How Does It Feel?’: Masculinity, Transformation and Structures of Feeling in British Television in the 1970S and 1980S
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‘How Does it Feel?’: Masculinity, Transformation and Structures of Feeling in British Television in the 1970s and 1980s Nigel Dyer BA (Hons), MA, MA, PGCE Director of Studies: Dr. Robert Shail 2nd Supervisor: Dr. Susan Drake This research was undertaken under the auspices of the University of Wales: Trinity Saint David and was submitted in partial fulfilment of a Degree of PhD in the School of Film and Digital Media of the University of Wales. January 2015 Volume 1 of 2 Abstract This thesis examines representations of masculinity in British television of the 1970s and 1980s which reveal a structure of feeling around masculine discourses of the period. It questions the ease of transformative change in gender identities and gender relations in terms of masculine performance by stressing both limitations and resistance to change against the backdrop of social, cultural and economic shifts which took place in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. While the Introduction sets out the key questions and problems which this thesis addresses together with the historical context, Chapter Two consists of a Literature Review of some of the most important extant literature concerned with the representations of masculinity on screen. Chapter Three establishes the methodological framework which underpins this investigation which incorporates both textual analysis, particularly through the application of Raymond Williams’s concept of structures of feeling, and gender theory. The thesis then goes on to deconstruct the work of a number of television writers who foregrounded a structure of feeling around male anxieties examining the interrelation between residual, dominant and emergent discourses of gender within their work. In the first of a series of case studies, Chapter Four examines the work of Peter McDougall arguing that the social structures which underpin his protagonists’ milieu are so potent and insidious that they render masculine transformation as highly problematic. Chapter Five places Trevor Preston’s Fox and Alan Bleasdale’s Boys From the Blackstuff as the obverse of each other as responses to social change. The former shows how patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity remains in place by absorbing emergent 1 discourses into adapted configurations of gender practice, the latter reveals the increasing marginalisation of traditional masculinities whilst largely ignoring gender inequity. Chapter Six examines Clement and La Frenais’ Auf Wiedersehen, Pet where more fluid, open, fragile, and multiple masculine identities emerge as a consequence of a variety of discursive practices and inter-subjectivity. Yet in the face of change the narratives stress the importance of nostalgic homosociality as a way of reaffirming residual identities. In conclusion this thesis suggests a model of gender which, whilst undergoing a considerable degree of destabilisation which may facilitate certain changes in normative behaviour, may also be so deeply entrenched within the individual and collective unconscious as to render certain aspects of reflexive transformation problematic. 2 Contents Abstract 1 Contents 3 1 Introduction 1.1 Aims 5 1.2 The Case for Television 10 1.3 White, Heterosexual, Working-class Masculinities 20 1.4 The Historical Context 24 1.5 Structures of Feeling 34 1.6 Thesis Structure 46 1.7 Conclusion 53 2 Literature Review 2.1 Introduction 55 2.2 Masculinity and Film: American Cinema 58 2.3 Masculinity and Film: British Cinema 66 2.4 Masculinity and Television 78 2.5 Masculinity Studies 85 3 Methodology 3.1 Textual Analysis and Structures of Feeling 94 3.2 Gender Theory 106 3.3 Structure and Agency 112 3.4 Conclusion 117 4 Dead End: Peter McDougall and John Mackenzie 4.1 Introduction 119 4.2 Peter McDougall in Context 122 4.3 Masculinity, Social Structures and Class 140 4.4 Work, Play and Identity in Working-Class Cultures 146 4.5 Clydesideism, the Hard Man and Dysfunctionality 155 4.6 Masculinity and Violence 162 4.7 Violence and the Public Affirmation of Masculinity 171 4.8 Identity, Affective Localism and the ‘Narcissism of Minor Differences’ 175 4.9 Transformation and Escape 181 4.10 Conclusion 188 3 5 North and South: Trevor Preston and Alan Bleasdale 5.1 Introduction 191 5.2 Tales of Two Cities: Fox and Boys from the Black Stuff 194 5.3 Fox: Introduction 200 5.4 Fox, Patriarchy and Masculinity 210 5.5 King Billy the Patriarch 214 5.6 Fox and Nostalgia 220 5.7 Billy’s Sons 227 5.8 Boys from the Black Stuff: Introduction 240 5.9 Identity and Work 247 5.10 Chrissie and Yosser 251 5.11 Boys from the Black Stuff and Nostalgia 258 5.12 What about the Women? 