ABSTRACT
This chapter reexamines Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies within a cultural and historical framework that emphasizes the importance of understanding the links between cinema and a growing American sporting culture in the nineteenth century. By viewing through a sporting prism the motion studies of horses that were widely distributed and reviewed by media around the United States (and beyond), the chapter generates productive associations between the mass amusements of sports and cinema. The analysis of traditions of sporting representation suggests productive reconceptions of the presentational strategies of early cinema. As the nineteenth century progressed, horse racing was transformed from an infrequent and regional occurrence in the early 1800s to a regularly scheduled and nationally organized series of events by the beginning of the twentieth century. This chapter demonstrates that Muybridge's work was popularly received as intimately connected to sporting culture and that it created an original mold that shaped the sporting images that followed.
