On the Ball with D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: Spring (c. January 1929)

watercolour (30 x 22.5 cm)

 

 

I. 

 

John Worthen's short piece in the latest Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies [1] concerning Lawrence's time as a pupil-teacher in Eastwood, is interesting for the revelation that the latter liked nothing better than to arrange an informal kickabout in the school playground during the lunch break, using bricks - and perhaps even jumpers - for goal posts. 

 

Although it seems Lawrence did not himself participate as a player, he was happy to act as a referee and so clearly understood the rules of the beautiful game - just like any other working-class lad at the time - even if there is no evidence (so far) to suggest he supported a local team [2].

 

Knowing this allows us to look at the above painting - Spring (1929) - with fresh eyes; perhaps Lawrence was not merely painting some local youths in the lovely French seaside resort of Bandol celebrating the scoring of a goal during a soccer match, but also fondly recalling the passion with which his own pupils at the Albert Street School would play the game ...

 

 

II.  

 

Funny enough, this picture by Lawrence is one that Keith Sagar seems to particularly loathe:

 

"Spring is supposed to be a painting of some boys in Bandol playing football, but by removing the blue shirts they wore in the first version of the painting, leaving them wearing nothing but boots, and by having all but one of them engage in activities which, whether homoerotic or not, have certainly nothing to do with the ball, he produces a ludicrous painting." [3]

 

The problem, however, is that whilst Sagar was a great Lawrence scholar, he was not, alas, a very good art critic and he misses the opportunity to recognise Lawrence's importance as a painter [4]. There is, I would suggest, a very special violence - and, indeed, a very special beauty - that emerges from his canvases as part of an art of sensation.

 

Lawrence does not wish to reduce his figures to the level of optical cliché; he is not trying to capture a likeness! Nor is he simply revealing and celebrating the flesh, he is rather pushing it in the direction of deformation and disfiguration (anatomical fidelity is no more an issue for Lawrence than it was for Cézanne).  

And so, returning to Spring ... 

 

Expecting and wanting to see an actual game of football, Sagar is irritated by the fact that Lawrence provides sensation rather than spectacle and that he is as uninterested in the score-line, the colour of the kits, or the intricacies of the offside rule, as the boys who play for the joy felt by healthy young bodies exerting themselves, the love of team mates, the ecstasy of celebration, etc. 

 

Spring demonstrates Lawrence's appreciation of the fact that football - and, indeed, sport in general - expresses and liberates certain vital forces and flows.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See John Worthen, 'D. H. Lawrence as Games Organiser and Football Referee', Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies, Volume 6, Number 3, ed. Susan Reid  (D. H. Lawrence Society, 2023), pp. 11-16.    

[2] Lawrence might have supported Notts County; the oldest professional football club in the world, formed in 1862; or Nottingham Forest, formed three years later; or Derby County, formed in 1884, and one of the twelve founding members of the Football League in 1888.

 

[3] Keith Sagar, Introduction to D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, (Chaucer Press, 2003), p. 68.

[4] What I mean by this is that Sagar thinks it sufficient to carefully establish the connections between Lawrence's life, writing, and painting, thereby framing the pictures in a bio-literary context. But in simply substituting snippets of biographical detail, personal anecdote, and literary criticism for a genuine analysis of Lawrence's paintings - i.e., one that is written in the terms appropriate to a discussion of a practice primarily concerned with colour and line - Sagar produces a somewhat pointless commentary which not only betrays his own ignorance of the plastic arts, but also his ultimate lack of confidence in Lawrence’s ability to draw.

I on Sports: One Guy's Opinion of Football as a Televised Global Spectacle

 

According to Roland Barthes, professional sport in general - and perhaps football in particular - is a modern phenomenon cast in the ancestral form of spectacle:

 

"At certain periods, in certain societies, the theatre has had a major social function: it collected the entire city within a shared experience: the knowledge of its own passions. Today it is sport that in its way performs this function. Except that the city has enlarged: it is no longer a town, it is a country, often even, so to speak, the whole world ..." [1]

 

That's true, I suppose - and even more so now, 60-odd years after Barthes was writing, when football is played, watched, and talked about in almost every corner of the planet; from Timbuktu to Tipperary. 

 

Only the Olympics comes close to capturing the huge global audience that the World Cup attracts every four years; we're quite literally speaking about billions of (mostly poor) people enthralled by the sight of 22 millionaire-idiots kicking a ball about for 90 minutes in the attempt to score a goal. 

