tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/ken-loach-22138/articles
Ken Loach – The Conversation
2024-01-18T12:14:17Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221255
2024-01-18T12:14:17Z
2024-01-18T12:14:17Z
Mr Bates vs The Post Office is perfect social realism: it speaks directly to the public
<p>In the wake of British broadcast ITV airing <a href="https://theconversation.com/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-depicts-one-of-the-uks-worst-miscarriages-of-justice-heres-why-so-many-victims-didnt-speak-out-220513">its four-part drama</a>, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/rishi-sunak-announces-plan-to-pass-law-quashing-horizon-post-office-scandal-convictions">new legislation</a> has been tabled, former Post Office boss Paula Vennells <a href="https://theconversation.com/former-post-office-boss-paula-vennells-says-shell-hand-back-her-cbe-but-it-may-not-be-that-simple-220869">has handed back</a> her CBE and, for the first time, Fujitsu, the company behind the faulty IT system at the scandal’s heart, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/16/fujitsu-admits-for-first-time-it-should-help-compensate-post-office-victims">has admitted</a> it should contribute to compensation for the victims. </p>
<p>The question that won’t go away is why it has taken a TV drama for the wheels of justice to really start moving.</p>
<p>News outlets, podcasts, political commentators and MPs have been galvanised into action after, as ITV revealed on January 9 2024, 9.2 million viewers tuned in to watch the drama. The scheduling and the audience profile go some way to explaining why it has had such an impact. So too, does the drama being closely aligned with social realist approaches to cinema. </p>
<p>My doctoral research into British social realism looks at how individual characters are constructed and represented in film. Mr Bates vs The Post Office follows the plight of characters facing a social problem filmed in a naturalistic manner. Crucially, much like Ken Loach’s 2016 film, <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2016-11-30/debates/AC2EA058-9135-410D-9138-DC2C5163574C/SocialSecurityClaimants">I, Daniel Blake</a>, it has generated not just public attention but also activism. </p>
<h2>How realism connects with the viewer</h2>
<p>Directed by James Strong and written by Gwyneth Hughes, Mr Bates vs The Post Office tells the story of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/post-office-scandal-why-thousands-of-victims-are-yet-to-see-justice-22088">Post Office Horizon IT scandal</a> that left hundreds of sub-postmasters with accounting errors between 1999 and 2015. The long-respected institution claimed these were solely their responsibility, resulting in <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-post-office-was-able-to-bring-private-prosecutions-in-the-horizon-it-scandal-220959">private prosecutions</a>, debt, bankruptcy and, tragically, suicides. </p>
<p>The drama focuses on conventional aspects associated with social realism: injustice, law and order and poverty. Sub-postmaster Lee Castleton (Will Mellor) is privately prosecuted. The bankruptcy he suffers as a result of losing that case and being required to pay legal fees for the Post Office, affects his home life, his relationships and his mental health. </p>
<p>There are hard hitting sequences, showing Castleton and many other characters reaching breaking point. One character takes their own life. These are scenes that remain with the viewer long after the programme has ended. </p>
<p>While the realist element of the drama is not as strong as its social aspect, the camera is deployed in a way reminiscent of Loach. It lingers as an observer in the lives of these characters. Similarly, in <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-daniel-blake-ken-loach-tells-britain-its-time-to-kick-the-political-door-in-66657">I, Daniel Blake</a>, the camera observes from a distance as Daniel comes up against structures of inequality and injustice. This offers a visceral insight into the torturous ordeal that ordinary people face. </p>
<p>While many critically acclaimed social realist films, such as <a href="https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/109497/">This is England</a>, <a href="https://zooscope.group.shef.ac.uk/fish-tank-dir-andrea-arnold-bbc-films-2009/">Fish Tank</a> and <a href="https://zooscope.group.shef.ac.uk/the-selfish-giant-dir-clio-barnard-ifc-films-2013/">The Selfish Giant</a>, share subtle political nuances with the ITV drama, it is in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/15/ken-laoch-film-i-daniel-blake-kes-cathy-come-home-interview-simon-hattenstone">Loach’s oeuvre</a> that it finds greatest resonance. His films, including <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2021.1879194">Sorry We Missed You</a> (2019) and <a href="https://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/article/ex-miner-digs-deep-to-help-migrants-in-the-old-oak">The Old Oak</a> (2023), adopts recognisable authentic characters in familiar locations. This convention of Loach and other social realist filmmakers, allows the audience to understand a broader range of socio-economic and cultural issues in society. </p>
<p>In my research, I have shown how <a href="https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/3284/1/KELLETT%20LEWIS%20FINAL%20THESIS.pdf">realism</a> can articulate a relationship between an individual and the social world. It activates a <a href="https://cmegali.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2021/11/04/mise-en-scene/">mise-en-scène</a> (a film studies term about the arrangement of props and scenery on set) of memory, recognition and familiarity. It solidifies the images and narratives on screen in the minds of the viewers. Much like Daniel Blake, and This is England’s Shaun Fields, the Post Office drama’s characters are relatable: the viewer can compare their experiences with those on screen.</p>
<p>Blake is constructed to be an honest person, who, despite his health issues, has to find work due lack of communication between health professionals and the benefits system. So too, the regular and hardworking people, in Mr Bates vs The Post Office become victims of a system that does not communicate effectively, severely affecting their wellbeing.</p>
<p>Furthermore, as opposed to a faceless person in a news article or subject in a documentary, the actors involved in the drama – Toby Jones, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Shaun Dooley, Will Mellor, Ian Hart, Monica Dolan – are all familiar to the British public. Through their history with national television, and the diverse regional representation they achieve, their presence further enforces the drama’s “this could happen to you” narrative. </p>
<h2>How scheduling and audience profile matters</h2>
<p>Of course, the show also benefited from a well-placed slot in the Christmas/new year schedule. It was broadcast on consecutive days and also uploaded to ITV’s streaming site, ITVX. This both catered to binge culture (where viewers watch several episodes in one sitting) and kept the momentum going, allowing the story to embed itself in the minds of viewers. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/265376/media-nations-report-2023.pdf">OfCom</a>, ITV boasts an eclectic audience, but most viewers are over 55 and from working class backgrounds. This means they’re mostly watching the drama from a working-class perspective, with experiences that chime with those represented on screen. </p>
<p><a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2023/dnr-executive-summary">Research</a> has long shown that, due to changing consumer behaviour and falling sales revenue, traditional media including newspapers and magazines are no longer able to capture the public attention in the same way this drama has. </p>
<p>Conversely, social realist projects have brought about real change. The public debate prompted by Loach’s I, Daniel Blake <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2016-11-30/debates/AC2EA058-9135-410D-9138-DC2C5163574C/SocialSecurityClaimants">led to a discussion</a> in the House of Lords, on how claimants were being treated by the social security system. </p>
<p>The show’s writer Gwenyth Hughes has spoken at length about her investigative approach to writing what she underlines is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/post-office-scandal-tv-drama-horizon">true story</a>: “If you want to really get people’s attention, tell them a story. And in this case, a true story.” Mr Bates vs The Post Office is a vital reminder of the power of fictional storytelling, rooted in real life, to give voice to ordinary people who have been marginalised and ignored. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lewis Kellett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Like the exemplars of social realist cinema, Mr Bates vs The Post Office follows stories of individual plight facing a social problem filmed in a naturalistic manner.
