Abstract

A brief history of the technology developments and ideological implications behind representations of the weightless human body in sports media. This twentieth-century trajectory outlines the work of historical figures—filmmakers, technologists, artists, and inventors—whose additions to the field demonstrate the continual culture of photographing, tracking, and capturing the levitating body. References to theorists such as Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Lacan, Friedrich Kittler, Paul Virilio, Judith Butler, and others serve to analyze and critique the ideology that drives technological progress in relation to the human body and compels the ongoing re-iteration and mass distribution of these bodies and images.