CIN 3110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Working Class Culture, Red Hair, Hypermasculinity
16 Jun 2018
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The History of British Cinema Class 4:
February 8, 2018 – Gangster Geographies (Performance and Get Carter)
• Genre – quintessentially American, but British films adopt it.
o Usually American themes – immigration, capitalist achievement
o BUT these are moulded into a British context.
• Character and Social/Geographical mobility
o How characters move through space, and how the capacity to move through space
is inflicted by particular social roles and identities
o Gangsters can move in different ways than other people of the population.
o How character and identity is indexed to different capacities to move through
space.
• Gender and performance
o How different genders play out within films
o How the films seek to destabilize gender identities
o Malleable identity.
Genre
• Typically American – typically irish or Italian immigrants
• Rise of criminal activity.
• Masculine protagonist, defined by violence and has a status as someone who is outside
the law. Taciturn figures. Don’t always use a lot of words, tend to be lower registers.
o Limitation to speech.
o Spectacular moments of violence. Violence as self-expression, which is linked to
a limitation of speech.
• Gangster is incredibly appealing. We secretly identify with him and want to be him.
Charisma that attaches to him. Cast as an attractive figure, because he stands outside the
law. This grants him glamour. We can live out our fantasies just watching him, without
breaking the law.
• Set female roles – gangster’s mom-link to the old country, femme fatale (usually
untrustworthy), virginal figure-sister or young girl in the community who needs to be
saved from depredation of society.
• Retention of the themes of economic struggle, violence, and the dark underside of
capitalism. Added to that, we get this detailed focus on local and working class cultures
in Great Britain itself.
Performance
• East vs West London. Travels across London to hide
• Very specific geographical differences between two neighbourhoods in London
Get Carter
• All the reference to American iconography.
• See also the post-industrial working class culture of New Castle.
• Fantasy of escaping modernity.
Character and Mobility
• Lawrence of Arabia – mobility granted by his background.
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