Review

Books

Culture

Football

Identity

Music

Sport

Taylor Swift

11 June 2024

4 min read

What makes fans tick?

Fandom’s remarkable fusing.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Scottish football fans wearing kilts march down a street singing and waving their arms alogt.

Scotland's Tartan Army of football fans.

"A fat, sarcastic Star Trek fan: you must be a devil with the ladies."

This put down of Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons neatly sums up a prevailing attitude to fans. To be a committed fan is to devote yourself to a niche pastime; to be weird and nerdy and, simply, not cool. At its worst, the fan becomes a fanatic, from which the noun is derived; an obsessive who stalks the object of their passion online and, at its most dangerous, offline.

Times are changing, though, and the internet is chiefly responsible. Where once fans could feel isolated and able only to relate to fellow afficionados slowly via the postal system, now they can find people who share their love in a handful of clicks and build relationships in real time. A lot of anguish is spent on how the internet allows people to find extremist chat rooms where abhorrent behaviour is normalised; less attention is given to the wonder of being able to find fellow lovers online of Massey Ferguson tractors, Australian mullets or Rubik’s Cubes. Many fans feel less alone online, building a new sense of belonging and purpose – a realisation that others will take them seriously.

Yet experienced from the inside, a remarkable bonding is taking place, where fans not only fuse with others, but with the team itself.

In Fans: A Journey into the Psychology of Belonging (Picador, 2024), the academic Michael Bond gives a perceptive and generous insight into the world of fandom. There are Beliebers, Directioners, Trekkers, Swifties, Janeites, Ricardians. For the uninitiated, that’s lovers of Justin Bieber, One Direction, Star Trek, Taylor Swift, Jane Austen, Richard the Third; though strangely one of the biggest bases of all simply goes by the title Star Wars fans. Bond spends some time looking at the phenomenon of Michael Jackson. Professor Gayle Stever has researched the pop star’s fans and found them, like many other fans, to be ‘normal people carrying on normal lives with functioning relationships and jobs, who just had this passion for Michael Jackson’. Despite the discomfort of idolising a celebrity who lived, and died, with serious child abuse allegations made against him, they saw Jackson as ‘the target of racist abuse and unwarranted criticism throughout his career’.

Fans often identify very personally with their idols. Cosplaying conventions allow fans to reinvent themselves and Houston University studies have shown that people can ‘feel less lonely and less anxious in the face of rejection simply by thinking of a favourite TV show’.

But what of football fans? Many find the aggressive tribalism involved hard to accept. I have observed young male fans of London Premier League teams chanting loudly at train stations in a way that made young women nearby shrink away, making me wonder whether my opening line from The Simpsons ought to be re-purposed. The ritualised conduct of football crowds – the fist pumping, jumping and embracing at a goal, the verbal and hand abuse of opposing players and referees, and the chants that defy pre-match announcements about tolerance at games – can look bizarre and scary. Yet experienced from the inside, a remarkable bonding is taking place, where fans not only fuse with others, but with the team itself.

‘... the best of sport is not the earthy moment of victory, but the privilege of watching athletes tilt at divinity.’

Emma John

The deeper the love for a club, the greater the joy and the pain at success and failure. It is a high-risk investment that many stake because it makes them feel so alive. The peerless interpreter of football fandom, Nick Hornby, says that football is a context where watching becomes doing’. Anyone whose leg has involuntarily jerked as a player reaches for the ball will grasp that.

I wonder if some football fans who identify as Christian struggle with the secret reality of uncontrollable mood swings every weekend? Should a win on a football pitch matter that much, when so many things are so much more important? They may aspire to the whimsy of Ecclesiastes (there is a time to win and a time to lose, the author nearly said) but feel the coursing testosterone of Samson instead.

God made us playful, and football is a disarmingly simple game to watch and play. There is also breathtaking beauty in the movements of its finest exponents, like the choreography of Michael Jackson himself. If we are called to life in all its fulness, isn’t this also a part of that fulness (even if some games are a stretch)?

In recent interviews, Nick Hornby has said he couldn’t write Fever Pitch again, his pained love letter to Arsenal FC; middle age has brought a new perspective. Writing in Prospect magazine (May 2024), sports journalist Emma John says: ‘I have observed many of my sports-loving friends follow the same trajectory…the best of sport is not the earthy moment of victory, but the privilege of watching athletes tilt at divinity’.

At least, until the final penalty shoot-out, when for the diehard fan it’s absolutely all about the earthly moment of victory.