 

It's arguable, of course, that the fans in the stadium are more than mere spectators; that everything that the players on the pitch experience, they also experience; that unlike theatre or cinema goers, football supporters actively participate in the spectacle and may even help to determine the outcome of the game. 

 

But then, the vast majority of fans are not actually pitchside; they're watching the game on TV and I would suggest that's a whole different kettle of fish; this is football that is no longer sport in the old (noble) sense of the term, but sport as choreographed entertainment and commercial product; sport in an age of hyperreality and hypercapitalism.

 

The agony and the ecstasy of the football fan is not so much liberated any longer, as cynically exploited and I woud suggest that the game has now lost its beauty, its innocence, and its meaning. But then, as Sam Malone would say: This has been just one guy's opinion ... [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Roland Barthes, What Is Sport? trans. Richard Howard, (Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 58-59.  

[2] See Cheers, season 6, episode 2, 'I on Sports' (Feb 1988), dir. James Burrows: click here to see all of Sam's sports editorials. 

 

For a related post to this one on football and the (lost) art of time-wasting, click here. 

On Football and the (Lost) Art of Time-Wasting

 

Today, we live in an era of universal Fergie time; one impatient of stoppages 

and which threatens to extend a 90-minute game indefinitely.

 

 

I.

 

I don't like football. I used to, when I was a child, in the '70s. Back then, I used to love playing football on the green and watching big match highlights on TV. But not now. I suppose I've changed. But so too has football changed. As one commentator writes:

 

"The sport that we loved so much as children no longer exists. It has been replaced with a Narrative of Football; a new game deeply entrenched in analysis, code, writing, superfluous discourse, and orchestrated controversy." [1]

 

This is football in the age of hyperreality and hypercapitalism. And it's also football played at such a manic pace that it has lost all sense of sporting rhythm; hyperactivity has destroyed the ebb and flow of the game and that most vital (and complex) aspect known as time-wasting. 

 

II.

 

In an excellent piece for The Guardian, Barney Ronay describes how in the latest version of what was once the beautiful - often boring and profoundly frustrating - game, everything is now micro-engineered to produce maximum effective playing time. 

 

Referees, argues Ronay, are now no longer present "simply to keep the mechanics of the game working, to understand handball and fouls and offside, but to police how football should feel and look, to decide what exactly can be deemed entertainment" [2]. 

 

This is the referee as television floor manager - that is to say, as the one who ensures that a TV production goes smoothly and that everyone involved in the on-field action - players, managers, supporters - knows exactly what they have to do and when they have to do it. Keep the ball moving! Keep the noise levels high! Ensure there are plenty of talking points for the pundits to analyse! And above all, don't ever forget the cameras are rolling!

 

This season, referees have been empowered (and instructed) to take aggressive action against time-wasting. And Ronay is right to say this is "a profound and quietly sinister little tweak, a value judgment taken without any broader consultation on what the game should look and feel like, with some deeply undesirable implications" [3]. 

 

Of course, on the face of it, this is an entirely reasonable change to make; in fact, the laws of the game have always discouraged (and allowed referees to punish) time-wasting. But, what is going on here is really something quite radical, driven by purely commercial considerations: 

 

"As ever, follow the money. The drive to increase active 'game time' (itself a vapid, ill-defined concept) comes directly from Fifa. And Fifa is essentiality a TV rights distributions agency, its entire model based around increasing screen revenues. What we have here is the laws of the game being employed as a tool to doctor the perceived TV entertainment value of the product ..." [4] 

 

If it risks player fatigue or injury, never mind! If it risks pissing off the fans in the stadium, who understand how the art of time-wasting is an intrinsic part of the game, who cares? The people who count are the big name sponsors and the punters who pay to watch the match live on TV - and they won't tolerate dead air. 

Ronay concludes:  

"Football is not a gameshow. This is not choreographed entertainment. The reason this thing has survived and flourished is precisely because it is messy and feverish, made up of both piano and forte, moments of fury interspersed with interludes of vital, brain-mangling boredom. And yes, time-wasting is part of the game, an ugly, maddening part, but a source of beauty in its referred effects; not to mention an entirely legitimate tactic in a 90-minute game." [5]

Unfortunately, however, football is now choreographed entertainment; played by millionaires, owned by billionaires, and watched by a global TV audience who expect non-stop action and plenty of goals, i.e., exactly the same kind of idiots who think one-day cricket is superior - because faster and more sensational - to test match cricket and want to see six after six after six.  

Ronay's hope that in this burnout society we will once again allow sport to catch its breath, is, sadly, in vain ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Luke Alex Davis, 'Football Is Dead' (3 April 2022), on the website Playrface: click here. 

