Figures of masculinity in New Lad fiction. Nick Hornby’s "Fever Pitch"

Table of Contents

Introduction

New Lad culture

Gender identity - Hegemonial concepts of masculinity

Analysis
The protagonist
The role of the father
Freud’s Oedipus Complex
The role of women
The working-class identity

Rites of passage

Bibliography

Introduction

“ Football is not a woman ’ s game, it ’ s not a pastime for milksops or sissies, it ’ s a man ’ s game. ”

-Trevor Ford

The enthusiasm for the game of football extends far beyond the crowded bleachers of modern stadiums in metropolitan areas around the globe and handcrafted goal posts on agrarian fields in the British Lake District. The so called “beautiful game” has served as a template for countless movies, books, plays and other cultural goods.

One of the most prominent writings on football and football fandom is Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. Besides the topic of football, it is the author’s own story about growing up as a British child of the 1960s, an era which was shaped by issues of class and questions about the existence of a British identity. As a semi-autobiographic coming-of-age narrative about love, friendship, labour and Nick Hornby’s obsession for football, the luck and success of Arsenal, the author’s favourite team, reflects the ups and downs of his own life. Grouped as a series of short contemplations in chronological order, each chapter is given the title of a certain football match that the author had attended. One chapter, for example, is titled “Just like a woman” followed by the subheading “Cambridge United vs Exeter City, 29.4.78” (Hornby, 1992, p.96). Fever Pitch is almost written like a journal, but uses the mentioned football matches instead of dates. The author states: “I have measured out my life in Arsenal fixtures” (Hornby, 1992, p.81. Just like a traditional coming-of- age narrative, the reader follows the protagonist from childhood into adulthood.

According to the author, Fever Pitch is not just about a man’s obsession for football: “The book is also, in part, an exploration of some of the meanings that football seems to contain for many of us” (1992, p.3).

One could say that, as a whole, it is an “extended metaphor on the ways in which football provides analogies to other aspects of life” (Bentley, 2008, p.118).

First published in 1992, it was Hornby’s first book and has since sold over a million copies in the United Kingdom and is considered to be a vanguard in the literary genre of New Lad writings. In August 2012, it was selected as a Penguin Modern Classic.

In this term paper, the author will analyse the depiction of masculinity in Fever Pitch, taking it as a representative for the New Lad genre of the 1990s. He will compare it to a hegemonic, traditional understanding of masculinity and work out Nick Hornby’s understanding of masculinity, as presented in the book.

New Lad culture

Men struggle to define their gender’s identity - According to modern day media, the perfect man must simultaneously be sensitive and aggressive, while being a smart, beloved and emotional member of society who does not try to be an overachiever (Elmore, 2001, p.3). Shortened, men are in crisis.

The new, presumably British, lad has shaped popular culture since the beginning of the 1990s. Writers of the New Lad genre, such as Nick Hornby or Tony Parsons, were the forerunners of a literary countermovement to, then popular, Chick Lit writings, such Candace Bushnell’s Sex And The City. They tried to reject the glorified image of men as wealthy, athletic, successful and well-mannered human beings, as it is being presented in most popular Chick Lit novels. According to O’Hagan of the British magazine Arena, the new lad was unable to shake off his manliness, but in a different way, than rowdy “prehistoric predecessors”. O’Hagan saw them as intelligent and smart men who used their cleverness as a seduction strategy (O’Hagan, 1991).

Imelda Whelehan argues that the New Lad culture is a “nostalgic revival of old patriarchy; a direct challenge to feminism’s call for social transformation, by reaffirming - albeit ironically - the unchanging nature of gender relations and sexual roles” (Whelehan, 2000, p.5). The British cultural theorist and sociologist R. Gill described the literary figure of the new lad with the following words:

“The figure of the new lad has been a significant feature of popular culture since the early 1990s. He materialised as a new masculine figure, a distinct articulation of masculinity, across a variety of cultural sites, most notably zoo radio formats, popular TV quizzes and sitcoms, and men’s magazines” (Gill, 2009)

In 1988, Frank Mort, Professor of Cultural Histories at the University of Manchester, described this new, contemporary understanding of masculinity as “the noise coming out from the fashion house, the market place and the street” (p. 194).

