“The English Game” written by Julian Fellowes, directed by Birgitte Staermose, 2020
If you type in ‘class struggle’ movies or series into your browser you’ll get this limited series. It’s based on a true story of the advent of modern U.K. football. Set in the late 1870s and early 1880s it features an angry strike against an obnoxious textile mill owner because of a 10% cut in wages. One of the more sensitive mill owners in Darwen, Lancashire relents and only cuts the wages by 5% to end the strike.
But this strike and form of class struggle are only a subtext to the real issue – how will working-men play football (soccer to Yanks) when they have to compete against privileged Etonians? The upper-class Etonians have plenty of time to practice, eat well and are in better health. When losing they use thuggish tactics that are now red card calls. The working-class players from the North of England and Scotland in Darwen and Blackburn work long hours a day, 6 day weeks, eat bad food and suffer from injuries at work. Their women are subject to the vicious stigma of out-of-wedlock birth and drunken husbands, which forms the female side of this tale.
How can the working-class compete with the British upper classes in football? And how can working-class women achieve dignity? Their communities are solid in support of their home-town teams – something that has continued to the present.
The answer the film gives is to pay the working-class players to play, not work in a mill or mine. This is the innovation of several of the smaller northern capitalists. Then the teams can all be on that fabled ‘level playing field.’ The Etonians try to get them banned for professionalism as opposed to their gentlemanly amateurism. Paying a player is against the rules, which are controlled by the Etonians. Another reason is a football riot between the early soccer ‘hooligans’ of Darwen and Blackburn. Another is that the Etonians style of play is the losing style of mobbing the ball like a rubgy scrum, not passing to each other.
The lead player of Blackburn, Fergus Suter, finds an ally among the Etonians and the game goes on. Their ally, Arthur, is a tall, handsome, young banker with a kind wife who attempts to help proletarian women with illegitimate babies. By the way, illegitimacy was outlawed in 1917 in the early USSR. After this break-through, the workers win 2-1 in a teary cup final using their ability to pass and U.K. football is changed forever.
This film was written by the same don who wrote Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes. What is clear is that the break-through comes because labor and capital come together for a deal to modernize football. But it also results in the slow but full commodification of football and its players. We have seen the pinnacle of this process, which in no way created ‘proletarian’ sports. Professionalism was a step forward to a higher level, which then slowly turned into its opposite, as dialectics would predict.
“Riviera” created by Neil Jordan, 2020, Seasons 1&2
This limited series is basically wealth porn. The real star is the French Riviera (and a bit of Italy like Venice) – Lamborghinis, huge chateaus, flowing bubbly, Prada bags, swimming pools, race horses, million-dollar paintings, yachts, private helicopters, the ocean and cliffs of the Riviera itself - all filthy but sparkling lucre. For people in the U.S., it is vicarious tourism. One of the perks of wealth seems to be the ability to kill people with impunity and to commit money crimes to protect ‘the family.’ This is why we have to coin the term the ‘lumpen bourgeoisie’ to refer to parts of the European and U.S. upper classes. It reflects the intersection of crime and capitalism that has become so obvious.
This parade of useless people is led by Julia Stiles, playing an American art dealer who hooks up with a rich family. She joins a scheming ex-wife, her husband’s neurotic daughter, drug-addled son and manipulative other son in what passes for a southern French soap opera made up of people speaking English. It features various violent local criminals, two instances of children by others, a serial murderer, a Nazi painting hoarder, explosions, family deaths and so many plot holes and unlikely bullshit (million dollar paintings, even one from the Louvre hanging in an unguarded and open old castle) that you can only wonder who watches this stuff. Oh, I did.
Other reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left: "The Football Factory," "Chavs," "Class Against Class," "The City,"
The Kulture Kommissar
January 3, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment