Abstract
With the release of The Football Factory(Dir. Nick Love, 2004) in May 2004 coinciding with news that filming had wrapped on Green Street (Dir. Lexi Alexander, 2005), The Timesran the exaggerated headline: ‘Film Now in Firm Grip of the Hooligans’ (Edgar, 2004). Criticism of this apparent ‘grip’ on the film industry was twofold. It focused, first, on the timing of the film and press releases (on the eve of the FA Cup Final between Manchester United and Millwall and also the Euro 2004 tournament in Portugal) and, second, on accusations that these films glamorised football-related violence, so running an alleged risk of pre- cipitating it in real life (Poulton, 2006). A decade later, the number of hooligan-themed films has tripled (see Table 7.1), providing the self-appointed moral guardians with more ‘evidence’ to support their complaints. For example, Tookey (2007) heralded the release of Rise of the Footsolâier(Dir. Julian Gibley, 2007) with the indignant lament: ‘Just what we need! Another British glorification of gang warfare, full of macho posturing, non-stop swearing (with a record number of c-words) and sadistic shots of gruesome beatings and killings.’
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© 2014 Emma Poulton
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Poulton, E. (2014). The Hooligan Film Factory: Football Violence in High Definition. In: Hopkins, M., Treadwell, J. (eds) Football Hooliganism, Fan Behaviour and Crime. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137347978_8
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