Popular Culture
The British sitcom Green Wing features a fictional game, Guyball ( /ˈɡiːbɔːl/ GHEE-ball), which parodies the obscurity of public school pastimes such as the Eton wall game. It is introduced by Guy Secretan, who learned the sport at the fictional school Whiteleaf (/ˈhwɪtlɪf/ WHIT-lif). The object of the game is to throw balls in a "Topmiler", a wicker basket on top of a leather flying helmet. However, the rules of Guyball are never fully explained, and are designed to be as confusing and as difficult to understand as possible. Fans of the show have however created their own rules, and the game was occasionally played 'for real'.
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild has a far more sadistic variant of the "Wall Game", and is essentially an extreme hybrid of rock-climbing and dodgeball.
In the first of Charlie Higson's Young Bond novels SilverFin, the young James Bond comes to Eton and learns the rules of the Wall Game.
J.V. Hart's young adult novel, 'Capt. Hook', also features the Wall Game. The young Hook, an Oppidan at Eton College, plays in the St. Andrew's Day competition.
The game was a subject of the 1987 book, The Sports Hall of Shame, by Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo.
Read more about this topic: Eton Wall Game
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
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“Just try to prove you’re not a camel!”
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)