Class on Screen: The Global Working

Class in Contemporary Cinema 1st ed.

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Class on Screen
The Global Working Class in
Contemporary Cinema
Sarah Attfield
Class on Screen
 Sarah Attfield

Class on Screen
The Global Working Class in Contemporary
Cinema
Sarah Attfield
School of Communication
University of Technology
Sydney, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-45900-0    ISBN 978-3-030-45901-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45901-7

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 Acknowledgements

As I was preparing this manuscript for final submission, the world changed.
The COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly around the world and many
people died. The subsequent lockdowns in many countries also led to sud-
den, mass unemployment as businesses and whole industries closed in
attempts to reduce the spread of the virus. The pandemic threw the pre-
cariousness of work into the spotlight and revealed the huge numbers of
people working on temporary contracts with no job security, no sick pay,
and in some countries such as the US, no health insurance and therefore
limited or no access to healthcare. It also made visible many working-class
occupations that have previously been dismissed in disparaging terms as
‘low-skilled’. The need for and importance of cleaners, shop workers,
delivery drivers and warehouse workers, as well as nurses and other front-­
line health-related staff, became apparent and in a complete reversal, these
formally undervalued roles were celebrated. Cleaners became heroes along
with nurses and doctors. The COVID-19 crisis continues as I write this,
and despite some countries starting to ease their lockdowns and move
back towards the status quo, there are still many places around the world
very badly affected. It will be a long road to recovery. But will the recovery
include a continuation of this celebration of working-class occupations?
Can the increase that’s been seen in union membership lead to a resur-
gence of union and worker power? Will there be any inroads into the fight
against neo-liberalism? This all remains to be seen—but at the very least,
there might be a little more respect for the work that millions of people do
around the world every day, often for the lowest wages and in unsafe
conditions.

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

COVID-19 hasn’t been the only monumental change in 2020. The rise
in worldwide support for the Black Lives Matter movement has been
deeply significant. African Americans have always been fighting for racial
justice, along with Indigenous people and all people whose lands have
been colonised. But the tipping point may have come with the murder of
George Floyd by police in Minnesota. Floyd is one of too many Black
people to have been killed by police, and Black people in America (and
around the world) have had enough. And the protests against police
violence have shown how class intersects with race—the majority of Black
American victims of police violence are working class. The uprisings in US
cities and the marches and rallies of support in many countries do indicate
a turning point—the acknowledgement of the structures of oppression
and the ways that systemic racism operates. And the need to dismantle
these systems. This must occur at all levels, and while a book about film
might seem inconsequential in the scheme of these struggles, the role of
popular culture is a very important one.
This book would not have happened without the support and encour-
agement of many people and I thank everyone who has listened to me rave
about films and talk about class. I am the product of my working-class
upbringing—I have held onto the working-class values taught to me by
working-class family. My formal education and my current role as an
academic does not mean I identify as middle class. I retain my working-
class characteristics and proudly assert that I am a working-class academic.
It’s a strange position to occupy and I would have felt very alone without
my working-class academic ‘family’—members of the Working-Class
Studies Association (WCSA) who have helped me to value my work and
encouraged me to keep going with it. Good old-fashioned working-
class resilience and determination is probably what my WCSA friends
would call it, (or sheer bloody-mindedness as my mum might have said).
I have met and talked about my work with many wonderful WCSA
people, but there are some who have become close and need to be
acknowledged here: Barbara Jensen, whose work on the psychology of
class has been so important; Sherry Linkon and John Russo—the founders
of the Association; Jack Metzgar, who always went away and watched the
films I presented on at conferences and then bailed me up to argue about
them the following year; Michele Fazio, Christie Launius, Terry Easton
and Cherie Rankin—the ‘OG’ gang; Nathan Bryant, who shares my pas-
sion for grim film viewing and Tim Strangleman, who thinks I’m way too
miserable. And so many colleagues over the years from around the world
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

