Football Fanzines and Cultures of Memory

MA-Thesis / Master von Christoph Wagner

Abstract:

The aim of this study is to show to what extent cultures of memory are important parts of the content of football fanzines and how they are exercised. It will also be discussed why these cultures of memory are an important part in the fanzines and for the people involved in the production of fanzines. The literature review in chapter one highlights the strength and weaknesses of written accounts on football fanzines and also examines concepts of memory that deliver an explanation for the use of cultures of memory in football fanzines. These include theories by Maurice Halbwachs who is acknowledged as the founding father of the field of collective memory. Pierre Nora takes this idea and adapts it to the collective memory of a nation, here France. Aby Warburg investigated how in Western European countries a pictorial memory has been developed over the course of the last 500 years through which pictures and images from the ancient past are recycled.

The sociological perspectives that will be presented here are used to give possible explanations about why there are cultures of memory in the content of football fanzines. Norbert Elias work on established and outsider relationships will be used to explain why football fans separate themselves from ordinary spectators in football stadia. He further looked at power relationships in this context. Also, the idea of a civilizing process is looked at and explained if such a thing had taken place among football fans to become producers and editors of football fanzines.

Throughout the work the history of football fanzines will be highlighted. This has partially been done by some writers mentioned in the literature review. These accounts examine the history of the fanzines until the mid-1990s. English football saw massive changes in the 1990s in the wake of the Taylor Report (1990) and with the introduction of the Premier League in 1992. Therefore the fanzines not only offered a platform for discussion of what has changed for them, but also the editors took the time to remember the favourite players of the supporters, their views of the past and to publish their opinion on club issues as well as footballing ones, that means match reports and a critical judgement of the players’ performance by the writers. In most of the literature mentioned in chapter one the 1990’s are described as the heydays of football fanzines. Something that Boyle and Haynes describe as harking back to a more secure, less complex society (2000:202). In their point of view the fans themselves become historians of the game and their club.

The third chapter introduces the methods applied to the dissertation to find out about the presence of cultures of memory. This is done by way of a content analysis. All relevant categories of memory are presented here and were sought for in the content of the fanzines examined. These will be found in Appendix 1. The results from this chapter will be found in Appendix 2. There is a table which lists all fanzines examined and all categories of memory combined and it will be shown if these categories are part of the content of football fanzines or not.

Chapter four is dedicated to the explanations for the findings from the preceding chapter. As the sample for the study is split into two, one part examining the 1990s the other fanzines from 2000 onwards we can draw conclusions about the development of football fanzines since the mid-1990s. Therefore, the history of fanzines is continued in this chapter, although this dissertation does not intend to give a chapter on the history of football fanzines. But to split the sample and examine the fanzines proved useful to outline the history of fanzines in the time period examined.

Chapter five brings a discussion about whether or not the theoretical framework can be approved of or if the theories outlined are not useful and if football fanzines do not contain cultures of memory at all. In any case it is analyzed why that is and what possible conclusions can be drawn from it for the further exploration of football fanzines and cultures of memory.

In the appendices there is a list of fanzines as well as a table that shows the results of the content analysis.

Table of Contents:

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Chapter 5., Discussion:

In this chapter it will be discussed if the theoretical foundations laid down in chapter two were applicable for this dissertation or not. The most important question that needs to be answered is why these cultures of memory appear in football fanzines. Therefore the theories outlined in the literature review will be tested and validated or disproved. The sociological part of this chapter draws upon Elias’ work on Established-Outsider relationships, power relationships between groups and the concept of habitus. Further, if there is such a thing as a class struggle between the working class and the upper classes that is fought within the field of football, this will be examined and the protagonists will be named.

For football fans there are other topics to remember and to write about than there are for football journalists and writers and sports writers in general. Therefore the stress in football fanzines is put on different memories then it is the case in newspapers, books and magazines. As a result of that the cultures of memory in football fanzines are employed for different reasons and in different extents than is the case in other media. And most often this happens with a bias towards either the media and more importantly towards other clubs and outsider groups. Therefore content patterns about which Shoemaker has written, are of importance and need to be regarded when cultures of memory in football fanzines are explained. Shoemaker further writes that the content of main stream media products is subject to certain conditions and constraints which have an impact on the content. The same has to be said about football fanzines.

