ABSTRACT

On September 22nd, 2017, President Trump described any National Football League (NFL) player who protested during the national anthem as a “son of a bitch” deserving to be fired. In response, during the broadcasts of the following games’ anthems, entire teams linked arms, knelt, or stayed in the locker room. This was a problem for the NFL’s multi-media entertainment brand. Normally a broadcast of a spectacle that associates the NFL with the U.S. military and that attaches a sense of patriotism to the association, this weekend’s performances of the national anthem instead became intertwined with player activist expression. This paper will explore how the NFL protected the portrayal of its media brand. Without its ability to shape how athletes represent the league through labor policy, the NFL had to recast the athletes’ activism into messages consistent with its brand in a post-hoc fashion. Through a close reading of the televised broadcasts of the various pregame actions that followed Trump’s comments, as well as accompanying online statements from NFL management on social media, this case reveals alternative methods deployed by the NFL brand to obscure and rewrite the intentions and impacts of athlete activist expression about racism and social justice.

摘要

2017年9月22日，特朗普总统将在国歌期间抗议的任何国家橄榄球联盟（NFL）球员描述为应被解雇的“ a子”。作为响应，在播出以下比赛的国歌时，整个团队将手臂联结，跪下或留在更衣室。对于NFL的多媒体娱乐品牌来说，这是一个问题。通常情况下，广播播放的是将NFL与美军联系在一起并带有爱国主义色彩的眼镜的广播，而本周末的国歌表演则与球员激进主义者的表演交织在一起。本文将探讨NFL如何保护其媒体品牌的形象。没有能力通过劳工政策来塑造运动员如何代表联盟，事后时尚。通过仔细阅读特朗普评论后的各种赛前动作的电视转播，以及伴随NFL管理层在社交媒体上发表的在线声明，此案揭示了NFL品牌采用的替代方法来掩盖和改写NFL的意图和影响。关于种族主义和社会正义的运动员活动家表达。