Screening the commune: popular tele/visions of domestic discontent Will Lawrence BA(Hons), MA A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Sociology Department, Lancaster University January 2021 Screening the commune: popular tele/visions of domestic discontent· Will Lawrence BA(Hons), MA· Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy· January 2021 Abstract This thesis investigates the phenomenon of communes being brought to life as a device and setting in popular television narratives between the mid-2000s and the late-2010s. I ask: how is the commune imagined on popular television of this period? Why does the commune have imaginary vitality at this juncture? I explore the imaginary vitality of the commune in the context of what I call a “decade of domestic discontent”: a period of discontent and unease in contemporary life regarding matters of the domestic. The “domestic discontent” to which I refer corresponds with concerns about climate change, intergenerational inequalities, and sexual politics. I examine four case study television programmes that feature particularly notable instances of the commune’s animation in the mid-2000s to late-2010s. I deploy a “figurative” analysis, in which a key focus of analytical attention is the fictional characters or factual television participants that feature in narratives about communes. I explore how these characters are constructed as having intertextual characteristics and qualities such that they bring to life figures that circulate in wider culture. The set of figures that I identify as imaginatively bound up with the commune are: “the low impact pioneer”, “the boomerang child”, “the selfish feminist”, “the cult leader”, “the acid casualty”, and “the raving brute”. This set of figures, I argue, is made up of both “discontented figures” and “figures of discontent”, that is, figures that express various kinds of discontent and figures that are objects of discontent. I argue that the commune is a signifier of multifarious kinds of discontent that have particular resonance in the contemporary moment. The thesis highlights television narratives featuring communes as presenting scenarios that evoke some of the most pressing current issues of domestic discontent. Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted in substantially the same form for the award of a higher degree elsewhere. Furthermore, I declare that the word count of this thesis, 60,826 words, does not exceed the permitted maximum. Will Lawrence January 2021 Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................ii Declaration .................................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Domestic discontent and figurative criticism ............................................................... 13 Situating the study: domestic dwellings criticism .............................................................................. 14 Domestic discontent in contemporary times ..................................................................................... 20 Discontented figures and figures of discontent ................................................................................. 27 Figurative television criticism ............................................................................................................... 32 Chapter Two: Familiarising the ecovillage in Grand Designs ................................................................. 41 Reassuring television and the low impact pioneer ............................................................................ 44 Austerity chic ........................................................................................................................................... 50 For the sake of the children .................................................................................................................. 55 Object of unconcern .............................................................................................................................. 58 Burning down the house ....................................................................................................................... 60 Disappearing commune ......................................................................................................................... 64 Chapter Three: Suspended adulthood in Jam and Jerusalem .................................................................. 67 Boomer comedy ...................................................................................................................................... 69 Regretful entrapment ............................................................................................................................. 74 Stay-at-home New Age traveller .......................................................................................................... 78 Selfish feminist ........................................................................................................................................ 83 Suspended adulthood ............................................................................................................................. 88 Chapter Four: Acid casualties in Waking the Dead ................................................................................. 91 Forensic noir and the traumatic sixties ............................................................................................... 94 Synopsis .................................................................................................................................................... 99 Cult leader .............................................................................................................................................. 101 Acid casualty .......................................................................................................................................... 107 Scene of injury ....................................................................................................................................... 115 Chapter Five: Communalism as barbarism in Eden: Paradise Lost ..................................................... 117 Controversial reality TV climate......................................................................................................... 121 Raving brute ........................................................................................................................................... 127 Sixties critiques of communes ............................................................................................................ 136 Boys in the woods................................................................................................................................. 141 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................. 143 References .................................................................................................................................................. 151 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors Tracey Jensen and Anne-Marie Fortier. I benefited enormously from their guidance and advice while developing the research. I’m grateful to Celia Roberts for assisting me in joining the Sociology Department at Lancaster. Thank you to Claire Waterton and Graeme Gilloch who commented on very early drafts of some of the material that was worked up into the thesis. The research was made possible by a scholarship from the ESRC. Thank you to all the generous people who encouraged and advised me in the process of applying for the scholarship. I’ve been fortunate to share the experience of studying and working at Lancaster with others on a similar path who are now treasured friends. Thank you to them and to friends further afield. I owe thanks to Charlotte Hardman for her counsel which set me off into new territory that allowed inspiration to flow. Thank you, finally, to my family for their support. Introduction Dr Raymond Parke (Richard Johnson) sits opposite a man who represents everything that he hates. He is in a police interrogation room with Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd (Trevor Eve). Parke is under suspicion for his role in the murder of a young psychiatrist in 1967, who was found to have been killed in the commune that Parke had started in the early part of his career as a fringe psychiatrist. The police team led by Boyd suspect that the murderer was a teenage commune dweller with paranoid schizophrenia with whom Parke had conducted a failed therapeutic role play encounter immediately prior to the murder taking place. Should Parke’s role in the murder be publicised, what is left of his already diminished professional reputation is at stake. The atmosphere in the room escalates to a tipping point. Enraged at Boyd’s scrutiny, Parke launches into an accusatory rant and stabs his interrogator’s hand with