This is england vs British heritage industry

[radiantjewel]

Currently I am writing a serious journalistic think piece about the film and series This is England and This is England '86 in relation to British heritage and more specifically the British heritage film industry.
I have a few questions and I am interested to hear your opinions.


1. What is your opinion on the traditional heritage films, such as the Jane Austen adaptations?
2. Do you think that This is England is in anyway an opposition against those kind of films?
3. Would you say This is England is representing British heritage?
4. Is the general audience ready to see a different side of British heritage you reckon? So by that I mean not the pacified and nostalgic tales set in stately country houses but a more 'historic' and less pacified side such as is represented in This is England.
5. What do you think Shane Meadows is implying by the title 'This is England'?

Thanks and I am really curious to hear your answers! I will post the article once finished.

[jill]

I don't know too much about this, so treat this as impressionistic and opinion.

I think there is a live and lively debate about this within the British Heritage industry, where there are more and more people arguing that heritage status should be given to ex-coalfield sites etc and not just stately homes and the like. Maybe your article is responding to that?Certainly this representation of 'Britishness' (or perhaps Englishness) is growing ever more anachronistic as British society grows ever more diverse.

The whole Heritage thing is deeply ideological in that it totally removes conflict from history, or at least until it is so long ago that it ceases to have any real impact. Like the site of Peterloo in Manchester, for example. It'll be a long time before a plaque is erected at the site of the Battle of Orgreave, if ever ;D TIE and others are certainly a 'challenge'-TIE is all about conflict (class and race) in English history.


I am not sure about Heritage films, but my impression is that they are made principally for a US market-a construction and representation of Britishness for external consumption. It is wholly 'unrealistic', but on the other hand these films tend to do well at the US box office, whereas Shane Meadows, Ken Loach etc probably wouldn't and films like Brick Lane would struggle even more probably.

Heritage is just a brand that sells over there. They certainly don't fully represent British heritage, although the whole idea of heritage is open to different interpretations, I suppose. For what it's worth I think a lot of films made in the UK about Britain or Britons with an eye to the US market are similarly sugary and unrealistic-e.g Finding Neverland.


Just why British social realist films don't do well is possibly partly a culture and language thing-seriously, TIE and certainly something like Sweet Sixteen would probably need to be sub-titled-and partly because the mainstream US film industry took the 'film is entertainment' rather than 'film is art' line at a very early point in the development of the film industry. So distributors pick up films because they think they will do well at the box office and not because they have something important to say about history, or culture or identity.

Which is not so say that there aren't 'arty' films made in the States (there are lots) and that there isn't an audience for British (and European) cinema in the States (there is), but it is largely overshadowed by Hollywood mainstream fare. Heritage films are aimed at that same mainstream audience-more entertainment than a 'serious' look at British history and identity.

In interviews, Shane has said that choosing This IS England rather than This WAS England was a conscious decision-the themes still resonates.

A bit off topic as far as your interests are concerned, but I'm just reading some stuff on the Ministry of Information and the Powell and Pressburger films that were made during the war and at the end of the war with the specific aim of improving US-British relations in the light of the 'over-sexed, over-paid and over-here' problems in the UK and the need to end US isolationism in 1945. Interesting in terms of how British (or English really) identity was constructed and 'sold' to both British and US cinema audiences way back then. Quite a few heritage films were made back then, of course, e.g Olivier's Henry V, in line with the MoI brief to promote English culture and values at home and, especially, abroad.

[radiantjewel]

Thanks for your reply Jill. You have some really good points there.

[jill]

A bit random, but glad there was something in it.

I'm not sure how far you want to delve into this, but there is quite a good chapter on heritage war time films in James Chapman (1998) The British at War (London: I.B. Taurus). He draws out the theme of Heritage films representing Britishness (again, actually Englishness) in terms of the rural idyll-romantic, but also conservative (maybe reactionary) representation. It's a construction that almost denies industrialisation and so obliterates the working class (as a product of industrialisation).

In relation to the challenge of TIE, when Shane shoots rural landscapes, he often includes industrial relics in the shot (e.g DMS-the old car, the petrol station, the tyre) and in TIE, the rural pub where the NF meeting takes place, is littered with industrial 'relics'-re-inserting the working class into the landscape? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think its interesting.

[RichK]

Much of the visually interesting junk is actually 'as found' with pieces occasionally added as required. Speaking only for myself of course, I've never thought of it in terms of 're-inserting the working class into the landscape', and that is interesting to consider. A sense of other people having passed through.. perhaps that adds something.

[jill]

Yes, other people passing through. Or 'ghosts' of the past in the present? It's just something I've thought about when watching, especially comparing it to those elitist conceptions of Englishness and landscape that are typically found in heritage type films. There are obviously exceptions in DMS (plus that nice unspoilt landscape/meadow opening in ARfRB comes to mind), but somehow the characters in Meadows films don't 'fit' in half timber cottage, thatch roof territory and I've always kind of thought the industrial relics lying around in the rural locations, make them look and feel more 'at home' or 'in place.' Probably just me though ;D