The Making of an Epic (American) Hero Fighting for Justice: Commodification, Consumption, and Intertextuality in the Floyd Landis Defense Campaign

This article considers how American cyclist Floyd Landis is commodified, or produced and reproduced (hereafter “re/produced”), for consumption through the multiple texts of his mediated campaign to fight doping allegations, a campaign that emphasized digital media. Critical discourse analysis revealed several intertextually related narratives deployed for consumption by fans and supporters, narratives that commodified Landis in a variety of complex and interrelated ways. The overriding self-referential narrative across the defense campaign texts commodified Landis as the epic (American) hero fighting for justice against insurmountable odds, institutional forces, and foreign conspiracies, yet remaining grounded, accessible, and available for consumption by fans and supporters. It is suggested here that the effective consumption of Landis’s campaign is partly due to features of digital media that render it a powerful site for guiding interpretations and for performing identities in ways that directly re/ produce users and fans as part of the promotional cycle. Equally, using digital media simultaneously enacted other key discourses (such as justice and democratization) mobilized in the campaign.