ABSTRACT
We continue to dream of martial heroes, project them inspirationally and present them continuously as civic icons. The warrior is central to the visible existence of the state – and interestingly, so incidentally and increasingly, is sport. And the two, in the past, the present and the future have been, are, and will be inextricably entwined. Robert Kennedy once asserted that ‘except for war, there is nothing in American life – nothing – which trains a boy better for life than sport’. Many would add ‘and a girl’ today. The ‘playing fields’, in one form or another, have always been the locations for preparation for life, and the battlefield. And on the latter today are to be found variants of the Aryan Superman – in Democracies, of course, always a defender, never an aggressor but a continuing and permanent iconographic presentation – an image, gender-free, purified of its threats, dangers and immoralities, that powerfully engages the senses. The image is not that of Wild Man but Wonderman and Wonderwoman. The Malign Fascist Superman has been replaced by the Benign Superman and Superwoman of the Free World.
