Contemporary British Coming-Of-Age Films (1979 to the Present)

1 Contemporary British Coming-of-Age Films (1979 to the Present) Philippa Zielfa Maslin A thesis submitted to Royal Holloway, University of London, in accordance with the requirements of a Ph.D. in the Department of Media Arts 2 Declaration of Authorship I declare that the work in this thesis was carried out in accordance with the regulations of Royal Holloway, University of London. This work is original, except where indicated by special reference in the text, and no part of the thesis has been submitted for any other academic award. Any views expressed in the thesis are those of the author. Signed: Philippa Zielfa Maslin Date: 19th January 2018 3 Abstract Locating itself in relation to existing work on youth in, primarily American, cinema, the thesis questions the analytical usefulness of conceptualising the ‘youth/teen film’ as a genre and, instead, seeks to establish the value of analysing the ‘coming-of-age film’ as a genre involving the employment of adolescent protagonists. In setting out to do so, it focuses on films which are set in Britain, made from 1979 onwards, and rarely discussed as coming-of-age films (or, indeed, youth/teen films), but which may be seen to benefit from such a critical approach. Following a survey of a range of anthropological, biological, historical, juridical, psychoanalytic, psychological and sociological approaches to adolescence, as well as scholarship on the literary precursor of the coming-of-age film, the Bildungsroman, and on the relationship between adolescence and cinema, a working definition of the coming-of- age genre is proposed. This then leads to an examination of the specific manifestation of the coming-of-age film in contemporary British cinema. Contemporary British coming-of-age films, it is argued, may be divided into three central strands – male adolescent protagonists, female adolescent protagonists, and adolescent protagonists from a minority ‘racial’ and/or ethnic background – and discussion of a wide range of films reveals how the variables of class, gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, and sexuality are shown to shape the identity formation of the assorted protagonists within the selected films, as well as intersect with social, political, economic and cultural concerns of the period. Placing an emphasis upon the shared features of the films, the thesis also identifies how the repeated appearance of certain issues, character types, plot devices, and narrative arcs establish lines of continuity that cut across the generic hybridity, and thematic, formal and stylistic diversity of the body of work at hand. In particular, the thesis posits that there are three main types of trajectory (successful or failed individualisation and socialisation, and more ambivalent outcomes) – aligning the contemporary British coming-of-age film with the tradition of the European Bildungsroman – and exemplifies this in an exploration of the influence of British cinema’s longstanding tradition of social realism upon the male-centred narratives. Furthermore, the thesis identifies the importance of the figure of the brother to a number of the stories of male adolescence, and the significance of the configuration of the girl and the man to many of the tales of female adolescence. Moreover, a focus on the treatment of ‘race’ and ethnicity reveals how the contemporary British coming-of-age film is a popular vehicle for the interrogation of the experiences of first, second and third-generation immigrants. In this way, the thesis establishes the importance of the category of the coming-of-age film for an understanding of some of the key themes and concerns of contemporary British cinema. 4 Contents Introduction Chapter One – Contexts: Adolescence, the Bildungsroman, and the Relationship between Adolescence and Cinema Introduction Scholarship on Adolescence Scholarship on the Bildungsroman Scholarship on the Relationship between Adolescence and Cinema Chapter Two – Defining the Coming-of-Age Genre and its Specific Manifestation in Contemporary British Cinema The Dominance of the American Film Industry A Transnational Approach and a Marxist Approach Defining the Coming-of-Age Genre The Contemporary British Coming-of-Age Film - (i) A Question of Genre - (ii) Generic Hybridity - (iii) Key Conventions Chapter Three – Boyhood in Contemporary British Cinema Common Configurations Framing the Coming-of-Age Process: Emerging Sexuality, and Educational Endeavours and Professional Pursuits - (i) Emerging Sexuality - (ii) Educational Endeavours and Professional Pursuits The Influence of Social or Working-Class Realism - (i) The Basics: What, How and Why? - (ii) From Fairy Tales to Tragedies: Billy Elliot (2000) and Sweet Sixteen (2002) - (iii) The Three Main Trajectories for Working-Class Boys - (iv) Upwards