28 | variant 43 | spring 2012 Tom Jennings The Poverty of Imagination

The UK’s soporific slide deeper into fiscally- outcome is queasy revisionist hokum in outwardly imposed structurally-readjusted barbarity, without The Coming of Age of Austerity well-meaning, commemorative approximations much in the way of disturbance to putative social UK cinema responded in a relatively sluggish of, say, traditions of northern music-hall (Little peace, has now been thoroughly punctured. manner to the tragedies of the 1980s, hot on Voice, Mark Herman 1998), Northern Soul (Soulboy, First the exuberant Lethal Bizzle of EMA kids the heels of the Tories’ first decade of cuts and Shimmy Marcus 2008) and even the militancy of prompted their university ‘betters’ to trash the accompanying degradation of working and factory women (Made In Dagenham, Nigel Cole Conservative HQ. Latterly, so-called Black Blocs living conditions for vast swathes of the populace. 2010). Having said that, other film revivals of bypassed passive masses of notional protest and In the 1990s, however, veteran social-realist working-class life – in the 1950s (Vera Drake, Mike pissed on complicit bureaucracy to attack the City. director Ken Loach was soon able to make up Leigh 2005), ’60s (Small Faces, Gillies MacKinnon And then, most vividly, came unexpected eruptions for lost ground, forensically detailing the latter 1995), ’70s (Neds, Peter Mullan 2011) or ’80s (This of spontaneous sustained rage among festering in terms of restructured employment (Riff Raff, Is England, Shane Meadows 2006, plus 2010/2011 slumdwellers that blazed all over the national 1992; The Navigators, 2001) and unemployment television series sequels)6 – may flirt with shop. (Raining Stones, 1993; Ladybird Ladybird, 1994; sentimental closure but, courtesy of subject matter What is remarkable, nevertheless, is how My Name Is Joe, 1998) – with Jimmy McGovern’s and handling, instead serve genealogies of the unprepared those supposedly in-the-know were in rare account of grassroots industrial struggle in present far better than safe paeans to, or laments the face of these socio-political squalls, storms and Dockers (Channel 4, 1999) integrating both within for, heroic or hellish pasts. 1 tornadoes. Sure enough, the flog-’em-and-bang-’em- a wider urban context. Elsewhere, less shackled up brigade broadcast their bile in a prompt chorus by documentary motivations, of class-hatred, as if the perpetrators of anti-social more expressive aesthetic and crime were restricted to archetypal, opportunistic, narrative means were mobilised small-time hoodies and arsonists. As if it had to bemoan crumbling lower- nothing to do with a wider, more deliberate class ties – whether these were orchestration on an apocalyptic scale, thanks to traditional (Nil By Mouth, elite financial obscenities mugging the 99% and Gary Oldman 1995), biological foreclosing on the mortgaged futures of global and (Orphans, Peter Mullen 1997) local populations. or alternative (Among Giants, But why do the revolting poor come as such Sam Miller 1998). Yet, despite a surprise? After all, despite unhealthy upstart not shrinking from the heft and idealisms regularly messing up business-as-usual scope of misery suffered, these elsewhere, a mythic enlightened middlebrow films still reserved space for rationalism is normally alleged to have bewitched germs of unprepossessing hope this geographic idyll. Early last century it even – some genuine residue, albeit gave birth to that dispassionately charitable tenuous, conflictual or deeply media empiricism called ‘documentary’ or ‘social buried, of affiliation, commitment, realism’. This has remained at the centre of the conviviality and solidarity. country’s fantasy factories ever since – despite But beyond being corruptible infernal colonisations by vulgar American kitsch for cynical enterprise, such organic human Service economy realignments in value- and purist continental aesthetics. And this cultural values have no obvious place in the New generation also nudged middle-class identification paraphernalia of institutional and representational British Order. If Thatcher’s “no such thing as from institutional professionalism towards crass patterns, disciplines, practices, and rhetorics society ... only individuals” was not so much corporate or petit-entrepreneurialism – which, has always taken as its very special scientific empirical description as statement of intent in among only recently mobile fractions, often led project the minute observation and adumbration a parochial version of global neoliberalism, its steadily back to precarity. Class recomposition had of the travails of the poor. In other words, where enduring corollary that “there is no alternative” myriad reflections in new social movements – from was the careful data gathering, processing and was pointedly rendered in baleful portraits of anti-Poll Tax action, hunt sabotage, New Age travel interpretation, on large and small public screens, attenuated nihilism and hopelessness among and Reclaim the Streets, to anti-globalisation – but when the think-tanks, policymakers, police, and younger generations in Naked (Mike Leigh 1993), direct political manifestation scarcely troubled movers-and-shakers seemingly needed it? Butterfly Kiss (Michael Winterbottom 1994) and mainstream media fiction. Instead, as in working- Accepting that current predicaments set-in Stella Does Tricks (Coky Giedroyc 1997). Conversely, class realism, markers of commodified (counter) during Thatcher’s yesteryears, not yesterday’s a cinematic coming to terms with ‘capitalist culture dominated representations of hipsters 2 recession, this essay subjectively surveys two realism’ sketched resignation to the rule-of- and bohemians flaunting superior fashion; decades of austere growth in British poverty porn. the-market over economic and social relations foregrounding consumption over production and Dissecting grim-up-north platitudes, perilous- among impoverished post-industrial subjects, assuming assimilation to blind materialism in down-south perambulations and sundry slumming- yielding three highly successful British films which biopics of youth music scene appropriation like it social-realist serenades, an attempt is made profited from blending