who have become friends and who inspire me with their intellect and
activism and make me proud to be part of the WCSA—Lisa McKenzie,
Matthew Sparkes, Joe Varga, Debbie Warnock, Sara Appel, too many to
mention!
There are many others to acknowledge. At UTS the students have
given me much to think about and I have appreciated their enthusiasm
and their criticisms. My most long-­standing film buddy at UTS has been
Rayma Watkinson. We have taught film studies together for many years
and have had endless discussions about films and our favourite filmmakers.
I know that if Rayma likes a film, I will too. David Adlam has introduced
me to many filmmakers and without him, I would not have known about
Roy Andersson—and that would have been a tragedy! Sunil Badami has
provided me with endless amounts of fascinating film trivia—his knowl-
edge of film always astounds. And I have many super supportive colleagues
in my faculty. But a special mention has to go to Liz Giuffre who has been
unwavering in her support and encouragement and has never let me give
up on anything. Liz is a genuine superstar and I’d be lost without her.
My partner John has also watched numerous films with me and has
shared my love for Taiwanese film, especially Tsai Ming-liang’s deliciously
weird representations of life in Taiwan. I have always appreciated John’s
willingness to watch whatever I suggest. And my kids have tolerated their
mother’s post-screening mini-lectures on films that I’ve taken them to see.
It must be annoying to have an academic parent.
Finally, this book is really for my mum. She didn’t get to see it in print,
but she was always my biggest fan and she would’ve been so proud. I
would love to see a film about working-class women like her—a film that
shows struggles and hardships but also the ability to have a laugh despite
the circumstances. Women around the world like my mum who have
worked so hard for so little financial reward but whose sharp minds and
collective spirit have kept families and communities going. Women who
refuse to give up the fight and who pass that fight on to their daughters.
Thanks mum.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Work and Unemployment 27

3 Working-Class Culture 59

4 Immigration and Diaspora 89

5 Gender and Sexualities123

6 Race and Class in Australian Indigenous Film167

7 Afterword195

Filmography201

Index207

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book began more than 30 years ago with a trip to a cinema in central
London. I was working at Hamley’s (the famous toy shop) and looking
for cheap entertainment that wasn’t just the pub after work. So Katie
Daniels and I ventured to a nearby cinema in Soho because we’d heard
that the tickets were cheap on a Tuesday. We had no idea what we were
going to see but we bought tickets for Pedro Almodóvar’s What Have I
Done to Deserve This? (1984). It was the first subtitled film I’d watched.
This was also the first film I’d seen with working-class characters that
seemed real. I was hooked. Almodóvar was my ‘gateway’ director, and
from that first film at the Metro Cinema, I sought out films from around
the world and became a regular at the small independent cinemas in cen-
tral London. This might not seem such a big deal, but for a shop girl from
a London council estate, this was a huge deal. There weren’t many like me
at the Metro and I have been told on many an occasion that working-class
people don’t like art house cinema. But I saw myself represented in these
films in ways that didn’t happen in the Hollywood films that flooded our
suburban cinemas. I became an autodidact film buff and most likely
annoyed everyone who accompanied me to the cinema. Fast forward 30
years and I find myself working as an academic and able to teach film stud-
ies and introduce to students some of the films I loved so much as a teen-
aged shop assistant. The irony of watching films with working-class
characters in cinemas full of middle-class audience members has never
been lost on me and it’s something that I’ve wrestled with for a long time.

© The Author(s) 2020 1

S. Attfield, Class on Screen,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45901-7_1
2 S. ATTFIELD

I have some ideas on audience that I will share later, but I will assert here
that working-class people do like art house films, but that the opportuni-
ties to watch them are not often forthcoming.
The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the representation of
working-class people world-wide in contemporary cinema to see what
commonalities of experience might be presented and to consider the dif-
ferences and cultural specificities on offer in some of these representations.
There are many questions to be posed and not all will be answered, but I
will try. My main point is that representation is important—it really does
matter, and seeing yourself or others you recognise on screen is powerful
when you are marginalised, ignored, demonised or ridiculed. Working-­
class people globally do most of the work. Working-class people make the
products, deliver the products, dispose of the products, clean up after
everyone, look after the children, the elderly, farm the land, build cities,
cook food, serve food, cut hair, dig for those minerals needed to make
those products or to provide energy. Working-class people form the major-
ity but are the least represented.
I take an interdisciplinary approach born from working-class studies.
This means a focus on the lived experiences of working-class people
(Linkon and Russo 2005, 11) which is why I started with an autobio-
graphical note. I’ve written elsewhere about the importance of autobiog-
raphy in working-class studies (Attfield 2016, 46, 2017, 95) but I will
repeat here that I come from a working-class background, and grew up on
a north-east London high-rise council estate. I have first-hand experience
of hardship, working-class work, poverty, classism, but also of community,
resilience, culture and fun. I am white—ethnically Anglo-Saxon and so I
have never experienced racism (although I have witnessed racism on many
occasions). My class background gives me some authority to speak in class,
but I am aware that I have benefited from white privilege. It is important
therefore to be intersectional, which, according to Hill Collins and Bilge,
requires an understanding of how ‘the major axes of social divisions in a
given society at a given time, for example, race, class, gender, sexuality,
dis/ability and age operate not as discrete and mutually exclusive entities,
but build on each other and work together’ (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016,
13). Intersectionality can be used as an ‘analytical tool’ (Hill Collins and
Bilge 2016, 12) to identify and understand how the layering effects of
discrimination operate. The majority of the films discussed in this book
illustrate the concept of intersectionality in concrete terms as characters
face layers of oppression due to their class, race, ethnicity, sexuality,
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