Lewis Kellett, Doctoral Researcher in Cinema, Sheffield Hallam University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126635
2019-11-27T16:25:10Z
2019-11-27T16:25:10Z
Warnings of a ‘race to the bottom’ on workers’ pay and conditions should concern us all
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303138/original/file-20191122-74584-3568qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bath-avon-uk-march-14-2018-1100572817?src=24a880f6-45e0-4c3d-9c2a-39bc946772b5-1-2">Shutterstock/Andrew Harker</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The number of people in the UK working on zero-hours contracts <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/emp17peopleinemploymentonzerohourscontracts">has risen</a> sharply over the past decade, from 186,000 people, or 0.6% of the working population, to 896,000 or 2.7%. This sharp expansion of the gig economy, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-tory-brexit-endangers-the-rights-of-workers-126613">concerns over workers’ rights</a> in the Brexit debate, have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-50143085/jeremy-corbyn-government-s-brexit-bill-a-race-to-the-bottom">prompted warnings</a> that the UK is being dragged into a “race to the bottom”. But what is a race to the bottom? And are these concerns justified? </p>
<p>Essentially the notion of a race to the bottom describes a view of government deregulation of the business environment. A world where companies cut costs – and wages – in order to be more competitive. Some people see this as a business opportunity that creates a seedbed for entrepreneurship to flourish. But too often, away from the political debate, these moves mean workers tending to work longer hours for lower pay, fewer benefits and worse conditions, either to keep or attract business. The kind of working life portrayed in Ken Loach’s latest film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8359816/">Sorry We Missed You</a>, where the “bottom” is the poverty level, or lower.</p>
<p>Whether the “race” is between competing national governments, local authorities or corporations, the overall effect is the transfer of wealth from the poorest workers to business owners. It has a particularly detrimental effect on the lowest paid, making them increasingly desperate for ever more work. </p>
<p>A direct consequence of such a strategy is increased use of “numerical flexibility” – adjusting labour patterns and benefits either within the company (for example removing overtime and shift allowances) or via zero-hours contracts and outsourcing to maximise competitive advantage for the employer. Supermarket giant ASDA is <a href="https://rightsinfo.org/asda-workers-threatened-with-sack/">currently introducing</a> new contracts that are said to remove paid breaks and night shift allowances. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50122703">According to ASDA</a> they need greater flexibility because of the competitive business market and state that wages will increase. However, its employees would end up effectively doing the same for less with little control over their working patterns.</p>
<p>Another result is the gig economy. Defined as a labour market with a prevalence of short-term contracts, this has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/28/gig-economy-in-britain-doubles-accounting-for-47-million-workers">doubled in size</a> in the UK over the past three years. Likewise, the use of zero-hours contracts (with no guarantee of a minimum number of work hours), <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/emp17peopleinemploymentonzerohourscontracts">has increased</a> from 0.6% of the workforce in 2010 to 2.7% in 2019.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ken-loachs-new-film-on-the-gig-economy-tells-exactly-the-same-story-as-our-research-125743">Ken Loach's new film on the gig economy tells exactly the same story as our research</a>
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<p>The workers we spoke to in <a href="https://openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk/index.php/iip/article/view/256">our research</a>, all on zero-hours contracts or deemed self-employed, shared tales of getting by with “lots of little jobs”. </p>
<p>Virtually all of the participants found work through <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19416520.2013.774213?scroll=top&needAccess=true">labour market intermediaries</a> (LMIs) – commonly known as employment agencies, rather than working directly for the employer. These agencies link individual workers with organisations, but there is evidence of <a href="https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/sites/default/files/ef_publication/field_ef_document/ef1603en.pdf">worker exploitation</a>. The shifting of employee responsibility to LMIs is a common strategy in order to cut the wages bill and increase profit – by removing responsibilities around things such as pensions, holidays and sick pay.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the first time people engage in this kind of work, the freedom, the knowledge that you can leave at any moment and try something else and the lack of a “traditional” boss can be exhilarating. But the uncertainty can eventually <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27598549">become exhausting</a>. </p>
<p>A further consequence is the inequality that, according to a <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/798404/SMC_State_of_the_Nation_Report_2018-19.pdf">recent report</a> from the social mobility commission, is “now entrenched from birth to work”. One of the causes cited is employment policy. An example from our research is illustrated by the experience of <a href="https://www.bigissuenorth.com/our-work/vendor-stories/2019/06/my-dreams-are-becoming-reality/">Leventica Marin</a>, a self-employed Big Issue seller, living in poverty with no access to holidays, pensions or sick pay, who had to continue working even after a physical assault. </p>
<p>Leventica is one of many. “In work” poverty, where people suffer poverty despite being employed, has increased, with <a href="http://socialmetricscommission.org.uk/MEASURING-POVERTY-SUMMARY-REPORT.pdf">14.2 million people</a> in the UK in poverty and one in eight classified as working poor. This research by the <a href="https://socialmetricscommission.org.uk">Social Metrics Commission</a> calls for organisations to understand the measurement and need to take action to tackle poverty.</p>
<h2>Rhetoric and reality</h2>
<p>The employers in the “race to the bottom” world, do not see themselves as equal partners to workers, contracting labour in the same way they hire an accountant or solicitor. The people who often end up in this kind of work are the economically vulnerable. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303135/original/file-20191122-74562-itmt10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303135/original/file-20191122-74562-itmt10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303135/original/file-20191122-74562-itmt10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303135/original/file-20191122-74562-itmt10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303135/original/file-20191122-74562-itmt10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303135/original/file-20191122-74562-itmt10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303135/original/file-20191122-74562-itmt10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The race is on in Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joss Barratt/Sixteen Films</span></span>
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<p>Such an approach gives flexibility and opportunity, and at the same time takes away flexibility and opportunity. It relies on an easily exploited resource, where in the words of Tracy Chapman’s song <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Tracy-Chapman-Subcity/master/331723">Subcity</a>: “Government and big business hold the purse strings”.</p>
<p>It is true that there are legitimate and real benefits to the kind of flexibility afforded by the gig economy. For consumers it means more choice and convenience, a better customer experience. </p>
<p>But, as George Orwell observed in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/20/orwell-wigan-pier-75-years">The Road to Wigan Pier</a> (1937), the “machine civilisation” and its convenience was going nowhere. Orwell advocated looking at the machine age in ways that made it successful for workers, not just the factory and pit owners. What was needed was not a reversal of “progress”, but a solution to make it work better for people. </p>
<p>Orwell advocated a genuinely revolutionary socialist party as the obvious – and only – answer to the troubles of the time. Today, the real prospect of a race to the bottom is something that should concern as all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126635/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Harrison works with the Granby Toxteth Development Trust (GTDT). She is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Collins works with the Granby Toxteth Development Trust (GTDT).</span></em></p>
The effect is the transfer of wealth away from the poorest workers.