social-realist tropes with Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes 1998) and 24 Hour to see if the national film oeuvre ought to have populist melodrama, comedy and romance. Worse, Party People (Michael Winterbottom 2002)7. The opened any eyes. Brassed Off (Mark Herman 1996), The Full Monty postmodern manoeuvering was more deviously (Peter Cattaneo 1997) and Billy Elliott (Stephen deployed by Cool Britannia’s celebrated middle- Daldry 2000), as well as sad retreads like Up ‘N’ class vanguards who, adapting slick cinematic Under (John Godber 1998), displaced structural innovations from Hollywood and MTV spectacle, 3 relations of class into its contrived performance purportedly blurred class boundaries in superficial – projectively mystifying the contemporary travesties of underclass abjection – such as 4 crisis into anachronistic patterns of masculinity Shopping (Paul Anderson 1994), Twin Town (Kevin presented as wilful personal obstacles to survival, Allen 1997), South West 9 (Richard Parry 2001) health and happiness via vicissitudes of cultural and, most iconically, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting capital. (1996)8. With class-denialism promulgated If the illusory bubble of New Labour’s “Things promiscuously – left, right and centre – elegies to can only get better” mirrored Boyle’s thematic what was lost from a mythical social-democratic trajectory – from yuppie psychosis (Shallow golden age of the political clout, social stability Grave, 1994), through Trainspotting, to X-Factor and economic security of labour now readily transcendence (Slumdog Millionnaire, 2008) – figured as mere consolation. Period drama concurrent trends in UK cinema thoroughly recuperations of recent proletarian experience tainted any seamless passage to consumerist strategically accentuate style over substance in a nirvana9. Darker urban pastorals spoiled ersatz 5 distanced nostalgia of ‘decadent mannerism’ cut streetwise cosmopolitanism with the return of the loose from specific historical moorings. This ironic repressed, signalled again through dysfunctional mendacity retrospectively legitimises its referent’s macho convolutions – such as the ‘disease’ of inevitable demise, having eviscerated the messy football hooliganism forever worried over in The contextual blood and guts which animated it. The variant 43 | spring 2012 | 29

Firm (Allan Clarke 1989) all the way to nevertheless, survived. So Nick Love’s a protracted 2000s cycle spearheaded biographically inflected picaresque, by Nick Love. A parallel nostalgic Goodbye Charlie Bright (2001), chased restoration dredged up more archaic its eponymous likely lad, streaking ghosts of mockney spivs and hardnuts round a run-down but still marginally dressed up in Tarantinoesque neo-noir, benevolent south London manor, flanked posturing at hyperstylised gangster gloss by equally schematic petty criminals in the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and sociopaths. Despite ducking and (Guy Ritchie 1998) franchise. These twin diving soon going decisively pear-shaped, fetishisms then promptly smart-casually Charlie’s readiness to put away childish cross-fertilised in a lucrative homegrown things gets spun unconscionably sunny – exploitation genre greeted with universal even if his creator’s own output graduated critical derision. A common denominator from wideboy thuggery to middle-aged throughout is supine acceptance of the bovver and raving vigilantism. However, petty bourgeois order, with its pitilessly in many rotting metropolitan boroughs, diminishing real returns wished away in Goes Shopping and Tina Takes a Break (Channel things already were more murderous, and infantile dreams of lottery wealth and celebrity 4, 1999; 2001) gave way to audacious crossovers, dilemmas starker, for schoolkid armies brokering lifestyle. The accompanying solipsistic vacuum is with wildly uneven results, in The Principles of Lust narcotic economies with knives and guns. And this then hysterically concealed in atavistic charisma, (2002), Mischief Night (2006), Exodus (Channel 4, wasn’t just according to moral-panic merchants in the latter cases of ‘New Lad’ vintage, coding 2007) and 1 Day (2009). and tabloid crisis-mongers – the teenagers stranded, fragmentary memories of collective UK cinema’s 2000s infancy intelligibly believed the hype too. But before their versions of vigour, pride, and even resistance to the present embarked from middle-childhood fantasies of events reached the screen, there was still time for desperate state of things. Even when upwardly- escape, after the surreal end-of-century Ratcatcher sober documentary observation as well as cynically mobile, it seems the rough and dangerous classes (Lynne Ramsay 1999) cut adrift abandoned intemperate exploitation. could not be persuaded to exit the big historical offspring to blissful suicidal merger in the In depth and texture, Bullet Boy (Saul Dibb stages and screens. poisoned urban womb. A rash of kitchen-sink 2005) merited promotion as the ‘Brit Boyz N the stories then set about the salvation of dying Hood’ even if hardly matching the gang-infested Coming of Age in Austerity families via wounded youthful innocence, with intensity of American New Black Cinema. The fairytale resolutions varying in outlandish naffness film’s restrained picturing of Hackey towerblocks, Meanwhile the working and workless inhabitants in Purely Belter (Mark Herman 2000), Billy Elliott, terraces and playing fields counterpointed of sink estates and industrial wastelands suffered and Gabriel and Me (Udayan Prasad 2001)11. More troubled biographies and questionable futures, as the New Public Management of state provision, complex portrayals of the negotiation of naïve a paroled aggravated assaulter fails to go straight which increasingly appeared premised on Oedipal archetypes among networks of kith and thanks to irreconcilable demands of family, shortchanging both its demoralised education, kin – for example in Like Father (Amber 2001), All friends and foes. His pre-teen brother strives to health and welfare staff and ‘customers’ punished or Nothing (Mike Leigh 2001), Sweet Sixteen (Ken avoid the same fate with an integrity built from for privatised, personalised deficiencies. But in Loach 2002), or