religion and gender. There is a major omission though—none of the films

deals explicitly with disability and class which points to the lack of engage-
ment with disability within the film (and other cultural products)
more widely.
The field of working-class studies allows the scholar to draw from disci-
plines that are relevant (Linkon and Russo 2005, 11), and in this book, I
draw from film studies, cultural studies, sociology, psychology, economics,
geography, literary studies, labour history and so on. This combination of
theories and approaches might seem messy—and even within film studies,
there are many different theories that I draw from. Within film studies, I
dip into Marxist, feminist, semiotic, formalist, phenomenological and vari-
ous other approaches using what has been described as a ‘piecemeal’
methodology favoured by some feminist scholars such as Freeland (2000,
356) who suggests that this helps to avoid a heavy ‘top-down’ approach
where one theory is applied to everything. Although there is probably a
general tone of Marxism because a Marxist approach is not just concerned
with analysing films but also influencing production and looking for ways
to effect change (Rushton and Bettinson 2010, 34). Film is a great peda-
gogical tool and has potential to be used to educate, inform and agitate
(which is not mutually exclusive with entertainment).

Defining Class
Before beginning any analysis of film, I need to define what I mean by
‘working class’.
To suggest that there is an identifiable global working class might seem
a bit ridiculous and I am not attempting to homogenise working-class
experience. It’s probably quite obvious that working-class experience will
be very different between one place and another, and not everyone who
might fit into the categories I’m using to assign working-class membership
will identify themselves as working class. So, the definitions are already
problematic but necessary. How is class generally defined? There are vari-
ous ways that scholars understand class.
A classic Marxist approach divides people according to their position in
a capitalist society. There are two main classes in this model—the bour-
geoisie, who are the capitalists and own the means of production, and the
proletariat, who sell their labour to the capitalists in a system of exploita-
tion that requires the proletariat (working class) to ‘generate a social sur-
plus product for those who own the means of production’ (Boucher 2014,
4 S. ATTFIELD

31). It’s a neat model, but it doesn’t allow for nuance. And does it apply
outside of the western world? Can we compare a factory worker in the UK
with a rural farm labourer in India? The type of labour they sell, how much
they get paid for it, and their working conditions will vary enormously.
A more contemporary economic definition might consider the role of
power (Zweig 2004, 4). This model suggests that in general, the working
class are those who are reliant on others to buy their labour and who have
little to no power in the workplace (Zweig 2004, 4). Understanding how
power works also helps to differentiate between people who also sell their
labour, but who have control and autonomy in terms of the work they do.
Academics are paid by an employer, precariously employed academics are
paid by the hour, but this does not make them working class. They might
experience poverty due to a lack of regular hours and might be exploited
by their institution. But this does not equal working-class status. The aca-
demic enjoys a good amount of autonomy in their workplace. They can
usually choose how they will teach and what they research. Despite the
constraints of the neo-liberal university and the work-intensification that
makes many academics unwell due to overwork and stress, they are still
not working class.
A sociological approach to class uses the work of French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu and considers the cultural aspects of class, particularly
that which is related to the consumption of art and culture—in other
words, ‘taste’ (Bourdieu 1984, 6). In this model, class is not determined
by income alone but also by the amounts of other types of capital that are
accumulated. Middle- and upper-class people have high levels of cultural
capital, which is the knowledge of things deemed important by middle-
and upper-class people, such as knowledge of high art, literature, and gen-
eral knowledge, and which allows entry into middle- and upper-class
spaces. Working-class people, due to lower levels of educational capital
(formal education), often have lower levels of cultural capital and there-
fore find it difficult to be accepted into these middle- and upper-class
spaces (Bourdieu 1984, 1). The lack of cultural capital means they are
deemed inferior (intellectually and culturally) by their middle- and upper-­
class counterparts (Bourdieu 1984, 7). Bourdieu (1984) suggests that the
type of culture consumed is used as a way of ‘legitimating social differ-
ences’ (7). Possession of cultural capital is necessary when attempting, for
example, to gain employment in a middle- or upper-class dominated
industry. Knowing the ‘right’ kinds of things means fitting into the mid-
dle- or upper-class world and is often more important than having the
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

