In general, definitions of ritual postulate the
necessary combination of a certain number of substantive properties which
distinguish ritual activity from more trivial regulated behaviour: first, a
break with everyday routine; second, a specific spatio-temporal framework;
third, a carefully programmed schedule of ceremonies recurring in a regular
cycle, and consisting of words uttered, gestures made, objects handled, with a
view to achieving some transcendent ends, not explicable in terms of practical
efficiency or as a mechanical sequence of cause and effect; fourth, a symbolic
configuration which lays the ground for the ritual practice and, at the same
time, ensures its observance; fifth, the establishment, in Turner’s words,6 of
an ’anti-structure’, freed from ordinary hierarchies regulating social life and
which, in that moment out of time, assigns to each person a different rank,
according to his relative proximity to the object of the rite and to the
officiants in charge of it; finally, the moral obligation to participate, since
attending a ritual is a question of duty and not just a matter of free choice.
In the proceedings of a ceremony, actions and words derive their meaning and
justification from tradition and exegesis, from texts which constitute its
founding background. Hence, V.-W. Turner characterizes ritual in the following
way: a powerful moment that gives meaning to existence through the necessary
intermixing of operative and exegetical aspects pertaining to other dimensions.
If rituals can be defined by their structural
properties (what they are about), they can also be viewed from the angle of
their general function (the use they have). According to Durkheim, the main
object of ceremonies is ’to secure the continuity of collective consciousness’,
’to assert for oneself and for others that we belong to the same group’,’ to
acknowledge and to recall periodically the primacy of the group over the
individual. On the occasion of these ’joint deeds’, the group gains
self-knowledge and takes a stand, or to use Marc Auge’s terms, ’individual
destinies are ordered according to collective rules.’8 Within these liminal
conditions, freed from daily constraints and hierarchies, a sense of communitas
prevails, an essential and generic human bond, without which no social group
could ever exist. From this perspective, ritual depends on operations rather
than words, reuniting from time to time the various parts of a fragmented
social body.
Once the medals have been awarded, are we
going to grant or deny the ritual nature of a major football match by comparing
its properties to the accepted ideal that has just been defined? What is
interesting in a model is not so much its use as a principle of inclusion or
exclusion. It is not so much a question of picking out similarities and
likenesses as of focusing on meaningful variations and discrepancies that tell
us something about the specific nature of the phenomenon with which we are
concerned. Before examining these specific modalities, one should look at the
formal characteristics, the types of behaviour, the symbolic figures,
etc.,which lead one to compare a big football match to a religious ritual,
because these are not merely incidental and haphazard features but are
essential and permanent elements of the game. Firstly, a particular spatial configuration.
The great urban stadium has often been
presented as ’the shrine of the industrial world’. This parallel is not simply
metaphorical, if we consider the feelings and attitudes the monument arouses,
as well as the rules which define its internal delimitations and uses. For
instance, in Italy, the players never train on the pitch where the Sunday game
will be played, and since it is exclusively devoted to the main event, there is
no ’curtain-raiser’ between two teams of lower rank; the players do not warm up
on the pitch, they come to inspect it, in their suits, an hour before the kick
off, then they go to get ready in a gym located under the stands or beneath the
pitch. For the most ardent of supporters, this pitch has all the qualities of
sacred ground: they even keep a lump of earth taken from it in their bedrooms.
Secondly, the distribution of spectators
within the precincts of the stadium recalls, in many respects, the rigorous
ordering of the different social groups attending important religious
ceremonies. In both cases, three main concurrent principles determine how the
space will be occupied: the usual social hierarchy (with the V.I.P.’s who
flaunt themselves in the best seats and boxes); the hierarchy of the football
world itself (directors, representatives of the leagues and federations, etc.,
are accommodated in reserved seats), then a hierarchy based on the fervour and
the strength of support (which is the principle governing the distribution of
supporters’ clubs from the middle to the outer edges of each end). Another
analogy, which stresses the parallel even further, is the obligatory and
ostentatious presence of the holders of political power in the official stand
used for major events.
Thirdly, spatial similarities go together
with temporal and rhythmic affinities. Competitions are scheduled according to
a regular and cyclical calendar of events, which reaches its peak at certain
stages of the football year (in spring, when cup finals and matches deciding
the championship are played). This regularity is most striking in Italy, where,
significantly, the match is always played on a Sunday afternoon.
Fourthly, the distribution of roles during
the spectacle, as well as the behaviour of the crowd itself, radiate a
ceremonial quality. The ’faithful’, of whom the most devoted belong to
brotherhoods based on districts, age groups, etc., ’commune’ with officiants in
charge of carrying out the ’sacrifice’. The ’faithful’ express their
excitement, punctuating the actions on the pitch with words, chants and
gestures, all of them codified. Their particular way of dressing, and the
accessories they exhibit and make use of (outfits, scarves, drums, rattles,
banners etc.) contribute to this metamorphosis of appearances and behaviour,
characteristic of ritual time.
Fifthly, the organization and the working
principles of the world of football also share some common ground with the
world of religion. After the fashion of church bodies, the world of football
has its own laws and strict hierarchy, ranging from FIFA to local clubs, run
exclusively by men imposing the same rules everywhere (the XVII Laws of the
Game – one always uses capital letters to refer to them), and with the
International Board at the head overseeing it all.
