An Excremental Vision of the City and Nostalgic Images of 'Unreconstructed' Forms of Working-Class Masculinity [Are] Found in Guy Ritchie's Films” (Dave 2006: 12)

“… an excremental vision of the city and nostalgic images of 'unreconstructed' forms of working-class masculinity [are] found in Guy Ritchie's films” (Dave 2006: 12). Discuss this statement in relation to Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and/or Snatch (2000). During the period Guy Ritchie’s films were released, the British film industry was seeing a shift in taste – particularly towards the Gangster film genre – largely due to the similarly shifting social climate. For some, Ritchie’s films were a godsend (Fisher, 1998, cited in Chibnall, 2001) and for others it was a debasing of traditional British culture (Appleyard, 2000, cited in Chibnall, 2001). Nevertheless, regardless of which stance is taken, it is hard to deny that these films presented “an excremental vision of the city and nostalgic images of ‘unreconstructed’ forms of working-class masculinity” as Dave (2006) states. Therefore, through a textual analysis of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) this essay aims to delve into the various methods Ritchie took to achieve the verity of the above statement, as well as why doing so was significant. The foundation for the arguments presented in this essay will largely be sourced from The British Cinema Book (Murphy, 2001), with some reference to British Crime Cinema (Chibnall & Murphy, 1999); but will also employ the help of more sociological arguments made by the likes of R.W. Connell (1987) in Gender and Power, and Linda McDowell (2003) in Redundant Masculinities? Before any textual analysis of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (LSTSB) is attempted, it is imperative that the shifting tastes in film and social climate mentioned in the introduction are discussed in order to put the film in context. Under the rule of Margaret Thatcher the 1980s brought about new laws and changes such as the abolition of the Eady Levy (1985) and the deregulation of all industry markets. Firstly, by removing the Eady Levy – “a tax on box office receipts in the UK” (Wikipedia, 2019) – British funding for British films was extremely lacking which lead to a heavy reliance on funding from the US – a rather precarious situation. Generally, major studios in the United States preferred using Britain as a base for their own productions over investing in indigenous British productions. However, one particular type of British film that American studios were sure would garner global success was the ‘heritage text’: films that promoted an idyllic view of what it meant to be “British” through the use of geography, characterisation, and class relations. The popularity of heritage films can be seen from the 1980s onwards. Secondly, the deregulation of markets translated to more competition and a rise of variety in the service sector, which further hindered the already declining manufacturing industry. This was an industry largely occupied by working class men so its decline meant that many found themselves unemployed, and couldn’t find re-employment within the service sector because it was “argued that many of the skills and qualities sought by employers are those stereotypically associated with women”(McDowell, 2003:29). In fact from 1975 to the late 1990s the percentage of men in employment went down from over 92% to 80%, while the percentage of women in employment increased from 59% to almost over 70% (McDowell, 2003:28). The “increasingly confident inroads into the workforce” (Monk, 1999:174) being made by women was in direct correlation to the feminist movement promoting female liberation, and which eventually gave birth to the concept of the New Man: the emotionally intelligent male who took pride in his health and appearance, shared domestic work with his wife, and even stayed at home to look after the children. Into this picture now enters the British Gangster film of the late nineties to blow the ideals of the heritage text and the New Man to complete and utter pieces. Films like LSTSB came about at a time when the British audience were tiring of the falsehood that heritage texts like Four Weddings and A Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994) were presenting both to them and the rest of the world. One of these falsehoods was the depiction of the city of London. While in heritage texts the audience is fed a vision of “a cosy village community” “where unlikely romances can blossom” (Murphy, 2001:296- 297), LSTSB presents “a more claustrophobic village London” rife with “dodgy deals, risky opportunities, and sudden violence” (Chibnall, 2001:283-284). This is epitomised first and foremost in the grimy, yellow-brown filter that colours the film, but also in the housing, the lack of nature (save for the copious amounts of marijuana) and the speech of the characters. The houses look haphazardly squashed together, boasting of thin walls and crappy furniture. The feeling of claustrophobia is so potent that it encapsulates the entire plot as