A Boy Called Dad (Brian Percival scratch, himself facing multiple threats in an the ruins of the post-war Keynesian settlement – 2009) – again endeavoured to resurrect the nuclear environment of jaundiced institutional hypocrisy the practical and psychological ramifications of alms across intransigent generations, and amid and thoroughly compromised masculine power. which their parents wrestled with in struggling corrosive infrastructure. Perhaps more presciently, With their own preoccupations, the damaged and to survive – fresh cohorts of kids were growing up further contributions fast-forwarded past besieged elders exhibit contradictory nobility relatively unencumbered by broken twentieth- adolescence to recalibrate bad family romance and inflexibility, with the generations’ lifestyles century promises. For them, material and social in elective relational antagonisms no longer so barely intersecting. Even when they do, mutual decay and deprivation were always already facts of bogged down in blood provenance – including incomprehensiblity ensures a zero-sum game of life; the glittering sheen of consumerism a world A Way Of Life (Amma Asante 2004), Love + Hate passionate relations. In impressive yet impeccably away even when on sale round the corner. And (Dominic Savage 2005), Summer (Kenny Glenaan modest social-realist style – thanks to a complex, again, the millennium’s social-realist filmmakers 2008) and Somers Town (Shane Meadows 2008). subtle script and naturalistic dialogue delivered by were well-placed to explore how these young However, uprooting from unsafe havens in a committed cast – both the spiralling determinism generations could conceive, build and live lives migrant dislocation to make economic and of violence and, counterintuitively, genuine in such straitened circumstances. After all, the emotional ends meet risks alienation at every turn. chances of youngsters thriving without abandoning original colonial impetus of early British realism This was charted in melancholic accounts of young homemade ethics or home turf are convincingly also thrust anthropological apparatuses into slums adults depressed beyond their years in transient rendered. to observe and record their strange exotica. This oddball communities of uncertain motive, in time round, many of its exponents had themselves Human Traffic (Justin Kerrigan 1999), The Last emerged from working-class backgrounds and, Resort (Pawel Pawlikowski 2000), Late Night with more intimate knowledge, were motivated by Shopping (Saul Metzstein 2001) and Morvern Callar their own unfinished business. (Lynne Ramsay 2002). Corresponding paranoid So a heterodox flow of realist films by low- detachment may then follow overweening budget auteurs blended poetic naturalism malevolence, as in London To Brighton (Paul with European arthouse enchantment and Andrew Williams 2006), but also prehistories popular melodramatics. Each sought potential of impersonal or absent nurturance poignantly in contemporary poverty, in contradistinction to conveyed in Helen (Christine Molloy & Joe the deafening discourses flooding media, culture Lawlor 2008) and The Unloved (Samantha Morton, and politics which blame, dismiss and demonise Channel 4, 2009). Finally, black-magic temptations neoliberalism’s victims. Established old hands of addiction to stave off social and psychic collapse like Amber Films10 paid painstaking attention to easily prove fatal, overwhelming ambivalent authentic sources, while bold faces like Lynne forbearance and despairing care offered against Ramsay, Pawel Pawlikowski and Andrea Arnold all the odds in Pure (Gillies MacKinnon 2002), tempered miserabilism with impressionist Shooting Magpies (Amber 2005), Better Things perspective or mixed-genre expressionism. (Duane Hopkins 2008) and The Arbor (Clio Barnard Shane Meadows had also privileged local and 2010)12 – thus circuitously recalling Ratcatcher’s autobiographical narratives for Smalltime comparably psychotic oblivion in other polluted (1996), Twenty Four Seven (1997) and A Room hinterlands that no last-ditch love could cleanse. Only the former was managed by the resolutely for Romeo Brass (1999) before risking provincial But the love remained alive, albeit in abeyance, unrealistic Rollin’ With the Nines (Julian Gilbey Hollywood pastiche in Once Upon a Time in the and the newbies weren’t giving up without a fight. 2005), a cheap blaxploitation ripoff revelling Midlands (2002) and Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) Filmmakers who had matured within Thatcher’s in kinetic drug-fuelled brutality and depths of and subsequently returning to more expansive blight, witnessed at first-hand the squandered and sexual depravity. It did, however, showcase the social-realism in This Is England. Conversely, dashed hopes among peer groups which they had, indigenous gangster-rap incarnation of Grime – Penny Woolcock’s faithful ethnography in Tina 30 | variant 43 | spring 2012 London’s ascendant mixed-race music subculture of-view cinematography, this potent expressive limited material resources, relations and ethics which, like the tawdry trappings of pornographic interplay of single-minded interior and implacable discernible in the city’s wreckage. Their tentatively consumerism, was neglected in Bullet Boy’s exterior alienation perfectly conveys the reckless awkward strategies may have only modest atmosphere before being thoroughly integrated damage risked for self and others; when lashing- chances of pragmatic success, but ultimately they into later youth-centric fare. Accordingly, Life out at each successive vain option threatens a self- reject the false promises of embracing addictive and Lyrics (Richard Laxton 2006) was next up in fulfilling prophecy of disappointment. barbarity to feed fatal fancies of fulfilment. Maybe the neighbourhood-watched stakes – a relatively Top Boy’s author retains radical sensibilities from mild Brixton hip-hop romance kitsching Eminem’s his own outspoken revolutionary republican, 8 Mile – which was promptly blown away by the libertarian-Left youth, even if in dotage accepting manic virtuosity of Kidulthood (Menhaj Huda political and artistic limits of temporary respite 2006). Written by Noel Clarke (who directed for isolated souls. But what