The Art(s) of Boxing

Abstract

Boxing and the arts have a long and intertwined history. In depictions of sport in literature and the visual arts, boxing has played central role. Boxing has served to enable the development of literary and artistic concerns. Boxing has been an especially fruitful subject in cinema, and different cinematic genres have appropriated the sport in order to develop their insights, in particular comedy and film noir. Rather than considering boxing films as a subgenre, the central argument of this essay is that the plasticity of boxing is a crucial element in the development of cinema. There are two processes at work in the boxing film, and perhaps in all artistic approaches to sport. The first one is linked to the modes of representation, to the celebration, distancing, questioning, eulogizing that the film enables. The second relies on fiction as a mode of understanding and of questioning boxing as an artefact central to historical societies. Conceptions of space and time play important roles in the boxing film. Boxing’s enduring presence in art thus represents an important artistic and cultural artefact related to complex social issues.