2. Contemporary Audience.
When we look at the characters of This Is England it is clear what era they are from due to the characters costume and
hair and make up, an example of this would be Shaun's Mother in the film, we can tell from her hairstyle and glasses
that Meadows wanted to portray to the audience a certain time period for his film, he wanted to show the film as
being set in the 1980’ s whereas it was actually filmed in 2006. This allows the audience now to see the contrast in
living from the characters in the film compared to the era in which the characters are watching from.
3. Social Extension.
Shane Meadows also linked to Williams theory, he includes a group of youths aged from around 15-25 who
indulged in somewhat negative working class activities such as consuming alcohol and drug taking, these groups
of people are not the type of social group which are shown in the ‘Hollywood’ movies. They lived on working
class estates and either were unemployed or had jobs which were underpaid and left them struggling in day to
day life.
4. Political Ideas.
Shane meadows portrays political ideas through the characters of This Is England, they are generally working class
and we can see this through there attitudes and actions. The political ideas shows the struggle that working class
citizens have to go through and example of this would be living in below standard condition housing in a rough area
of an estate or unemployment or a jobs which doesn't offer enough pay and makes day today life hard and a struggle.
We can tell from the photo below that the housing conditions are drab due to the scrap material used for curtains and
the bare walls, we also see no furniture indicating poverty.
5. Secular Society.
Another of Williams' Ideas which is portrayed in Shane Meadows production of This Is England would be that of a
secular society. Many of the characters have an upside down cross in-between there eyes and somewhere on there
body indicating there anti religious views, we also see a lot of aggression in the films, which the picture below
highlights, including racial discrimination which again replicates a society in which religion is not key and rebelled
against, the characters also partake in drug and alcohol abuse.
