Column

Comment

Football

Identity

Sport

6 December 2024

5 min read

Football’s rainbow row shows up symbolism’s flaws

The vagueness that gives symbols power reduces the chance for nuanced conversation.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

Premier League.

In 2013, the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall partnered with the Premier League to launch the Rainbow Laces campaign. For certain matches, Premier League footballers are encouraged to wear rainbow colour laces and armbands when captain.

The stated aim of the campaign is to ensure “everyone feels welcome” at football matches. All the league’s clubs have committed to the campaign, although the wearing of laces and armbands is optional for players.

Recently, Ipswich Town’s captain Sam Morsy decided to wear a standard captain’s armband, rather than the rainbow-coloured version. The club later released a statement saying he made this decision due to his religious beliefs, which the club respected. Morsy again declined to wear the rainbow-coloured armband for Ipswich’s match against Crystal Palace a few days later.

Speaking of Crystal Palace, their captain – Marc Guehi – did wear the armband, but wrote “I [heart] Jesus” on it. While the FA did not punish Guehi or Palace, they did write to them to remind them that religious messaging of any kind was not permitted on kits. Subsequently, during Tuesday’s match against Ipswich, Guehi changed the message to “Jesus [heart] you.”

It says something about society’s view of Christianity that people saw Guehi’s “I [heart] Jesus” message and took it as an anti-LGBTQ+ message. The Church is doing something wrong if people can so easily equate loving Jesus with hating LGBTQ+ people.

Of course, it is undeniable that many people have been – and continue to be – discriminated against and persecuted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity in acts of violence and abuse underwritten by religious beliefs.

However, being ‘religious’ is not a straightforward predictor of someone’s views of sexual orientation. Many people who self-identity as Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or as members of any number of other faiths, would describe themselves as inclusive and affirming of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

So, why are we talking about what colour armband grown men are wearing – or not wearing – when playing football?

The issue emerges because of the use of these armbands as symbols. Symbols are inherently empty of content; they only mean something when individuals or groups assign meanings to those symbols.

This is how the meaning ascribed to symbols changes over time, as they are used in different ways and received by different social groups. For centuries, the swastika was a wholly positive religious symbol in a variety of traditions across Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, often carrying connotations of prosperity and good fortune.

You would be hard pressed to find someone who ascribes this meaning to the swastika from the 1930s onwards.

Symbols are powerful, but they are so precisely because they are devoid of intrinsic meaning. Humans are unsurpassed in their ability to fall out with one another. By centring campaigns and movements around symbols, people who would ordinarily be at each other’s throats are more easily able to stand alongside one another, ‘filling’ the symbol with whatever meaning sits most comfortably with them. They are meaningless banners under which odd bedfellows might bury the hatchet in service of greater aims.

But symbols can be a double-edged sword. Their lack of concrete meaning also allows different people to find competing meanings in the same symbol. Part of the reason for the dispute over the wearing of rainbow armbands, then, is due to different groups ascribing different meanings to the same symbol.

For some footballers, being encouraged to wear rainbow armbands might be received as being encouraged to wear a symbol encoded with meanings that undermine their entire system of religious belief.

And, for these people, religious belief is not an optional extra; it is their most fundamental identity and it is the framework within their entire existence and experience is rationalised and given meaning. To undermine a framework like this is no trivial matter.

But for people who identity as LGBTQ+, seeing their team’s captain wearing a rainbow armband might ‘mean’ something as simple as: “If you identify as LGBTQ+, you are welcome here at this football match, and we want you to feel safe here.”

It’s not hard to see how a refusal to wear an armband might be received as a slap in the face for people who ascribe that meaning to the armband; it’s tantamount to a refusal to acknowledge their existence. While it unfortunately does need repeating, the mere existence of LGBTQ+ people is not a threat to religious belief.

The malleability of the symbol means that both individuals – and by extension, the groups to which they belong – are left feeling as though there is no space for them in football. Or, at the very least, that they have to compromise on being who they are if they are to be afforded a place within the football community.

The desire for beige corporate gestures designed to be cheap, easy and unoffensive wins often reduces the scope for conversation and dialogue.

And this is the problem with trying to navigate complex issues such as societal inequality through tokenistic gestures and symbols: the same power that enables symbols to unite people can also divide people. The same vagueness that makes symbols so powerful also minimises the possibility for genuine and nuanced conversation.

This is not to say we should do away with such gestures altogether. The comedian Matt Lucas took to X to recount something of his experiences as an Arsenal fan. Twice this season – just this season – Lucas has been abused at football matches because of his sexuality.

I’ve never been abused at a football match because of my sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, or, for that matter, my religious beliefs. I don’t think it’s up to me to decide what does and does not make LGBTQ+ supporters feel welcome and safe at the match. If symbols such as rainbow armbands make these supporters feel safer at football matches – and again, it’s not up to me to decide if they do or they don’t – then I can only imagine that is an unqualified positive.

That being said, if football is going to have meaningful and fruitful conversations about questions of faith, religion, and sexuality, then I think it’s clear that tokenistic use of symbols is simply not equipped for that. Like so much contemporary public discourse, the desire for beige corporate gestures designed to be cheap, easy and unoffensive wins often reduces the scope for conversation and dialogue.

Symbols lie at the heart of human experience. The fallout from the actions of Sam Morsy and Marc Guehi demonstrates the significance of symbols to human life, but also of the importance of understanding the meaning of our cultural symbols, both as we understand them, and as they are understood by others.

Too often we focus on what symbols mean to us, at the expense of what they might mean to others. When we assume that symbols carry a shared, fixed meaning for all, we deny ourselves the opportunity to listen and learn from the ways in which we experience our shared cultural symbols.

