Last night I saw a film called A Way of Life, by Amma Asante. It’s a “bleak” portrayal of working class life in modern Britain and the simmering tensions existing. The story is set in South Wales but it could just as easily have been set in any working class area of Britain – from Dagenham, to Leeds, or Glasgow. From looking at IMDB’s entry it looks as though it’s Amma Asante’s directorial debut although she is also an actress, writer and producer (she wrote A Way of Life also). I think it was quite an impressive piece of work.
The main role is that of a single mother played by Stephanie James. All of the performances are flawless and totally convincing, including Brenda Blethyn’s portrayal of the baby’s grandmother – we never see the father, as he is in prison. What’s good about this piece of work is that it is totally un-judgemental, and just tells it like it is. It’s completely free of the kind of sickly sweet over-romanticised sentimentality (and compassionate patronising!!), of say – a Mike Leigh, or even a Ken Loach piece! I’ve never understood why Leigh and Loach are so vaunted as the voice of the working classes. Particularly Leigh, who just provides a completely false “fairy tale” view of working class life that I’m sure most middle class left wing types absolutely love! But speaking as a working class lad myself I find his work actually insulting, pathetic and twee. I don’t find it gritty or hard hitting at all. Loach’s work at least conveys some sense of realism mainly due to his habit of casting “real people,” and working class actors as oppose to Leigh’s usual bunch of luvvy’s hamming it up, and “improvising” to their hearts content!
On my recent University course we did a module on national and individual identity in Britain. Obviously it focussed heavily on class issues. We had a visiting professor come to one lecture who was supposed to be an expert on the working class. I was shocked and appalled by her attitudes. She waxed lyrical about how the working classes must experience such a sense of community – and how she longed for that – and wished she’d experienced it herself. When a few of us – the 3 or 4 of us out of a class of 30 or so – who were actually from a working class “deprived” background, tried to bring the focus back to some of the harsher realities of growing up in Britain in that environment – she flatly refused to listen. In fact she didn’t actually refuse to listen – she just ignored the fact that we had even spoke! She was not going to let anything burst her romantic Leighist, Loachian bubble of plucky, chirpy working class people triumphing over the adversity of their lives, and making light of it all with a bit of a laugh and a pint down the pub.
Don’t get me wrong – that defiant streak is something to be admired – and you can’t live that way, and get through it all without going mad, without a hell of a sense of humour – indeed, that’s why us working class people are so proud to be working class. I’m sorry, but the truth is that if you grew up in a middle class background – no matter how hard you try – you just simply can’t understand what it is like to grow up in relative poverty in a developed nation like Britain. Thank god there are a new breed of film makers, writers and actors who are finally telling it like it really is. Thanks to people like Paul Abbot, Shane Meadows, Nick Love and now hopefully Amma Asante, finally, working class people are getting their
own voices heard. What’s characteristic about all of the above people’s work is that they portray the harshness of working class life in all its guises – good and bad – and completely unapologetically. They depict the violence as something that is just there – with no attempt at all to justify, interpret or explain it. Once, that would have been unthinkable – to portray such nastiness without in some way explaining it. But it’s necessary to do this! Only then can we hope to convey some sense of the constant feelings of anger, frustration and resentment and powerlessness that living that way inevitably produces.
You can’t really know what it’s like, to always be having to literally scrape together your last pennies just to get through the week. It’s a relentless struggle and it never ends – until if you’re lucky, one day it does. You can’t know what that’s like unless you’ve lived it. You can’t begin to understand the toll it takes on you physically, emotionally and psychologically. It all builds up you see. The feeling inside. Constant anger and resentment – barely contained. You don’t have the time to figure it out or deal with it – you’re too busy trying to live. So you keep going. And the fact is that there are a million ticking time bombs out there – several million – and they can go off at any time – without a terrorist in sight.
And so we have drunken violence at the weekends in our city centres and high streets. We have football violence, happy slapping, muggings and racial fights. These are all just forms of pressure valves. If we didn’t have them, we’d have full scale riots instead – on a regular basis! All of the above filmmakers (not Leigh or Loach of course), understand this. They depict it in their films almost casually – a fact of life. Cos that’s what it is for millions of people – an everyday fact of life. As much as I hate the violence – truly hate it, much the same as these film makers, I suspect – I refuse to condemn it! It’s there – it’s there for a reason, ie; it’s caused by something. Don’t ask me what – lots of things obviously. We can talk about that til the cows come home and it won’t get us anywhere. We can debate about social injustice, deprivation and hegemony – and sorts of other bollocks as long as we like and it won’t help.
Or we can go the other way and deal with it the way society seems to be doing these days – just say it’s just a bunch of chavs. Slap an ASBO on em and have done with it. Maybe every society or group needs somebody to put down and blame everything on – and our socially acceptable scapegoat these days seems to be “chavs.” Not that anyone can actually define what a chav is. To some it’s anyone that comes from a council estate. To others it’s not anyone that comes from a council estate – just the ones who are druggies, single mothers – or who wear Burberry caps! I kind of suspect that to most it’s a kind of catch all term that can be adjusted to suit whatever purpose the user of the term requires. If someone happens to talk, dress or act in a certain way – and you have a reason to dislike them – then they must be a chav! They’re just doing it because they’re stupid and don’t know any better! Demonise em, make them something “other,” and sweep them, and the problem under the carpet!
When did that attitude become acceptable??? I’d like to know – I really would!
Anyway I’m getting carried away here – writing a fucking essay!!! Thought I’d just finished with all of that at Uni! Feels good to have a rant every now and then though. It’s not good enough though to just label people chavs, if they are druggies, criminals, scroungers or violent nutters – and then not accept the realities of our society. Yeah ok, maybe there is a hard core of people, that are a TINY minority of society that really don’t give a toss about anything – but the cold hard fact of the matter is, that a lot of the druggies, criminals, scroungers and violent nutters out there – are not chavs, but are actually ordinary people like me, and yes reader – even you! But some of us are living hard lives, while the rest are comfortable and complacent. And that’s where the problem lies. It’s not an answer to dismiss a whole, massive group of people – and a whole gamut of serious problems – as something other than civilised normal people, who are behaving in an uncivilised and abnormal (or sub-normal), way and then just sweep it all under the carpet. That’s a dangerous trend to start!