Patricia Jolliffe, Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management, Liverpool John Moores University
Helen Collins, Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125743
2019-11-01T14:36:09Z
2019-11-01T14:36:09Z
Ken Loach’s new film on the gig economy tells exactly the same story as our research
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298562/original/file-20191024-170449-4wlpvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C53%2C3940%2C2395&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ricky, from Sorry We Missed You.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joss Barratt/Sixteen Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ken Loach’s film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8359816/">Sorry We Missed You</a>, tells the harrowing tale of Ricky, Abby and their family’s attempts to get by in a precarious world of low paid jobs and the so-called “gig economy”. </p>
<p>But how realistic is it? Can Loach’s film be accused of undue pessimism? After all, UK government ministers <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dwp-gig-economy-damian-green-speech-holiday-minimum-wage-sick-pay-hours-a7421071.html">have applauded</a> the gig economy and the freedom and flexibility of being an “everyday entrepreneur”. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/publications/youth-enterprise-and-precarity-or-what-is-and-what-is-wrong-with-">new study</a> by myself and employment expert <a href="https://www.ncl.ac.uk/business-school/staff/profile/andreasgiazitzoglu.html#background">Andreas Giazitzoglu</a> investigates what we know about the gig economy, in order to get a clearer picture of what is really going on in the contemporary world of work in the UK. </p>
<p>Narrowly conceived, the gig economy means workers (as independent contractors) doing discrete, short-term tasks – or “gigs” – for companies via <a href="https://theconversation.com/digital-platforms-making-the-world-a-more-complicated-place-104372">digital platforms</a> such as Deliveroo, Amazon or Uber. As <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0950017017719839">one study</a> describes them, these are “labour contracts that are as temporary as is possible for them to be”. </p>
<p>We argue that it is better to see the gig economy as part of a wider shift towards insecure forms of work. Long-term unemployment is no longer a serious social policy problem, but standard, full time, long-term employment is also much less common. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299670/original/file-20191031-187912-e8cc9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299670/original/file-20191031-187912-e8cc9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299670/original/file-20191031-187912-e8cc9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299670/original/file-20191031-187912-e8cc9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299670/original/file-20191031-187912-e8cc9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299670/original/file-20191031-187912-e8cc9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299670/original/file-20191031-187912-e8cc9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299670/original/file-20191031-187912-e8cc9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Our study in illustrated form, by Dr Cheryl Reynolds, University of Huddersfield.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dr Cheryl Reynolds</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>More and more people are churning from “one shit job to another shit job”, as Ricky puts it in Loach’s film, punctuated with periods of unemployment. And as Loach observed (in a Q&A session following a preview), Sorry We Missed You is a sequel to the 2016 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5168192/">I, Daniel Blake</a>, which explores the degradations of the UK’s benefit system. </p>
<p>These are two sides of the same coin, as <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/book-review-poverty-and-insecurity-life-in-low-pay-no-pay-britain/">research</a> on “the low-pay, no-pay cycle” has shown. Many of these jobs are on zero-hours contracts, which although illegal across much of the EU, have boomed in the UK.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-showed-i-daniel-blake-to-people-living-with-the-benefits-system-heres-how-they-reacted-73153">We showed I, Daniel Blake to people living with the benefits system: here's how they reacted</a>
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</p>
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<p>There were <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/contractsthatdonotguaranteeaminimumnumberofhours/april2018">fewer than 200,000</a> of these contracts in 2007. Ten years later, in 2017, there were over 1.8m. </p>
<p>Employers insist that workers want this “flexibility”. But <a href="https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/nearly-million-people-are-zero-hours-contracts-it%E2%80%99s-time-government-act">two-thirds</a> would prefer a fixed-hours contract. </p>
<h2>Degraded work conditions</h2>
<p>The government celebrates high levels of employment but <a href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105210312tf_/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lmac/self-employed-workers-in-the-uk/2014/rep-self-employed-workers-in-the-uk-2014.html">two-thirds of employment growth</a> since the 2008 financial crash has been in self-employment or <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2019/01/Setting-the-record-straight-full-employment-report.pdf">other forms of “atypical work”</a>. Much of this self-employment appears to be bogus. Just like in Sorry We Missed You, employers designate workers as “independent contractors” to cut wage costs and employment rights</p>
<p>Investigative journalism <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/amazon-drivers-forced-deliver-200-11668823">has exposed</a> the degraded work conditions of “self-employed” delivery drivers like Ricky: intense pressure to meet delivery schedules, breaking speed limits, snatching meals on the run, urinating into plastic bottles rather than stopping, barely making the national minimum wage. </p>
<p>Even a <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmworpen/847/84703.htm#_idTextAnchor003">government inquiry</a> found that “some companies are using self-employed workforces as cheap labour”, damaging workers’ well-being in order to “increase profits”.</p>
<p>If not bogus, then much self-employment is likely to be “forced”, perceived as the only alternative to being unemployed. This was typical of the “young entrepreneurs” <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017096103002">I interviewed</a> in the 1980s. </p>
<p>Held up as role models for Margaret Thatcher’s “enterprise culture”, their ambitions were, in fact, much more prosaic. Rather than go on the dole, they used the (recently re-launched) <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/new-enterprise-allowance-campaign">Enterprise Allowance Scheme</a> to set up “micro-businesses” – knitting jumpers, repairing bicycles, freelance photography – keeping going by undercutting other businesses and by gross self-exploitation. Very few succeeded over the long term. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ysjwg-MnZao?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Most plodded along until, exhausted, demoralised and in debt, they closed down their businesses. Low pay is also typical of more recent forced self-employment and has been a key factor in the UK’s shift towards low paid work.</p>
<p>Across the research, we found ten things that were common to workers’ experiences of this new, insecure labour market: </p>
<ol>
<li>Modest aspirations (people were not looking to get rich quick but wanted regular work and to be able to pay the bills)</li>
<li>Lack of choice </li>
<li>Disempowerment (employers now have “disciplinary discretion” to withhold offers of work to people on zero-hours contracts)</li>
<li>Insecurity of work<br></li>
<li>Insecurity of income </li>
<li>Low pay </li>
<li>Debt </li>
<li>Exploitation </li>
<li>Self-exploitation </li>
<li>Anxiety </li>
</ol>
<p>One of the duties of critical social science is to question fashionable ideas. We should be particularly alert when comfortably placed, middle-aged politicians exhort younger people to “take up opportunities” that they themselves would never dream of going near. </p>
<p>Would government ministers be quite so <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dwp-gig-economy-damian-green-speech-holiday-minimum-wage-sick-pay-hours-a7421071.html">“excited”</a> about the gig economy if they had to surrender their fixed salaries, paid holidays and pension schemes in favour of working a daily schedule so gruelling that toilet stops are impossible and the minimum wage cannot be earned?</p>
<p>All of us – the public who rely on the services of the gig economy just as much as the politicians who proclaim its virtues – need to wake up to the reality that, in this instance, “flexibility” is just another word for exploitation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125743/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert MacDonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Flexibility is just a euphemism for exploitation.