right kind of things—someone who is asset poor, such as an artist, but

cultural capital rich, is likely to be accepted by the middle-class gatekeep-
ers of the art world (the gallery owners and agents). There are other types
of capital too—linguistic capital relates to the way people speak. Having a
working-class accent can be a barrier to employment in certain industries
as it is associated with lack (of education and of sophistication). And social
capital relates to who people know. Those who have parents with connec-
tions in the industries they want to work in are definitely advantaged when
seeking employment. These various forms of capital work together. So, as
a young autodidact film buff and avid reader, I could talk to middle-class
people about art house film and literature. But I knew nothing about clas-
sical music and I had a working-class accent which immediately marked
me as different. Even as an academic I still feel the effects of this lack of
cultural capital when talking to colleagues who grew up in households
where reading works of literature and having academic discussions was
totally normalised—colleagues who had access to music lessons, and holi-
days abroad. As Bourdieu explains, cultural capital is passed on through
generations, and a child raised in a family with high levels of cultural capi-
tal gains a ‘head start’—an advantage which ‘enables the newcomer to
start acquiring the basic elements of the legitimate culture’ and without
any effort (Bourdieu 1984, 70–71).
To understand how class works requires an approach that combines
elements of classic Marxism, economics and the sociological model,
because class is both complicated and messy but also quite clear in terms
of how class structures create and reinforce inequality. The way the work-
ing class are defined needs to be ‘broad and inclusive’ (van der Linden
2014, 73) and those who are not usually included in the older, more
binary models need to be considered. Class status is felt and is lived, and
often for working-class people, it is quite clear who are the ‘haves’ and
who are the ‘have nots’.

The Global Working Class

With this in mind, who are the global working class? In the western world,
the old image of blue-collar, manual male workers (the coal miner or the
autoworker) is being replaced by one that is feminised and white collar
(the call centre employee, the shop assistant). This change is real, with the
decline of manufacturing in western countries and a move towards service
industries. Many towns in western countries have been deindustrialised in
6 S. ATTFIELD

the past three decades, and the local industries have moved on to places
where the labour is cheaper, leading to a fragmentation of previous
working-­class communities (Atzeni 2014, 5). Work is often gendered, and
heavy industry in the west has been traditionally male-dominated. So,
while there are still some heavy industry and blue-collar occupations in
western countries, the old working class now consists of those workers,
plus anyone engaged in routine work (particularly service work). If we
apply the economic model, the working class is made up of people earning
low wages (minimum wage where it exists), or who are, increasingly,
employed precariously (part of the ‘gig’ economy or on casual or zero-­
hours contracts). These workers are part of the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’
sectors—meaning, they might be working formally for an established
employer, or informally selling goods on the street (Bieler et al. 2008, 1).
The power model also includes workers without autonomy in the work-
place—those who have no, or very little say in their day to day tasks. And
Bourdieu’s approach potentially broadens the category and includes peo-
ple who lack high levels of educational, cultural and linguistic capital (so,
culturally, a person could be considered working class if they have low
levels of cultural capital even if they are earning a high wage).
When we move away from the western world, we can see that the class
categories are more defined and there is even less potential to move classes
by gaining formal education or finding opportunities to be entrepreneur-
ial. In some places, workers have less safeguards too in terms of industrial
laws that help to protect workers in the west (Ness 2016, 6). The impacts
of decades of neo-liberalism have been felt strongly in the developing
world, and almost half of all employed people globally are now classified
as the ‘working poor’ (Bieler et al. 2008, 9). And there are fewer safety
nets such as access to unemployment benefits or affordable health care.
But what unites working-class people across the world is the way they are
exploited by employers and subject to the whims of the ruling classes. And
where the older established working-class communities might have
become more fractured due to deindustrialisation, there are new working-­
classes constantly forming (Silver 2014, 49).