When analyzing the content of football fanzines, or in general the content of every media product, certain conclusions can be drawn from the information gathered from the content of the objects examined as was shown in the chapter above. Comparing the content of a fanzine and a newspaper over the issue of an obituary proves to be fruitful. The Guardian Newspaper and the Chelsea fanzine CFCUK report both on Peter Osgood who died in March 2006. The fanzine dedicates a whole issue to Peter Osgood including memories of fans who knew Osgood personally and match reports from his playing time. The Guardian Newspaper on the other hand reported on his death by writing about Osgood being an embodiment of the swinging sixties in London. Also, the obituary recalled Osgood’s greatest moments as a Chelsea player, his time at Southampton, at Norwich and in the US. The England career also gets a short notion in this article. Therefore it is important to consider that football fanzines are reporting on their issues relying on their own sources and will not take into account a levelled reporting on topics concerning their club. That means they remember differently from newspapers or the public. The Chelsea fanzine names Osgood the „King of Stamford Bridge” and certainly will not do so with any other player of the club in the near future.

The literature that specified on fanzines clearly pointed out that fanzines emerged because there was a need to publish independent reporting from football fans. There were a number of reasons to do so. The first one is the state of the stadia in Britain. Stadia resembled the image of cages built for animals but not to be inhabited by people. Further, many grounds were old fashioned and did not meet security standards necessary to guarantee safety for spectators. This results from the fact that the British grounds were among the oldest in the world and had poor facilities. Apart from that fans were otherwise treated as uncivilized barbarians and in public were portrayed as hooligans. The anticlimax of all this, the negative image and the maltreatment and terrible policing errors, was the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 which left 96 Liverpool supporters dead. This portraiture of fans in the public neglects the fact that not all football fans were hooligans. But blaming football hooligans was surely the easiest option as this quotation in the Sunday Times (June 18, 1985) shows: „[Football] a slum sport, watched by slum people.” Football fans are hence living in slums and probably will behaving as such. This statement sums up what was thought about football fans in the press circles. Therefore, it can be said that the negative image of football fans cannot be upheld but has to be revised. As late as 1985 the public still perceived football supporters mainly as hooligans. As a result it can be said that the emergence of football fanzines showed the public that football fans are not all hooligans.

In an article about hooliganism and collective memory King produces a useful insight into the construction of collective memory among hooligans. King reconstructs events that occurred at an away match of Manchester United in 1999 against Olympique Marseille. King reports of a short incident between the stewards, the Manchester hooligans and the French riot police, which is referred to later as the major event of the evening. The match itself became less interesting because of this incident. In this case the Manchester United supporters seem to be handled unfairly by the stewards when reacting to abuse and missile throwing by Marseille supporters. In consequence this led to a short fight between the stewards and the Manchester supporters. The stewards were later replaced by the French riot police. Also, these incidents of fighting led to a number of injuries in the Manchester camp. King himself seemed to have been attending the match and witnessing the incidents first hand. The question he is following is „what role does the discussion of violence play in affirming the group”. He claims that the group members must have an agreement that not only fighting but also discussing their violence is establishing a collective memory among the group and thus is a part in the construction of a collective identity. It is interesting how King describes the necessities of hooligan groups in terms of their behaviour. There are strict codes of behaviour which can not be violated without pulling disrespect onto the hooligan group by other groups. In the case of the match the hooligans reacted violently because the stewards disrespected them as a group and thus offended their pride as a group. This pride has been established in years of existence of the hooligan group has become habitus, a disposition. Bourdieu describes this as „…permanent manners of being, seeing, acting and thinking, or a system of long-lasting (rather than permanent) schemes or schemata or structures of perception, conception and action”.

