Psycho. #64

Mate, are you seriously saying Arteta isn’t responsible for our current form?

Gosh! Interesting to see a football fan barging in here, our hallowed cinema safe space, with this confrontational attitude, much like the ‘hooligans’ I remember well from news reports in my childhood. I used to come to the UK on holiday in the 1980s and vaguely wonder if somebody might throw a chair at me at some point if I went too near a pub. Who here remembers ‘yobs’? Those were the days. In the current era, you can find the cultural secretary bending over backwards to welcome violent criminals to our streets. Perhaps there could be a happy medium, somewhere between condemning working class people and extending an olive branch to fascists? Just a thought. 

A little bit of context is due, for the faithful readers who will have no idea what this question alludes to. On my social media last week, I lightly poked fun at the conversational style of three straight men who came to the restaurant where I work, and who – within mere minutes of sitting down and getting the pints in – got right down to the business of racking up football commentary clichés. One of them said to the others, with no trace of irony or self-mockery, “Before we used to get through games… now we’re winning them. Because Arteta [the manager of Arsenal football club]...” and then another of them jumped in with, “Mate… Arteta’s world class.” 

Now. A few things are going on here, and I would like to address them straight off, before seeing if I can find a way to bring this round to cinema, which is what this column is ordinarily about. First off: it should be a point of amusement to everyone that discussions are actually conducted like this. These are the kinds of empty gambits I would come up with as a pisstake of unsocialised men desperately grasping onto the only conversational life-jacket they can see for miles and miles around. I don’t even pay attention to football, but I do know that Arsenal football team are top of the league, and therefore it seems fairly evident that they are currently winning games. The team that won the most games wins the prize – that’s how it goes. I would go further: it is also so obvious that the winning team’s victories are due to their having a good manager, that I would be embarrassed to say so. And one more thing: “we”?