works best, as in much Adulthood, the 2008 sequel), this pursuit of of the work described above – whether focusing classmates dragging a panoply of delinquent on personal or interpersonal change or stasis – is predicaments round streets and high-rises drew on imaginatively brewing trials and tribulations his intimacy with its disreputable setting – more into ensemble patchworks of juxtaposition to like four funerals and a teenage pregnancy than creatively mull over. This was already explicit in in the yuppie Notting Hill – and the vernacular the rhythms and rhymes of the local soundsystems of impatient yearning, impassioned loyalty and and griots, and now brings to life on screen the harsh wit rang as true as the quickfire intimidation extraordinarily multifarious striving for individual and unforgiving shaming and disrespect among and collective redemption and empowerment still incipient predators and prey. characteristic of environments mired in the most Sadly, rushing to deliver revelations of moral unpromising circumstances. Misery? Yes: in spades squalor in juvenile rites and wrongs of passage – but far more besides, and by no means only rammed far too much implausibility into a twenty- The grievous hostility here evident in representable miserably. four hour exegesis. Inflated physical, mental and dysfunctional lower-class daily life, however, sexual cynical prowess in characters left little of matches fractiously vibrant intimacy, spirit and the humdrum anomie and vulnerable uncertainty intelligence, and such vital human impulses can Community De- / Re-generation of real adolescent shades of grey. The breathless warp destructively when inchoate fury narrows For the most comprehensive excommunication of narrative panned out thick, fast and predictable, the limits of the foreseeable. Refusal to relinquish kitchen-sink drudgery in the service of exuberant leaving no space for reflection let alone quotidian desirous intensity, no matter how inadequately flatulent hilarity – but never abandoning a teenage kicks such as enjoying the spot-on beats articulated and negotiated, or subsume it in scandalous sacreligious slant on magical realism blaring on the soundtrack. Maybe kids do mature conventional role prescriptions, is highly likely – the unique, groundbreaking Shameless (Channel that quickly and wickedly. But such suspiciously to result in schism. Yet emotional bonds run 4 2004-2012), now in its ninth series, is unlikely partial verisimilitude seems rather to reflect as deep as the profanity even in a family this to be beaten. With nary a trace of patronisation teenage’s own delusions of grandeur, keeping fear fragile; one which nurtures as well as neglects. or mockery, but profound and abiding respect of the future at bay while inadvertently nourishing Conversely, Channel 4’s recent four-part Top for those making the most of the slings and agendas pushing the repressive containment Boy (Ronan Bennett 2011) revisits Bullet Boy’s arrows of outrageous misfortune, Paul Abbott’s of subhuman underclasses. And authorities in Hackney(ed) crossroads, whose socio-economic barnstorming soap-operatic brainchild – based any sense are conspicuously absent here, as in climate over intervening years has exacerbated on memories of his troubled childhood – began later Menace II Society wannabes like the rather the unravelling of further impoverished kinship serial offending with a humble family-in-meltdown charming 1 Day (Penny Woolcock 2009) and networks: blood connectivity now stretches beyond on a satellite Manchester sink thoughtfully relentlessly charmless Cherry Tree Lane (Paul breaking point. Fashioning substitute clans from dubbed the ‘Chatsworth’. The non-landed gentry Andrew Williams 2010), as well as, at another social detritus at hand is thus imperative and, as of this lumpen country estate are the Gallaghers, figurative extreme, the comedic contempt of in its precursor, realism and crime melodrama presided over by drunken, feckless Frank: a Anuvahood (Adam Deacon & Daniel Toland 2011) are skilfully blended, daring to expose prevailing fleetingly present, irredeemably self-centred dad where clueless cretins with Ali G pretensions are commonplaces of urban deviance as simplistically gone rotten who was doubtless never good for antisociality’s primary perpetrators. prejudicial with Ashley Walters nailing yet much other than siring nine. Successive series Recent entries in UK youth cinema’s urban another bad boy with a heart of tarnished gold, inexorably haemhorraged siblings pining for killing fields continued to earnestly craft dialogue and a young cousin warding off his ambivalent greener grass, so narrative blinkers slowly widen scripted from authentic patterns of banter and mentorship. to a panoramic kaleidoscope of ne’er-do-wells patter, but disguise blindingly obvious narrative Psychiatric and relationship breakdown and and inadequates who actually do tolerably and arcs with increasingly tired crowd-pleasing novelty overworked drudgery leave kids fending for adequately well, from day to day at least – shoring gimmicks. Sket (Nirpal Bhogal 2011) at least themselves among drug cartels who succumb to up mutual, unapologetically glaring weaknesses tempered testosterone overdoses with feminine the vicious logic of their enterprise more from lack and bad-luck excuses with irrepressible optimism, ferocity and tenderness in girl gangs betraying of alternatives than psychopathy – paralleling the surprising nous, and adventurous brio. And, as well their men and each other – whereas Shank (Mo affective sufferation among children, parents and as their effortless practical genius in syncretic Ali 2010) and Attack the Block (Joe Cornish 2011) intermediate cohorts alike. Highlighting one lad’s cultural expropriation, this best of humanity traded respectively in Mad Max and Spielbergian navigation through everyone’s stormy weather, certainly know how to throw a party – both in the 13 sci-fi buffoonery. The former parachuted an utterly a sophisticated meshing of trauma, painful dry political and festive wet-bar senses . unconvincing nonviolent direct action credo into love and hope, in overlapping the directionless moral starvation of infantile biographies, convincingly teens, while the latter’s unwelcome