While football, and sports in general, are often depicted as a modern, socially acknowledged form of gladiatorial combat, New Lad writings reject the traditional categorization of men as warriors. Instead, the new 'male icons' of the 1990s, as presented in this particular genre, are often unsuccessful and struggling, when it comes to their social skills, their career or their ability to interact with the other sex. The New Lad's image of a male hero strongly contradicts the usual powerful and successful image, as it is being presented in traditional romances.

Gender identity - Hegemonial concepts of masculinity

''What do masculinity and femininity stand for?'' This question has been asked and answered an innumerable amount of times. Not just by people from the field of academia but also by self-help manuals, popular culture, governmental legislations and psychoanalytic theory. There are so many different perspectives, theories and understandings that entire volumes could be written on the subject of hegemonic masculinity. The classic images of females as collectors and males as hunters, which are probably amongst the oldest classifications of gender identities, have developed over time and both men and women are socialized into believing that certain character attributes and behavioural patters determine their gender affiliation. This process of socialization commences right after birth, at the first stages of infancy.

Since I will analyse the depiction of masculinity in Fever Pitch, I am not going to focus on working out a personal definition of femininity. As mentioned before, the concept of masculinity is squishy. A basic understanding of masculinity would be that it consists of cultural and organizational norms, such as behaviours, languages and practices, which are commonly associated with males and, therefore, are not considered feminine (Itulua-Abumere, 2013, p.42). To fully approve this concept, though, a common understanding of male and female features would need to exist, which is not the case - Different societies and cultures throughout the world have different understandings of masculinity.

Hegemonic concepts of masculinity define what it means to be presumably manly in a traditional, antiquated manner. Hegemony is achieved through a collective understanding of cultural and institutional practices, which allege their authority through the media (Kenway, 1997, p. 52). The concept of hegemony was, in a great measure, influenced by Marxist ideology (Marx and Engels, 1992). According to Antonio Gramsci, former General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party, the concept could be illustrated as the domination of a group, or society, over another (Bates, 1975, p.352). Hegemonic masculinity is a belief in the existence of a normative ideal of male behaviour that is represented by tendencies for male dominance and superiority. It represents the thought of men as the ‘privileged’ sex (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 852). Furthermore, hegemonic masculinity is not alone about the dominance of men over women. Modern forms of hegemonic masculinity have their roots in the colonial era (Connell, 1995). Back then, colonizers were amongst the most common symbols for this hierarchy-based form of masculinity. They were admired by many and had the command over entire cultures, since their white and ‘cultivated’ background made them presumably better and smarter than the natives of the colonized country. Today, hegemonic aspects of masculinity, naturally associated with male dominance, are ubiquitous. The perception that “football is a major signifier of successful masculinity” (Epstein, 1998, p.7) points out the affiliation between football and hegemonic masculinity.

According to David Mayeda, the 2012 Super Bowl commercial by H&M would be a picture-perfect example for modern hegemony. Protagonist of the television commercial is the British football player David Beckham, who carries multiple cultural traits that ad to his masculine status: Besides his lean and tattooed appearance in the commercial, he is a celebrity, financially wealthy and married to a successful icon of popular culture. His marriage and his heterosexuality are crucial for his standings as a ‘real man’ (Mayeda, 2012). Sabo and Panepinto display another example of the male gender’s hegemonic dominance over the female sex in contemporary football culture:

“Football’s historical prominence in sports media and folk culture has sustained a hegemonic model of masculinity that prioritises competitiveness, athleticism, success (winning), aggression, violence, superiority to women, and respect for the compliance with male authority” (Sabo & Panepinto, 1990, p. 115)

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