Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain PDF
Preview Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain
Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain ‘ThisisthebookthatresearchersandteachersofcontemporaryBritishTVDrama have been waiting for. With insight and sensitivity, this collection abandons the overworked realism/heritage debates to explore class in relation to a fascinating range of 21C British TV texts. From Peaky Blinders and Happy Valley to Grandma’s House and Footballers Wives, scholarly debates around class and British telly are reworked, refined, and completely re-energised. Buy this book. Rightnow.’ —DrAlisonPeirse,LecturerinWritingforScreenandStage, UniversityofYork,UK. DavidForrest(cid:129)BethJohnson Editors Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain Editors DavidForrest BethJohnson SchoolofEnglish UniversityofLeeds UniversityofSheffield Leeds,UnitedKingdom Sheffield,UnitedKingdom ISBN978-1-137-55505-2 ISBN978-1-137-55506-9(eBook) DOI10.1057/978-1-137-55506-9 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017939686 ©TheEditor(s)(ifapplicable)andTheAuthor(s)2017 Theauthor(s)has/haveassertedtheirright(s)tobeidentifiedastheauthor(s)ofthisworkin accordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,whetherthewholeorpartofthematerialisconcerned,specificallytherightsof translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology nowknownorhereafterdeveloped. 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The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, UnitedKingdom For Inderjit Bachada (1983–2016) F OREWORD ClassyTelly I hope this collection achieves what it should: to bring closure to any sensitivity around discussing class as a structuring feature of television - whether in relation to classic questions of representation or around the trajectories of writers, actors and institutional histories. There is renewed academic rigor to questions of class, precisely at the time when class identificationsareapparentlymorein flux. Television itself is at the centre of this new spectacularisation of class, because nowhere is class made more visible at this key moment in British history. Of course, I am partly referring to working-class participants taking the dubious limelight afforded to them through reality television. Somemightclaimthatthesensationaldramaof‘reality’hascomeatareal cost to the more expensive fictional drama of which British television has such a proud legacy and through which narratives of working-class lives andexperienceshavebeensorichlyexplored.Yettherearemanyexamples here of British television’s ongoing contribution to understanding the broader social, culturaland politicallandscapeof class. Television is itself a ‘classed’ (and feminised) medium associated with the domestic, the humdrum and the everyday and has so often been pitched in a cultural hierarchy as the poorer relation of film. However, its very classed and gendered form has also been the key to its dramatic success.Itsabilitytodrawoutintimacy–whetherthroughthesingleplay orthesoapopera-attendstoaclassedaestheticwhichhasbeenattached to that overused phrase ‘gritty realism’. Whilst many of the essays in this collection refer back to that defining history in the national vernacular of vii viii FOREWORD Britishdrama,theyalsotakeusinnewdirections.TV’sintimateabilityto takeitstimedrawingusintoitsaffectiveregisterscanusetheeverydayto arrestusandmakeus feelinjustice inprofound andmoving ways. Television’s attention to class also draws on other registers, reminding us that the importance of place and space as phenomenological experi- ences of class can be drawn out over the television series. Whilst the very realNorth/SouthdivideplaysouteconomicallyintheUK,sothatdivide gainssymbolictractionindrama,where‘theNorth’offersagothichinter- land whereby working-class narratives also take on a sublime ‘othering’ substance, especially in crime drama. Consider also how the crime genre itselfstructuresthenarrativethroughtheworkinglivesofthepolice–the middle-classdetective overcoming their‘outsider’ statusin the masculine working-class policestation. Butalsothiscollectionremindsustolookatothersitesandgenresthat would often get overlooked for what they communicate about classed sensibilities.Thisbookremindsusthattellingstoriesofclassedlivesisnot onlytiedtoapreoccupationwith‘socialissues’.Working-classlivesarenot alwaysfilledwith‘problems’butalsowithcomedy,ironyandjoy-evenif often in the face of adversity. Whilst comedy is replete with examples where class distinctions provide the drama, so too is more ‘weighty’ serious drama. Class should therefore also be traced in the spaces where thestoriesofprivilegedlivesabound.Poliakoff’smarginalisationofwork- ing-class characters as mobs or outsiders is as central to the telling of the structuring of class narratives as anything more traditionally associated with ‘gritty realism’. Classalsoappearsontelevisioninthestoriesofthosethatgettoappear. Much has been made in recent years of the class divide in the cultural sectorandthecreativeindustries,andtheimpossibilityofaccessforthose not publically schooled. Essays here remind us of the stories of those writers and actors that do make it through – what pressures they have to beartotellcertainkindsof‘truths’andcarrytheburdenofworking-class ‘authenticity’.Itseemsthatthistraitisatonceamarkerofvalueandatthe same time a ‘mark’ which cannot be removed to allow the same creative license affordedto the middle-class‘neutral’ actor. The classed identity of writers is clearly central to the stories that get told.WouldthepassionforthetellingofPeakyBlindershavemadeitwere it not for an emotional investment in the story of the Birmingham’s industrial legacy by a Brummie? I have often heard it said of academics whowriteofclass(likemyself)thatwewriteandspeak‘withachiponour FOREWORD ix shoulder’. The origin of this phrase stems from the 19th century when boysinNewYorkwouldplaceapieceoftimberontheirshoulderanddare a challenger to knock it off. Setting out a challenge, marking a space for contention, and asking others what they make of it, are also the traits of good intellectualworkwhich can be found inthisbook. September,2016 HelenWood A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to thank the following for their help, support, and inspiration during the processofediting thisvolume: Jack Cortvriend, Mike Forrest, Kristyn Gorton, Rachel Hughes, Laura Minor, Alison Peirse, Wallis Seaton, Paul and Ethan Smith, Gemma Thorpe, David Rolinson, and all our contributors for enriching and expandingour knowledge ofclass telly. xi C ONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 David ForrestandBethJohnson PartI AuthorshipandClass 2 This Is England: Authorship,Emotion andClass Telly 13 BethJohnson 3 JimmyMcGovern’s TheStreet andthe Politics of Everyday Life 29 David Forrest 4 High-flyers,Hooligans and Helpmates:Images of Social Class in the TelevisionDramas ofStephen Poliakoff 45 StephenHarper PartII InstitutionsandStructures ofClass 5 Through Class Darkly:Class in the BritishTV Noir 61 Paul Elliott xiii
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