Robert MacDonald, Professor of Education and Social Justice, University of Huddersfield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125771
2019-10-24T13:41:46Z
2019-10-24T13:41:46Z
Martin Scorsese says superhero movies are ‘not cinema’: two experts debate
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298519/original/file-20191024-170475-9zkfcb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2044%2C1076&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jeremy Renner and Robert Downey Jr in Avengers: Endgame.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">©Marvel Studios 2019</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Ken Loach have all recently expressed scorn at the growing dominance of superhero movies in the commercial cinema, with Scorsese saying that the Marvel film universe is “not cinema”. We asked two academics: an expert in cinema and an expert in comics to debate the question.</em></p>
<p><strong>Julian Lawrence: senior lecturer in comics and graphic novels, Teesside University</strong></p>
<p>Marvel movies aren’t cinema. So what are they? Martin Scorsese <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2482391/martin-scorsese-clarifies-controversial-comments-about-marvel-movies">recently labelled them</a> “<a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/news/martin-scorsese-marvel-theme-parks-1203360075/">theme parks</a>” but I suggest they function primarily as commercials. I agree with British filmmaker <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/ken-loach-marvel-superhero-films-boring-and-nothing-to-do-with-art-of-cinema-11841486">Ken Loach’s comment</a> that Marvel movies are “a commodity which will make a profit for a big corporation – they’re a cynical exercise”. </p>
<p>Fellow film great Francis Ford Coppola <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/21/francis-ford-coppola-scorsese-was-being-kind-marvel-movies-are-despicable">agrees with them both</a> – except he doesn’t think they went far enough, labelling superhero films “despicable”. </p>
<p>They are not the first to take aim at superhero movies. In 2014, director/screenwriter <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/film/birdman-director-alejandro-gonz-lez-i-rritu-c-868003">Alejandro G. Iñárritu</a> (Birdman) condemned superhero blockbusters saying “… they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right-wing … Philosophically, I just don’t like them.”</p>
<p>He could be on to something about the right-wing propaganda aspect. Superhero movies tend to set up situations where the world is in grave danger – and sell superheroes as the solution. The message here is that might makes right and that the end always justifies the means: a classic fascist trope. You can see why someone like Loach might not like this narrative trend. His stark new film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysjwg-MnZao">Sorry We Missed You</a>, makes it clear there are no superheroes to save us, just ordinary people in real situations living lives of quiet desperation.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bread-and-circuses">bread and circus</a> commodities, Marvel movies also function as self-advertisements – not just for the countless prequels and sequels, but also for merchandising, which is the real cash cow. Licensing revenue for toys, games, clothing, even breakfast cereal far <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/superhero-earns-13-billion-a-748281">eclipses box office receipts</a>. </p>
<p>Selling a commodity as art has become so normalised that we consumers gladly invest our money and time to collectively participate. I <a href="https://time.com/3630878/binge-watch-tv-shows/">invested a great deal of time</a> watching the TV series Mad Men, only to discover in the final episode that it was a <a href="https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/mad-men-finale-coca-cola-hilltop-ad-1201499510/">seven-year-long Coke commercial</a>. Since then, I’ve refused to spend any more of my life on episodic television and had to laugh when I read abut the inadvertent <a href="https://fortune.com/2019/05/06/game-of-thrones-starbucks-cup-advertising/">Starbucks product placement</a> in the final series of Game of Thrones.</p>
<h2>The ninth and seventh arts</h2>
<p>Franco-Belgian scholars <a href="https://www.tempslibre.ch/actualites/la-classification-des-10-arts-que-personne-ne-connait-vraiment-146">classify cinema</a> as the “seventh art”, with comics being the ninth. But if we are to distinguish cinema from a murky mash-up of all media, then some protocols are needed. First, how about a moratorium on custom-made scenes that pander to international audiences? Iron Man 3 was <a href="https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chinese-version-486840429">cut for the Chinese market</a> by upping the screen time for a minor character and adding foreign product placement that are not included in the original version. This is not done for art’s sake, but to generate increased revenue.</p>
<p>The backlash to Loach, Scorsese and Coppola is not surprising, since <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Marvel-Cinematic-Universe#tab=technical">almost everyone in Hollywood</a> (and beyond) is in on this game. For instance, Marvel movies accounted for 48.2% of Samuel L. Jackson’s <a href="https://comicbook.com/marvel/2019/04/28/samuel-l-jackson-films-13-billion-dollar-box-office-gross-worldw/">entire career box office take</a>, and a whopping <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Marvel-Cinematic-Universe#tab=acting">82.6% of Robert Downey Jr’s</a>. Over in the DC Extended Universe in 2017, feminist icon Wonder Woman earned millions for her investors, which included oil tycoons <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/conservative-koch-brothers-are-secret-investors-wonder-woman-1027376">Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch</a> and Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, <a href="https://variety.com/2019/politics/news/mnuchn-ratpac-dune-jackie-speier-1203125377/">Steve Mnuchin</a>.</p>
<p>It isn’t the genre that is the problem, it’s that mainstream superhero movies are created primarily to sell more mainstream superhero movies. The claim that Disney/Marvel innovated “narratives that are dispersed across its extended network of movies” is more evidence for their being capitalist commodities rather than cinema. Dispersing narratives across a network is a marketing ploy used by Marvel and DC for decades (known as <a href="https://www.marvel.com/comics/events_crossovers">crossovers</a>) to boost sales of failing titles– readers are lured into buying issues of comics they don’t normally follow in order to continue reading a storyline or get closure. The films are essentially doing the same thing.</p>
<p>The best superhero film I’ve seen all year is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2v3_jHrvBQ">Woman at War</a> by <a href="https://www.screendaily.com/news/woman-at-war-director-benedikt-erlingsson-blasts-film-industrys-carbon-farting-crisis-in-karlovy-vary/5140851.article">Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson</a>. It tells the story of one woman’s battle against planetary annihilation. Go see it if you get the chance.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1187156751843356672"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Neil Archer: senior lecturer in film studies, Keele University</strong></p>
<p>For the record, I’m ambivalent about much of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU) – yet I was still struck by <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2481615/martin-scorsese-has-some-blunt-thoughts-on-marvel-movies-and-james-gunn-is-sad-about-it">what Scorsese had to say</a> about Marvel movies being more theme park than cinema. </p>
<p>That Scorsese should take this line, in some respects, is apt. <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/interview-peter-biskind-revisits-easy-riders-raging-bulls">Peter Biskind’s 1998 book</a>, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, evokes Scorsese as one of the great filmmakers of the “New Hollywood”, the decade or so from 1968 when it seemed that film-literate, adventurous directors and writers would re-imagine Hollywood.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Josh Brolin as Thanos in Avengers: Endgame.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©Marvel Studios 2019</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The end of this period, in Biskind’s view, was down to the infantilism of films such as Jaws and Star Wars. These were films which were often viewed more as amusement-park rides than cinematic art – what Robin Wood critically dismissed as the childish, commercially-driven “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lM-rx7S2ijoC&pg=PA350&lpg=PA350&dq=robin+wood+spielberg+lucas+syndrome&source=bl&ots=7EcDUK5f7c&sig=ACfU3U0RIq_THBU4qFm0caG9sGG9yl2x5w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6ht3m4LTlAhVAShUIHYOlA7AQ6AEwB3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=robin%20wood%20spielberg%20lucas%20syndrome&f=false">Spielberg-Lucas syndrome</a>” dominating mainstream film.</p>
<p>But if you want to look at the economical, expressive storytelling possibilities of film, just watch Spielberg’s Jaws, or even better, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLiRnvppAaM">Close Encounters of the Third Kind</a>. Don’t take my word for it – <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/martin-scorsese-jj-abrams-christopher-nolan-pay-tribute-steven-spielberg/">Scorsese, ironically, said so himself</a> in a 2018 interview with Empire magazine, describing Spielberg as “a pioneer of visual storytelling … reinventing our art form with each new picture”. </p>
<p>Since he so strongly supports Spielberg, sometimes associated with the demise of grown-up cinema, it’s surprising that Scorsese should come out against the most current examples of popular film.</p>
