Intellect

Authors:  David Forrest 
DOI: 10.1386/seci.6.2-3.191/1

Keywords
British social realism, the British New Wave, Shane Meadows, art cinema, Bordwell, Poetic realism

Abstract
This article seeks to highlight the textual parallels of the British New Wave and the films of Shane Meadows, supported by the Bordwellian definition of art cinema. In so doing, I will encourage a reassessment of British social realism within the wider framework of art cinema, demonstrating how a focus on the aesthetic, formal and stylistic characteristics of the mode offers us new points of departure in our analysis of British realism. To this end, Andrew Higson's and John Hill's sociologically inclined readings of the New Wave cycle are evoked to reflect the dominant critical discourses that have inhibited broader engagements with the films. Hill's and Higson's class-based interpretations of the New Wave's problematic aesthetic issues are reapplied to the recent films of Shane Meadows, highlighting the manner in which similar aesthetic compositions occur across British social realist films, from the middle-class gaze of the New Wave to the apparently authentic approach of Meadows. By illuminating the narrow boundaries of these socio-political reading strategies, I advance a case for an understanding of British realism based on authorship and the pursuit of self-consciously disseminated lyricism.