This document discusses British national identity and cultural diversity through examining British cinema from the 1940s to 2000s. It explores how nationality is constructed through geography, biology, race, ethnicity, institutions, shared values, and culture. Key periods of British cinema discussed include the Free Cinema movement of the 1950s, British New Wave of the 1960s, and social realist films that focused on working class lives. Contemporary representations of masculinity and the impacts of Thatcherism on British society in the 1980s are also summarized.

1. From “this sceptr‟d isle” to
This Is England
„British‟ Identities
and
Cultural Diversity

2. Key themes
• What is nationality?
• Historical snapshots: 1940s, 1960s, 1980s - 2000s
• British cinema: fiction and non-fiction
genres, movements, realism
• Heritage, mythology and monarchy
• Unity / fragmentation
– British nations
– Social class & gender: male identities
– Youth culture (and politics)
– 2nd generation Asian British
• Redefining Britishness?

4. What is Nationality?
“National identity is generally understood to be a shared identity of the naturalized
inhabitants of a particular political-geographical space – that is particular nations.
But how is that identity generated? How do members of a particular nation come to
take on that identity? Is national identity something we are born with as subjects of a
particular nation? Or is it something we learn?” (Higson, A. in Briggs & Cobley 1998)
The nation is far too vast an entity for all its members to know each other. Yet vital
to the sense of a nation is that its members form a unified community of people with
shared interests and concerns. The unification of people in the modern nation is
achieved…by cultural means…”in particular the role of the national media and the
education system in enabling a nation to imagine itself as a coherent, meaningful
and homogenous community.” (Anderson, B. 1983, referenced in Briggs & Cobley)

5. Why Britishness Now?
• Globalisation and insecurity of identity
• Reclaim patriotism from extremists
• How is nationality constructed?
– Geographically?
– Biologically?
– Racially, ethnically?
– Institutionally?
– Shared Values?
– Culturally?

9. Henry V (1944)

11. Brief Encounter 1945

12. Free Cinema Movement
1956-59
• documentaries
• determination to treat the lives of
ordinary people with respect
• examine British society with honest
and critical eye
• extend British cinema focus beyond
conservative middle class
preoccupations

13. We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959)

15. British New Wave 1960s
Cultural context:
• Spirit of Free Cinema
• European New Wave Cinema
• Northern working class novelists
• Theatre: Look Back in Anger 1958
• Angry Young Man type
• Art: John Bratby, Mother Bathing Child
• „Kitchen sink‟ drama

17. Social Realist Cinema: Origins
• Historical & Social: Industrial Revolution
• Literature, Art
– 18thC dominant representation „life as it is really lived‟
– 19thC „critical realism‟ – Dickens, photography
• Established British film genre:
– 1930s Documentary Film Movement
• Many realisms, contested term
• Realism: „truth‟ through recognising the importance of
social context
• Film realism: aesthetic construct

18. Social Realist Cinema:
Codes & Conventions
• Low budget, independent production, art house / TV
market
• Character and place are linked
• Branston & Stafford: 2 necessary characteristics
– capture experience
– deliver a message
• Raymond Williams: 4 criteria
– secular
– contemporary
– social extension
– artist‟s intent

19. Useful working definition for
students
“ „Social realist‟ films deal with
recognisable social problems, filmed in
„real‟ locations, often using some form
of „documentary style‟ camerawork and
an avoidance of any notions of
„glamour‟ or false „prettiness‟”.
(Branston & Stafford, The Media Student’s
Book, (2007, 4th ed, p.446)

29. Contemporary Male Types (Spicer)
• Heroic masculinity
• Lovable new man
• The underclass everyman
• Fools and rogues
• Criminals
• Rebels
• Damaged Men
• Ethnic Hybridity and Gay Identities

30. The Everyman?
Within a heterogeneous postmodern consumer culture it is
extremely difficult to offer a consensual figure of the ordinary
Everyman. However, there are, I suggest, two antithetical
versions, one that is resoundingly middle-class and therefore
only partially representative; the other from an „underclass‟
whose low status is eloquent testimony to the ravages of
Thatcherism. What has gone, almost completely, is the decent
dependable working-class paterfamilias or the boy-next-door.”
(Spicer A. 2001: 186-187)

33. This is England (2006)

34. Thatcherism
• Reaction to strikes and shortages of Labour govt at end of the 1970s
• Wollen: 3 elements of Thatcherism
– Light touch neo-liberalism
– Neo-conservative authoritarianism
– National division north / south
“…Thatcherism had a moral crusade to weed out and punish the „workshy‟,
to encourage materialism, to re-establish the family, whilst at the same
time introducing repressive legislation to „outlaw those lifestyles and
pursuits which contradicted Thatcherite ideology (gay men and women,
single mothers, trades union activists and, later, travelers, ravers and
demonstrators. The social and political context proved to be a spur to
many working in the arts, and the early to mid-1980s saw a general
shift to more left-field politics.”
(Lay, S. British Social Realism, Wallflower, 2002)

35. My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)