Social Realism- Conventions
Social realism in films is representative of real life, with all its difficulties. The stories and people portrayed are everyday characters, usually from working class backgrounds. Typically, films within the social realist canon are gritty, urban dramas about the struggle to survive the daily grind.
Social Realism in British films peaked during the 1960s when what is commonly referred to as the British New Wave.
But social realism is more than just a genre; it is the dominant form of cinema in British film. Just as the classic Hollywood narrative dominates the American film industry regardless of genre, so social realism and political awareness permeate British cinema.
This is as true today as it was half a century ago, with social realism evident in popular British films such as Trainspotting, Brassed Off, Nil by Mouth, My Name Is Joe, This Is England, Human Traffic and 24 Hour Party People and more recently Kidulthood/Adulthood. All of these films are similar, they are not expense spectacles. They have a cast that is not in mainstream films. If the film is British, the cast will be pre-dominantly English.
British social-realist film-making originated in the 1930s documentary movements, desire for the cinema to play a positive role in society beyond entertainment for profit. social realism is, it's basically a representation of a 'life as it really is' often portrayed using the working class and comments on political and social issues current to the setting of the film. It’s usually low budget and aimed at an art circuit and the films resist resolution, they a more documentary.
Social Realism and Representation
Social realist texts usually focus on the type of characters not generally found in mainstream films. Social realist texts draw in characters that inhabit the social margins of society in terms of status and power. This ‘social extension’ has usually involved the representation of the working class at moments of social and economic change. Hill has noted that this is not just a matter of representing the previously under-represented but that these subjects are represented from different specific social perspectives.
For example there was a shift in modes of representation of the working class from the Grierson documentaries of the 1930s to British Free Cinema documentaries and the British New Wave features, which followed on from the Free Cinema Movement. Free Cinema and new wave chose to represent the working class neither in victim mode, nor in heroic worker mode as had been done previously. The working classes were to be seen as more energetic and vibrant.
Critics generally accept that women have faired badly in the representations of the British New Wave, although Loach’s Poor Cow (1967) and TV docudramas Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home helped redress the balance. By the 1980s social realist films such as Letter to Brezhnev (1985), Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) reflected the changing nature of society and the growing importance of women in the workforce, not only women but humor too was more apparent. This approach continued into the 1990s with films such as Mike Leigh’s Career Girls (1997). Some have argued that the portrayal of women took a retrograde step in the mid to late 1990s as they became adept consumers unsupportive of husbands as in Brassed Off (1996) and The Full Monty (1997). Alternatively women became victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse Stella Does Tricks (1996), Nil By Mouth.
It has been argued that in general the representation of the working class has shifted from being producers to consumers reflected in a move that has seen members of the working class in more privatized domestic environments and leisure-time settings instead of as members of geographical communities or in workplace environments where collective bargaining procedures are in place. Hill sees this as starting with British social realist films of the 1960s and continuing into the 1980s and 1990s.
Whilst social realist representation has tended to focus upon white working class males there has been some breakthrough in terms of race in films such as My Beautiful Launderette (1985) and Bahji on the Beach (1994). The changing sense of Britishness has been represented through cultural hybridity and multiculturalism from the mid 1980s through until Chada’s Bend it Like Beckham moving from social real to a more fantasy mode in the process. Recently social extension has begun to be granted to the position of asylum seekers and refugees and those affected by the diasporic forces relating to globalisation and the collapse of the post-capitalist states (Soviet Union / Communist China). Last Resort (Pawlikowski 2000) and Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002), which keeps in the frame wider issues of the structures of globalised inequality from a social realist perspective.
Another facet of social realist representation has been a tendency towards autobiography suggests Lay (2002). Starting with the work of Bill Douglas and Terence Davie, Lay suggests that this was present in films such as Wish You Were Here (A retro-social realist film), Stella Does Tricks, East is East and Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsey, 1999). It is arguable that these films contain within them a nostalgic look backwards from a working class perspective, which in some sense echoes the growth and success of the ‘heritage film’ in British cinema.
Posted by Conor Bunn
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