Pride: Representation - 1980's Britain

The Miner strike of 1984 was a major industrial action to shut down the British Coal industry led by Arthur Scargill.  Opposition to the strike was Conservative PM Margaret Thatcher. The strike affected not only industry but lives in which Labour and the miners joined forces to mobilise Thatcher. Straight away the film begins with a montage of real footage showing miners striking against the shut down, the visuals progressively get more violent showing that as the strikes moved along so did the violence. Immediately in the opening of Pride the film foreshadows it is going to take on the subject when Mark is watching the coverage of the strikes on his TV. This represented 1980's Britain as politically corrupt. It was very much seen as the government vs the oppressed.





Another major impact on the 1980's was the introduction of AIDS. We see the real advert campaign which electrified the UK at the time with its bleak message when Joe enters the living room to his family watching the advert on TV, this is another way the film uses foreshadowing as way to show that Joe is a victim of the issue and it is only a matter of time before his family finds out representing how prejudice 1980's Britain was, coming out to an unaccepting family was a big deal and fear for gay people. Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens saw the AIDs crisis as another opportunity to take a hit at the gay community, it can therefore be seen that 1980s Britain used AIDS to provide an excuse to its underlying issue of the Gay community representing Britain as extremely homophobic; politically and in society.

1980s Britain saw women becoming more capable of shaping and transforming society. Sian is a strong woman who portrays this representation but is held back due to her gender. Before the strike Sian was a young housewife whose life revolved around a clean house and making her children presentable which made her happy but the introduction of mobilising the strike helped her to live up to the new role women had in society in the 1980's. Particularly when it is her who persuades the police officers to release the miners from custody.

The 1980's was an extremely homophobic period. This is emphasised throughout the film with various characters struggle to overcome the fear of the homophobia and coming out. One character in particular is Bromley, we follow his journey as he comes out to his friend, family and even to the audience because as an audience he is the only character we can engage with because we see his back story, this doesn't happen with any other character. Gethin is used as a counteract to Bromley to represent the timeline of two different stages of being gay, Bromley is in the first stages of coming out whereas Gethin is hoping to reconcile with his mother as an audience we assume this will be Bromley over time.

Margaret Thatcher once described 1980's Britan as there being 'No such thing as society' however i think Pride proves her wrong through the use of visuals and themes of unity through close up shots of the hand coming together.