In fact, football can be seen as a ritual in
which magico-religious practices play a significant role, but in a specific
way. Madame du Deffand did not believe in ghosts, but was afraid of them;
conversely, Benedetto Croce, like some Neapolitan seller of charms, was
convinced that the evil eye did not exist, but nevertheless believed in it. A
fan once told me that he prayed before matches, although he was an atheist. All
of these are contradictory forms of behaviour, ’semi-propositional beliefs’, to
use Sperber’s words.’ In the same vein, both football supporters and players
believe in their propitiatory rites, just as the ancient Greeks believed in
their gods, that is in the minor key; but, like the Romans, they are religiosi,
that is to say formalist and scrupulous in their attempts to win over Dame
Fortune. In short, one would be wrong, here as in other cases, to take rituals
at face value, to imagine them as deeply rooted in an unshakeable faith:
transcendence is only dimly perceived; practice is more common than true
belief; detachment from rituals is also a part of rituals.
But apart from religious gestures and appeals
to religion, one wonders what the true framework for these propitiatory rites
might be. It is certainly not a system of beliefs be it either eclectic or
doctrinaire - but is more akin to a growing search for stable relations - for
example, for the connection between a number on a shirt and victory - which, in
the eyes of the person concerned, have already proved themselves to exist.
Thus, to use Frazer’s terminology, it is the law of similarities which is at
the basis of most of these practices. Among players, it is goalkeepers and
strikers who are the most eager to propitiate the gods: they have to make
instant decisions and their fortune hangs by a thread. For them, the line is a
narrow one between making a name for themselves, or being considered a nobody.
In order to tame fate and master the aleatory, the keenest supporters pay
enormous attention to their choice of clothes, and even to their choice of
underwear. Some of them never go anywhere without a club emblem (scarf, pen,
medallion...) ; in some cases, they transform their private universe into a
sort of domestic shrine where they keep, not only the precious relics of their
attendance (match tickets, especially), but also the concrete evidence that
they have stood next to their idols.
Football appears, therefore, to be on the
dividing line between various beliefs which come from all directions. It is a
sort of ’rite-gatherer’ where, in the manner of a kind of syncretic ’bricolage’,
all those customs which might help to avert misfortune are called upon. This
fragmented religiosity is living proof that, for those who become its devotees,
there is some realm beyond human agency where meaning is to be found, and where
issues of cause and effect are settled. Yet, there is no need to emphasize how
weak these beliefs are. On the one hand, they are not shared by everyone, and
those who respect them are often sceptical about their efficacity. Like Jules
Renard, they seem to say: ’Je ne comp rends rien a la vie mais il n’est pas
impossible que Dieu y comprenne quelque chose.’ On the other hand, one must not
forget that football does not constitute a specific or autonomous world, with
its own set of established transcendental beliefs: it is only a particularly
fertile field for the proliferation of magico-religious practices borrowed from
a whole range of other rituals.
Finally, football mania and religious
devotion share common ritualistic properties, but in a very particular way. Important
ceremonies are most often characterized by solemnity, but in football the
solemn runs alongside the ridiculous; the tragic alternates with the comic,
drama with parody, belief with scepticism, commitment with aloofness, ritual
with show, collective moral obligation to support one’s side with the
individual desire to have a good time, the social order of everyday life with
the hierarchy particular to the day of the match, etc. Transcendence appears
only hazily, and on the fringes; the sacred and its figures are only called
upon in a metonymic or hyperbolic way, often in inverted commas, just as if
they were not in their real place there. Besides these extraordinary
modulations, many other features relate to an ambiguity in the classification,
an ambivalent ’inbetween’ status of this type of ritual event. Contrary to a
religious system, football matches and the fervour they arouse do not form an
autonomous and coherent body of representations, beliefs and practices. Ritual
behaviour constitutes here a sparkling patchwork of miscellaneous borrowings
from the most varied magico-religious universes, of syncretic interpretations
which draw on a variety of forms (sacramental rhythms, cups, gestures), in
order to endow them with new meanings, often in a ludicrous mode. The
correspondence between the functional and exegetical aspects which, according
to V.-W. Turner, provide the basis for the ritual configuration, is just as
blurred. If a football match can be broken down, like a ceremony, into a series
of codified operations, carried out by officiants and assistants, no body of
mythical or symbolic explanations can give an exhaustive account of the meaning
of each of these acts and of the emotions they arouse. It is, then, a ritual
with no ’exegesis’, one that ’does rather than says’,&dquo; and one that
speaks about itself, that is ’thought within men, without their knowing’ - but
for what purpose?
After all, if a great football match, more
than other similar events which bring people together, periodically makes
manifest the enduring reality of a collective consciousness, it is because it
combines four underlying features which are seldom brought together in those
other events to which it is apparently akin. Firstly, it epitomizes, as we have
said, the values which model the most salient aspects of our world; secondly,
by opposing ’us’ to ’them’, it polarizes the particular and the universal;
thirdly, it gives the group the opportunity to celebrate itself by performing
and displaying itself, both in the stands and on the pitch; fourthly, due to
its multifaceted character, it lends itself to many and varied readings. In the
light of football’s complex and contradictory properties, one is perhaps
justified in seeing this sport, which is neither pure spectacle, nor an
established ritual, as symbolic of an epoch in which the classificatory
landmarks of collective life have become confused. One may also be led to
reconsider other ’traditional’ rituals which we have come to think of as fixed
and immutable, but whose own complexity we may have too rapidly overlooked.
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