<p>So what’s the problem with Marvel? As I <a href="https://filmkeele.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/hooray-for-hollywood/">explored in a recent book</a>, the MCU’s most significant contribution to modern cinema – like it or not – has been to rethink the idea of the “standalone feature”, favouring narratives that are dispersed across an extended network of movies. From one perspective, the superhero franchises have simply expanded “classical” narrative form across a series of films.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Comic book hero: Zade Rosenthal as Iron Man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2012 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2012 Marvel.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Has this been at the expense, in Scorsese’s terms, of the “<a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2481615/martin-scorsese-has-some-blunt-thoughts-on-marvel-movies-and-james-gunn-is-sad-about-it">emotional, psychological experience</a>” and the emphasis on “human beings” that is his preferred view of cinema? Well, Hulk is not Hamlet – and nor is Iron Man, despite the absurdly regal send off that character gets at the end of Avengers: Endgame. </p>
<p>But for all its self-congratulation, <a href="https://youtu.be/ooAsQ7Z5d2A">Endgame</a> still offers much of the experience Scorsese demands – and which he might recognise. There are meditations on loss, on family, as well as debates on responsibility and moral choice, reflections on time and the impact of life decisions. And while we’re at it, were there many more films made in 2018 as refreshing, and politically engaging, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-i-marvelled-at-black-panthers-reimagining-of-africa-91703">Black Panther</a>?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-i-marvelled-at-black-panthers-reimagining-of-africa-91703">How I marvelled at Black Panther’s reimagining of Africa</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Corporate enterprise</h2>
<p>But isn’t Loach right about Marvel being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/22/superhero-films-are-cynical-exercise-to-make-profits-for-corporations-ken-loach">a corporate enterprise</a>, designed to take our money? Of course he is – these are Hollywood movies after all (I believe Scorsese makes these too). Do we then disqualify every major studio production in history as an advert for itself?</p>
<p>But the bigger issue here is that, because they are linked to broader practices of commercialisation, the films themselves are – mistakenly – deemed guilty by association. The political critique of the films also reduces the sizeable audience to an undifferentiated, uncritical mass. Loach, like most critics of the films – who also admit to not watching them – doesn’t seem to credit Marvel’s viewers with any discernment or intelligence. But marketing and merchandising - as plenty of Disney flops have shown - can’t alone guarantee audience devotion.</p>
<p>Indeed, as <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814743485/media-franchising/">media scholar Derek Johnson reminded us</a>, within “corporate” Hollywood, filmmaking and merchandising divisions are often separate – even in conflict with each other. The skill of Marvel’s filmmakers, in fact, has been both to create and sustain an audience that wants to follow its characters over ten years and more. This is an achievement in narrative – not in flogging toys or pillowcases.</p>
<p>To be clear: I get why people don’t like Marvel. But why can’t filmmaking like theirs, and like Loach’s, coexist? As <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xPGPXu2MokkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=tom+shone+blockbuster&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTtrb_8a_lAhWCThUIHUnvAPkQ6AEIKDAA#v=snippet&q=biskind&f=false">Tom Shone wittily asks</a> in his book Blockbuster, the demonising of modern movies tends to be all one-way traffic. Film connoisseurs tear into Star Wars for failing to be The Godfather, but nobody rips up Coppola’s family saga for missing a few space battles. Why need cinema be just one thing? Why not both? Isn’t cinema, in the end, something for everyone?</p>
<p>The elephant in this particular room, I suspect, is neither art, nor commercialism. And probably not “right-wing neoliberal propaganda” either. It’s exhibition. For the likes of Scorsese, the popularity and distribution muscle behind such films make it harder both to make and screen non-franchise or lower-budget movies. And he has a point. </p>
<p>But while there is clearly an imbalance problem within the contemporary cinema landscape, that doesn’t mean the films themselves are “not cinema”. Maybe they are just the cinema you’d rather not see.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Martin Scorsese believes superhero movies are ‘not cinema’. What do the experts think?
Julian Lawrence, Senior Lecturer in Comics and Graphic Novels, Teesside University
Neil Archer, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Keele University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/90564
2018-01-30T12:38:20Z
2018-01-30T12:38:20Z
Fifty years ago A Kestrel for a Knave gave working-class Britain a voice: it’s needed again now more than ever
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204001/original/file-20180130-107713-1p7hfx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1272%2C950&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Classic: an image from Ken Loach's 1969 film, Kes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">United Artists</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Half a century ago, a working-class writer by the name of Barry Hines wrote a tale of an impoverished boy and the bird he befriends. It’s a simple story with complex themes, which struck a real chord with the Britain of 1968. Adapted into a classic film by Ken Loach the following year, A Kestrel for Knave is about the politics of education, about what, how, and why we learn. It also reminds us that the circumstances of our background determine our life chances – that class matters. Its themes are just as relevant five decades on. </p>
<p>For Hines, education was always political: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>English literature was reading books about people who had been dead for hundreds of years … I wanted to read about a world I could identify, where people had to work for a living. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hines, who was brought up in Barnsley, Yorkshire – in the same neighbourhood his most famous novel was situated – came to books relatively late in his own education. A keen schoolboy sportsman, he trained as a PE teacher at Loughborough College. But when a roommate lent him a copy of Orwell’s Animal Farm, Hines – then aged 21 – found himself, for the first time in his life, reading for pleasure. He was hooked. </p>
<p>Just four years later, while working at a school back home in Barnsley, Hines wrote his first radio play, <a href="http://www.mckellen.com/stage/00042.htm">Billy’s Last Stand</a>, broadcast on the BBC in 1965. In 1966 his first book was published: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/mar/25/barry-hines-football-kes-the-blinder">The Blinder</a>, a semi-autobiographical tale of a footballer caught between the worlds of football and academia. </p>
<p>This was an era when there was an appetite for working-class, regional writing. It was an era when writers from humble backgrounds had access to networks, so scarce today, that could open the doors of opportunity. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/stan-barstow-writer-whose-novel-a-kind-of-loving-was-a-key-text-in-the-literary-revolution-of-the-2331329.html">Stan Barstow</a>, the author of A Kind of Loving helped Hines secure a literary agent, and <a href="http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/a-bradley.html">Alfred Bradley</a>, the producer who had commissioned his first play, helped the young teacher access a BBC bursary for northern writers. Crucially, this subsidy gave Hines temporary leave from his job to focus on his next project. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Working-class fiction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kestrel-Penguin-Modern-Classics-2000-05-25/dp/B01K0V1XB8/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1516958565&sr=8-8&keywords=kestrel+for+a+knave">Amazon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was during this period that Hines met <a href="http://tonygarnett.info/">Tony Garnett</a>, another class warrior making popular political art. Fresh from producing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/31/cathy-come-home-50-years-homelessness-mental-health-problems">Cathy Come Home</a> with Loach, Garnett was looking for new writers. Would Hines write a TV play? “Not yet”, came the answer: “I’ve got this book going round in my head, and I’ve got to write it.” </p>
<p>Hines promised to tell Garnett and Loach when it was finished. They duly read the book – and the rest is history. In that moment the arts seemed open and accessible in a way that is unimaginable today – working-class voices were at the vanguard of cultural production. </p>
<p>It’s fair to say that the success of the film – and its iconic presence in the national imagination – has turned attention away from the novel on which it was based. But much of what gives the film its sense of lyricism emerged directly from Hines’s prose. Garnett described how the visual nature of Hines’s writing meant that the screenplay was “more or less a cut-and-paste job”. In early scripts, the producer and director literally copied pages from the book to punctuate the scenes of dialogue. These long passages of prose, highly textured descriptions of the South Yorkshire countryside, are written into the very fabric of the film. </p>
<p>Hines writes the landscape in minute, visceral detail – and in the process re-imagines the English pastoral tradition from a working-class perspective. The representation of nature becomes a political act.</p>
<h2>Hard times</h2>
<p>Hines’ lyricism offers readers a fleeting sense of relief from the harshness of Billy’s home and school life; where his imagination is allowed to prosper in defiance of those who oppress him. His brother, Jud, beats him, his mother neglects him, his classmates relentlessly mock him and, and in a scene made famous by the late Brian Glover, he is utterly and painfully humiliated on the football field. </p>
