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‘I predict a riot’: forecasts, facts and fiction in ‘football hooligan’ documentaries

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17430430701823570

1743-0445

Emma Poulton,

Sports Analytics and Performance

This essay addresses how British documentary films have engaged with and represented the socio-political issue of football-related disorder. The essay's primary concern is to examine the ways in which documentary film-makers offer audiences a mix of forecasts, facts but also factual inaccuracies and fiction in their representation of football-related disorder. While the British documentary tradition has been generally considered as a source of information and is associated with providing an investigative and educational news service, hooligan documentaries can be seen increasingly as sources of entertainment within popular culture. As such, two broad classifications of hooligan documentaries are identified: those produced supposedly with the intention to inform and educate – usually underpinned by the conventions and practices of investigative journalism – and those made essentially to entertain, underscored with distinctive aesthetic and affective properties to gain and hold an audience. Using Blackshaw and Crabbe's concept of ‘consumptive deviance’, it is argued that recent trends have led to a blurring of these categories, with documentaries designed for entertainment still informative and traditionally ‘informative’ documentaries employing production techniques to help entertain audiences. In this sense, documentary films can be recognized as forms of ‘fantasy football hooliganism’.