ENGLISH FOOTBALL FANS ARE JUST VICTIMS OF AGREESIVE MEDIA CAMPAIGNS?

…HOW LONG WILL THEY CONTINUE TO ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BE HOOKWINKED BY THE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS?
By Mansor Puteh


THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE IN MALAYSIA WHO DON’T SEEM TO REALIZE THAT THEY HAD BEEN MADE FULL USE OF, BY THE MEDIA TO BE SOMEBODY WHOM THEY ARE NOT AND LIKE SOMETHING WHICH THEY NEVER LIKED BEFORE?

I find it strange for many Malaysians who say they are ardent fans and fanatics of some of the football clubs in England. They are willing to spend long hours watching football matches on satellite television and waking up groggy the next morning.

They also wear their favorite football team's tee-shirts and other souvenirs around them and shirts or jackets with patches of their favorite clubs' logos. And their vehicles are also stuck with many stickers of the clubs.

Some of them even have names of their children from those of their favorite strikers and other players.

And during the World Cup finals, there are also many of them who suddenly change their loyalty and now support whatever country they choose, like they are also clubs. They have suddenly become imaginary citizens of those countries who fly their flags everywhere.

How could anyone in his right mind think of supporting a foreign country like he is a citizen of that country?

I do not care for the New York Yankees or the Red Socks American football teams, despite having lived in New York City and Boston in my university days in America.

In fact, I also do not have any interest in American football to start with and had not seen a full game when it was broadcast on television. I do not know most of the names of the players except for some of the more colorful ones.

And how could anyone be so passionate about giving his undivided support for a football club of foreign countries of a city which he has not visited before and can never do so in his life-time?

Why would any Malaysian want to fly the flags of foreign countries and paint their faces in the colors of those flags anyway? I find it odd.

It’s not enough for some of them to have a foreign American or British accent, but to be seen flying the flags of those countries and putting stickers of their flags on their vehicles, should be a strange sight.

But alas, many do not care if they are a strange sight anymore these days.

How could they allow themselves to be victims of such media campaigns which must have started in the early 1970s when Malaysians had television and when the advertising agencies started to get foreign advertising executives who gave them the idea that Malaysia is no more but an extension of the west, so everything they did had to complement this pseudo-ideology which continues to happen till now even when those foreign executives had long left the country and whose places had been taken over by the locals.

But alas, most of those in the advertising industry in Malaysia are not Melayu who had also studied abroad. So their fascination for things local is too restricted. Worse, when they had already developed some biases of their own that reflect in what they do for their clients.

The government had tried to Malaysianized the film industry and they have managed to do it with some measure of success. But there is still a lot for it to do before this can truly happen.
How come I am not into all these? I do not have any interest to support any English league football club or foreign country during the World Cup finals?

The reason is because of my advertising background, having a degree in it, to make me realize that all of this happens because of some ingenious advertising campaigns by the agencies who know the real weaknesses of many Malaysians.

So they devised an advertising strategy to attract their attention and to distract them to the other less important things in life and become ardent fans of a new game of brand loyalty.

In the past no one talked about foreign football clubs. Now many do. But there are many still, who do not care for them, and I am one of them.

So I hope those who claim to be fanatics of those clubs and countries, to be fully aware of their senses, and accept the fact that they are no more victims of shrewd advertising campaigns than they care to admit.

Shouldn’t they start to think about their personal interests and other hobbies that they can develop so that they are not seen to be groupies?

Many Malaysians are indeed groupies, who cannot function without having groups to join in, where everybody wears pretty much the same style of clothes and who also shout the same slogans.

What I find to be pathetic is how many of them who would also say pretty much the same things, on the matches which they had first heard on television being described by the football commentators.

And even our local football commentators are sounding like those they had heard from England, when they were exposed to them when they were younger. Now that they have become football commentators themselves serving the local television stations, they start to sound like those in England that they had seen or heard earlier.

Just listen to the way those foreign football clubs fanatics talk about the game they had just seen and one can tell if they are original or just a repeat of what they had heard on television, or what they had read in the trade magazines earlier.

Many Malaysians are now proud of the wrong things and activities. Everything foreign is good. Anything that is local is bad.

This is also one of the major strategies adopted by the local advertising agencies who do not want Malaysians to admire their own kinds who appreciate their other fellow Malaysians are doing.

They want to force everybody to be like them. So no wonder, those in the advertising agencies are some of the most ‘alien’ beings in Malaysia; they do not care if they look more foreign than the foreign tourists.

And when they have their annual dinners to celebrate the industry’s fraternity, they tend to even overdo this, and pretend that they are not Malaysians but pseudo-Americans.

One of the main victims of such an attitude is on how many Malaysians who have become so callous and who suffer from an identity crisis. They have acquired a different set of values which may not be compatible with the local ones.

They have also created a hatred of local sports, so much so that those who favor local football are those who are not too financially well-off to be able to appreciate foreign league football.

So now we see more Melayu supporting the local state football clubs as opposed to the non-Melayu who favor the foreign ones.
The fact that most of the local state and national footballers are Melayu is also another big distaste to them to be able to fully appreciate local football.

It is ironic how in Singapura where most of their footballers at the district and national levels are also Melayu, yet the crowds that frequent the matches are mostly the non-Melayu, so when their country won a major price in a Malaysian league tournament some time ago, many of them turned up at their stadium to greet them, irregardless of whether they are Melayu or non-Melayu.

Only some of them will grow out of their fascination for the foreign football teams and countries, when they grow older and wiser. But there will be some others who will take it to the next generation by encouraging their children to be like they are.