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<p>It is against this backdrop of abuse that Billy meets Kes. His relationship with the kestrel unlocks a hunger for learning and, in the most arresting scene in the novel and film, Billy, so often silent and disinterested in school, is invited by his teacher to talk about his new-found passion for falconry. Billy finds a voice – and Mr Farthing and Billy’s classmates hang on his every word. </p>
<p>The liberation is tragically fleeting. Soon after Kes is killed by Jud. </p>
<p>Hines <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eJaQc1jr7BgC&pg=PT219&lpg=PT219&dq=if+there+had+been+gcses+for+falconry+billy+would+have+had+an+a+grade&source=bl&ots=z1MAW0vye6&sig=exXh9Fs64Ptr4S7BG8L1N0awOvM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQo8yi1f_YAhVHZVAKHShJANoQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=if%20there%20had%20been%20gcses%20for%20falconry%20billy%20would%20have%20had%20an%20a%20grade&f=false">later remarked</a> that if there had been “GCSEs for Falconry, Billy Casper would have been awarded an A grade”. But no such qualification exists – and by the end of the novel Billy is on the scrapheap, a victim of a class system which uses education to discipline rather than liberate its subjects. </p>
<p>In that moment when Billy is asked by his teacher to speak about Kes, our hero – up to this point utterly disengaged at school – finds agency for the first time, and Hines shows us a model of education where learning is an end itself. The classroom becomes a space of possibility, not of prescription. In these Utopian moments, the novel gives us hope. </p>
<p>I first read A Kestrel for a Knave at my own school, itself not far from Barnsley. I knew Billy Caspers, Juds, and Mr Sugdens. The story rang true, and Hines showed my classmates and me that working-class lives and landscapes were worthy of art. A Kestrel for a Knave has now disappeared from GCSE syllabuses, and there is little space for the novel elsewhere in a narrowing curriculum. </p>
<p>Five decades ago, the son of a miner wrote a book full of empathy and respect for someone who would today be sneered at by many as a “chav”. A Kestrel for a Knave was published across the world and Penguin enshrined it as a “<a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/57240/a-kestrel-for-a-knave/">Modern Classic</a>”. This was literature of and for the people. </p>
<p>In 2018, the landscape is depressingly different. <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Literature%20in%20the%2021st%20Century%20report.pdf">The economic decline of literary fiction</a> must be understood as a class issue. Without radical thinking on access to the arts and creative industries, the Billy Caspers of post-industrial Britain will remain voiceless.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Forrest does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The tragic story of a lonely, bullied boy who befriends a kestrel was an instant hit in the 1960s.
David Forrest, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70243
2016-12-20T16:45:52Z
2016-12-20T16:45:52Z
Half a century of homelessness in the UK – here’s what has changed
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151008/original/image-20161220-26748-1orkyhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Injury, unemployment, eviction, squats, shelters, social services – homelessness. This is the desperate spiral depicted in Ken Loach’s influential film, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007492r">Cathy Come Home</a>. First aired 50 years ago, the drama offers a graphic portrayal of the treatment of an ordinary family by public authorities, as they grapple with homelessness. </p>
<p>Reflecting the public outrage at the film’s revelations, the pressure group <a href="http://www.shelterat50.org.uk/#/130/shelter-at-50">Shelter</a> was founded to raise awareness and campaign for reform. The same year saw the publication of one of the only government-sponsored surveys of homelessness in England, by the National Assistance Board (NAB).</p>
<p>On the 50th anniversary of these three landmark events, it’s time to ask whether Cathy and her family would suffer the same tragedies today. </p>
<h2>The first count</h2>
<p>We’re not shown what happens to Cathy after her children are taken by social services. In all likelihood, she would have joined the 965 people sleeping rough, which the NAB found in their one-night head count on December 6, 1965, of which only 45 were women. </p>
<p>She could have become one of the 1,367 unaccommodated claimants of National Assistance, the precursor to our Jobseekers Allowance. That meagre provision might then have afforded her the occasional bed in one of the 567 commercial or charitable hostels and lodging houses, which housed 28,789 inhabitants, of which just 1,905 were women. </p>
<p>Free, public sector accommodation was limited to the NAB’s own reception centres – a relic from the Victorian era’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/shp/britishsociety/thepoorrev1.shtml">Poor Law workhouses</a> – which housed 1,956 men at the time of the count.</p>
<p>After computing these figures, the survey estimated that there were about 13,500 single homeless people in December 1965, the vast majority of whom would have been men.</p>
<h2>Ten years on</h2>
<p>Cathy might have fared better a decade later. Tireless campaigning by Shelter and other charities finally bore fruit, in the form of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/48/enacted">1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act</a>. The act is unique among Western states, because it <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616718.2016.1230962">makes housing a statutory right</a> for certain people. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/homelessness-code-of-guidance-for-councils-july-2006">The law</a> obliges local authorities to provide permanent housing to families who are judged to be “unintentionally homeless” (or threatened with homelessness) and belong to a “priority need group”. These include families with dependent children or pregnant women. </p>
<p>So, Cathy would have had housing rights up to the point where her children were removed by social services, although she would still need to prove that she had not become homeless “intentionally”, by being evicted from a private tenancy for failing to keep up rent payments. Despite several re-enactments, these laws have withstood Thatcherism, and today remain in more or less their original form.</p>
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<p>Yet any expectations that the act has worked to eliminate homelessness today must be quickly disappointed. The methods used by the NAB to count homelessness have changed over time, which makes comparisons tricky. But <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-in-england-autumn-2015">figures released</a> by the Department for Communities and Local Government, based on nightly head counts undertaken in the autumn of 2015, revealed 3,569 rough sleepers. This is double the number recorded in 2010, and nearly five times the figure quoted 50 years ago. </p>
<p>Services have not expanded to cope. The NAB counted 34,596 available places in hostel accommodation in 1966. The charity <a href="http://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/our-research/annual-review-of-single-homelessness-support-in-england">Homeless Link</a> recorded 36,540 in 2014. </p>
<p>Would Cathy still lose her children for being homeless in 2016? <a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/policy/health-and-care/homelessness/one-in-three-councils-took-children-into-care-due-to-homelessness/7017718.article?">An investigation</a> for Inside Housing revealed that 35 of the 106 councils that responded to their survey had taken at least one child into care during 2014/15, where the main reason was homelessness. This tells us that a third of councils are still pursuing this practice, 50 years after Cathy and nearly 40 years after legislation was supposed to make it unnecessary.</p>
<h2>Ray of hope</h2>
<p>Amid this darkening outlook, some hope rests with the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/communities-and-local-government/Homelessness-Reduction-Bill.pdf">Homelessness Reduction Bill</a>, which is currently being debated in parliament. As it stands, the bill will oblige local authorities to assist all homeless people by assessing their situation, helping to prevent their homelessness where possible, or providing temporary accommodation for up to 56 days. </p>
<p>It also addresses the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness">most rapidly increasing trigger</a> of homelessness: the shorthold tenancy. When a shorthold tenancy comes to an end – usually after a period of six months – the landlord can evict the tenant without any legal reason. The new bill requires that local authorities treat households as “threatened with homelessness”, as soon as an eviction notice is served. This means people like Cathy won’t have to wait for the bailiffs to arrive before help is available.</p>
<p>If the NAB enumerators were to repeat their survey today, they would be struck by how little has changed. Some comparisons are possible using <a href="https://files.datapress.com/london/dataset/chain-reports/2016-06-29T11:14:50/Greater%20London%20full%202015-16.pdf">data on rough sleepers</a> compiled by the Mayor of London’s office. Compared with 50 years ago, today’s rough sleeping population is younger, more female and more vulnerable. It has a greater proportion of foreign nationals, and as we have seen, it is larger and growing by the year. </p>
<p>But unaffordable and insecure tenancies remain the primary reason that people are left without accommodation. The proposed legislation offers some hope, but it’s provisions are essentially reactive – until politicians address the underlying causes, people like Cathy will continue to struggle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham Bowpitt is a Reader in Social Policy at Nottingham Trent University. As part of his work, he receives funding from Framework Housing Association for the evaluation of Opportunity Nottingham, a project supporting adults with multiple needs. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees for the Emmanuel House Support Centre, serving single homeless people in Nottingham.</span></em></p>
In 1966, the BBC drama Cathy Come Home radically changed the way society thinks about homelessness. So how would Cathy fare today?