the audience comes to realise that all the characters are interlinked. Furthermore, the character vernacular of cockney rhyming adds authenticity to the film, especially in the scene where subtitles are needed for the audience to understand the conversation. It acts as a comedic trope that creates familiarity and a sense of identity for British people that can comprehend the scene sans subtitles, but without excluding the rest of the audience. By also allowing the dialogue throughout the film to be riddled with excessive swearing – part of the “excremental” experience – Ritchie moves away from the polite and charming stereotype of the British accent to a crasser and more brazen one. Inside Eddie’s home, complete with “grimy, yellow-brown filter” Of course it can be argued that films that eschewed traditional British values and depicted an “excremental vision of the city” existed before the likes of LSTSB. These films belong to the era of the British New Wave (1959-1963) where the plight of the working-class was given a voice and the public were rooted in the reality of British life. Ritchie also gives the working-class a voice, albeit an incredibly male voice. What he does differently, however, is dispel the notion that everyone up north was of the working-class, poor and struggling to make ends meet while the population of the south consisted of the middle-upper class who either inherited their money or did minimal labour to earn it. But, he also does not show a working-class that works honestly for their money – it seems everyone is a criminal – and while his films may reflect a truer reality than the heritage texts, they certainly do not have the same amount of realism that films of the British New Wave carried. This less-than-realistic vision can be seen in the “invisibility of women” and the use of stylised and frequently exaggerated performances for the sake of comic effect (Chibnall, 2001). The lack of women in LSTSB served to promote Ritchie’s focus on “the fabric of male relationships” (Gilby quoted in Chibnall, 2001), and the hyper-masculinity of the criminal underworld. In other words, LSTSB is an embodiment of the New Lad culture – the antithesis of the New Man. As mentioned earlier the concept of the New Man gained potency as women achieved greater independence. Men came under a similar type of scrutiny that women had been subjected to for centuries. Feeling the pressure of this new construction of what it meant to be masculine, “The New Lad was constructed to reassert the patriarchal power of hegemonic masculinity destabilised by feminism, thus endorsing traditionally masculine values involving male friendship, stereotypically masculine commodities, and sexism” (Nijjar, 2018). Examples of this in LSTSB include the friendship between Bacon (Jason Statham), Eddie (Nick Moran), Soap (Dexter Fletcher), and Tom (Jason Flemyng); the “stereotypically masculine commodities” of cars, guns and violence; and the sexist joke made by Soap with the punch line “four spring dwarf” which is a pun derived from the slogan, “Vorsprung durch technik”, used by the German car company Audi. Consequently, one can see how the characterisation of the New Lad culture is an “’unreconstructed’ form of...masculinity” (Dave, 2006). Besides being the playground for showcasing high levels of male bravado, why is the gangster film a perfect platform for affirming the New Lad? 1. Gangsters are more often than not from the working-class and the New Lad culture majorly – if not completely – belonged to the working class male. 2. Gangsters are criminals and due to the growing unemployment of working-class men criminal activity became the only source of employment and subsequent income. In the discussion of her film Face (1997), another gangster cycle film, Bird (quoted in Monk, 1999) argues that it presents “the choices that you have if you come from a working-class background in inner-city London and you’re bright...there’s no work, so either you go into crime or you give in.” This statement can also be applied to LSTSB. Therefore, it is no surprise that the opening of the film introduces us to Bacon and Eddie via their criminal antics. Bacon, with the help of Eddie, is hawking stolen goods while assuring his customers that, “these are not stolen, they just haven’t been paid for.” Ritchie actually discovered Statham selling fake jewellery and perfume on street corners (a side hustle between his modelling gigs) when he decided to cast him in the role of Bacon (Snider, 2015). Art imitates life and proof is given to Chibnall’s (2001:283) statement that for these men “all the world is gangland and the only legitimate occupation is the hustle.” Although used to describe the lack of choice women often have as a result of the constraints of patriarchy, Jan Morris’s phrase “opportunist submission” (quoted in Connell, 1987) appears fitting in the above analysis as one is made to acknowledge that crime and gang-life are the only viable enterprise in a system that deems your skills as outdated or you as under qualified.

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