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Foul Play: Soccer’s “Infamous Thespians” and the Cultural Politics of Diving
- TDR: The Drama Review
- The MIT Press
- Volume 60, Number 1, Spring 2016 (T229)
- pp. 10-24
- Article
- Additional Information
“Diving” or “simulation,” according to FIFA’s Laws of the Game, is an attempt to deceive referees by feigning injury or pretending to have sustained a foul. When examined as a performance strategy, simulation in football reveals a tacit reliance on the aesthetic criteria of realist acting and incites an antitheatrical discourse that services xenophobic anxieties in the new Europe.