Elias describes habitus as a second nature which includes behaviour but also manners. Halbwachs writes that within kinships such as the family or social classes, memories are passed on via oral tradition. In peasant societies children learned family traditions from the grandparents or other elderly members of the group. Further, within groups memory is passed on by ritual performances. In the case of the article by King it is the leader of the group that acts as an authority and destines the talk in the pub after the game. What this shows is that even among hooligans it is important to draw upon collective memory and to establish a collective identity for themselves. The same can be said for other football fans. The example with hooligans proves exemplary because hooligans react violently which is recognized more immediately than written accounts on football matches.

Therefore the role of rituals is important for groups, the maintenance of group memory and group identity. Initiation rites are one form of passing group memories and group identity to new members, especially to young men. But this does not work in football fanzines as these represent a printed or literary form of memory. Therefore fanzines rely on written forms of memory which were highlighted in chapter four and in appendix 2. Connerton continues where Halbwachs stops writing about the passing on of memories though rituals. Halbwachs correctly states that the memory of religious groups, in his case that of Christianity, relies on a memory that stretches over a time period of two thousand years. The memories that Christianity relies on are passed on through the ritual of the mass. For football fans chants in the stadium have the same meaning as have chants in the church for Christians. The stadium plays a significant role in this as it becomes a sacred place that has features of a church. Bale highlights this idea in stating that the stadium can become a sacred place, a scenic place, a tourist place and even home. Bale describes football as a surrogate religion for supporters in recapturing the scenes in Liverpool’s stadium after the Hillsborough disaster. One goal mouth was packed with scarves, shirts and other memorabilia in order to remember the dead of the tragedy. In this example the theory outlined by Pierre Nora is proven. Nora stated by means of the French nation that the collective memory of a nation is perpetuated with the help of places and monuments. This further creates a sense of place among football fans. For society is rapidly changing and „The only certainty is uncertainty, so that in this view nostalgia is the attempt to cling to the alleged certainties of the past, ignoring the fact that, like it or not, the only constant in our lives is change”.

Football fan groups resemble religious groups as they perform rituals within the stadium by singing and chanting. Also, these groups tend to use written forms of memory which can be found in Christianity, too. This is one purpose of fanzines that can be identified here.

Another aspect is the control of memories of society brought forward by Connerton. He asks how memory of groups is conveyed and sustained. Connerton concludes that a hierarchy of power is established by controlling the memory of a society with the storage of large amounts of data through data processing technologies and further, this has become a question of political importance. From this perspective Jary et. al. are proved to be right when they state that football fanzines are a form of cultural contestation. It can be argued that a with the organization of football fans in a central body such as the FSA and with media outlets in form of fanzines, football fans constitute a successful pressure group within the football figuration. In contrast to Marxist sociologists this could not be described as a class struggle, rather this could be interpreted as shift in the power balances between groups that are involved in football. Therefore the FSA and the so-called fanzine movement are to be seen as a pressure group within the football figuration. That this did not happen with an outbreak of violence is due to civilizing processes that took place in Western Europe. This can be explained by their interdependency to each other. Football fans need the football while the clubs and the administrations of clubs need the fans. Not just for the money but also as a sign for the popularity of the game in general and the club in particular. As a result football fans now have a dead pledge with which chair persons of football clubs can be put under pressure. Though, this works most often on club level but not on a national scale, therefore the power that fans acquired is of limited use as it only refers to their particular club that fans can have an influence on the governing of the club.

