Figo and Pig's Head: Dirt on the flag

The picture records the moment when Luis Figo was going to take the corner kick in Camp Nou in 2002 (Jennings 2018). Some audience yelled at him, trying to drive him away from the stadium. The scene was in stark contrast to the moment when the audience welcomed him as the rising star of the club after his move to FC Barcelona. At that moment, someone threw a pig’s head towards him, which created one of the most famous scenes in football history. The particular hostility wasn’t baseless, as Figo’s move from FC Barcelona to Real Madrid was considered one of the biggest betrayals in football history. He was deemed one of the team’s most important players. Nevertheless, in 2000, as the captain, Figo transferred to Real Madrid, the primary rivalry for Barca because of the pre-agreement with the new president of Real Madrid. The deal, unexpected to most Barca fans, made Figo “Judas” from the perspective of Barca fans.

Figo’s character as the betrayer and the Barca supporters’ reactions to him remind me of Douglas’ discussion on dirt and body margins in “Purity and Danger”. According to Douglas, “dirt offends against order” (Douglas 1966:2). Therefore, it is never surprising that people would dedicate efforts to cleaning up messy bathrooms. That is not fundamentally driven by the craven fear of certain rules or the concern about hygiene problems (Douglas 1966:2-3). Instead, people always try to reorganize the environment and force everything to conform to an idea. Her most important metaphor is the universal connection between body margin and the danger in different societies across time. Douglas described the body to be “a model which can stand for any bounded system” (Douglas 1966:142). Paralleling to the potential traitors of a society or group, anything issuing from the boundary, such as excreta, is never allowed to enter into the guarded system again. Especially while facing the “danger pressing on external boundaries,” any threats “in the margins of the lines” or “from the internal contradictions” will be particularly serious problems to social purity (Douglas 1966:152). Based on the extended metaphor, Douglas opposed the idea that concern about body margins should be attributed to primitive people’s “psychological shortcomings” (Douglas 1966:144). Instead, modern society also shares the concern and has similar rules to regulate the body margins and exits. 

Douglas’ symbolic of “body margin” is straightforwardly indeed applied in today’s modern society, as people threw different leftovers in the photo towards Figo: the bottles, banana peels, and pig’s head. They are the margins of eating and drinking. The scene seemed to establish the connection described by Douglas between primitive and modern societies: the stadium became the site of primitive rituals, where people used “body dirt as ritual instrument of harm” (Douglas 1966:149). They attempted to demonstrate the authority of the collective order against the pollution of betrayal, though Figo should not be fully responsible for his unexcused leave. Here, Douglas emphasized the threat of the traitor being excluded due to the internal contradictions over the enemies outside the boundary to make sense of people’s shared concerns. Likewise, the members of the community actually concerned more than the decline in the competence of the club to win the trophies because of Figo’s leave. More importantly, the “betrayal” could potentially undermine the team’s solidarity. The impurity of disloyalty could corrupt the purity of loyalty and cohesion. That is, Figo’s leave thus reminded other players of uncertain opportunities in other clubs when they kept pursuing the remaining players and competing against the club on the pitches. The problem was especially influential as his destination, Real Madrid, had a long history of competing against Barca until now, so the members of the community (e.g., fans and officials) would inevitably add the character of “betrayal” to the move. These enemies “pressing on external boundaries” (i.e., competing against Barcelona in the league) intensified club officials’ and other followers’ rigorous attitudes towards the event. Thus, Figo ultimately became the dirt that disorganized the maintained collective order and would be excluded as the “body margin” of the system. People were eager to sweep out the harm from the system and restore cohesion and loyalty (purity) through the ritual to create the divide between their club and Figo. They expected that the conduct could prevent the extension of the polluting effect by demonstrating the authority of the collective order, which particularly resembled the purpose of similar primitive rituals. 

In conclusion, the audience’s response to Luis Figo’s transfer to the stadium is a typical reflection of how particular social groups react to the internal offence to the collective order in Douglas’s proposed way. The threat of internal contradictions and subsequent “betrayal” would raise group members’ more radical exclusion by the connection between the action and body margins. Thus, the case is important support for Douglas’ argument on the universality of primitive and modern societies on the concern about pollution of social order and the symbolic of body margins to represent the pollution.

References: 

Douglas, Mary. 1966. “Purity and Impurity:An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo.” Routledge.

Jenning, Patrick. 2018. “Barcelona v real madrid: The curious incident of the pig's head at the Nou Camp.” BBC Sport. October 26. Retrieved April 2, 2025 (https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/45956352)