seeks to identify the semiotic structures underlying these performances using Barthes’ views on signification, denotation/connotation and ‘myth’. This framework is juxtaposed with contemporary cricket to illustrate how cricket adapts similar semiotic structures into its spatiotemporal setup, players, body politics, media representation, appearance, choreography and spectatorship. It also examines the moral ideologies governing cricket, especially notions of heroism, justice and the spectacle that can be traced back to ancient theatre. It ends with an understanding of how Barthesian wrestling can be used to analyse other contemporary sports too, suggesting directions for further research in this area.KEYWORDS: Barthesian semioticswrestlingcricketspectaclemoralitybody and spatiotemporality AcknowledgementsAt the very outset, I, Surya Nandana, express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Prof. SP Dhanavel for his warm support and guidance, thorough scrutiny of my writing, and valuable and insightful feedback. Then, I wish to thank my fellow research scholars for our interesting, productive and often humorous discussions. Lastly, I thank the Department for its logistical support, and my friends for our interesting brainstorming sessions and loving presence.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsSurya NandanaSurya Nandana is a 2nd-year research scholar at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The broad field of her research is the semiotics of contemporary Indian cricket, with reference to matches and tournaments, signification systems, representative practices, memory and emotions, body politics, spatiotemporality, history, culture and literature.SP DhanavelSP Dhanavel is a Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Some of his current areas of interest are semiotics, literature, film, sports and academic writing. His larger repertoire includes Indian and world literature, poetry, English language teaching, communication and soft skills. He has edited and published several articles and books, with the latest being Continuing Professional Development of English Language Teachers from Springer Publications.