Final Project: LeBron Feeling the Heat

LeBron Feeling the Heat

            Sports events, like many other forms of entertainment, are subject to swells of emotion and energy. Just as a musician belting out a particularly high note will bring an audience to its feet, so too does a baseball slugger’s home run or a quarterback’s Hail Mary pass to the end zone. For the home team, such actions often bring joy and excitement to the crowd; it is quite the opposite for fans of an away team. In that vein, any sports team visiting another arena for a match will likely be exposed to a certain amount of heckling and derision during the game, with every mistake magnified with boos and appropriate sound effects from the stadium’s particular sound system.

            If your name happens to be LeBron James, the effect is startlingly more pronounced. James, the starting small forward for the Miami Heat basketball team, has experienced a level of directed hate rarely seen even in the most heated of rivalry games. In fact, when James visited the New Jersey Nets for a game on October 31, 2010, he was greeted by “an inquisition by the news media” and “loud boos from the fans” (Kaplan). James, once regarded as the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) next great player and one with the “ability to transcend the sport” (DuPree), was now one of the most reviled players in the league. James’ reputation dropped to the point where he was named the sixth most disliked sports personality by the Q Scores Company, a firm which polls the general population about their views on celebrities (Rovell).

            James’ precipitous fall from grace began with what many perceived to be a lackluster performance in the 2010 Eastern Conference Finals, with his Cleveland Cavaliers facing elimination in Game 6 from the Boston Celtics. James and the Cavaliers would lose the game, and James was heavily criticized for his poor performance and seeming lack of heart. It was James’ actions in the off-season, however, that truly injured his public image. During the off-season, James held a hour-long live TV special on ESPN which he titled “The Decision,” in which he announced that he would be leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers after 7 years to join fellow NBA superstars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh with the Miami Heat. James, who had been heavily recruited by many other teams, was roundly criticized for the way he announced his decision and also for his decision to leave Cleveland. Cavalier fans were especially hurt, as team owner Dan Gilbert publicly called James’ actions a “narcissistic, self-promotional build-up” and a “cowardly betrayal” (Gilbert). The aftermath in Cleveland was such that fans publicly burned their LeBron James jerseys and other LeBron memorabilia in the streets as fans across the nation generally sympathized with Cleveland fans.

            In an effort to restore his popularity to its once great heights, James partnered with his shoe endorser Nike and released a commercial titled “LeBron Rise,” carrying the following description: “This isn't about what LeBron James has done, or hasn't done. This is about the difference between the expectations others may have of him versus the expectations he has of himself. What should he do? The answer is a question.”

The video begins with James sitting on a set surrounded by camera crew, looking solemnly at the ground. James then turns his gaze toward the viewer asking “What should I do? Should I admit that I made mistakes?” The view then switches to a shot of James as a high school student, looking longingly at a school trophy case while James continues to ask “Should I remind you that I’ve done this before? Should I give you a history lesson?” The set then changes again to James in the present, driving past Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio as his long-standing giant poster is dramatically dropped as James continues to ask “What should I do? Should I tell you how much fun we had?” The next shot shows James in an empty banquet room giving a speech for his Hall of Fame acceptance as James wonders “Should I really believe I ruined my legacy?” The ad then switches quickly through various shots of James getting his tattoos removed, of an advertisement for his new shoes, black and white shots of James on the basketball court, and James as a stereotypical Western villain. Throughout these shots, James continues to ask the viewer “What should I do? Should I have my tattoo removed? Want to see my shiny new shoes? Should I sell shoes? Should I tell you I am not a role model? What should I do? Should I tell you I’m a championship chaser, that I did it for the money, rings? Should I be who you want me to be? Should I accept my role as a villain?” James finally looks at the camera and whispers “Maybe I should just disappear?” as the view cuts off a la a television screen shutting off. The image returns to a floating head of James surrounded by floating heads of his friends and the text “blah blah blah” as James asks “Should I stop listening to my friends? They’re my friends.” James then asks “Should I try acting?” as the ad shows James in a Miami Vice parody complete with actor Don Johnson. James then asks “Should I make you laugh? Should I read you a soulful poem?” accompanied by a sequence of James delivering a poem in what appears to be a poetry slam café. James then asks the viewer “Should I just clear the decks and start over?” while he takes a bulldozer to a basketball court. The advertisement ends with James again asking “What should I do?” while quick shots from the commercial are flashed on-screen until the viewer sees one last image of James driving a basketball to the hoop, leaving the reader with one last question: “Should I be who you want me to be?” The commercial then ends with the words “JUST DO IT” imposed on a plain background followed by the Nike logo.