Representation
What is representation and why is it important? Representation, simply
put, is the portrayal of people or things or places. But analysis of represen-
tation is also used to explore how people, things and places are portrayed.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

What sort of portrayals dominate? Are certain people always presented in

a negative or stereotypical manner? Are some people not represented at
all? The study of representation considers the ways we acquire our knowl-
edge of people, things and places. What do we know, and how do we
know it? A lot of what we learn about people comes from portrayals in the
media and popular culture. If we aren’t from a particular group, or know
people from that group, we learn about them via representations. And if
those representations are limited, so will be our knowledge of that group
(Hall 1997b, 258). Society rests on shared meanings (Hall 1997a, 2) and
a general consensus can be created around these meanings. And the cre-
ation of these meanings is often controlled by those with the power and
means to distribute them widely. If it serves the interests of the ruling
classes to portray working-class people in a certain way (or to limit their
portrayal), they can use their influence and power to do so. Working-class
people are often marginalised, and despite being completely crucial to the
running of societies and economies, working-class people don’t often see
their own stories told in the public sphere. This is significant because rep-
resentation matters.
Linkon and Russo (2005) state that representations provide important
insights into how working-class people are understood and viewed by vari-
ous institutions such as ‘the media’ (12). We can use film to tell us the
story of class in different places and times—films offer snapshots of con-
temporary society and can show us what might have changed across time
and location and where commonalities might exist (Zaniello 2005, 153).
Films are important because they help to create the sorts of values and
norms that can dominate society and help to ‘make us think’ (Rushton
and Bettison, 2). According to Dowd (2013), the way that films are con-
sumed, usually in a ‘relaxed mode’ (60) belies the particular ideologies
that underpin them, and audiences can be easily persuaded by what is seen
on screen. bell hooks (2009) suggests that films provide a version of the
real that can be ‘life-transforming’ to watch (1–2). According to Cardullo,
the famous French film theorist André Bazin claimed that film could ‘grasp
social, cultural, political and economic realities’ and each film operates as
‘social documentary’ (Cardullo 2012, 35–36); ideas that related to the
realist film that Bazin advocated which is the favoured mode of the major-
ity of filmmakers discussed in this book and therefore relevant here. And
as mentioned previously, there is a strong educational potential to film and
it is where many audiences learn about issues such as class, gender and race
(hooks 2009, 3). According to hooks, there is a seduction at play when
8 S. ATTFIELD

viewing films, and a potential flow of power that is one-sided (2009, 4).
hooks acknowledges the ‘radical possibility’ of film, but also states that it
is possible to be critical of a film that has brought enjoyment on various
levels (2009, 135). Linkon and Russo stress the significance of using
working-class voices as a ‘primary source’ (Linkon and Russo 2005, 12)
for studying working-class life, and this is something that I grapple with
when analysing film, because many of the films discussed in this book are
made by filmmakers who are not working class.

History of Class on Screen

How have working-class people been portrayed on screen? Cinema actu-
ally has a rich history of working-class representation. It isn’t too hard to
find stories about working-class people in films from various eras and dif-
ferent parts of the world. It is worth including here some historical con-
text for the contemporary films to be discussed later in this book, because
the films mentioned in the following section have been influential for con-
temporary filmmakers and in many ways, created the space for subsequent
working-class representation.

America
In the earliest days of filmmaking in the US, working-class stories tended
to dominate. The films of the silent era in the US catered to working-class
audiences, and according to Ross (1998), this early cinema was ‘remark-
ably sympathetic to the plight of the working class’ (4). From the begin-
nings, the producers of films saw the potential of the medium as
entertainment and education (Ross 1998, 6), and they saw the benefits of
targeting the largest groups as audiences (working-class people). Many
films that were made told stories of workers and the poor and were instru-
mental in shaping the ways in which people viewed American society (Ross
1998, 10). Movie theatres of the silent era were mainly working-class
spaces, and going to see a film was a cheap pastime. Audiences wanted to
see their own lives reflected and flocked to the screens. Many films of the
time were overtly political, and sparked political discussion and debate
among the audience members (Ross 1998, 27). Films depicted workers’
struggles for decent pay and conditions, fights with bosses and life trying
to make ends meet. They were often ideological in nature (Ross 1998,
62), and presented particular political messages to working-class
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

