Anyone know who Steve Jones is? No, not that Steve Jones, the other Steve Jones. Steve Jones the geneticist and all round smart cookie. Well, anyway, he was on the radio at the beginning of the week (so I'm told, didn’t catch it myself) and one of the things he commented on was those drawings you get that are meant to illustrate man’s evolution from chimps. You know, the ones that start with a chimp, then go onto a more upright chimp, then a hunched over man, then an upright ‘modern’ man?
The way Jones described these was ‘starting with an Arsenal supporter and ending with a guy walking into the British library’ or something remarkably similar. Now, I'm pretty sure that Jones was joking and didn’t intend to directly insult every Arsenal fan walking (or knuckle dragging according to some) the planet. But it was quite interesting to see how football fans are seen by certain sections of society, and it got me thinking.
Football fans come in all shapes and sizes. I know people who stack shelves in Wilkinsons and people who spend their days preparing lectures for Russell Group universities who are avid fans of football. Yet so often they are all grouped together into one baying, swearing, scarf wielding bunch. Anyone who’s been to a football will have seen clearly that not everyone is yelling abuse at the opposition, trying to strangle the ref and/or invade the pitch.
Obviously this is a caricature, but perhaps a potentially dangerous one. By treating every football match as a riot waiting to happen you’re antagonising the fans who just want to go along to watch the match and giving those few likely to cause trouble something to rail against.
Jones’ worlds also highlight the image that people extend to football fans beyond the stadium. They’re uneducated. They’re less sophisticated. They’re not as evolved as, say, someone who’d rather spend their Saturday afternoons in the British library. This is quite clearly not the case, but say ‘football fan’ to most people and they see only a drunk, rude, working class bloke in last season’s shirt.
Note the description. There’s become a nasty class dimension to the demonization of football fans. Football is seen as a working class hobby, not something the educated upper echelons waste their precious time on. The inextricable connection between football and the working classes cast Jones’ comment in an even more uneasy light.
This in turn hints at the way in which working class people (or ‘The Underclass’ as they’re known in some sections of the gutter press) are shown in the media. I can’t quite work out if this is an attempt to keep those who see themselves at the top at the top, the public distaste some people feel it’s acceptable to display towards certain lifestyles or an attempt to ignore the problems faced by the poorer people in Britain. But that really is twisting the logic. Not much about football can really be read into that. They just might be symptoms of the same problem.
I'm not defending the often antisocial and aggressive behaviour of some football fans, but I am emphasising that it is ‘some’. I was unlucky enough to be trying to get home from work when Glasgow Rangers were playing in Manchester and reportedly ‘wrecked’ the city. The actual damage sustained is still squabbled about, but every football fan I met that day was friendly and excited about seeing their team in a European game. They are not all hooligans and, as said above, it’s only counterproductive to treat them as such.
I'm not demonising Steve Jones for a throw away comment either. We all make them, and sometimes they’re pretty funny, I just felt like exploring the social view behind it. Alright, I know he wasn’t targeting ‘all’ football fans, just those unfortunate enough to be following Arsenal, but he could have made the same comment about any premier league club in the country with the same effect.
That’s the end of my musings, but I would like to now state that I am not, nor have I ever been a football fan just in case anyone was wondering (hence still calling Arsenal’s division the ‘Premier League’. I don’t know its new name). When I was little my Dad used to take me to see Leeds United. That’s probably why I never got into the game.
Peace and Love x
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Perhaps Steve Jones was using been using an in joke. But whatever, it's certainly wrong to tar all football fans or any other group with the hooligan brush. Personally, I have no interest in football whatsoever, but I know quite a few people who are dedicated fans of the game, none of whom remotely fit the soccer thug label. Indeed, it's probably true that most of the violence is caused by people with no real interest in watching the matches; rather they're using football as an excuse for tribal thuggery.
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