Tom Jennings the Poverty of Imagination

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.

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