The corporate constitution of national culture: the mythopoeia of 1966

Abstract

Focussing on corporatized and mediated imaginings of nation – as highly political, public and pedagogic processes – we aim within this paper to address important questions of cultural identification and discursive address. Our focus is on the ubiquity of the year 1966 in popular narratives of Englishness in the immediacy of major football tournaments: connoting far more than football, we argue that the mythopoesis of 1966 – as a somewhat artificial, powerful myth-making mnemonic – is a historically situated toponym that conjures up the supremacy of England on the international stage. Further, through the performance of an aesthetic of selective silence, we propose that the mythopoeia of 1966 reasserts a utopic abstraction of nation, and acceptance and enactment of, and acquiescence to, mythical English ‘values’.

Notes

^1. Our observations centre explicitly on the build-up to the 2010 world cup in South Africa, although our argument is dependent on reference to previous campaigns and the prominence of sporting commodities during the ‘sporting summer of 2012’ and in the early build-up to the 2014 FIFA world cup in Brazil.

^2. Both Fenton (2007) and Kumar (2010) warn of the fluid nature of national sentiments. Kumar (2010), for example, discusses whether this is the ‘real thing’ with regard to the longevity, attachment and resonance of ‘ninety-minute nationalism’.

^3. Andrews (2006) explicates sport as a corporately structured and commercially compelled cultural arena. He suggests this normalized, and indeed normalizing, blueprint is based on the following structural and procedural elements: profit-driven executive control and management hierarchies; cartelized ownership and franchised organizational structures; rational (re)location of teams and venues; the entertainment-driven mass mediation of sporting spectacles; the reconfiguring of sport spectacles and spaces as sponsorship vehicles for advancing corporate visibility; the cultural management of the sport entity as a network of merchandizable brands and embodied sub-brands; the differentiation of sport-related revenue streams and consumption opportunities; and the advancement of marketing and promotional strategies aimed at both consolidating core and expanding new, sport consumer constituencies.

^4. Hardin (2014) discusses corporism as the mechanism whereby the ethos/structures/sensibilities of the corporation become infused within all aspects of life, ranging from institutional forms to the logic of understanding the individual as a micro corporation.

^5. In our previous work (see Silk and Andrews 2001), we have suggested that it is possible to discern both indifferent and enthusiastic engagements with nation/national identity by transnational corporations. In this regard, and as pointed out by both anonymous reviewers, there are times when nation-based nostalgia does not serve the logics of profit, and instead more cosmopolitan strategies are deployed. Previously we discussed these are multivocal transnationalisms often centred on global anthems (at times incorporating multiple, and often highly superficial, local sensibilities) that seek to engage a multitude of markets at one and the same time. For sure, a feature of major sporting tournaments is their cosmopolitanism and the often competing discourses between nation and world (or more accurately, cosmopolitan or universal ‘values’). In this essay, though, we focus on the corporate-inspired constitution of nation through nostalgic reference to 1966.

^6. We would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing out that one of the most significant corporations involved with the World Cup, at least in the UK, is the BBC. Our focus in this paper is located in the ways in which the signifiers of 66 – as commercial symbols/products – circulated within an increasingly corporatized cultural nation during this ephemeral moment.

^7. In this game, Argentina's captain Rattin was sent off, remonstrated with the referee and tore a Union Jack flag from a spectator which he scrunched in his hand. England manager, Alf Ramsey, called the Argentinians ‘animals’ and intervened at the final whistle to stop players exchanging shirts (Albarcres, Tomlinson, and Young 2001).

^8. In this reincarnation, titled 3 Lions 2010, the song features soprano Olivia Safe, (ex-)Take That solo artist and English ‘icon’ Robbie Williams and ‘outrageous comedian’ Russell Brand.

^9. For sure, such processes were well underway, and were in part based on the increased regulation and commodification of the game as part of the Taylor report, the creation of the Premier League and the impact of Rupert Murdoch (in the guise of BSkyB).

^10. We are referring here to the time period under consideration in this article, the build-up to the 2010 World Cup.

^11. The parodic intent of the player 69 insignia on the shorts (the second six turned asunder), over the knee socks and back of the T-shirt, is not lost as Ann Summers equates being patriotic and looking ‘drop dead sexy’. In case one did not understand the subtle reference to the vibrator, the poster was designed in the style of an old ‘sports card’ and depicts the name ‘Rampant Rabbit’.

^12. According to Brown, Richards, and Jones (2014), 10 million St George Cross flag were sold during the 2006 World Cup; see also http://www.unionjackwear.co.uk/

^13. Most recently, in October 2012, the new national football centre of excellence for the England national team, ‘St George's Park’.

^14. Of course, such narratives are perhaps at one and the same time reinforced and disrupted by high-profile debates circulating around racism within the game, and exemplified in both the Louis Suarez and John Terry racism allegations and charges.

^15. According to the Umbro campaign team, the intention was ‘simply to show the many faces and ethnicities making up today's multicultural England. The image is an inspiring picture of England early in this new century; proudly multicultural and fascinatingly diverse’ (Hall 2009). All too predictable responses from white nationalists, represented at the online community ‘Stormfront’, suggested that advert was extremely offensive, induced physical sickness and was full of ‘foreigners’ wearing English shirts. There were also comments that decried the loss of grandfathers who had ‘fought for this’ and links back to the 1966 world cup winning team who were ‘all white’ (see http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t715124/).

^16. Take, for example, the regular ‘chav’ nights in which the lower working class are parodied and pathologized at a number of middle-/upper-class higher education institutions. For one example, see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1324886/Oxford-University-lacrosse-team-dress-babies-chavs-initiation-ceremony.html

^17. We appreciate that discussion of the British male ‘chav’ is suggestive of a partial picture of class segregation and subordination (e.g. Ginsburgh 2012; Hanley 2011; Kenny 2012). ‘Chav’ is, as Ginsburgh points out in her review of Owen Jones book ‘Chav’, a representation that does not encompass the realities or diversity of the working class, let alone its articulation with multi-ethnicities.

^18. As but one example, see http://www.yourcarisshit.com/

^19. There are many other groups who could be interpellated by these corporo-cultural discourses, including, for example, political parties such as UKIP who would likely garner some sort of symbolic capital from the display of the St George's cross and utilize this in reframing ‘policy’ issues as related to immigration and multiculturalism (which, as could be argued, conveniently ensures the invisibility of ‘race’ or racisms).

^20. The ‘sporting summer of 2012’ encompassed the London 2012 Olympic Games, British victories in the Tour De France (cycling), the US Open (tennis) and the English national team's involvement in the Euro 2012 football tournament. The moment of ‘hot’ nationalism was exacerbated given the celebrations for the Queen's Jubilee celebrations which also took place during the summer of 2012.

^21. A seemingly endless list of commercially produced official and unofficial souvenirs to differing degrees depicted tradition, the past, the flag, national signifiers, London monuments and so on to capitalize on (ephemeral) attachments to nation during the ‘sporting summer’ of 2012: from companies as diverse as Anne Summers, Fairy Liquid, Macleans, Tampax, British Petroleum, PG Tips, and Pampers, to name merely a few.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Silk

Michael Silk is a Reader in Physical Cultural Studies in the Department for Health, University of Bath.

Jessica Francombe-Webb

Jessica Francombe-Webb is a Lecturer in Physical Cultural Studies in the Department for Health, University of Bath.

David L. Andrews

David L. Andrews is a Professor of Physical Cultural Studies in the School for Public Health, University of Maryland and a Visiting Professor in the Department for Health, University of Bath.