intruders were sketches manifold constituents rampaging pitch-dark aliens disrupting mugging, of crumbling commons, in spite drugging and blagging in a motley starstruck crew. of an unfeasibly minimal cast Our petty posse transform themselves into unlikely and plentiful questionable plot superboys in ridding the ’hood of its unspeakable holes. In the light of dishonest nemeses – forging alliance with a slew of more commonplaces elsewhere or less respectable middle-class fractions in overstating degraded sociality, the process. Sadly, and ruinously, however, the the anachronistically threadbare ultimate deeply offensive corollary implies that gangs and police presence here the otherworldly invasion actually emanated from rather suggest institutional their own psychic recesses, whose ‘blackness’ they neglect, paradoxically letting must expunge to prevail. autonomous interaction breathe. Alongside high-energy grimefests running out Dehumanisations of feral scum of steam for want of hints of the transcendence of crescendoed after the series’ endless, restless immaturity, more contemplative completion, but no deterministic slices of community hard-knock life have truck is had with clichéd embedded individual outsiders within – as opposed inadequate parenthood, positive to insiders without prospects – in translating role models and the ‘Victorian’ elements of the filmmakers’ own conflicted values toxic in any strata, but pathetic in these. The writing team’s eschewal of any harsh upbringings. Among the best was Andrea Arnold’s So, Reality TV’s tough-love presaging of soft-cop judgement that the characters wouldn’t already Fish Tank (2009), updating her Oscar-winning invasion to transform fortunes is trashed along level at one another – affectionately or otherwise, desperate single-mother short Wasp (2003) and with traditional professional imperialism; with though never with superior snobbish boosterism showing a disaffected daughter suffocating social workers only being useful when disavowing in mind – instantly and consistently irked all under constricting Thames Estuary horizons. Her officialdom and following class-conscious conceivable sneering moral majorities. The high- obsessive-compulsive acting-out veers from solitary noses, instead of turning them up in disgust at minded chatterati can’t handle every facet of their hip-hop dancing to cathexis with her mam’s respectability’s failure to thrive. bourgeois omniscience being bawdily punctured new boyfriend – the exotic downhome appeal of The older characters seem paralysed in sad with unforgiving regularity, pinpoint alacrity and local travellers and strangeness of semi-natural individualistic tactics just as useless these days alarming accuracy. And they writhe and whinge landscapes beyond the estate contrasting with as the moral homilies which blatantly failed in apoplexy about this ‘fetishisation’ of poverty its familiar ambient clamour of a back-catalogue them. Acutely so aware, the youngsters combine as if we haven’t had to put up long enough with of plaintive calls and responses from British soul wily intelligence and obstinate interpersonal schedules full of the pompous circumstances musics. Coloured and lit with bewitching point- commitment to carve out coherent paths from nourishing their vanity. Yet among sublime variant 43 | spring 2012 | 31 crackpot pratfalls and subversive overcomings youth of all races enjoy their hybrid culture in metaphorised in failed marital attempts by the of official and informal malignancy, mistakes relative peace away from vexing intransigence couple at the centre of comic gravity. Cheap, have certainly proliferated – like embracing elsewhere. cheerful ceremonials fall foul of material, social local Plods to the bosom or, worse, installing Cross-stitching the corrosive fissures of white and historical stumbling blocks threatening to criminal tribe the Maguires at the heart of the and Asian communities, the film’s hysteria cripple the future. The groom sorrowfully panics darkness – but the surefooted guiding vision consistently erodes stereotypes, remaining about turning into his father’s facsimile, and the sweeps such embarrassing accidents under rooted in working-class neighbourhoods. Here, bride’s abused backstory comes intolerably into the carpet-bombing profanations of sincere despite intense material pressures, upward conscious relief in a transfixing strand escalating single-issue and PC complacencies. Shameless mobility’s false promises are just as destructive to unlikely resolution. automatically and unerringly takes the side of as the baleful allure of the law of the criminal Switching format seemed natural in light of the the subalterns, without sacrificing clear-sighted jungle in crystallising vicious circles of isolation. cinematic inspiration of social-realism by Alan vulgar class pride and righteous reverse prejudice. The desperate rearguard defence of ancestral Clarke, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh which failed And if the proof of TV puddings is ratings, it has families provides no useful prognosis, merely to attract film funding. Trademark collaborative vastly overperformed, whilst remaining fondly locking members into perpetual hypertension practices with a superb cast shine through, appreciated by all demographics closest to its and the submission to oppression which carnivals improvising everything from dialogue to design beady-eyed gaze. have always had the function of momentarily and costume, placing a premium on the awkward Among few cultural products with the bare- overturning. In fact, though now celebrated only in naturalism of time, place and interaction rather faced cheek to compare, Under the Mud’s (Sol Yorkshire, the druidic origins of Mischievous Night than slavish devotion to seamless superficial Papadopoulos 2006) repair of a lame marriage – a time when fairies walk the earth – predate simulation. This approach favours narratives seems wastefully unambitious given the scouring Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes by many centuries. weaving together multiple characters without Scouse humour and invention in its community While hardly supernatural, the outcomes of this relegating subsidiary roles as mere props for workshop source material. Mischief