263 5.13 Change and Entrapment 276 5.14 Conclusion 283 6 Howay the Lads!: Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais 6.1 Introduction 286 6.2 Breaking Away: The Emergence of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet 289 6.3 Britain in the 1980s 305 6.4 Changing Class, Changing Masculinities 311 6.5 Fatherhood and Relationships 324 6.6 Feelings 332 6.7 Homosociality 336 6.8 The Heroic Project, Mythologising and Nostalgia 345 6.9 Conclusion 352 7 Conclusion 355 Bibliography 370 Teleography and Filmography 404 4 1 Introduction 1.1 Aims Identities are not fixed essences locked into eternal differences. They are fluid possibilities, the elements of which can be reassembled in new political and cultural conditions.1 As historically specific organisations of language, discourses present themselves in the plural, coexisting within temporal frames, and instituting unpredictable and inadvertent convergences from which 2 specific modalities of discursive possibilities are engendered. This thesis aims to explore discursive constructions of masculinity in relation to new emergent discourses in the 1970s and 1980s. Through the analysis of fictional television narratives of the period it will seek to demonstrate the existence of masculine anxieties around change and adaptation, and endeavour to establish why transformation in masculinity and gender relations remained so problematic for many men. It will go on to analyse how fictional representations of men, as faltering and directionless, but entrenched, reveal deficiencies and instabilities within constructions of masculinity, examining how the narratives frequently work to re- legitimise or re-formulate dominant discourses of gender. While this thesis seeks to investigate the televisual representations of masculinity through a number of theoretical perspectives concerned with the construction and performance of masculine identities, what underpins this study is a methodological approach based upon Raymond Williams’s concept of structures of feeling, which will explore both text with context. The programmes themselves will reveal the feelings and experiences of fictional representations of men within the broader social 1 Jeffrey Weeks, The Lesser Evil and the Greater Good: The Theory and Politics of Social Theory (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1994), p. 12. 2 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 184. 5 and cultural structures of the period. The overall aim of the thesis is to isolate a structure of feeling expressed by a number of significant writers which emphasises anxieties around white, heterosexual, working-class masculinities. It will reveal how they attempt to manage emergent discourses while simultaneously engaging with dominant and residual ones. It will go on to investigate the degrees of embeddedness and resistance to social and cultural changes in order to establish the reasons for these, informed by a number of significant theoretical studies on identity and reflexive transformation. If then, as the opening quotations of Weeks and Butler have asserted, identities should be seen as fluid, this thesis will argue that they may also be embedded and constrained. With the emergence of new positions and new identities, produced in changing economic and social circumstances, the question arises, to what extent are people able to reconstruct themselves and their own identities? How are changes which are deemed to affect identity experienced and what effect do they have on the construction and crucially the maintenance of identities? If, as I will argue, many men’s constructed masculine identities were particularly resistant to new cultural conditions this then leads to questions about how identity is formed and maintained, the relationship between construction, limits and constraints and the dialectic of social structures and agency. My aim then, in an attempt to answer these questions around identity, is to examine key fictional television texts which were broadcast at a particular time in Britain when the very notion of working-class masculine identity and the attendant structures and institutions which underpinned it, were challenged socially, culturally and economically. In his work on masculinity in literature Knights has suggested that 6 male identities are ‘reinforced and re-enacted through social forms of communication’ and fictional narratives are an important part of this.3 ‘Stories oriented to men and to men’s experiences’, argues Knights, ‘not only articulate for the future what it is to live and be as a man, they also act as a blueprint for future 4 stories’. As Woodman has observed, while fictions may relate to a fictional past they also ‘revalidate, reinforce or question the meaning of masculinity’ and particular 5 masculinities at crucial temporal and spatial junctures in history. The study of texts then, ‘can contribute to a critical cultural politics of gender, fictional representations 6 being one among many other contributing factors’. Foucault maintains that discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it any more than silences are. We must make allowances for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and effect of power but also a hindrance, a stumbling block 7 a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Thus, the discourses emanating from the selected televisual texts may serve to offer up their own explanations of these complex and unstable processes, whilst themselves subscribing to and questioning gender power relationships.