Classless: Recent Essays on British Film

by Carl Neville

Why has mainstream British film been so unrepresentative of the changes in British society over the past twenty years? Classless looks at the erasure of key issues of class and class struggle in recent British film as well as the flattening out of the rich variety of English social types into the bland middle-mass of Love Actually. By analysing a number of key films and emergent genres the ideological character of the Major years on into the false dawn of Blairism and Cool Brittania will be elaborated, and it will be argued that even works that are ostensibly subversive, such as Danny Boyle?s Trainspotting serve to promote the underlying myths of neo-liberalism. The films under discussion will range from Steven Frear?s The Queen to Jonathon Glazer?s Sexy Beast The book will also consider popular genres such as the recent Football Hooligan films along with more recondite works by a handful of auteurs.

Genres: British Literature

100 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2010

Reviews

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Are you part of the British working class? Do you feel a sense of social weightlessness, a lack of representation, alienation even?
A witty, sometimes brutal, deep-dive into the attempts of nighties and noughties British culture and film to enter the 'End of History', and the ensuing erasure or subjectivisation of class - in total, stark contradiction to ones experiences outside the cinema, club, and Ecstasy pill.
It doesn't (nor does it need to) go significantly deeper, but this is a great read if one is familiar with the class analysis of society, with materialism, and the understanding that 'The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships'.
It's very dense and warrants a re-read, but neither does it academise itself.