audiences. Films such as The Italian by Reginald Barker, 1915 depicted

the hardships faced by an Italian immigrant living in a New York tenement
and were empowering for working-class immigrants seeing their stories on
screen (Ross 1998, 5). The Blacklist by William C. de Mille (1916), repre-
sented a strike, and encouraged workers in real life to engage in strike
action (Ross 1998, 8). Radical filmmakers knew that film could be
employed as a ‘powerful weapon of mass ideology’ (Ross 1998, 85) and
harnessed its potential as a radical pedagogical tool (O’Neill 2018, 133).
This ‘progressive phase’ (Stead 2014, 23) which dominated US filmmak-
ing, lasted until the 1920s, when the Hollywood studios started to rise
and films moved away from radical content and on to more ‘respectable’
themes and middle-class stories (Stead 2014, 15).

Australia
In Australia at the same time, there was also an emphasis on working-class
stories in films. In 1906, one of the first feature films made in the world,
The Story of the Kelly Gang by Charles Tait, was released. This film told the
story of notorious bank robber, Ned Kelly and his gang and dramatised
the famous police siege of the gang’s hideout that resulted in Kelly’s cap-
ture and subsequent execution. The film set in motion an Australian pre-
occupation with the stories of working-class criminals (mostly male and
white) and spawned many further screen adaptations. Audiences of the
time sympathised with bushranger Kelly and his poverty-stricken family
(he was the son of an Irish convict) and it was a hit with working-class
audiences (Shirley and Adams 1989, 18). The ‘golden age’ of Australian
film production that occurred prior to the First World War (Shirley and
Adams 1989, 24), saw a number of working-class characters and tales
translated to the screen. A stand out film from just after the First World
War was Raymond Longford’s 1918 feature The Sentimental Bloke. This
film told the story of The Bloke, a working-class petty criminal living in
the slums of Sydney. The Bloke falls for a girl, Doreen, and vows to change
his ways and leave crime behind. The film was an adaptation of a popular
poem by C.J. Dennis, who had used working-class argot in his verse and
the spirit of the poem is maintained in the film. Many of the film’s scenes
were shot on location in the (since gentrified) working-class area of
Woolloomooloo in Sydney’s centre. The naturalistic acting, and the street
locations, made the film an authentic slice of Australian urban working-­
class life and it has held up well despite its age.
10 S. ATTFIELD

Soviet Cinema
In other parts of the world, as cinema developed, it also often took on a
working-class flavour. Soviet cinema is well known for its employment as
an ideological tool, and a centralised industry formed relatively quickly
after the October Revolution in 1917. By the mid-1920s, Soviet cinema
was well established and recognised as a ‘useful propaganda and educa-
tional tool’ (Christie and Taylor 1994, 61). The films designed to dissemi-
nate revolutionary ideology often featured proletariat characters and
settings and were critical of the bourgeoise—the villains of the films
(Youngblood 1992, 117). Yakov Protazanov’s 1917 drama The Man from
the Restaurant serves as a typical example of a film about a working-class
man (a waiter), who is pitted against a bourgeois villain (a wealthy man
attempting to dishonour the waiter’s daughter). Another example would
be Fridrikh Ermler whose films such as his 1926 Katka the Appleseller
positioned him as a ‘chronicler of Soviet life’ (Youngblood 1992, 67).
In the 1920s, Soviet filmmakers responded to the state requirement for
the film to be created for ideological purposes, but many of them moved
away from popular genres such as melodrama, and towards experimental
practice. Such filmmakers saw the medium as an art form, not as popular
culture, and filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein engaged in experimental
art practice producing films about the proletariat and revolutionary ideas
that were Avant-Garde in form (Christie and Taylor 1994, 52). Eisenstein’s
1925 The Strike, and his famous 1925 The Battleship Potemkin, have been
hailed as masterpieces of cinema but in 1920s Soviet Russia, audiences
considered them to be ‘too challenging, too difficult’ (Christie and Taylor
1994, 54) and they were not popular or well received by filmgoers at the
time (Taylor 2016, 163). In response to audiences’ criticisms of experi-
mental film styles, the state encouraged filmmakers to use popular forms
of cinema to spread the message of Soviet Russia and the principles of
socialist realism were applied to genres such as melodrama and the musi-
cal, capitalising on socialist realism’s ‘revolutionary romanticism’ by repre-
senting socialist utopias (Taylor 2016, 165) and culminating in the
‘Stalinist musicals’ of the 1930s such as Ivan Pyr’ev’s 1939 Tractor Drivers
(Taylor 2016, 166–168).

