Post-Fandom and the Millennial Blues : The Transformation of Soccer Culture

Soccer fandom has traditionally been seen as an important part of adolescent, generally male, identity making. In Post-Fandom and the Millennial Blues , Steve Redhead shows how this tradition of youth culture of fandom has been eroded in the last years of the twentieth century by the more fleeting, style conscious allegiances inspired by television, films and music. The clubs that young people follow are determined by advertising and popular music; the games that they watch are brought to them by the globalized culture of television, as in the world cup staged in America; even their fears of so-called soccer hooliganism are determined by media-engendered moral panics at a time when the phenomenon itself seems to be dying away. The resurgence of 'laddism' in the 1990s is one consequence of the 'bourgeoisification' of the game and the popularising of 'soccer into pop' (so that bands like Oasis play their beloved Maine Road stadium and have corporate tie-ups with Manchester City). Fans of both music and soccer are increasingly visibly interchangeable in their mediated spectatorship, look and attitude. 'Low' art is everywhere: soccer and pop are the fields of Bohemian artistic experiment and fashion catwalks. In this book, the author provides a thought-provoking journey into the end of the twentieth-century postmodern culture of youth, pop and sport-as-business Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 Preface......Page 10 POST-YOUTH......Page 12 POST(REALIST)-REALISM......Page 21 POST-FANDOM AND HYPERLEGALITY......Page 33 HYPERREALITY BYTES......Page 43 (CHANNEL) SURFIN' USA......Page 65 THE SOUND OF THE STADIUM......Page 76 THESE CHARMING FANS......Page 91 POST-CULTURE......Page 104 A-Z of Soccer Fanzines......Page 115 Goal! Goal! Goal! Diary of USA '94......Page 141 Soccer Players' Pop Songs......Page 151 Notes......Page 153 Bibliography......Page 158 Index......Page 166 The book tells a new, accessible story of the 'disappearance' of soccer hooliganism as a social problem into a burgeoning pop culture of accelerated youth styles, literature and post-fandom. As the media future of pay-per-view, digital production and the expansion of the airwaves and cyberspace comes on stream, soccer as the 'people's game' or as 'football hooliganism' is becoming a distant speck on the horizon of twentieth-century history. A 'man's game' is being transformed into a media event for global-but-localised consumption In this timely and important contribution to the field of popular cultural studies, Steve Redhead looks at the way youth culture is being reshaped by media culture in its various aspects at the end of the millennium Steve Redhead. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 147-154) And Index.