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:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“I know that there are many persons to whom it seems derogatory to link a body of philosophic ideas to the social life and culture of their epoch. They seem to accept a dogma of immaculate conception of philosophical systems.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)