 

[2-5] Barney Ronay, 'Time-wasting in football is ugly, maddening - and absolutely vital', The Guardian (17 August 2023): click here. Those who are interested in this topic might also like to read: Cameron Carter, 'Football has elevated time-wasting into a sophisticated art form', The Guardian (19 Oct 2022): click here.  

 

 

For a related post to this one on football as a global televised spectacle, click here.

Reflections on the Death of a Footballer

Dominic Snow: Saint Pelé (2007)

Oil on canvas (51 x 77 cm)

saatchiart.com

 

 

Have you heard the news? 

 

The great Brazilian footballer Pelé is dead ...!

 

Actually, it's hard not to be aware of his passing, as his face and name is everywhere at the moment, even though he hasn't kicked a ball for forty-five years and even though kicking a ball is essentially what he's known for - that, and for being the public face of erectile dysfunction [1].

 

Judging from the press and media coverage, however, you would think he was a veritable saint among men; a bit like Nelson Mandela, only with the number 10 on his back, rather than 46664.

 

White liberals in particular can hardly contain themselves when talking about him and one can't help thinking that it's not because they care about football or remember him playing, but because he's a sporting version one of those figures that film director Spike Lee called magical negroes ...

That is to say, a black man who is pure and noble of soul and in possession of great wisdom or insight; a reassuring figure who upholds the ideal of a universal humanity and teaches us how to be better people.  

 

It's basically an inverted (and romantic) racism and if, like Lee, I was black, it would make me mad as hell (indeed, even without being black it irritates me).  

 

So, I'm sorry that Pelé is dead; maybe he was a great man as well as a great footballer. I don't know and I don't care. What I do know is that I'll be glad when the world's media turns its attention elsewhere. 

 

And, just one final point ... 

 

I think it revealing that the media here in the UK are giving more attention to the death of an ex-footballer from a far away land than to the passing of a truly iconic national figure - Vivienne Westwood  - who also died yesterday.  

 

It shows that the world of fashion - and, indeed, the world of contemporary art - remains something the Great British Public are not only indifferent to, but suspicious, scornful, and fearful of [2], whilst football, on the other hand, is now supposed to be played, watched, and enjoyed by everyone, from rough girls to delicate boys the whole world over.

 

The so-called Beautiful Game has become an opiate of the masses [3].   

 

 

Notes 

[1] Hired by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in 2002, Pelé was the first celebrity ambassador for Viagra, although he insisted in 2011 that he had never needed to take the little blue pills himself. His main role was to raise awareness around erectile dysfunction and encourage men to openly discuss their problems. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this had some humorous consequences (see spoof image below).

 

[2] One recalls, for example, the shameful reaction of the Wogan audience - egged on by the ghastly Sue Lawley and fellow guest, the equally ghastly Russell Harty - to Westwood's Time Machine collection back in 1988: click here. Well done Janet Street-Porter for sticking up for Westwood, but what a pity Grace Jones wasn't on hand to give Harty and Lawley both a few hard slaps. 

 

[3] Marx, of course, originally used this dictum with reference to religion: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." See the Introduction to his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley, (Cambridge University Press, 1970). 

      The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar had an estimated 4 billion viewers for its 64 matches played over 29 days. 

Reflections on the 2014 FIFA World Cup

2014 FIFA World Cup Official Logo

During certain periods, in certain societies, says Barthes, the theatre had a major social function; namely, it united the entire city within the joy of a shared experience and knowledge of its own passions. 

Today, it is sport - and one sport in particular, football - that in its own fashion performs this function. 

Football today, however, is a global phenomenon and obsession and it's no longer just a city which it brings together, or a nation, but, in a sense, the entire world - as we currently witness in Brazil at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Of course, just like the modern Olympic Games, the World Cup is a monstrous and insane corporate-media spectacle; one which is reportedly as rife with corruption off the field, as it is tainted by undignified behaviour on it (Suarez, really, what were you thinking?).

At best, the World Cup is merely posing as a noble sporting event with ancestral significance and only pretending to further the highest ideals of humanity. The opening ceremony - always carried out with great formality - fools no one and bores the spectators as much as it often bemuses the commentators. 

We all know football is now played by vain and greedy millionaires who are more concerned with selling their image rights and securing extremely lucrative sponsorship deals than with kicking a ball about and that the fans are treated as little more than a bovine source of revenue; the super-fat in their over-priced replica shirts supporting the super-fit for the entertainment and further enrichment of the super-wealthy.

And yet still we watch, still we care, and still we believe ... Such is the magic of the beautiful game.