Educating bodies and sensibilities through cinema in Peronist Argentina. Sports, politics and aesthetics

Abstract

Escuela de campeones (School of champions) premiered in Argentina on December 19, 1950. Directed by Ralph Pappier, the film is about what can be seen as part of the “sportization process” of Argentinean football, showing the difficulties experienced by those who wanted to introduce sports into the school curriculum. Based on the real-life story of the Scottish teacher Alexander Watson Hutton, the film shows the obstacles he faced from the moment he arrived in Buenos Aires in 1885, attempting to introduce new and modern pedagogical methods at the elitist and conservative Saint Andrew’s School. Winner of the Cóndor de Plata Award for Best Film in 1951, the film focuses on Watson Hutton’s persistent attempts to make football part of the school curriculum in parallel with the legitimation and popularization of this sport in Argentinean history. Escuela de campeones is relevant not only because of the importance of football for Argentinean national identity, but also because it premiered at a crucial political moment in Argentinean history – that is, during the administration of Juan Domingo Perón. The decade between 1946 and 1955 was probably the most intense political period in Argentinean history, resulting in a series of social and cultural transformations that are the subject of debate even today. In those years, through the centralization of the state apparatus, a formerly silenced population emerged as a new political and cultural voice, influenced by the government’s intentions of refounding the republic, baptized by the Perón administration as “la Nueva Argentina” (new Argentina). In this context, the government not only made cultural offerings accessible to different sectors of the population, but also widened the definition of what was considered “culture”: mass circulation magazines, radio, films, fashion, or sports were now seen as cultural expressions and artifacts. As the arts were thus redefined, cinema too dealt with new themes and addressed new issues and concerns. In this context, telling a story from the history of football gained broad interest.