THEME BY MARAUDERSMAPS
nikhak

Famed British literary theorist Terry Eagleton’s book Figures of Dissent (2003) includes essays on radical political and cultural figures like the eccentric Lacanian critical theorist Slavoj Žižek, post-colonial scholar Gayatri Spivak, Oscar Wilde, and T.S. Eliot. Sandwiched between his terse but dense musings on these radical thinkers and anti-establishment gadflies is an essay on David Beckham. The essay, first published in the Guardian as a review of Beckham’s 2000 autobiography My World, is charitable enough to Beckham the man, who Eagleton notes seems like a genuinely “loving father” and someone who clearly “detests racism.” However, in less than three pages Eagleton also convincingly establishes that Beckham the man is all but irrelevant to his legacy and appeal as a public figure if not as a “figure of dissent.” For Eagleton, Beckham’s visceral allure is rooted in his ability to symbolically balance working-class chav-ness with late-capitalist sexiness: a tattooed teetotaler whom men imagine performing gut-busting acts of physical exertion for club and country, and whom women imagine performing gut-busting acts of physical exertion for, well, something else entirely. His status as soccer god and metropolitan sex god is based on the subtle ruse that he is more anti-establishment than he actually is. And what he actually is, according to Eagleton, is a “public fetish,” a monument to neoliberal consumer-culture vapidity that has come to represent the post-Thatcher, post-Love Actually British cultural milieu. (Read the rest at The Run of Play)

fauxhawksneverdie:

World Cup bad hair, Group C. England’s representative: David James.

Totally disagree. Always awesome hair! 

fauxhawksneverdie:

World Cup bad hair, Group C. England’s representative: David James.

Totally disagree. Always awesome hair! 

soccerblog11:

Beckham’s Boots - Conflicting loyalties aside, they’re mostly remarkable for their cleanliness.

They have his kids names on them - so cute!

happybeekeeper: footysphere:
Women’s football in Portsmouth, England 1917
via flickr

happybeekeeperfootysphere:

Women’s football in Portsmouth, England 1917

ls86:

In 1950 World Cup: USMNT 1 - England 0

Lets do it again boys!

"It’s more important to play for the LA Galaxy this weekend than England."

David Beckham

…its about fucking time

(via ls86)

must put this movie on the list of movies to see

skins » mods » soul » footy

paris87:

This is England.

Queen Elizabeth 1 was horrified by the british sport.