football hooligans - film - 2008 - Cass

Cass
Jon S. Baird
Cass Films
2008
108 minutes

Cass is a biographical film based on the life of Cass Pennant, one of the best known participants in the English “football Hooligan” or ‘casual’ subculture of the 1970s and 80s (which isn’t to say that the subculture is currently dormant) wherein hardcore fans of specific soccer teams would fight each other in the streets when their chosen teams would play. The film is directed by Jon S. Baird who, according to iMDB, has also worked on one of the few other casual films, Green Street Hooligans, and directed a short about the subject earlier in his film career titled It’s a Casual Life.  Most directors of drama have little to do with the subject matter of their films however the recurrence of this subculture as content in Baird’s career suggests he might have direct knowledge of his material. There aren’t many films about the casuals and Baird is involved with two.

The film is largely a positive look at the phenomenon of unorganized Football violence, which puts it in league with Green Street Hooligans and The Football Factory, neither of which really represent the subculture negatively. Cass Pennant was a Jamaican orphan, abandoned by his mother and then adopted by aged pensioners in an all-white neighborhood. He bonded with his elderly adoptive father over football matches and entered the hooligan scene when he fought alongside West Ham United supporters against the Wolverhampton Wolves (also called the Subway Army or the Subway Wolves, they were supporters of the Wolverhampton Wanderers FC).  Following this melee, Pennant joined the Inter City Firm (the Casual club that fought for West Ham), and eventually became a leader to the group. 

From the film, Cass and his crew advancing on their enemies!

The film follows the predictable life of a prominent Football Hooligan, featuring scenes of violence (of course) and prison terms (of course). Baird’s film, however, also creates the sense of an emotional and intellectual life for an individual who, as a celebrity of a subculture known primarily for its brutality, was undoubtedly portrayed as a lizard-brained thug for much of his life. Cass is often shown in the film to be critiquing the misunderstandings of mainstream media (and other observers) of the Casuals, and takes to the writing of his autobiography and his personal views on the subculture as a challenge to outsider perspectives. The real Cass Pennant published his bio in 2002 but has gone on to write a number of books on Football Hooligans, to greatly expand a body of literature that was once made up of only Bill Buford’s gonzo-esque Among The Thugs (which portrays the Hooligans as the mindless attack-drones of Working-class spectatorship).  Cass also shows its subject’s sadness over the death of his father as well as his struggles in maintaining his life as ICF leader while starting a family.  

One interesting aspect of the film is the aspect of the business cards the ICF members carried that said “Congratulations - you have just met a member of the Inter City Firm”.  Outlaw Biker clubs also developed this practice.

english revolution - book - 1996 - Liberty Against the Law: Some Seventeenth Century Controversies

Liberty Against the Law: Some Seventeenth Century Controversies
Christopher Hill
Allen Lane
1996
354 pages

Christopher Hill was a major British historian whose specializes in the history of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century.  This history consists of a study of the transition from a full monarchical, feudal society towards a parliamentary government constitutional monarchy where power was shared between various sectors of society.  Probably Hill’s best known work is The World Turned Upside Down, a book about the revolutionary movements of that period (including The Diggers, The Ranters, and The Levellers as well as Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army) although he had written over twenty other books, edited a number of volumes (including an anthology of Digger texts), textbooks, and books about subjects such as the Russian Revolution of 1917.  

Liberty Against the Law is a book published well after Hill retired from academia in 1978.  It is essentially a series of historical sketches of subversive activity in England during the seventeenth century.  The book starts with discussions of issues and controversies surrounding things like the closing off of the commons and its effects on normal people, and the methods by which normal people may supplement the lacks in their life through the use of the forests and progress into brief historical discussions of groups of people who may be identified as subcultures or countercultures, such as pirates or vagabonds.  

Woodcut depicting the Diggers being forced off the common land they're cultivating

Woodcut depicting the Ranters

Woodcut depicting the Levellers' Putney Debates where the constitutional future of England was discussed.

