2. Representation
It should be known that film is by far used much more often as a commercial medium
than an educational tool. However it is important to note that social realist texts usually
focus on characters not generally found in mainstream films. The representation of
specific character types in realist texts has ‘tended towards social extension’. Hallam and
Marshment note how social realist texts focus on and include groups who might appear
in the backgrounds of Hollywood productions.
Hill has noted that that in British social realism, the social extension has largely
involved the working class at the economic and social change. In British social
realism, the social extension urge has moved to film-makers to redress social and
representational inequalities in relation to class. Portrayal not only seek to show
aspects of ‘the working class class way of life’ but also show these visions from a
political standpoint created from sets of assumptions about what is the realist and
the issues the characters within the remit of social realism.
3. Dodd and Dodd argue about the representation of the working class
in the documentaries of the 1930’s that in terms of representation,
documentaries of the 1930’s also worked to fetishise the working
class male body engaged in hard honest labour.
Lindsay Anderson felt that British cinema had severely under represented the
the working class and his work provides an example of the way social realist film
makers strive to improve upon previous conceptions of social realism.
The work of Anderson and his contemporaries represented a major break
from what they recognised to be stuffy and sterile documentary realism. The
representations of the working class in their documentaries were more
energetic and vibrant, due to the fascination for the newly developed youth
culture and respects for the ‘earthy’ and unpretentious traditional working
class, which these film makers regarded as being under threat from ‘the forces
of consumerism’ and the influence of american culture.
4. In the New wave films of the 1950’s and 60’s women were often the
target of violent attacks of their working class heroes and often figured
as either a threat to masculinity- through their obsession with marriage,
motherhood and settling down. In the 80’s the way women were
represented was changed by female centred social realist texts which
reflected the growing importance of the women in the the workforce
and society as a whole.
Hallam suggests that there was a shift from representing working class characters
as producers of labour to consumers of goods. The significant change that
accompanies this shift is by a move from depicting working class characters in
communities and in the workplace, where they are more capable of collective
bargaining and action, to envisioning them in the private made domestic and
leisure-time settings.
Higsons contends that a feature of British realism is that public and private space
are changing. It is explained by Hill as ‘The films of the British new wave displayed
a shift from political to private because their focus on culture aspects tended to
preclude work while their focus on the discontented male involved a down-playing
of collective conditions and actions of the person.
5. British social realism’s sense of of social extension is, in a multicultural,
multi faith Britain as bad as its lack of working class characters seemed
to Anderson in the 1950’s.
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Britain has a largely invisible population of refugees, asylum seekers and
illegal workers who are rarely found on British screens beyond news
bulletins and documentaries.
In conclusion the representation of working class characters in British social realist
films are on one hand being attended to within the framework of social extension
while on the other hand these texts seem to favour the white male working class
characters. In addition, in terms of issues and themes they are defined as ‘prone’ to
the social and psychological traumas of unemployment, violence and addiction. The
move from public to private, political to personal narrows the vision so much that the
wider structural inequalities, regionally, nationally an globally are lost from the
frame.
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