Night (Penny highly unusual urban fairytale “with its head in conflicted heroes – which previous work, including Woolcock 2006) also skims romcoms and amateur the clouds and its feet on the ground” might also the cinema film, was regularly guilty of. That it northern (this time Leeds) raconteurship, but appear somewhat improbable. Nevertheless, its augured well for emphasising the open-endedness with inspired whittling and surreal realisation hidden script alchemy of pragmatic irreverence of real communities – haunted by ghosts of crisis is a different kettle of fish altogether from the for authority, laughing-off of adversity, and past but with potential for resilience, autonomy previous Tina films. They located their Channel 4 imaginative empathy and engagement updates and creativity as well as regression, submission Cutting Edge credentials in recounting everyday age-old formulae for survival, solidarity and and malice – was amply demonstrated in the 2011 resourcefulness among the urban deprived resistance still applicable most anywhere. series set at Christmas 1988 and with the most struggling to stay afloat, gut-wrenching but almost rather than merely reactions inconceivably optimistic to trauma as in normal collective passion on display. social-realist agonies. But the Skilfully melding the mildly cinematic denouement was amusing, sympathetically shot amid heightened police grotesque and downright paramilitarism after the horrific without detracting London bombings, reinforcing from very serious concern, aims to comedically Meadows’ best script yet undermine increasing sketches comparably tangled segregation of British Asians personal tensions and from neighbours. Here, pressures across the board legacies of closer prior interaction converge on Of course, a crucial salient caveat with in a compelling portrait of a desolate generation a single mum seeking stability for the kids, and suspiciously benevolent heterotopias like bodging their own coming of age15. various diverse connectives develop with the the aforementioned is a risk of soft-pedalling embattled Khan family leading to November 4th’s tragedies and turning points, indelible scars and festivities of benign delinquency set against the intransigent devilishnesses probably present “We Come From the Slums of ...” mundane disrespect and darker anti-sociability of in many midsummer night dreamers’ real lives. Not only run of t’ mill rations of awfulness, but crime, racism, drugs and violence. Shameless sometimes surely errs on the rosy also fascinating cornucopias of fictional fancy Design and photography magnify warmth and side since, for example, sticky ends are so few and food for thought about the social and cultural vitality despite divisions, and the overlain New and far between. But significant negativity can reproductive conditions of the wretched of our Beats and bhangra avoid cliché as the mayhem nonetheless be acknowledged and encompassed earth have smuggled through the closed-circuit resolves into generational contrasts of multiracial if the storytelling is sufficiently freewheeling Big Brother filters of conformism in the towering hope. Romance rekindled breaks backward- while being carefully, caringly choreographed. manufacture of consent. On closer inspection, looking traditions, while teenagers pursue quests Exemplary in this category are Greg Hall’s grounds for provisional encouragement that and forge friendships based on generosity and super-ultra-low budget guerrila productions14 – another world is possible seem least opaque in – glimpsing the limitations of parental blind The Plague (2005) and Same Sh*t, Different Day exactly those scenarios where groups of characters alleys – working-through toxic power relations to (2010) – chronicling teetering trajectories among have some paltry time and space to arrange their serve future needs. But deterministic narrative lovable London hip-hop chancers, which allow affairs without constantly being individually arcs rather miss the point – an urge obliquely frustrating prevarication and protracted interludes and collectively fingered and pestered by formal lampooned in the Big Men’s ballooning fetish; a to modulate impending agony or ecstasy and market and governmental forces. In which case, deft condensation of joyriding, lifestylism and the judiciously sprinkle sudden serious twists among it’s telling that the remnants of Old Left patrician Northern kitchen-sink ritual of climbing a hill to inadvertent clowning and slobbing. But for deep vanguardism these days, in concert with the usual look down on the town. The lieutenants flail out of dramatic chutzpah, oscillating humour and bourgeois suspects, line up to a man, woman and control of their territory, ending impaled on the winning gross caricature, as well as in facing transgendered being in the parties of the dark mosque tower – contrasting the failed Western nightmare scenarios head-on, the 1980s saga This angels of capitalism and the State. No doubt we secular hot air of mastery with the impotence Is England (2006-12) might, if mentally calibrated should also give a passing nod to conspiratorial of the Muslim hierarchy in challenging the to regional, sonic and sartorial specifics, share paranoia over the recuperative inoculation fundamentalists eventually repelled by enlisting common class co-ordinates across the present day of animalistic carnival among human couch- dope-dealers’ muscle. Such plot absurdities UK. potatoes vegetating in the future-in-the-present likewise signal the humility of the film-maker in The four-part This Is England ’86 (2010) matrix of Baudrillardian simulation. But that relinquishing authorial omnipotence – bravely reconstituted threads of the initial film, depicting too comfortably coincides with the absorption weaving the weft and warp of meticulously its ensemble’s continuing misadventures three of comfortable classes into twittering Webs collected grass-roots anecdotes and repartee to years later. The skinhead subculture whose inconsequentially cluttering up so many Occupy demolish pretension, free up energy and facilitate ambivalences the earlier work unpicked – echoing Everything liberal world views. Effete consensual agency. only in fading NF graffiti – has diluted further