Best of Friends, Or Worst of Enemies?

Chapter 5 Best of Friends, or Worst of Enemies?

The snobbery of our films is not aristocratic. In British films the aristocracy is generally…treated, though respectfully, as a fine old figure of fun. Similarly, the functions of working class characters are chiefly comic, where they are not villainous. They make excellent servants, good trades- men, and first-class soldiers. The film director lindsay anderson (2004: 235) writing in 1956 about the way in which class was represented in British films

At a time when the normal condition of the citizen is a state of anxiety, euphoria spreads over our culture like the broad smile of an idiot. An observation made in 1948 by robert warshow (1964: 84) in his influential essay, ‘Gangster as Tragic Hero’

As long as you present poverty as something dignified, the establishment will not be disturbed. An observation made in 1970 by the Bengali film director, Mrinal Sen (cited in rajadhyaksha and willemen, 1995: 384)1

Introduction

The focus of this chapter is on films projecting the image of its class protago- nist as being a powerful-but-friendly subject (= ‘friend’), located analytically between the two other categories that featured in the previous chapter, one hostile (= ‘fiend’) and the other harmless (= ‘fool’). These in turn overlapped with two other variables. First, that of pastoral and Darwinian versions of the agrarian myth, the former corresponding to a situation of harmony in the countryside while the latter reflected one of struggle. And second, these two versions each possessed a landlord and plebeian variant, which depicted the class-specific character of the discourse.

1 The epigraphs by Warshow and Mrinal Sen are included in order to make the point that not all those formulating or analysing popular culture have succumbed to idealism, and viewed it as a-historical or as unproblematically emancipatory/progressive/empowering.

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It could be argued that, where the element of struggle is involved, characterization of ‘those above’ as ‘friends’ to ‘those below’ is more insidious than ‘fiend’/’fool’ images. Unlike either of the latter, therefore, the portrayal of mon- arch or aristocrat as a friend-of-the-people seemingly negates the hierarchy at the apex of which such upper class subjects are positioned. In keeping with the discourse of populism, this characterization undermines plebeian conscious- ness of class. By denying not so much the presence as the efficacy of class, the image of ‘friend’ permits ‘those above’ to deflect or suspend references to the existence of a material relation that is unequal, thereby enabling them to be depicted as ‘other’ than in reality they are: namely, owners of means of produc- tion that confer on proprietors such as themselves forms of economic, political, and ideological power not available to ‘those below’. What in class terms are enemies can therefore be presented as ‘friends’ – the central emplacement of populist discourse. Films with imperialism as a central theme project a combination of versions and variants, and may exhibit opposed forms of the agrarian myth. Those engaged in conquest, for example, will proclaim the desirability of versions of the agrarian myth that are pastoral, resulting in a discourse uniting landlord and/or plebeian of the same national identity. This will be met on the part of the conquered with landlord and/or plebeian versions amounting to Darwinian variants of the agrarian myth. The recent past has witnessed a resurgence of benign depictions in popular culture of the monarchy and aristocracy, a development evident in films such as The Queen (2006) and The King’s Speech (2011), and television dramas like House of Cards (1990–95) and Parade’s End (2012).2 All the latter present an image of the British landowning class as benign, adhering to the ideology of noblesse oblige. This is consistent with the self-image projected by Con servative members of the coalition government elected in 2010, one led by politicians from a public school and Oxbridge background, many of whom were old Etonians with considerable wealth and land. The extent to which film depictions reflect or depart from political reality is one of the issues exam- ined here. As has been noted in the previous chapter, images/narratives that stressed the disempowered and/or politically inefficacious character of aristocracy and

2 This approach, focusing as it does on royal and/or aristocratic life in the English country house over a period extending from the late nineteenth century to the first half of the twen- tieth, also includes the films Mrs Brown (1997), directed by John Madden, and Gosford Park (2001), directed by Robert Altman, as well as the television series Downton Abbey (2010 onwards).