            James’ ad with Nike is a somber, sometimes humorous, response to the outrage he faced after his decision to join the Miami Heat. In that vein, James and Nike attempted to redirect the flow of animosity away from James and create a new, more human image of James. Shots of James as a teenager and his driving past Quicken Loans Arena are examples of Nike attempting to portray James in a more sympathetic light, as an individual who had no bad intentions when going through his decision. James’ rhetorical question “What should I do?” itself serves as a response to the heavy burden he bears as a high profile celebrity, one that often robs celebrities of personal freedom and expression. James’ final question to the viewer at the end of “Should I be who you want me to be?” is perhaps the most powerful line delivered, evoking Muhammad Ali’s own defiant desire to be his own man in an era where racial prejudice was more prominent. The advertisement itself features little music in it, contributing to the somber tone that attempts to evoke sympathy and understanding for LeBron and his Decision.

            In contrast to the more serious moments of his advertisement, James also utilizes humor to bring levity to the situation. Scenes of James acting in an episode of Miami Vice with actor Don Johnson and reciting poetry are all ridiculous scenarios for the athlete to find himself in, but here they are presented as a means of highlighting the ridiculous nature of the controversy surrounding James. At the end of the day, James is merely an athlete playing a sports game. In a world filled with issues like poverty and genocide, a man switching teams loses significance. Furthermore, humorous situations like those shown in the advertisement humanize James in a different way from the more somber approach described earlier; humor shows that James, a two-time MVP in the NBA, is not above poking fun at himself and making himself look silly. By combining humor with a more serious rhetorical narrative, James seemingly had the right material to soothe the public’s anger against him.

            Unfortunately for James, the public remained as angry as ever. James’ advertisement, released in October 2010, seemingly did little to affect the public’s opinion of him as evidenced in his precipitous drop in popular according to the Q Scores Company. Cleveland Cavaliers’ fans in particular were even more scathing of James after his ad, as they “peppered him with obscene chants and booed every time he appeared on the giant TV screens beneath the scoreboard” and even produced their own video response deriding their former hero for his actions. Can we explain the ineffectiveness of James’ advertisement despite its rhetorical quality both visually and verbally?

            Teresa Brennan, Sara Ahmed, and Jenny Edbauer can all help us contextualize LeBron’s plight through a variety of different theories. In her book The Transmission of Affect, Teresa Brennan deals with the belief that emotions and energies can be transmitted among people and perhaps more importantly, that there is no distinct barrier between an individual and his/her environment. This lies in contrast to the commonly held belief that individuals hold emotion and affect within a discrete barrier that is closed off from the world. As such, affect can be transmitted easily through crowds, almost like a contagion. This affect “can override an individual’s personal affective response,” thus allowing an individual to be caught up in the flow of emotion surrounding him or her (Brennan 68). In LeBron’s case, the transmission of affect is one possible contributor to the public’s rage-fueled frenzy against him. A crowded basketball stadium is the perfect scenario for an individual to “’become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will’” (Brennan 54). This individual, surrounded by angry fans and detractors of James, will also become an angry LeBron James hater. Indeed, the very image of an aggressive crowd can raise testosterone levels in men; more broadly, any image can set off an increase or decrease in certain hormone levels (Brennan 72). Thus, “the crowd becomes more than the sum of its parts” (Brennan 72) and anger at James reaches an unprecedented fever pitch.

            Sara Ahmed’s “Affective Economies” adds another layer to the heated emotions surrounding LeBron and his ill-fated “Decision.” Ahmed proposes in “Affective Economies” that “affect does not reside in an object or sign, but is an effect of the circulation between objects and signs” (Ahmed 122). That is, emotions are not contained within a subject like LeBron James but are circulated among multiple subjects. Ahmed specifically mentions the emotion of hate, noting that “hate does not reside in a given subject or object. Hate is economic; it circulates between signifiers in relationships of difference and displacement” (Ahmed 119). In this scenario, James is not the sole subject of hate; instead, he is part of a larger narrative in which he aligns “different figures or objects of hate” (Ahmed 119). James is then the unifying subject in which concepts such as betrayal, cowardice, and disloyalty are figuratively “stuck” to James. Consequently, James’ decision to leave his former team did not positively make anger or hate reside within him but it did bind the public against him. The difficulty for LeBron then becomes “unsticking” himself from the words “coward” and “disloyal,” just as it is difficult for “the bodies who

“could be terrorists” are the ones who might “look Muslim.” (Ahmed 132). Indeed, Ahmed notes that “The work done by metonymy means that it can remake links… even when arguments are made that seem to unmake those links” (Ahmed 132). In the case of LeBron’s advertisement, images like LeBron sitting in a set similar to the one in which he announced his decision to leave Cleveland and the dramatic drop of his poster become painful reminders of James’ seeming betrayal. As a result, the affect of hate continues to be circulated around LeBron, unaffected by any of the humor or serious appeals made by LeBron in his advertisement.