Trajectories - (v) Downwards Trajectories - (vi) Ambivalent Trajectories - (vii) Conclusion 5 Brothers Conclusion Chapter Four – Girlhood in Contemporary British Cinema Introduction Common Configurations Existing Scholarship The Girl and the Man - Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (i) Prostitution (ii) Other Forms of Sexual Abuse and Exploitation - Consensual Sexual Encounters and Relationships (i) Working-Class Girls (ii) Middle-Class Girls Conclusion Chapter Five – Minority Ethnic Adolescent Protagonists in Contemporary British Cinema Introduction Black British and British Asian Cinema The Pairing of Issues of ‘Race’ and Ethnicity with the Image of Youth Black British Males: 1980s and 1990s Black British Males: 2000s and 2010s British Asian Males Jewish British Males Other Minority Ethnic Males Black British Females British Asian Females Conclusion Conclusion Filmography Bibliography 6 Introduction ‘We [psychoanalysts] who know so much about the child in the adult know so much less about the fate of the adolescent in him, whether as a continued source of renewal or as a split-off younger self alternately idealized and repudiated, revived and “murdered” – and, of course, reprojected on the young.’ Erik Erikson, Life History and the Historical Moment (1975: 222) Context Interest in cinematic portrayals of childhood is burgeoning, both within and without the Academy. Recent years have brought: Frances Gateward and Murray Pomerance’s anthologies Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood (2002) and Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth (2005); Emma Wilson’s monograph Cinema’s Missing Children (2003); Vicky Lebeau’s monograph Childhood and Cinema (2008); Karen Lury’s monograph The Child in Film – Tears, Fears and Fairy Tales (2010); a University College London symposium entitled ‘The Girl in Global Cinema’ (12th July 2013); Mark Cousins’s film The Story of Children and Film (2013); a BFI season curated by Cousins, ‘The Cinema of Childhood’, comprising seventeen films about children, from twelve different countries (11th April - 28th June 2014); a Leverhulme Trust project entitled ‘Childhood and Nation in World Cinema: Borders and Encounters Since 1980’ (1st July 2014 - 30th June 2016); Fiona Handyside and Kate Taylor-Jones’s anthology International Cinema and the Girl: Local Issues, Transnational Contexts (2016), inspired by the aforementioned UCL symposium; and Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Wilson and Sarah Wright’s anthology Childhood and Nation in World Cinema: Borders and Encounters (2017), inspired by the aforementioned Leverhulme Trust project. Further to this, it is essential to recognise that a number of these publications include discussions of films that are, more accurately, about adolescence. For example, the first of the three sections that make up Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood (Gateward and Pomerance 2002) is entitled ‘Girls II Women’ and ‘explores issues related to the trials and tribulations girls experience in the coming-of-age process’ (17). And Barbara Klinger states of Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth (Gateward and Pomerance 2005) that it presents a ‘multifaceted’ response to the question of ‘what … the coming-of-age narrative reveal[s] about the process of becoming a man’ (back cover). Indeed, the relationship between adolescence and cinema may be said to be an established field of academic enquiry in itself, with publications such as: David Considine’s monograph The Cinema of Adolescence (1985); Jon Lewis’s monograph The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Film and Youth Culture (1992); Thomas Doherty’s monograph Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s (2002); Timothy Shary’s monograph 7 Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary Cinema (2002); Sarah Hentges’s monograph Pictures of Girlhood: Modern Female Adolescence on Film (2005); Shary’s introductory book Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen (2005); Steve Neale’s section on ‘Teenpics’ in The Cinema Book (2007); Shary and Alexandra Seibel’s anthology Youth Cinema in Global Culture (2007); Anne Hardcastle, Roberta Morosini and Kendall Tarte’s anthology Coming of Age on Film: Stories of Transformation in World Cinema (2009); and Catherine Driscoll’s monograph Teen Film: A Critical Introduction (2011). In addition, 2014 saw the release of film critic Charlie Lyne’s documentary Beyond Clueless, which – described on its accompanying website as ‘a dizzying journey into the mind, body and soul of the teen movie, as seen through the eyes of over 200 modern coming-of-age classics’ – trains its lens on American ‘teen movies’ from the period 1994-2004 (Beyond Clueless website) and was one of fourteen films to form

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