Hockey the Universal, Individual Hockey:

Hockey

The Universal, Individual Hockey:

The Sport as Art and Community in Canada

In Gruneau and Whitson's Hockey Night in Canada, the authors present Canada's most famous and identity-forming sport as a symbol of the universal contrast between high and popular culture as well as the contrast between Canadian and American cultures. While Gruneau and Whitson remark that some have criticized the sport for a variety of regions -- ranging from commercialization to association with lower, or mass, culture to an overwhelming masculinity -- others contends that hockey is an important part of Canadian mythology, not only uniting the past with the present, but also bringing communities together. In today's society where gender is a primary, if not the primary, issue in contemporary culture, however, the association of hockey with masculinity cannot be ignored. Stereotypical descriptions of Hockey paint the sport as one steeped in violence and profanity, images that many associate with a masculine, competitive, and confrontational view of culture and the world. In fact, some suggest that hockey's attachment to a hypermasculine vision of Canadianness enabled it to become the core element in Canada's emerging hockey mythology. Although a stereotypical association of hockey with masculinity is certainly understandable, understanding hockey as an art form as well as its role in the community allows one to understand a Canadian hockey without gender implications.

In the same was as deconstructionist literary and artistic theories have suggested that it is the reader or viewer who creates meaning for the piece of art, hockey is a form of culture that, despite its nearly universal appeal to most Canadians, can be interpreted in a variety of ways for a variety of different people groups. In fact, Gruneau and Whitson, in their discussion of culture, suggest that sport may also be considered a type of art form. While some have contended that the violence often displayed in hockey games leaves the sport no other choice than to sport a characterization of "hypermasculinity," the authors argue that those who see only violence in the game have ignored it's art. In fact, Gruneau and Whitson state that the United States has grossly misinterpreted hockey with its failure to notice "the game's dual traditions of aggression and artistry" (26). Having established hockey as an art form, one must now be willing to analyze and interpret the sport as if it were a piece of "high culture" such as a poem by Byron, Shelly, or Keats. Indeed, Gruneau and Whitson support this view, suggesting that hockey can mean many things to many people, just as different audiences derive different meanings from poetry. To claim hockey as identifiable with only masculinity, therefore, would be a major misnomer, as the authors suggest, "hockey has always had a range of different meanings and intended uses for various groups in Canada" (27). Based on this interpretation of hockey as art susceptible to the same artistic deconstruction as poetry, those claiming an inherent masculinity in hockey would have no ground, for just as forms of high culture, such as the English Romantics and the Bible, contain messages that could now be viewed as sexist, different groups draw different meanings from the texts. While hockey may have masculine connotations for the single sportsman watching a game, a father watching the same game may see the sport as a way to bring the family together, while a mother next to him in the stands may marvel at its sociological implications as she watches her daughter bond with her father while discussing the intricacies of the game.