The whole Hog
LETTERS
From Melvin J. Lasky, Jim Powell, R. A. F. Howroyd, L. E. Weidberg, S. J. Noble, George Whitehouse, R. G. Wood, Rupert Jackson, George Scott-Moncrielj, G. Reichardt.
Sir: Who still believes in cathartic theory? If the spectator at a football match releases his tensions by reacting to the clash of the players on the field,' as Stuart Hood writes (18 April), does the violence and vandalism of football fans 'point to incomplete cartharsis . ..'? Anti- quated and reactionary bourgeois rubbish! This is, as any sociologist of soccer knows, as outdated as the Aristotelian vocabulary it uses.
Anyone with a smattering of modern mass- cultural studies (and related disciplines)—cf. the writings of Marcuse, Adorno, Foucault, Laing, et al—can sense the true dialectical significance of Saturday hooliganism. It is an unconscious protest on the part of at least a small segment of the bamboozled sporting masses against the exploitative manipulation which crowds them into primitive arenas to waste their time, ener- gies and enthusiasms on diversionary pseudo- contests. Most fans, alas, remain docile and blind to the mass-cultural farce that is regularly enacted in order to prevent a genuine confron- tation of the real tensions and conflicts in society. A few—the weakest links in the chain of false consciousness—break through to a dawning sense that it is society that needs to be opposed, not some harmless club of visiting footballers. To be sure, there is an element of random and unplanned destructiveness, but this is inevitable in any self-liberating outburst of what the LSE militants have properly called crea- tive vandalism.
How dangerous these first signs of.a new and revolutionary . mass consciousness are to the existing system has been abundantly revealed in the recent hysterical efforts of the Establish- ment to bring so-called football hooliganism under control. Clearly this attempt toss ...t.e.iut step to- wards spontaneity may be another; wards a fascist societi 4f panem et circenses. Hooligan: cr the world, unite to defend your rights! The revolution can be lost on the play- ing fields of England.
25 Haymarket, London SWI Melvin J. Lasky
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