ABSTRACT
Whereas the militarized body politic has, arguably, become the leitmotif for the sporting popular, within this chapter, focus shifts to comprehending the interplay between television, sport (in the form of being physically active), and the valorized and normalized post-9/11 citizen / corpus. That is, sitting alongside the militarized body politic, so clearly appropriated within televised sport coverage, is another revered corpus: that of the allconsuming, fi t, toned, and economically functional neoliberal American citizen. Of course, the antithesis of this “body that matters”—to borrow a phrase from Judith Butler (1993)—is that of the demonized and pathologized body: the body classifi ed as clinically obese. Indeed, as Biltekoff (2007) argued, the war on terror and the war on obesity are far from inseparable; rather the national anxiety about obesity escalated in conjunction with the reaction to 9/11, such that the anti-obesity campaign has played an important role in maintaining the cultural conditions that sustain the war on terror (Biltekoff, 2007). Charlotte Biltekoff (2007) pointed to the symbiotic relationship between the spectacle of terror, in Giroux’s (2006) parlance, and the “terror within”—the war on obesity-in the rhetoric of the Bush administration. She revealed, through the speeches of the thensurgeon general (Richard Carmona) that even though both discourses are portrayed as equally menacing threats lurking within national borders, the war on obesity, unlike the war on terror, was easily winnable through the dedicated efforts of citizens working towards a common purpose. Indeed, with the war on terror characterized by an elusive enemy, and belying the multitude of diffi culties associated with, and barriers to, weight loss, the war on obesity was framed within a rhetoric which allowed for individuals to participate in a national struggle against a mortal threat (Biltekoff, 2007). Bush (in Biltekoff, 2007) himself weighed in on this debate, calling for Americans to exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, eat healthily, and give up their favorite foods. Through framing the national response to obesity as a patriotic community endeavor and as a civic duty, Biltekoff thus convincingly argued that the war on obesity functioned like other previous wartime propaganda campaigns in which everyday activities became a means for individuals to participate in a national endeavor. With thinness
conceptualized as civic duty, with the stress on self-improvement through dieting and exercise as ‘good wartime citizenship’ (Biltekoff, 2007), the confl ation of consumption and neoliberalism, militarization and terror becomes apparent. That is, through the war on obesity, the economic, militaristic, international, and domestic policy aims of the Bush administration could be realized. Within this chapter, then, and to explain these processes further, I focus on one commercial television series, which I argue is emblematic of the complex relationships among the governance of the national citizenry, the terror within, and the response to the war on terror.
