Genre and Social Realism Quotes

"social realist texts are described as 'gritty' and 'raw', offering a 'slice of life' or a view of 'life as it really is" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"The impulse towards realism occurred during a prolonged period of social and structural change: the move from the country to the city by thousands of workers to feed the growing industrial infrastructure (particularly in Britain); the new political idea of communism and socialism attempting to provide a sweeping answer for the new working classes created by the industrial revolution; the secularisation of society; the 'new god' of science and its categorisations and reductive methodologies" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"There is no universal, all-encompassing definition of realism, nor is there agreement among academics and film-makers as to its purpose and use. But what we can say is there are many 'realisms' and these realisms all share an interesting in presenting some aspect of life as it is lived" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"Carroll (1996) suggests that the term should only be used with a prefix attached. This is because another important feature of all realisms is how they are produced at specific historical points. The addition of a prefix, such as social-, neo- documentary-, specifies the 'what' and, crucially 'when' of that movement or moment. What is regarded as 'real', by whom, and how it is represented is unstable, dynamic, and ever changing, precisely because realism is irrevocably lies to the specifics of time and place or 'moment' (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"Content in terms of themes and issues is usually allied to a film-maker's intent. In British social realism this intent if often reformist, educative or socially purposive in some way, and the choice of issue and the prevalence of certain themes is bound up with a mission or a message" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"Theorist Andre Bazin (1967; 1971) argued that realism should provide room enough for audiences to find their own realities within realist film texts and argues that techniques such as depth of shot and long takes would allow for this space to negotiate the realism for the text" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"The narrative structures of social realist texts tend to operate cyclically or episodically" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"Social realist texts resist resolutions and the future is rarely bright" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"In British social realism, for example, some of the prevalent and recurring themes include: the demise of the traditional working class, changing gender roles, anti-consumerism, the negative effects of capitalism, and national identity" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"British social realist texts were associated with exhibiting a distinct preference for content over style" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"Social realist texts are commonly associated with an observational style of filming which tends to produce a distance between text and spectator" (British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit)

"As John Hill summarises; [T]he novelty of the movement was largely conceived in terms of  “contents”(subjects) – of the presentation of the working class on the screen  no longer as the stock types or comic butts of “commercial” British cinema,  but as “real”, “fully-rounded” characters in “real” settings (the regions, cities,  factories etc.) with “real” problems (both everyday and of the culture/ freedom/restraint, purity/corruption, tradition/modernity,  affluence/authenticity). (Hill 1999: 130)" (Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema)

"Set in real locations of industrial towns, most of these films have young  working-class men as the main characters, who, unsatisfied with their life, are seeking escape." (Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema)

"Hill states that these shots of the industrial town such as squalid houses, factories with smoking chimneys, and canals in and around the town; add to the film a "reality effect‟ which is placed alongside the use of the regional language and that of non-professional actors." (Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema)

"The descriptive shots of the drab and gritty settings allow the film to achieve an authenticity otherwise unseen in earlier works. Higson calls the effect of those shots „surface realism‟ and further as "moral realism‟: the former authenticates the location itself within the regional accents of the actors, whilst the latter would develop the audiences‟ sympathy and commitment to the state and social problems faced by those places and people." (Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema)

"The British New Wave films repeatedly employ characters with a desire for escape (such as Arthur in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning), or climbing up the social ladder (like Gerald in This Sporting Life or Joe in Room at the Top). Alongside the representation of their open sexuality (and sometimes issues of abortion), this tendency characterises representation of the working class" (Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema)

"Loach's work has never primarily been about visual style: at the core of all his films, are political statements about people marginalised economically or politically within British society. Loach's films from the 1960s through to the 1980s, deal with particular social and political contexts, such as housing problems or union strikes. His main concern is the social system; supposedly designed to help people in a predicament, but which nevertheless works in the opposite manner to further oppress the people and create misery." (Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema)

"Higson calls the effect of those shots "surface realism" and further as "moral realism": the former authenticates the location itself within the regional accents of the actors, whilst the latter would develop the audiences‟ sympathy and commitment to the state and social problems faced by those places and people."  (Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema)

"Location shooting in the British New Wave worked in both ways: it reveals the "real" state of these towns and people, and its "authenticity" allows the film to acquire sympathy from the audience"  (Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema)

"Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (including structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them" (An Introduction To Genre Theory)