The whole Hog
Sir: Is Mr Lasky (Letters, 25 April) quite serious? I suppose so. I fear so. He writes of the 'exploitative manipulation' by which the Establishment drives large numbers of people to football matches, he comments with en- thusiasm on 'creative vandalism,' and at the same time he attacks Stuart Hood's view (18 April) that violence and vandalism of football fans 'points to incomplete4catharsis.'
Of course, Mr Hood is correct. The violence always occurs at its worst when defeat is in the air. And if defeat doesn't equal incom- plete catharsis, then what does?
Not so simple to understand, unfortunately, is the so-called 'exploitative manipulation' of the Establishment. With his obvious aversion to the game Mr Lasky fails to see that football is not imposed but that there is a quite genuine mass desire for it. People love it; perhaps they love it too much. It is the one piece of ex- citement and variation in an otherwise drab week. A 'diversionary pseudo-contest' it may be to Mr Lasky, but to many it is the playing. field of life itself.
Doubtless the intensity of emotion, and thus the vandalism (hardly 'creative,' one would have thought), is an unconscious protest against something, but that something is certainly not the Establishment. No; this type of behaviour is caused by the inward rejection of a way of life—regular, dull, inevitable, unavoidable. What can Marcuse, Mr Lasky or anybody else do to change that?
Previous page