Europe
In Europe, filmmakers in France embraced the naturalism of novelist
Émile Zola—whose stories about ordinary French people inspired a
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

number of film adaptations during the silent era and had a significant
influence on early French cinema (Aitken 2006, 30). Adaptations of Zola’s
work include Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset’s 1912 imagining of La Terre.
These films brought the stories of striking coal miners and agricultural
workers in nineteenth-century France to the screen. The influence of nat-
uralism also had the propensity to create some romanticism of working
people and nostalgia for more simple times, and there were questions
about the intended audience for films such as André Antoine’s 1932 Les
Travailleurs de la Mer, about a small coastal community, with suggestions
that despite the ‘evocative portrayal of lower-class experience’ in his film,
it was aimed at bourgeois audiences interested in class tourism (Aitken
2006, 33). The realist period between 1930 and 1938 in French cinema
saw a number of films engaging with the lives of workers, and one of the
most prolific filmmakers of the time with an interest in social realism was
Jean Renoir. During the 1930s, Renoir made films such as Toni (1936)
about the lives of migrant workers, and La Bête Humaine (1938) about a
murderous train driver. Renoir’s films contained anti-bourgeois themes
and offered a ‘pronounced social critique’ (Aitken 2006, 37).
In later years in France, members of the French New Wave were also
interested in working-class stories, and while a number of the French New
Wave films focus on bourgeois characters, there are plenty of working-­
class characters too such as juvenile delinquent Antoine Doinel in François
Truffaut’s 1959 Les Quatre Cents Coups and Michel in Jean-Luc Godard’s
1960 À bout de soufflé. A wonderful picture of working-class coastal life is
presented in La Pointe Courte—Agnès Varda’s 1954 story about a difficult
marriage. The film is set and filmed in a small fishing village in France and
includes everyday scenes of the locals going about their daily tasks. Varda
places equal importance on the working-class residents of the village as she
does on the protagonists. Varda continued her interest in working-class
characters in her 1985 feature Vagabond about a young homeless woman
who meets a tragic end and her 2000 documentary Les Glaneurs et la
Glaneuse which is centred on people trying to make ends meet by scaveng-
ing for discarded food and other items.
In the post-war period, neo-realism took hold, particularly in Italy, and
offered audiences realist representations of working-class life, with stories
of poor individuals and struggling families set against the backdrop of
unemployment and economic instability. One of the undoubted master-
pieces of the genre is Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves (1948),
described by French critic André Bazin (1971) as containing ‘supreme
12 S. ATTFIELD

naturalness’ (58) and an example of ‘pure cinema’(60). Neo-realist cinema

was characterised by its seeming naturalness, although this was carefully
crafted by the filmmakers (Marcus 1986, 58). On-location shooting and
natural light was used, which depicted the poor neighbourhoods of the
stories’ settings. Non-professional actors played the roles, adding to the
authenticity and the focus of the narratives was working-class life, and
many of the films contained tragic endings, illustrating the real hardships
in society at that time. Da Sica was particularly effective in taking a simple
premise and extracting the drama that exists within the everyday for the
poor and marginalised (Marcus 1986, 55). The Bicycle Thieves follows the
protagonist, Antonio Ricci, as he attempts to locate his bicycle—a piece of
essential equipment that is stolen from him on his first day at work after a
long period of unemployment. The despair experienced by Ricci and his
son Bruno is palpable and despite the efforts of his comrades, Ricci does
not find his bicycle and the film ends on a depressing note (Marcus 1986,
74). Despite being set and filmed in 1940s Italy, the themes of the film
have stood the test of time, and it is particularly relevant in the current
days of the so-called gig economy, which relies on workers to provide their
own equipment (vehicles for delivery services, etc.).
Britain has a tradition of working-class cinema that really began with
documentaries made in the late 1920s-early 1930s with working-class sub-
jects such as John Grierson’s 1929 Drifters about Scottish fishermen
(Leach 2004, 33) and films made through the film units established by
Grierson which produced documentaries that celebrated working-class life
(Leach 2004, 33). Some of these documentaries have been criticised for
being overly romantic representations of workers and for avoiding social
critique. Robert Flaherty’s Industrial Britain (1932) showcased the skill
of industrial workers, but didn’t contain the ‘documentary realism’ which
had been the initial aim of Grierson (Leach 2004, 35).
In the 1950s a group of directors developed a new style of documen-
tary filmmaking known as Free Cinema which tried to break free from
some of the perceived restrictions of the film industry (Leach 2004, 53).
The directors involved tended to be left-leaning politically and believed
that film was dominated by middle- and upper-class concerns and so they
turned their cameras onto working class subjects, making documentary
films about working class people and working-class culture. These direc-
tors also became influenced by the emerging literary movement known as
the ‘Angry Young Men’ (Leach 2004, 53)—a group of writers who were
challenging the dominant discourse and literary conventions, and there
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