On the other hand football fans are dependent on clubs as they are a stronghold and support for their identity, not just locally but also nationally. This is to prove again that Pierre Nora’s thesis of lieux de memoire is right. As he stated that modern societies are in constant transition, there are no longer any milieux that carry memory of a group or a class because of what Carrier calls processes of globalization, democratization, the development of mass society and the spread and development of the mass media. These processes leave the former milieux empty; instead there are lieux, places that carry the memory of the milieux with them. Taking off from that idea Bale describes football fans as having internalized a sense of place. The place for them is the stadium of their club. For many, if not all the stadium is a place they describe as home. Therefore it is comprehensible when football fans oppose any thought of a relocation of football clubs. In the wake of the Taylor Report it was suggested that clubs relocate their stadium into suburbia. This is because supporters are travelling to matches by car or by bus and the most of the British stadia were built within neighbourhoods which were considered unsuitable according to the Taylor Report, because of narrow streets with limited parking facilities. That it is possible is shown by the fact that many clubs are still located at their historic neighbourhood. Bale further cites from a fanzine from Charlton Athletic that the ground and the club cannot be separated because the one involves the other. As a consequence football fans display a pride of place and local patriotism. Therefore to refer to something stable and seemingly everlasting is something that not only religious groups do but also football fans. In this case it is the stadium and the club that helps to construct a sense of belonging and community. As was described so far, what can be seen is developing among football fans, is an identity that uses different utilities such as local pride and sense of place and a collective memory to establish a collective identity as football fans. Through this bonding with a football club, the stadium and other fans in the group a relationship between these entities with the surrounding groups can be detected. That means that, football fans consider themselves as established groups while other groups are considered as outsiders. This could even be people who are involved in the government of the clubs for example chair people, managers and other people somehow involved with the club. Most notably this is directed towards supporters of other football clubs and the media. Especially in the context of this dissertation, this is of importance as football fanzines constitute a new medium which is dedicated to football alone. Although the newspapers extended their coverage about football it was not to the satisfaction of football fans. The writing was still biased against football fans.

To stress the idea of established-outsider relationships a bit further, it can be stated that those fans who considered themselves as true fans distinguished themselves from those who were indeed hooligans. About those relationships Goudsblom and Mennell quoted Elias writing: „…one of these neighbourhoods, although hardly different from the other in its social composition and its occupational structure, treated the other as outsiders, and its members often spoke of them almost as if they were moral reprobates and outcasts”.

This seems a stark exaggeration but points out the relationship and the image groups can be affixed to by other groups. It seems more likely that football fans were seen as a disgrace and thus as outsiders by the public because of hooliganism. But this would do the majority of football fans wrong as they are no hooligans. In this connection it seems worthwhile to stress the idea of Connerton again. It is again a question of the power and the control over memory. Football fans claim that the memory and thus the identity of their group are to be controlled by them alone.

Finally, another point for discussion is that of identity of football fans and how it is constructed. As can be seen throughout the study identity has been a topic that was always referred to. In this discussion it becomes clear that the concepts of memory postulated by Halbwachs, Nora and Warburg and which are deployed throughout the study lay the foundation for a group identity centred around memory. Together with Norbert Elias’ theory of civilizing processes and the concept of habitus as a second nature, it is possible to construct a concept of identity for football fans as was shown in this study. But also, this is possible for every group that is examined. To grasp identity a thorough investigation has to be carried out as identity and its construction have changed massively in the last century. Whereas in traditional societies identity was easy to construct for oneself and to identify for others, this has become more difficult in the late twentieth century. Kellner describes this by writing that traditional societies saw fixed, stable and solid identities of ist members. „One was a hunter and a member of the tribe and that was that”. In contrast to that Kellner describes identity in modernity as more mobile, multiple, personal, self-reflexive and subject to change and innovation. In a traditional sense identity was something that contained „predefined social roles” and a set of „myths which provided orientation and religious sanctions to one’s place in the world, while rigorously circumscribing the realm of thought and behaviour. One was born and died a member of one’s clan or group of a fixed kinship system, and a member of one’s tribe or group with one’ life trajectory fixed in advance…Individuals did not undergo identity crises, or radically modify their identity”.

Although in modern societies identities are continually expanding, they are still subject to a set of roles and norms. Therefore, a mother was a mother in pre-modern societies and still is a mother in modern societies. Bauman (2004:2) on the other hand describes modernity and thus identity in modern societies as fluid. Fluids are changing their shape rapidly and constantly. This can idea be adapted to football fanzines and football fans. It is the changing of society that makes people to hark back to times when there was less insecurity and instability. For these reasons people try to look back and try to find a golden age as Pearson has described it (1983:3) where public fears and moral panics were non-existent.