Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Contributors
- 1 Introduction: Shane's World
- 2 Structure and Agency: Shane Meadows and the New Regional Production Sectors
- 3 Twenty-first-Century Social Realism: Shane Meadows and New British Realism
- 4 ‘Al fresco? That's up yer anus, innit?’ Shane Meadows and the Politics of Abjection
- 5 No More Heroes: The Politics of Marginality and Disenchantment in TwentyFourSeven and This is England
- 6 ‘Now I'm the monster’: Remembering, Repeating and Working Through in Dead Man's Shoes and TwentyFourSeven
- 7 ‘An object of indecipherable bastardry – a true monster’: Homosociality, Homoeroticism and Generic Hybridity in Dead Man's Shoes
- 8 A Message to You, Maggie: 1980s Skinhead Subculture and Music in This is England
- 9 Changing Spaces of ‘Englishness’: Psychogeography and Spatial Practices in This is England and Somers Town
- 10 ‘Shane, don't film this bit’: Comedy and Performance in Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee
- 11 ‘Them over there’: Motherhood and Marginality in Shane Meadows' Films
- 12 ‘What do you think makes a bad dad?’ Shane Meadows and Fatherhood
- 13 Is This England '86 and '88? Memory, Haunting and Return through Television Seriality
- 14 After Laughter Comes Tears: Passion and Redemption in This is England '88
- Index
3 - Twenty-first-Century Social Realism: Shane Meadows and New British Realism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Contributors
- 1 Introduction: Shane's World
- 2 Structure and Agency: Shane Meadows and the New Regional Production Sectors
- 3 Twenty-first-Century Social Realism: Shane Meadows and New British Realism
- 4 ‘Al fresco? That's up yer anus, innit?’ Shane Meadows and the Politics of Abjection
- 5 No More Heroes: The Politics of Marginality and Disenchantment in TwentyFourSeven and This is England
- 6 ‘Now I'm the monster’: Remembering, Repeating and Working Through in Dead Man's Shoes and TwentyFourSeven
- 7 ‘An object of indecipherable bastardry – a true monster’: Homosociality, Homoeroticism and Generic Hybridity in Dead Man's Shoes
- 8 A Message to You, Maggie: 1980s Skinhead Subculture and Music in This is England
- 9 Changing Spaces of ‘Englishness’: Psychogeography and Spatial Practices in This is England and Somers Town
- 10 ‘Shane, don't film this bit’: Comedy and Performance in Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee
- 11 ‘Them over there’: Motherhood and Marginality in Shane Meadows' Films
- 12 ‘What do you think makes a bad dad?’ Shane Meadows and Fatherhood
- 13 Is This England '86 and '88? Memory, Haunting and Return through Television Seriality
- 14 After Laughter Comes Tears: Passion and Redemption in This is England '88
- Index
Summary
When we think of British realist cinema we think of Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Alan Clarke and the British New Wave, among others, and it is testament to the importance of the subject of this collection that – for someone who has only been making feature films since the late 1990s – we now think of Shane Meadows. Meadows has emphatically continued the progression and diversification of arguably Britain's richest cinematic tradition. He is a unique filmmaker who can be understood both within the lineage of the realist mode and as a maverick who breaks as many moulds as he shapes. By analysing these two characteristics in unison, we are able to assess more clearly the director's influence on British cinema, and British culture more generally. Meadows retains key aspects of Britain's realist heritage while redrawing the mode's stylistic and thematic boundaries, practices which can be understood more clearly by investigating the work of other contemporary filmmakers whose films have parallels with those of Meadows, and who together illustrate the emergence of this new British realist address.
Since Shane Meadows' feature film debut in 1997, the likes of Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher [1999] and Morvern Callar [2002]), Paweł Pawlikowski (Last Resort [2000] and My Summer of Love [2004]), Andrea Arnold (Red Road [2006] and Fish Tank [2009]), Duane Hopkins (Better Things [2009]), Samantha Morton (The Unloved [2009]) and Joanna Hogg (Unrelated [2007] and Archipelago [2010]) have produced films that have marked the reconfiguration of the realist paradigm in Britain.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shane MeadowsCritical Essays, pp. 35 - 49Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013