And if there is one thing we really could do with more of, it is listening.

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Review

Culture

Film & TV

Identity

Weirdness

9 December 2024

5 min read

Nightbitch’s metamorphosis of motherhood

In parenting the best things in life cost everything and nothing.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A woman runs down a street at night accompanied by dogs

Amy Adams, running with the dogs.

Searchlight Pictures.

With birth rates declining, family breakdown increasing and what has been called an anxiety epidemic amongst children, a film about the raw challenges of motherhood – aimed at men as much as women - has to make us sit up and take notice.

Nightbitch does exactly that. Based on Rachel Yoder’s lockdown novel of the same name, it tells the story of a stay-at-home mum who, faced with the brutal realities of modern-day mothering, discovers her feral side – and transforms into a dog.

The film stars Amy Adams, an exceptional actress known for her roles in Arrival—a Denis Villeneuve masterpiece about aliens arriving on Earth—and other iconic films like Man of Steel (as Lois Lane), Enchanted (where she plays the central character), and Night at the Museum (as Amelia Earhart). In this film she delivers a powerful and deeply emotional performance as another alienated character, once a successful artist with a promising career, now reduced to part-parent, part-nightbitch.

The plot has echoes of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, where travelling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up one day to find himself transformed into a giant insect. While Samsa’s arthropod transformation signifies entrapment and helplessness, Amy’s canine alter-ego provides a contrasting sense of liberation, offering her an empowering path of fierce self-assertion amid the demands of motherhood that have become overwhelming and suffocating. Nevertheless, both magical realism narratives use animal transformation to explore profound feelings of loss of identity, isolation and inequality - themes that are especially relevant in a time when pressures on families are immense.

Identity loss

Introducing herself to a group of new mothers, Amy’s character, who remains nameless throughout, says, “I used to be an artist.” Her inability to articulate who she is reflects so much: her loss of purpose, loss of social identity, loss of external validation, loss of financial independence, loss of cognitive functions, loss of self-worth. But it is not only her transformation into a dog that depicts this. There’s a poignant moment as the film opens when Amy bumps into the woman who has taken her old job. The stark contrast between their appearances—Amy looks pretty rough compared to her perfectly turned-out replacement—highlights just how different her life now is. It seems to me that this image of identity loss will resonate with all who face the struggle to reclaim oneself after a major life event, but especially with new mothers.

Isolation

Though Amy’s character is married, her husband is often absent, working long hours to provide financially. When he is home, he seems to want the pre-motherhood version of his wife, engaging only in the lighter aspects of parenting while avoiding the ongoing challenges. This dynamic leaves Amy’s character feeling alone and disconnected from her husband. Not only that, Amy’s initial attempts to connect with other mothers at her child’s nursery fall flat. Although they share the bond of motherhood, she finds their conversations unfulfilling. Similarly, when she reconnects with her old work friends, she discovers their lives have moved on without her, deepening her sense of displacement. She doesn’t fit in at home, at work, or in her community. She is trapped between worlds and is deeply isolated. Nightbitch offers a powerful antidote to Insta-perfect images of parenthood. The stark visual this film provides of the mother running away from the home at night as a dog challenges us to take seriously the need for mothers to escape claustrophobic societal expectations and to find autonomy, community and support.

Inequality

The third key theme explored in the film is the inequality between the male and female experiences of parenthood, as it portrays how much of the burden falls on women. Statistics only confirm the ongoing gender disparities, with women far more likely than men to reduce working hours and sacrifice their career prospects. Women disproportionately shoulder the long-term economic and professional consequences of parenthood, as well as the day-to-day duties of parenting. Add to this the emotional impact of isolation and identity loss, and the burden becomes almost insurmountable. This cumulative strain is faced by all those who are expected to seamlessly transition from independent individuals to selfless caregivers, often with little structural support. The film lays bare how these pressures, left unaddressed, can fracture not only individual lives but the entire stability of the family.

The film left me with questions:

Have I played my part?

As a father, watching this film prompted me to reflect deeply on my own family dynamic. Do we divide responsibilities fairly? Have one person’s dreams or ambitions been side-lined for the sake of the others? Do I overlook or undervalue what my wife does? What happened to the balance we originally envisioned and agreed upon as a couple?

Where is the support?

I also wondered about the structural support needed for those beginning their parenting journey. Then I remembered who facilitates tens of thousands of parent and toddler groups each week across the UK – the Church. Over a third of children under four attend these groups, translating to millions of parents and carers finding access to a lifeline – a welcoming environment and space for connection and mutual support. Do churches know what an important role they are playing? Do new parents know what is available to them there?

Is parenting only a burden?

While the film expresses brilliantly the challenges of parenthood, does it do so at the expense of expressing its joys? In my own experience parenting 30 children through birth, fostering, and adoption in almost the same number of years, I am still trying to work through the paradoxes. How can it be both overwhelming and overwhelmingly enriching. Both lonely, and connect us to the privilege of unconditional love? How is it that in parenting the best things in life cost everything and nothing?

At the London Film Festival Premiere that I attended, Amy Adams also reflected personally on the film:

“It gave me an opportunity to not only tell my relationship with my mother but also my sister and my friends…. There was a deep universality to the experience of motherhood but also the exploration of relationship inside of parenthood,, the relationship with husband. Everything just fell so true, relatable, and funny.”

In the end, Nightbitch is more than a dark, fantastical, funny tale of transformation; it’s a powerful mirror held up to modern family life that everyone can benefit from considering. It challenges traditional gender roles and expectations, inspires reflection on sacrifices and struggles, and provokes important questions about identity, privilege and partnership in the complex journey of parenthood and beyond.