dissociation from the obscene Real cannot Fittingly, the children’s exploration of a into post-punk, goth, mod and casual crossovers. stomach any of the hideous visceral immediacy mysterious adult world provides most bite, blithely Style-sense promiscuity mirrors diverse fortunes and euphoria, let alone convulsive mortal agonies, juggling real danger and heartache with naïve among misfit gang members who nevertheless of the libidinous and death-drive imaginaries of sass and insight. They grapple with the inanities retain the rabid loyalty emblematic of the illiberal billions – who can’t in any case afford the of respectability (“My mam’s a smackhead.” depressed post-industrial contexts excavated latest must-have digital gadgetry or other high- “Mine’s a dinner-lady.”) and are drawn to the so convincingly. Again structured by the re- blown or low-rent distractions of fashion, let alone relatively well-off ‘Death Row’ whose denizens engagement of old mates, Meadows’ loosening decent IT facilities. Descending back to ground – paedophiles, headteachers, gangsters, bosses – of the semi-autobiographical focus allows fully- zero, two tendential gaps may be noted in TV and correlate posh with perverse. While one joyrider realised grappling with the challenges of young cinematic transitional programmes out of the post- views Osama bin Laden screensavers and jihad working-class adulthood, with prospects dire and war social-democratic settlement ushering in the videos as comic relief from being pressganged into dubious past certainties disappearing in rampant post-class-war neoliberal consensus and beyond. iniquity, another’s apprenticeship to a hardman political Machiavellianism. In such inauspicious First is the odd erasure alluded to above of signs grandad entails blundering around junkie mums circumstances the ‘imagined community’ of nation and symptoms of the direct intervention of either and courier pensioners. And whereas one lass coheres no better than England’s footballers at corporate or state services and utilities, be it hard finally guns down her unlikely father, a younger tournaments then or since – rendering concrete forces of law, disorder and criminal injustice or, Muslim stepsister strategises her transcendence damage to social fabrics most explicit in gamuts for that matter, soft bizzies of all education, social of patriarchy in the local urban music nightclub – of savage stress and ill-ease which friendship work, or welfare disciplinary stripes. But then a temporary autonomous zone where lower-class networks struggle to heal or ameliorate – the contemporary repressive SNAFU (‘situation 32 | variant 43 | spring 2012

normal, all fucked-up’) of the militarily-industrious Notes that scant recorded intelligent attention has accrued to Shameless so far. What does exist includes: James complex is moderately disinclined to bother 1 And, even now, we can confidently predict that no right- Walters, ‘Saving Face: Inflections of Character Role on leftie accountancy will reach our plasma screens mobilising its bungling apparatus unless the lower- Play in Shameless’, Journal of British Cinema and – matching the mainstream media news blackout of classes collectively impinge outside abject zones Television, 3 (1), 2006, pp95-106; Sally Munt, ‘Shameless the most significant victory of British industrial labour in Queer Street’, in Queer Attachments: The Cultural on solid middle-England ground. Except, of course, for many years – of the recent magnificently horizontal Politics of Shame (Ashgate, 2007); and Stephen Baker, in cultural representations – those discussed national networking militancy of sparks, siteworkers and ‘Shameless and the Question of England: Genre, Class herein, but more especially in the mesmerising allies, defeating with inspired direct determined action and Nation’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 6 16 (against the grain of their appalled and appalling trade panopticon of Reality TV . Of course, once (3), 2009, pp452-67. For discussion of the first series in union hierarchy) the massed ranks of the Big Seven sticking our necks above the parapets and daring terms of previous television comedy and drama, see my construction companies; thus, for now, retaining some of ‘A Low Down Dirty Lack of Shame’, Variant, 12, 2004, to intrude in the sterile civic spaces of genteel the precious terms and conditions remaining from what pp11-12. Note also a considerably tamer Shameless U.S. residence and dirty commerce, they’ll come down their ancestors battled so hard for (see, for example, (produced by John Wells and Paul Abbott in 2010), reports at http://neanarchists.com/). like a ton of bricks – but neither is there much with the otherwise superlative loser-actor William hint of that on telly or at the pictures. Whereas, as 2 Cf. Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No H. Macy completely unconvincing as a Yank Frank. the riotous August proved17, if there’s more than Alternative? (Zero, 2009); see also Slavoj Zizek, ‘Risk Whereas north of their border, the comparably mordant a few of us at a time they’re not really fit for that Society and its Discontents’, Historical Materialism, 2, mockumentary saga Trailer Park Boys (Mike Clattenburg, 1998, pp143-64. purpose anyway, unless tooled up like robocops Canada 1999-2009), as with Manchester’s favourite 3 See Mike Wayne, ‘The Performing Northern Working fictional pikeys, broke viewing figure records year on bludgeoning and blasting innocuous passers-by Class in British Cinema: Cultural Representation and its year – see Dean DeFino, ‘From Trailer Trash to Trailer and those deluding themselves trying to cash in on Political Economy’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Park Boys’, Post Script magazine, 2009 (posted at http:// ‘rights’. 