The book is quite large although each chapter is fairly short and provides the reader with a succinct discussion of its topic in regards to its subversive qualities as well as its social value and import to the class which gives rise to it (which, when discussing things like piracy, smuggling, and poaching, is itself subversive).  It should be mentioned that Christopher Hill was an avowed Marxist, and his analysis of historical movements and features of the English underclass (such as vagabondia or a pervasive admiration for the folklore of Robin Hood) is driven by Marxian dialectics.

mohawk warriors - film - 1992 - Acts of Defiance

Acts of Defiance
Alec G. MacLeod
National Film Board of Canada
1992
104 Minutes

Acts of Defiance is just one of a small number of NFB documentaries that recorded the events of the 1990 Oka Crisis that took place in the Western Quebec communities of Oka and Kanetesake. The crisis erupted when the municipal government of the Oka permitted the expansion of a golf course and luxury housing development on land long used by the Mohawk people of Kanetesake for things like the burial of their dead. The Mohawk Warrior society mounted a campaign of armed resistance against this expansion which ultimately failed although the crises led to a renewal of First Nations activism in Canada and the rise of warrior societies in many First Nations communities.

Defiance, directed by Alec MacLeod, opens with the scene of an illegal bingo game at a Kanetesake community hall during which it is announced that the first prize (a lawnmower) was donated by the Warriors, demonstrating how the Warrior Society was already woven into community life in the area.  MacLeod’s film includes voices from all of the involved communities in his treatment of this crisis however it is the voices of the Mohawks and their Warriors that are represented most sympathetically by the director. Members of the Warriors (essentially those Mohawks who defended the disputed lands from construction crews and law enforcement) were the primary source of verbal information pertaining to the events and were shown admired and celebrated by their community.  Conversely, the police and military (Canadian Forces were called into Oka) appear absurd at best and heavy handed at worst, while politicians (such as the mayor of Oka, Jean Oulette) appear mean spirited, corrupt, and arrogant.  This privileging of the Mohawk voices challenges the representation of the events appearing in much of the press coverage of the crisis at the time, most of which consisted of statements issued by law enforcement, military, and governmental personnel who had an interest in resolving the dispute to the favour of land developers.  

The film shows the decision to develop land long used by Mohawks as a contemporary form of colonial dispossession of First Nations sovereignty. A striking fact stated early in the film is that more Mohawk land had been taken legally for development since 1950 than in the entire previous era of Mohawk-European contact. The disputed land was originally used by Mohawks for grazing their animals, then European settlers began playing golf there (thus scaring Mohawk animals) and eventually a legal apparatus organized to privilege white interests could only recognize the space as a golf course. The film, through its many Native voices, expresses a more recent history of Mohawk anger at Canadian politics and society: their exclusion from the Meech Lake negotiations, and the shooting of a man named David Cross during a dispute with police. Such events, in addition to the continual encroachment of First Nations land, led to the development of an intense resentment towards a dominant society that appeared to only show them disrespect and demand obedience.
Much of Acts of Defiance is about the inability (or refusal) of outsiders to understand Mohawk resentment and opposition to them. The Mohawk Warriors fought in infrequent gun battles with police and military during the summer of 1990, but MacLeod’s film also shows unarmed Kanehtesake villagers standing up to armed personnel (who are also empowered by governmental authority) as well.  Furthermore, it is clear from watching the film that the heavy handed actions of police (who are shown seizing cases of soft drinks during searches of all vehicles entering or leaving the Mohawk community) steeled the resolve of the entire Mohawk population against government forces. While the Quebec police produced the local First Nations community in its entirety as adversary, the military largely seemed present for the purpose of producing a particular representation of the events that advance a long-standing Euro/Native colonial discourse.  

Famous photo of Canadian Forces private Paul Cloutier in staring contest with Mohawk Warrior Brad  Larocque.  Here is Vancouver punk band DOA's appropriation of of the image for the cover of their 1993 album, Loggerheads.