Graham Bowpitt, Reader in Social Policy, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66657
2016-10-20T08:12:41Z
2016-10-20T08:12:41Z
I, Daniel Blake: Ken Loach tells Britain it’s time to kick the political door in
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142158/original/image-20161018-16173-ydolmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">E One</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ken Loach’s latest film was screened at the prestigious Cannes film festival in May, where it was awarded the top competition prize, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/22/ken-loach-cannes-2016-palme-dor-win-i-daniel-blake">Palm D’Or</a>. No surprises there – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5168192/">I, Daniel Blake</a> cements Loach’s continued importance not only as a film director but also as a shrewd social commentator and committed political activist. It is a film that is both gripping and perfectly politically timed, telling as it does the story of a man who through no fault of his own finds himself caught in a harsh world of uncaring bureaucrats, food banks and benefits cuts.</p>
<p>Ken Loach began his directing career at the BBC in the 1960s. He soon made his name making socially engaged dramas such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059020/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Cathy Come Home</a>, which through its heartbreaking story of a family’s struggle to keep their heads above water brought the issue of homelessness to the public’s attention when it was broadcast to great acclaim in 1966. But both Loach and Tony Garnett, his producer at the time, have <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/cathy-come-home-422630.html">since reflected</a> that the film lacked a real political analysis of how people ended up homeless and on the street, and more importantly who was to blame and who could provide a solution. Speaking more recently, Garnett <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07jhsd1">said</a>: “Cathy let everybody off the hook … It didn’t put the boot in where it should have done.”</p>
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<h2>The finger of blame</h2>
<p>Fifty years on, Loach is still looking for who to point the finger of blame at; where to stick the proverbial boot in. With I, Daniel Blake, he hones in on the people behind changes to the benefits system , which have seen those, such as disabled people and young families, least able to help themselves in the cross hairs as easy targets for cuts. </p>
<p>He also takes a well-aimed swipe at those heartless individuals working within the system who simply “carry out orders”. There is a memorable scene in the film where a benefits office worker is scolded by her superior merely for taking the time to try and help the slightly bemused Daniel. The implication is that such thoughtful assistance will not deliver the right productivity results and therefore must be eliminated. </p>
<p>Typical of Loach, I, Daniel Blake is a film that engages with the harsh social conditions within many parts of the UK in the second decade of the 21st century. Loach and his producer Rebecca O’Brien, alongside another long time collaborator, writer Paul Laverty, have forged a work that is driven by anger and dismay at the fact that such a state of affairs exists in a wealthy country like the UK. </p>
<p>The film focuses on Daniel Blake, played by comedian <a href="http://davejohns.net/">Dave Johns</a>, a man who has worked hard all his life but finds himself on the wrong side of benefits cuts following a heart attack. As he tries to work his way through the labyrinth of the unfamiliar welfare system, he befriends Katie (Hayley Squires) a young mother forced to uproot her young family from London due to a lack of affordable council housing.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142165/original/image-20161018-16167-1arm2vp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142165/original/image-20161018-16167-1arm2vp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142165/original/image-20161018-16167-1arm2vp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142165/original/image-20161018-16167-1arm2vp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142165/original/image-20161018-16167-1arm2vp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142165/original/image-20161018-16167-1arm2vp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142165/original/image-20161018-16167-1arm2vp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Every-person.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">E One</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The choice of a heart attack as the reason for Daniel being unable to work is a crucial one, emphasising as it does his “every person” status. Such a condition is all too common in today’s society and something most people can easily relate to. Here Loach and his collaborators make Daniel stand for many of us – one small medical emergency away from the breadline. The logic is, if we could all be Daniel Blake then we should all be angry at the system that, as represented on screen, lets him down.</p>
<h2>Hope in the future</h2>
<p>For me, one of the most striking and under-commented upon aspects of the film is its representation of young people. Early in the film, we see Daniel berate his young black neighbour for continually leaving smelly rubbish on the walkway between their flats. This implies that the film might collaborate in the common image of lazy, workshy working class youths, continually off their faces on drink and drugs, that is so often peddled across the mainstream media. But as the film progresses, showing young people as helpful and caring, their petty scams are revealed as simply a way to make ends meet in an austerity Britain that does not provide anything for them. </p>
<p>So, when Daniel struggles with the computers in the public library, it is a pair of young, helpful characters who both do their best to assist him. Young people, from these characters to Katie and her children, offer an optimism for the future in a film that paints an otherwise bleak picture of the UK. They may struggle to make ends meet, but they care about their fellow human beings, and most of all are willing to chip in to help.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142166/original/image-20161018-16145-1hd7c7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142166/original/image-20161018-16145-1hd7c7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142166/original/image-20161018-16145-1hd7c7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142166/original/image-20161018-16145-1hd7c7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142166/original/image-20161018-16145-1hd7c7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142166/original/image-20161018-16145-1hd7c7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142166/original/image-20161018-16145-1hd7c7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Optimism in youth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">E One</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>It is in these small moments that Loach shows us, as he has done from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0126093">The Big Flame</a> (1969) to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114671/">Land and Freedom</a> (1995), that young people are the future and provide hope and optimism amongst the despair. None more so than Katie’s young daughter, Daisy (Briana Shann), who, when Daniel has not been round to see them for a while, simply knocks on the door and quietly asks how she can help him after all he has done for them. Like many of Loach’s previous works, it is in its characters that I, Daniel Blake is a film of hope and belief. </p>
<p>At a preview screening in Manchester, Loach argued that even though I, Daniel Blake creates a picture of a Britain that marginalises and impoverishes its weakest, he still has hope in the will of the people to change things in the face of the sort of brutality shown in his film. At the centre of that belief is a continued commitment to the idea that a socialist movement can organise against austerity and provide an optimistic future for those represented by the characters of Daniel, Katie and her children. </p>
<p>The audience responded by giving the director a standing ovation. His final words were that with a growing socialist movement, perhaps best reflected in the large numbers of people joining the Corbyn-led Labour Party, this was the first time in his 80 years that he had felt the door to real political change was open. The job now, then, is to kick it in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Willis is affiliated with HOME where he is a Senior Visiting Curator: Film</span></em></p>
Loach’s latest film tells the story of a man who finds himself caught in a harsh world of uncaring bureaucrats, food banks and benefits cuts.
