Arsenal F.C.: Encyclopedia II - Arsenal F.C. - Arsenal in popular culture

Arsenal F.C. - Arsenal in popular culture

As one of the most successful teams in the country, Arsenal have often featured when football is depicted in British culture. The club were the backdrop to one of the earliest football-related films, The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939). The film is centred on a friendly match between Arsenal and an amateur side, one of whose players is poisoned whilst playing. Many Arsenal players appeared as themselves, although only manager George Allison was given a speaking part.

More recently, the book Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby was an autobiographical account of Hornby's life and relationship with football and Arsenal in particular. Published in 1992, it formed part of, and may have played an active part in, the revival and rehabilitation of football in British society during the 1990s. The book was later made into a film starring Colin Firth, which centred on the club's 1988–89 title win.

Arsenal's perceived tendency to be defensive and "boring" through the 1970s and 1980s made the team the butt of jokes by many comedians such as Eric Morecambe. The theme was repeated in the 1997 film The Full Monty, in a scene where the lead actors move in a line and raise their hands, deliberately mimicking the Arsenal defence's offside trap, in an attempt to co-ordinate their stripping.

The club is also mentioned in several Monty Python's Flying Circus sketches, and in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: a barman remarks that the impending end of the world is a "lucky escape" for Arsenal, who are playing that afternoon. Most recently, in the 2004 box office hit Ocean's Twelve the stars put on Arsenal tracksuits to escape from a hotel as part of one of their European heists.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Arsenal in popular culture", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki