ABSTRACT
“Generation IX: Sports TV, Gender and Voice” takes up a key debate in feminist studies of sports media which often foregrounds the question of “voice”: Whose commentary underscores and guides coverage of female athletes? How is female athletic achievement often either undermined through conventional objectification or made “safe” through reference to maternity and heteronormative coupling? The chapter focuses specifically on espnW’s Nine for IX (2013) and HBO Sports’ mini-series Being Serena (2018) as sites of struggle over questions of contemporary voice, authorship, and gendered athletic identity.
