Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots

Myth and Mascot

Myth and Mascot The spirit of the Illinois tribe of Indians hovers over the University of Illinois campus—one of our most colorful and treasured traditions. Much of this, indeed, is tradition, with scanty historical source materials underlying it. But we love it just the same. The spirit of the mysterious, the legendary, the mythological, is good for us. We need this dash of “Make Believe,” just as we do the results of research and scholarship in scientific and historical backgrounds. —CLIVE BURFORD, “We’re Loyal to You, Illinois” The French semiologist Roland Barthes spent his professional life analyzing how we hold on to certain images and turn them into myth. It was Barthes in the 1950s who first applied semiotics, the study of signs, to popular culture in his book Mythologies. Detergents, wrestling, french fries—no subject was too ordinary for his semiotic lens. Myth is, Barthes explains, a language, a form of speech, a particular way of talking about a subject. It isn’t the subject that matters . Anything can be raised to the status of myth if described in mythic language . And these descriptions needn’t be verbal—a photograph can serve just as well as a story or tale. Rather than being forgotten, Barthes says, mythic images become ubiquitous . They are “half-amputated, they are deprived of memory, not of existence: they are at once stubborn, silently rooted there, and garrulous, a speech wholly at the service of the concept.” Garrulous the image of an Indian certainly is, for Indians can be found 28 everywhere in advertising and sports. But what concept do these Indians serve? The University of Illinois insists that Chief Illiniwek is not a mascot, but a symbol (a distinction it finds significant) that “symbolizes the spirit of the Fighting Illini.” Florida State University says the same thing about the impersonator of Osceola who rides out and plants a flaming lance before football games. A mascot is a good luck charm. The word itself can be traced to French words that bear the taint of witchcraft and superstition. A mascot, usually an animal, is a pet, kept by the team and its fans for good luck and for their own entertainment. When they insist that Chief Illiniwek and Osceola are more than mascots, these schools acknowledge that a mascot may inspire feelings of affection but not respect. A symbol is more neutral, simply a single powerful image, a mark of visual shorthand that stands for a bundle of beliefs and ideas. The symbol gives physical form to amorphous values: the cross for Christian belief, the American flag not only for our country but also for our feelings about it, our political system, and the American people. The same symbol can be used in different ways: the Star of David worn on a chain by a Jewish person, the Star of David sewn by Nazi order to a prisoner’s clothing. In both cases the symbol represents Jewish identity . But in one case, the symbol is chosen freely as a positive indicator. In the other it is coerced, the person is branded with it, and the values attached are all negative. It is also possible that a symbol can mean different things to different people. Picture a white-columned plantation house—is it a gracious lifestyle or an oppressive, inhuman system? Both, of course, depending on who does the looking and which side of the house they know—the front door or the back. The Confederate flag is a contemporary case in point. Some white southerners see it and think of a small but valiant army battling and sometimes winning against a larger, better-equipped force. To them it means not buckling under, having courage and honor in battle, even when you lose. American blacks and most white Americans see the same flag as a standard for slavery and racism. Many MYTH AND MASCOT 29 realize that its history as a racist symbol goes beyond the Civil War. It was adopted by white vigilante groups during Reconstruction and later was often displayed by the Ku Klux Klan at cross burnings and lynchings. In more recent years it has become a symbol of opposition to civil rights and has been adopted by neo-Nazis and skinheads. The Confederate flag over the South Carolina capitol building, which made the state the target of a nationwide boycott, was raised in 1962, after a national controversy...