Nwonka, Clive James (2014) 'You’re what’s wrong with me’: Fish Tank, The selfish giant and the language of contemporary British social realism. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 12 (3). ISSN 1474-2756 (doi:10.1386/ncin.12.3.205_1)

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Abstract

Contemporary British social realism has rapidly gained critical adherents in mainstream film critique, with the 2009 film Fish Tank hailed as a triumphant demonstration of British political cinema. The 2013 film The Selfish Giant followed this trend, and both have been aggrandized as a concrete critique of social inequality and, in a similar vein to the films of Ken Loach, offer an insight into the destabilizing effects of living with marginalized social categories. However, this article contends that the representation of working-class characters in Fish Tank and The Selfish Giant can also be interpreted as a depoliticized form of British social realism that fails to effectively depict the scope of social inequality or critique current policies and problems. This article interrogates the critical responses that annex Fish Tank and the Selfish Giant with Loach’s body of films and suggests that the texts form part of a broader trend of decontextualization in contemporary British social realism.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Film studies; Cultural studies New Labour; Politics; Sociology; British social realism
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > School of Design (DES)
Last Modified:	02 Jun 2017 14:05
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/17223

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