23 (4), 2006, pp287-297. libcom.org/library/trailer-trash-trailer-park-boys). At stake, then, is what will happen when 4 For relevant discussions and varying interpretations, 14 The outfit responsible is called Broke But Making Films, the unruly multitudes emerge en masse from see: Slavoj Zizek, ‘Whither Oedipus’, in: The Ticklish whose website at www.broke-but-making-films.com can symbolic and actual respositories of despair and Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology now be visited to snap up The Plague and extras on DVD (Verso, 1999); John Hill, ‘Failure and Utopianism: for only a fiver ... sleepwalking estates of mind, to posture, frolic Representations of the Working Class’, in: R. Murphy 15 For an account of Meadows’ own coming of age in and act directly in the faces of authority, its (ed.) British Cinema of the 1990s (BFI, 2000) and ‘From bodging bang up-to-date slickly digital production, see reluctant or enthusastic servants, and those who New Wave to Brit-Grit: Continuity and Difference in his interview in The Guardian, 16th December 2011, just don’t care and are content – if not intent on Working Class Realism’, in: J. Ashby & A. Higson (eds.) online at www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/16/ it – for us to remain corralled there? Apart from British Cinema Past and Present (Routledge, 2000); Claire making-of-this-is-england-88. Monk, ‘Underbelly UK: the 1990s Underclass Film, 16 At the turn of the century, sociologist Beverley Skeggs sideways glances and glimpses in Shameless and Masculinity and the Ideologies of “New” Britain’, also embarked on a thoroughgoing decade-long investigation the like, and occasional frescoes of fury against the in Ashby & Higson; and Cora Kaplan, ‘The Death of the of Reality TV’s primary function of informally Working Class Hero’, New Formations, 52, 2004, pp94- indiscriminate, discriminatory intrusion of public legislating popular orientations to lived class – see: the 110. For a corrective, see James Heartfield, ‘There is No policing and, even rarer, the intimate internal excellent collection Reality Television and Class (edited Masculinity Crisis’, Genders, 35, 2002, www.genders.org/ with Helen Wood, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Reacting biopolitics of the nano-commodification of desire, g35/g35_heartfield.html. to Reality Television (by Skeggs & Wood, Routledge, UK filmmakers are largely silent on such questions 5 As Paul Marris aptly puts it, in ‘Northern Realism: An – and would doubtless be booted offscreen pronto 2012); and, for tentative political lessons, ‘Imagining Exhausted Tradition?’ Cineaste, 26 (4), 2001, pp30-66. Personhood Differently: Person Value and Auonomist 18 if presuming otherwise . However, in matter of 6 Not to mention the excoriating postmodernist grandeur Working-Class Value Practices’, Sociological Review, 59 fact – to cite one tiny recent example – when of the Dante-meets-James Ellroy apparitions of (3), 2011, pp496–513 (also at: www.hum.aau.dk/~proj- East London’s Muslim and other youth come out 1970s-80s West Yorkshire in the Red Riding trilogy (by forsk/beverley_skeggs/articleskeggs.pdf). and about scouting against fascist manifestation, Tony Grisoni, from four David Peace novels, Channel 4, 17 For a range of interesting perspectives on the 2009); let alone those dipping into the rural and urban blatantly flouting the commands of community significance of the UK riots, see: ‘Paul Gilroy Speaks class-saturated vicissitudes of previous centuries, such on the Riots, August 2011, Tottenham, North London’, ‘leaders’, and make a point of seeking out as Andrea Arnold’s exhilaratingly trenchant take on http://dreamofsafety.blogspot.com; Slavoj Zizek, ‘Mischief Night’ camaraderie with ‘the anarchists’ Wuthering Heights (2011) and the sickly-sour sex-work ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’, London Review of while the woefully backward self-styled ‘advanced exposé The Crimson Petal and The White (by Lucinda Books, 19th August 2011; Aufheben, ‘Communities, fractions’ of self-important politicos studiously Coxon, based on the Michel Faber novel, BBC2 2011). Commodities and Class in the August 2011 Riots’, self-kettle down the other end of the road; well, 7 A rare exception being the reggae dancehall-themed Aufheben, 20, 2012, pp1-17 (available at http://libcom. Babymother (Julian Henriques 1998); discussed in org); The Guardian, ‘Reading the Riots: Investigating maybe there’s hope for us all. Rachel Moseley-Wood, ‘Colonizin’ Englan’ in Reverse’, England’s Summer of Disorder’, 2012, www.guardian. Visual Culture in Britain, 5, 2004, pp91-104. co.uk/uk/series/reading-the-riots; plus the Khalid 8 In Visions of England: Class and Culture in Contemporary Qureshi Foundation & Chelsea Ives Youth Centre, ‘Riot Cinema (Berg, 2006), Paul Dave convincingly parallels Polit-Econ’, and Howard Slater, ‘FTH: The Savage and the venture capital speculation on low-cultural signifiers Beyond’, both in Mute, 3 (2), 2012, ‘Politics My Arse’, emptied of context in Trainspotting with similarly www.metamute.org. Finally, for a preliminary – if blatant cultural commodity trading among the era’s sometimes strangely misconceived and over-reaching – Young British artists – as critiqued by Julian Stallabrass exploration of what insurgent educational praxis might in High Art Lite (Verso, 2000) – calculatingly pandering entail, see the admirable Mastaneh Shah-Shuja, ‘Zones to sundry aspirational, reactionary and aristocratic of Proletarian Development’ (Open Mute, 2008). deceptions that class really no longer mattered. 18 Perhaps that’s why the risibly underwhelming 9 See Carl Neville’s valuable analysis in Classless: Recent Wachowski brothers-produced American version of Alan Essays on British Film (Zero, 2011). Moore’s graphic novel V For Vendetta (James McTeigue 2005) wasn’t a whole lot more illuminating on the 10 Amber’s work is discussed in more detail in my subject, either. ‘Hunting, Fishing and Shooting the Working Classes’, Variant, 34, 2009, pp25-27. 11 See James Leggott, ‘Like Father? Failing Parents and Angelic Children in Contemporary British Social Realist Cinema’, in: P. Powrie, A. Davies & B. Babbington (eds), The Trouble With Men: Masculinities in European & Hollywood Cinema (Wallflower, 2004). 12 The latter not being fiction at all, but a quasi- documentary with professional actors ventriloquising the family and friends of troubled Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar. For a discussion of the ‘truth’ irretrievably lost in this variety of realism, see Omar El- Khairy, ‘Clio Barnard’s Talking Heads’. Mute, 3 (1), 2011, ‘Double Negative Feedback’; www.metamute.org. 13 Despite all these uncommon attributes, it is revealing