University of Leipzig

Wintersemester 2002/2003

The Representation of the Working Class 
in the Films Brassed Off and The Full Monty

by

Alena Friedrich

05.01.2003 

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 3

PART I. THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS IN THE COURSE OF THE 20TH CENTURY 6
1. The "Old" Working Class 6 
2. The "New" Working Class 7 
3. Summary 8

PART II. THE REPRESENTATION OF THE WORKING CLASS IN THE FILMS BRASSED OFF AND THE FULL MONTY 10
1. The Characters′ Socio-Economic Situation 10 
2. The Social Bonds 14 
3. Working class Pride and Traditionalism 17 
4. The Workers′ Male Identity 20 
5. Regional Identity 22

CONCLUSION 24

BIBLIOGRAPHY 26

Introduction

Social class has always been a basic topic of British film-makers. Especially the New Wave films of the 1950s and 1960s represented class, and particularly the working class, as one of their main issues. At a time of increasing consumerism, Americanisation, commercialisation and growing affluence the lower ranks of society feared a demise of their class identity, as they were traditionally associated with a lower socio-economic status (Hill 2000a: 178; Eley 1995: 19). Later, in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher′s politics of de-industrialisation and individualism destroyed not only a huge part of the workers′ traditional working places and, thus, of their social basis, but also of their class identity (Eley 1995: 40; Monk 2000: 275). Now the stress of the films′ narrative lay on the social effects of mass unemployment and poverty rather than on the consequences of growing working class affluence and embourgoisement (Hill 2000a: 178). As the socio-economic effects of Thatcherism were still noticeable in the 1990s, that decade′s films′ narrative was also centred around unemployment and social disadvantage of the lower classes. Two of these films which focus on the lives of working class people in the 1990s are Brassed Off (Mark Herman, 1996) and The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997). Both films take unemployment in traditional working class industries and its social and psychic effects on the people involved as their themes. The main focus of these motion pictures is on working class people and their way to manage their lives without work and financial means. In this respect, it is particularly interesting to analyse the representations of class, and especially of the working class, in these two films. As films always convey certain ideas and images, and, thus, re-presentations of the "real world", it is of particular significance to filter out these recorded images to understand what ′sense of the world′ (Cooke 1996: 298-9) the film is making, i.e. how the film-maker interprets and presents the "world outside" to the viewer. According to Richard Dyer (quoted in Cooke 1996: 299), four different aspects of representation can be considered: First, the concept of representation, i.e. the sense of the world the film is making, second, the typicality of the representations, i.e. the question of what the film considers to be typical in society, third, the producers of the representations, i.e. the question who is responsible for the representations on screen, and fourth, the recipients of the representations, i.e. the audience. This essay, which is going to analyse the representation of class in Brassed Off and The Full Monty, will particularly focus on the typicality of the representations. The question will be, in which ways the films can be seen as "typical" working class motion pictures. In this respect, the stereotyping of the social classes in these two films will particularly be focused on. Stereotypes are based on oversimplified and preconceived ideas of the characteristics of a particular person, situation or group (Oxford English Dictionary 1989, "Stereotype"). With regard to Brassed Off and The Full Monty, it will be analysed if classes, and particularly the working class, are represented in such an oversimplified way or if the films represent new and innovative images of the social ranks.

According to Eley (1995: 21), the images and stereotypes of the ′traditional working class culture′ as they are presented in many films refer back to ′a historically specific formation of the period between the 1880s and the 1940s′. That was the time when the popular image of the working class was formed; according to Eric Hobsbawm (quoted in Eley 1995: 21) it was ′the working class of cup finals, fish-and-chips shops, palais-de-danse, and Labour with a capital L′, recognisable ′by the physical environment in which they lived, by a style of life and leisure, by a certain class consciousness increasingly expressed in a secular tendency to join unions and to identify with a class party of Labour′. Yet, although the working class underwent several substantial changes in the course of the 20th century, causing an increasing demise of the traditional working class culture and its distinctive characteristics, many film-makers still fell back on these images and stereotypes when producing a film. In this context, it shall be analysed if the makers of Brassed Off and The Full Monty also used such stereotypes to produce an image of "the good old working class" as it was many decades ago. In order to gain an understanding of these working class stereotypes, the first chapter of this paper will deal with the "old" working class as it existed at the turn of the 20th century and its main characteristics.

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