You can think of this as a kind of “journal entry”-style assignment. You don’t have to argue a point (though you may!), and you’re welcome to develop your thoughts in whatever direction you see fit. I just ask that you try to engage one (or more) of the questions below. In other words, try to take one or more of the questions below as a starting point, but feel free to let your thoughts roam a bit and/or discuss other aspects of the film that were interesting to you.
The assignment will be graded on the basis of the amount of thoughtfulness and effort you have put into it. I expect most students to do very well on their film reaction assignments. Remember that you are only required to complete three of the four film reaction assignments, but (even if you don’t write a reaction on a given film) you’re still expected to watch the film in question by the due date indicated on the syllabus.
This reaction is due by the beginning of your recitation on Friday, October 1. Even if you don’t write a film reaction for Icarus, you will still need to have watched the film by then so that you can participate productively in class discussion that day.
Some Questions You Might Consider:
As a spectator of sports (e.g., if you watched the Olympics this summer), do you feel like it makes a difference to you whether the athletes participating in (and winning) sporting events are using PEDs? In other words, in watching sports, do you care whether the athletes you’re watching are “drug cheats” or not?
In Fogel’s exchange with Don Catlin, late in the film, he asks him, point-blank, “Does WADAhave the ability to catch drug cheats today?”—to which Catlin replies, “No.” If you were participating in an elite sport in which you knew, or strongly suspected, that all your top competitors were doping, and gaining a huge competitive edge from it (Fogel is initially told to expect a 15%-20% improvement!), what do you think you would do? Do you think it would be wrong to participate in doping in such circumstances?
According to Rodchenkov, Vladimir Putin (this is around 1:28 of the film) used the popularity he gained from Russia’s dominance at the 2014 Sochi games as political capital to back his invasion of Ukraine. Do you think the IOCand/or WADA bear any responsibility for the political events that unfolded in the wake of the Olympics?
More broadly, Olympic sports clearly serve political purposes, reinforcing patriotic zeal in many countries. Should sports be used to build patriotic sentiments and solidarity within countries? Or should sports and politics be separated? If they should be, is there any way to continue the Olympic Games without them being used for political ends?
Do you think Rodchenkov regrets having exposed the Russian doping scheme? If you were in his place, do you think you would have opposed the Russian government in the way he did?
Did the IOC make the right decision in allowing Russian athletes to continue to compete in the Olympic Games, with the idea that a collective punishment would be unfair to the individual Russian athletes who weren’t doping?