            Jenny Edbauer’s “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies” provides another unique outlook on the failure of LeBron to repair his public image through his advertisement. In her article, Edbauer argues that “rhetorical situations operate within a network of lived practical consciousness or structures of feeling” (Edbauer 5). In contrast to traditional models of the rhetorical situation as a rather static framework focused on audience, exigence, and constraints, Edbauer suggests that rhetorical situations are more organic and ecological in nature. Edbauer’s proposal of a shift from rhetorical situation to rhetorical ecologies uses the popular “Keep Austin Weird” slogan as an example of public rhetoric changing according to its situation; in the case of “Keep Austin Weird”, from a stand against big business to a broader badge of honor for a city. Edbauer observed that the “Keep Austin Weird” rhetoric changed to suit different audiences, even spawning popular counter-slogans like “Make Austin Normal,” thus illustrating that “counter-rhetorics directly respond to and resist the original exigence” (Edbauer 19). Nike’s “LeBron Rise” also spawned two prominent counter-ads, which served to undermine James’ attempt to restore his image by challenging James’ original message. The first of these counter-ads was made by a group of Cleveland Cavaliers fans, in which they offered scathing and unsympathetic responses to James’ rhetorical questions in his advertisement. The second counter-ad was created by Tom Hinueber, a 21-year-old college student at UNLV, by splicing footage of “LeBron Rise” with an earlier commercial done by basketball legend Michael Jordan in 2008 titled “Maybe.” Hineuber’s edit, titled “Maybe You Should Rise,” saw Jordan respond to LeBron’s questions within the context of his own legacy, telling James “Maybe I destroyed the game. Or maybe, you’re just making excuses.” Both counter-ads are examples of Edbauer’s ecology of rhetoric, in which LeBron’s advertisement was shaped by different rhetors with a different exigence. I posit that these counter-ads, which received significant attention themselves, reinforced an affect of hate toward James by rhetorically emphasizing his shortcomings through the fans themselves and through the words of a legendary sporting figure.

            What can be said for LeBron James’ future? Theorists like Teresa Brennan, Sara Ahmed, and Jenny Edbauer provide us with many useful frameworks for examining James’ current predicament with his once adoring public. Brennan’s theory on the transmission of affect offers a compelling explanation for the unusual animosity displayed against James at games, showing that the frenzy of hatred toward a subject can be and oftentimes is extremely contagious.  Ahmed’s theory of affective economies demonstrates the difficulty in breaking the circulation of certain affects because of the fact that affects do not positively reside in a subject or object, a dilemma for James and his public attempt to redirect the anger currently pushed on him. And Edbauer’s model of rhetoric as an ecology helps explain the existence of counter-ads made by third-parties, which in turn refocus hostility toward James. The lessons here can just as easily be applied to an actor or a politician wishing to remake a public image or shape a new one.

            In the end, LeBron James may simply have to ride this current hatred out and hope that the public’s memory is a short one. Other superstar athletes like Kobe Bryant and Ben Roethlisberger have recovered from sexual assault scandals to return to a state of public adoration. While advertisements like “LeBron Rise” may not be effective in changing public perception, a championship ring just might do the trick. Until then, James will just have to deal with the heat in Miami.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. “Affective Economies.” Social Text 22.2 (2004):117-139. Web. 4 May 2011.

Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Print.

DuPree, David. “King James’ next conquest.” USA Today. 21 Apr. 2006. Web. 4 May 2011.

Edbauer, Jenny. “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35.4 (2005):5-23. Web. 4 May 2011.

Gilbert, Dan. “Open Letter to Fans from Cavaliers Majority Owner Dan Gilbert.” Web. 4 May

2011.

Kaplan, Thomas. “James Faces Jeering, but Little Competition.” The New York Times. 31 Oct.

2010. Web. 4 May 2011.

Rovell, Darren. “LeBron's Q Score Takes Huge Hit.” CNBC. 14 Sept. 2010. Web. 4 May 2011.

Wieden+Kennedy. “LeBron Rise.” Nike. 2010.