Andy Willis, Reader in Film Studies, University of Salford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49915
2015-10-28T16:32:02Z
2015-10-28T16:32:02Z
Britain’s greatest living filmmaker? You may never have heard of him
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99987/original/image-20151028-21119-109tgmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Watkins on the set of his last film, La Commune (1871)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2013/the-anarchist-cinema-of-peter-watkins">Icarus Films</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Who would you choose as Britain’s most influential living film director? Ken Loach? Mike Leigh? Even Sam Mendes, director of the current Bond film, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34639118">Spectre</a>? For my money, it would be Peter Watkins, who celebrated his 80th birthday on October 29.</p>
<p>Perhaps you have never heard of Watkins, nor seen any of his films. Yet he pioneered making dramatic reconstruction look like gritty documentary reality, influencing everyone from Loach and Leigh to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0339030/">Paul Greengrass</a>, director of the <a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bourne-saga/36132/the-bourne-saga-ranking-the-movies-in-order-of-quality">Bourne films</a>. The dozen films Watkins made over his 40-year career remain some of the most powerful and politically challenging of all time.</p>
<p>Born in Surrey, he began in amateur filmmaking in the late 1950s. His professional debut was <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/520802/">Culloden</a> for the BBC in 1964 – retelling the story of the last land battle on British soil. It was hailed as a breakthrough for the way it used handheld newsreel-style shooting and direct-to-camera “interviews” with participants such as Bonnie Prince Charlie, as if television had been around in 1746. </p>
<p>But Watkins was doing more than finding new ways to make audiences take notice. He was also exposing how “reality” in television and film could be manipulated. If a documentary style could be convincingly faked in Culloden, what about other films and TV programmes that showed the world “as it is”? This was years ahead of its time. </p>
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<h2>Fall-out</h2>
<p>For Watkins’ next film, he aimed to bring the future to life in the same way as Culloden had done with the past. The results were incendiary. The War Game (1965) offered a stark “pre-construction” of what might happen if the UK was hit by a nuclear attack. The images were so disturbing – harrowing firestorms; emaciated bodies; the breakdown of civil society – that the BBC imposed a ban on it for 20 years. It was a notorious act of censorship, recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-war-game-how-i-showed-that-bbc-bowed-to-government-over-nuclear-attack-film-42640">revealed to have been imposed</a> in collaboration with the British government. Watkins had the last laugh when the film <a href="https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-fictional-nuke-film-that-won-the-oscar-for-best-documentary-b63b42798aeb">won an Oscar</a> in 1967 for Best Documentary Feature. By then, he had left the corporation. His subsequent work is arguably even more interesting. </p>
<p>Watkins’ first feature film, <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/privilege-1967">Privilege</a> (1967), imagined a dystopian future in which a British “coalition government” creates a pop star it can manipulate to control the young (played by ex-Manfred Mann singer Paul Jones). It received mixed reviews on release but has since <a href="https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/26244-privilege-the-squeeze-and-private-road-among-highlights-of-eiff-after-the-wave-retrospective/">been seen</a> as prescient of our Simon Cowell-era of manufactured pop. </p>
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<p>Disappointed with the reaction to the film and the continuing fall-out over The War Game, Watkins took the crucial decision to leave Britain in 1968. The most international of all British-born directors, he would go on to make films in various countries, always in the native language. </p>
<p>First came <a href="http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/gladiators.htm">The Gladiators (1968)</a>, shot in Sweden. Together with his US-produced <a href="http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/punishment.htm">Punishment Park (1971)</a>, it largely pioneered the futuristic “violence as game” scenario of participants fighting to the death for the pleasure of a TV audience. You can see the huge impact on science fiction in the likes of Rollerball (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073631/">1975</a>/<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246894/">2002</a>), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093894/">The Running Man (1987)</a> and the current <a href="http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Hunger-Games">The Hunger Games</a> franchise. With their devastating critiques of how the mass media can manipulate real suffering for entertainment, Watkins’ films also predicted the rise of reality TV.</p>
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<span class="caption">Lennon responds …</span>
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<p>Meanwhile, he was influencing some of the most famous names of the 20th century. In 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono cited him as the primary influence for their celebrated campaigns for peace. The previous year, Watkins had written a long letter to hundreds of opinion-formers asking what were they doing to work for world peace. According to Lennon, it was like receiving your “call-up papers for peace”. <a href="http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1887244,00.html">“Bed-Ins”</a>, <a href="http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1969.0331.beatles.html">“Bagism”</a>, <a href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1111">“Give Peace a Chance”</a>, <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnlennon/imagine.html">“Imagine”</a> – would these have happened without Peter Watkins?</p>
<p>Another famous stunt also carried Watkins’ trace marks. When <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/marlon-brando-rejected-godfather-oscar-2014-2?r=US&IR=T">Marlon Brando refused</a> his Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather in 1973, he sent a young Apache woman to the ceremony to protest Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans. This was after he had collaborated with Watkins on an aborted film about General Custer and The Indian Wars. </p>
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<h2>Munch</h2>
<p>In the early 1970s Watkins decamped to Scandinavia again to make what many regard as his masterpiece, Edvard Munch (1973). This biography of the famous Norwegian painter was shot in Watkins’ trademark documentary style. He identified so strongly with Munch that he invested many of his own feelings in the portrayal, which <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/manup/cstv/2007/00000002/00000001/art00003">helps explain</a> why it is so good. Ingmar Bergman, Sweden’s greatest filmmaker, <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/manup/cstv/2007/00000002/00000001/art00003?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf">reportedly said</a> “the film was made by a genius”. </p>
<p>Watkins continued working until the end of the 1990s, culminating in <a href="http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/commune.htm">La Commune (Paris 1871)</a> (2000). This re-told the events of the 1871 Paris Commune, where Parisians mounted barricades on the streets to protest their hated National Government, only to be slaughtered by its troops. </p>
<p>I had the immense privilege of being invited to the eastern Paris studio along with a colleague to witness the shoot. Watkins shot for three hot weeks in July, reconstructing the commune with the help of 200 French people who were not professional actors. He shot in a series of long takes with minimal editing, aiming to provide a space for this cast to express their political feelings not only about the historical events but to draw the link with society today. Suddenly and thrillingly, characters in 19th-century costume <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/58009392/dont-forget-look-camera-peter-watkins-approach-acting-facts">were discussing</a> contemporary issues such as racial discrimination, and the power of TV, radio and the internet. Critics rated La Commune among Watkins’ greatest works, <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/film/10th-annual-film-critics-poll-the-abridged-results-6392368">voting it</a> one of the best films of the 2000s. </p>
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<p>Watkins is now retired in France, posting periodic updates on <a href="http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/">his website</a> about what he sees as the “media crisis” in the world today. His work has seen a major re-evaluation by a new generation, including career retrospectives at the likes of <a href="http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2001janfeb/watkins.html">Harvard</a> and the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/eventseries/peter-watkins-films-1964-99">Tate Modern</a>. He is indisputably Britain’s greatest film dissident. Happy 80th birthday, Peter Watkins.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Cook has received past funding from AHRC</span></em></p>
Peter Watkins may not be a household name, but The Hunger Games, John Lennon’s Imagine and the Bourne films would be very different without him.
John Cook, Professor in Media, Glasgow Caledonian University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.