Brief end notes: The film ends with a celebration of the Warriors society members who spent time in jail.  The celebrated members, both men and women, were named in the film and the list included the sculptor Joe David who was later paralyzed in a violent dispute with reserve police.  The film also borrows heavily from CBC’s coverage of the events, much of which can be found on the CBC digital archives.  Finally, Warren Kinsella’s Web of Hate, a history of organized racist activity in Canada includes accounts of pogroms, anti-Mohawk rallies, by the good people of Oka.

critical mass - book - 2010 - One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility

One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility
Zack Furness
Temple University Press
2010
348 pages

“War on the car” rhetoric has been common in Toronto over the past few years.  Such a phrase comes from the deployment of a particular form of rhetorical combat which positioning the car as the battered victim of mean-spirited bullies who call for alternatives to the one-driver-one-car commuter model simply because they hate the freedom that cars represent.  The kind of hyperbole represented by terms like “war on the car” presumes that the car is the de-facto centerpiece of urban living and any encroachment, no matter how minor, on its dominance of the city streets, is an abhorrent assault on decency and the traditional lifeways of post-industrial mankind. Thus calls for bike lanes in Toronto and critical recognition of how much noise and pollution and stress and congestion is added to the city by the flow of car traffic is ‘the war on the car.’  

Zack Furness’ book, One Less Car (borrowing his title from the popular pro-bike sticker seen on frames and racks)



investigates the dominant discourse surrounding cycling, particularly in the context of American cities wherein cycling is primarily a form of recreation.   Zack Furness is an assistant professor of cultural studies at Columbia College in Chicago.  He has gauged ears and tattoos, by the way, and after seeing his photo it occurred to me to check on whether or not he appears in a new (2012) Autonomedia book titled Punkademics, about punk university professors (including a contribution from my Trent University comrade, Alan O’Connor), and as it turns out, Furness edited that particular volume.  

One Less Car presents a dual approach to an investigation of contemporary cycling and politics.  The first is to look critically at the history of representations of the bicycle in popular culture and interrogate the discourse on the subject.  So, for example, according to Furness, the bicycle has been portrayed as a children’s toy with a primary function of preparing the young to become drivers.  Connected to that then, is the representation of adult cyclists in specific forms of American popular culture as stunted in maturity (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and The 40 Year Old Virgin).  

Otherwise, cycling is for the impoverished or for people who shirk a social responsibility to purchase a car.  These kinds of images produce a normative understanding of cycling as fodder for humour, but an absurd choice of transportation for a real-life American adult.

The second phase of critiquing the popular discourse is for Furness to cite all of the pundits who denounce urban cycling for whatever reason.  So many of the arguments Furness quotes are basically by people simply appalled that the road they use as auto-drivers should have to be shared with anyone else.  The arguments are typically of a “know your place” variety that presumes that an existing order of privilege is also fundamentally correct, and that the vulnerable who are threatening to put a minor strain on that privilege are, in essence, selfish.  For example, Furness cites one pundit who claims that a hypothetical (child) cyclist crushed under the wheels of an SUV is a threat to the driver’s safety and not the other way around.  This sort of argument emerges in a cultural environment where driving is always presumed as safe and cycling always presumed as dangerous, even though the invention and popularization of the automobile has unleashed a holocaust of death and injury, and the one major threat to the safety of cyclists is the exact same thing that threatens that of drivers - that is other reckless and inconsiderate motorists.

The other side to the analysis of the dominant discourse is the culture of radical cyclists: critical mass participants, bike co-ops, and things like that.  Modes of bike usage that revel in the ‘other’ status of the urban cyclist.  Much of Furness’ book is about explaining critical mass and he quotes frequently from Critical Mass inventor and chief theorist, Chris Carlsson, as well as other cycling intellectuals such as Microcosm Publishing founder/Bipedal, By Pedal zinester Joe Biel.  The section on critical mass subjects the monthly ride to the same rigorous critique as other aspects of the broader cycling discourse, although Furness is clearly sympathetic to the event and its underlying sentiments.