Title: The Football Factory
Author/Artist: John King
Publisher: Vintage
Media: Book
Reviewer: Pan
I'll be blunt: I hated this book. Not because of the racist language, the sexism or the violence, I'm even willing to excuse the crap writing. No, what makes this book so objectionable is the crass use of stereotypes. You want cartoon cut-out characters then here, take your pick: the lefty woman in the dole office who regards every white working class man with short hair and a flight jacket as a Nazi; or the white working class bloke in the dole office who suspects the woman of being a Trot and is himself sympathetic to the Nazis in C18; or is it the upper middle class woman who gets laid by Tom (the central character in the book) and who, being upper class, reveals herself to be a perverse slut who is against racism, videos herself having sex with black men but really has no black friends...I could go on, but what's the point? Perhaps all this is some form of post-modern irony, but in that case I didn't get the joke.
The book alternates chapters based around Chelsea football matches with vignettes of 'working-class' life, and it is these which reveal the inadequacies of King's writing and it's here that the stereotypes I've described are trotted out as though they are something startlingly original. It's the football related chapters that work the best and which feel the most authentic. The pace is fast, violent and fuelled by drink-powered rage that wants to lash out at everything. It feels authentic, (and it shows that little has changed in the years since I used to go to watch Chelsea play every Saturday). However it's the crass generalisations and flawed politics/polemics which really stand out. No wonder the book was hailed by people like the 'Daily Mail'.
If depictions of working class life and culture were not so rare in the mass media then I doubt whether this book would have attracted the attention that it has. But the fact is, the media is as class based as it always was, that doesn't change. When the middle-classes discovered football it suddenly became possible for books like this to be written, and the fact that it dealt with the underside of soccer gave it the 'unique selling point' it's capitalised on.
If you want another view of football and working class culture then look at the fanzines. Get yourself a copy of 'Red Attitude' or take a look at AFA's 'Fighting Talk'.