Review

Awe and wonder

Culture

Theatre

22 April 2025

5 min read

This Narnia play left me yearning to cheer on good

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is still relevant at 75.

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

A play set shows a witch and lion on stage.

EMG Entertainment.

This article contains spoilers.

It’s been 75 years since C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was first published, and the story is still captivating audiences and even sparking fresh controversy.

If you hadn’t heard the news, the role of the lion, Aslan, is rumoured to have been offered to Meryl Streep, a woman, for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming film, set to be released in time for Thanksgiving next year.

I recently saw another adaption of the famous book - Adam Peck’s play - in a theatre in Torquay, as part of a 75th anniversary tour of the UK.

And having previously read the book and watched two different film versions, I still found myself considering elements of the story I hadn’t previously, hidden depths I hadn’t noticed - even if these didn’t include Aslan’s gender.

For those not familiar with the tale, it follows the journey of four children through the doors of a magic wardrobe, which transports them into a fantastical kingdom in which a lion reigns but a witch has held dominion for 100 years.

Under the White Witch’s spell, there has been only winter for a century - “always winter and never Christmas”, as one famous line from the story goes.

But now, thrust into this story in the fulfilment of a prophecy long foretold, four “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve” - boys and girls, to you and me - come as the lion king returns, and a new day dawns.

The winter begins to thaw, Spring is in the air, and Father Christmas even shows up to shower the children with gifts.

But the return of Aslan - and even Santa Claus - doesn’t signal the end of the story. There is still a battle to be fought; the witch still has power and even ensnares one of the children, Edmund, with the promise of all the Turkish delight he could wish for, and the title of a prince.

It is at this moment - still early in the tale - that the battle between good and evil is clearly laid out, and the forces of light and darkness clash thenceforth.

In the play, those enslaved by the witch are clad in black to emphasise the distinction, while much is made of the meaning of the name of the youngest child, Lucy: “bringer of light”.

The imagery is abundantly clear, as it has ever been in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, of which the The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the first and most famous of seven books.

And the author, renowned for being an atheist who later became a Christian, leans heavily upon his newfound faith throughout the Narnian tales, and not least in the character of Aslan.

Yet while you and I may frustratingly regularly let ourselves down, there is also something within us - is there not? - that ever yearns to cheer on the forces of good.

At Easter, it is especially hard not to see in Aslan’s death and resurrection a striking similarity with the figure at the centre of the Christian faith.

Indeed, it was this moment of greatest sacrifice - for the “traitor”, Edmund - that most struck me this time around, even though I already knew the story so well.

At church the following day, as I took Communion, I was still reflecting on Aslan’s sacrifice and wondering whether Edmund more closely resembles the average Christian - myself included - than the older, nobler brother, Peter, in whom most of us would prefer to see our likeness.

My mind returned to a moment in the theatre that had humbled me, when the lady sitting in front of us handed me £20 to treat my children for being “so good”, having at the interval made me bristle by asking them to sit quietly and stop kicking her chair.

“Fair enough?” I hear you suggest. Well, perhaps, but I didn’t think it until that humbling moment after the curtain had closed.

My son later told me he hadn’t thought the lady had been unkind, which again got me thinking about my own imperfections and need to be more childlike.

Yet while you and I may frustratingly regularly let ourselves down, there is also something within us - is there not? - that ever yearns to cheer on the forces of good.

I doubt many audience members were rooting for the witch, while I suspect most can also understand the need to “beware the witch”, as one song from the play puts it

Another biblical parallel is the fulfilment of a prophecy long foretold, while both the Bible and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe highlight the special significance of someone innocent dying to save the guilty.

There is even a clear reference at the very start of the book and play to one of Lewis’ most famous pieces of theology, when the professor in whose wardrobe the children later get lost asks them a question as they consider whether or not to believe Lucy about the magical kingdom that she first glimpsed.

She’s either lying, mad or telling the truth, the professor says, in much the same way that Lewis says of Jesus Christ’s own central claim: he’s either “mad, bad or God”.

As for the success of the play, as someone who no longer lives in London, I was certainly impressed by this West End product.

The scene changes are creative, aided by music, dance and possibly even a trapdoor - my children and I had different opinions on how the magical disappearances of certain characters were achieved. Maybe it truly was magic.

There’s also the nice touch of the play starting even before it officially begins, through the twinkling of a soldier’s fingers upon the keys of a piano while the audience take their seats - perhaps to help us turn our minds from a sunny day in the English Riviera to dreary London at the time of the Blitz.

So, do go and see the play if you get the opportunity - it’ll do you good and make you think, whether or not you choose to consider if the lion is male or female.