were a couple of notable members who wrote about working-class life

such as John Osborne and Alan Sillitoe. Osborne was a lower-middle class
rebel but Sillitoe was a working-class man. Directors of this ‘New Wave’ of
British cinema (Leach 2004, 53) such as Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz
and Tony Richardson began to make dramas, some of which were adapta-
tions of Osborne’s plays or Sillitoe’s novels such as Look Back in Anger
made in 1959 by Richardson and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning made
in 1960 by Karel Reisz and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
made in 1962 also by Richardson. These films were characterised by their
social realism (Hill 1986, 1), the focus on working-class life and reflected
the changes to traditional working-class culture that were occurring in the
1950s and 1960s. They were generally about young men who were at
odds with society but who were bound by their class backgrounds. They
were sometimes referred to as ‘kitchen sink dramas’ and many were set in
northern England. Many of the film directors were middle class—they
were not making films based on their own experience, but felt these were
important stories to tell.
The 1960s were pivotal due to the emergence of Ken Loach, a director
from a working-class background and one of the crops of ‘scholarship’
boys who obtained a middle-class education but who maintained an inter-
est in their working class backgrounds and the inequalities created by the
class system (Garnett 2001, 71). Loach began in TV, and his doco drama
Cathy Come Home made in 1966, told a story of unemployment, poverty
and homelessness and is considered a classic of British drama. Loach went
on to make many feature films about working-class people, beginning
with Poor Cow in 1967 and then Kes in 1969 and he has had a long career
with recent films being I, Daniel Blake which was released in 2016 and
won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Sorry we Missed You released in 2019
(these films will be discussed later in the book). Loach provides his
working-­ class characters with political agency and gives expression to
those at the margins (Forrest 2013, 81). He focuses on the world of work
and on working-class community and is a committed Marxist filmmaker
(Leach 2004, 191). He shows the resilience of working-class people and
depicts the struggle and hardship of working-class life. Loach uses a docu-
mentary realism and tends to use a combination of professional and non-­
professional actors as he believes actors need to understand the
circumstances of their characters in order to play them authentically (Leigh
2002, 70). He also states that ‘politics is reflected through the aesthetics
of filmmaking’ (Fuller 1998, 114)—so the politics is embedded in all
14 S. ATTFIELD

aspects of the film and is not necessarily conveyed explicitly—although it

is sometimes (Forrest 2013, 98).

Latin America/The Caribbean

There is a history of working-class representation in Latin America and the
Caribbean film—including films made for decolonising and revolutionary
purposes. Political film movements in the region have been influenced by
Classic Soviet cinema, Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave (Díaz
López and Elena 2003, 4). For some filmmakers in the region, film has
been an important aspect of revolutionary culture and filmmakers have
used theoretical ideas to inform their work, such as those of the anti-­
colonial revolutionary writer Franzt Fanon (Stam 2003, 31). Fanon was a
Caribbean psychologist who wrote about the impact and effects of colo-
nialism on the psychology of people. He also wrote about the ways in
which violence was used in efforts to decolonise, and these ideas appealed
to those engaged in armed resistances. These ideas led to concepts such as
‘Third Cinema’ which is very important in Latin American film studies
(Díaz López and Elena 2003, 128). Third Cinema is film from third world
post-colonial societies and also applies to African cinema as discussed
below. In 1969, Argentinian filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio
Getino wrote a manifesto for Third Cinema called ‘Toward a Third
Cinema’ which stated:

The anti-imperialist struggle of the people of the Third World and of their
equivalents inside the imperialist countries constitutes today the axis of the
world revolution. Third cinema is, in our opinion, the cinema that recog-
nises in that struggle the most gigantic cultural, scientific, and artistic mani-
festation of our time, the great possibility of constructing a liberated
personality with each people as the starting point—in a word, the decoloni-
sation of culture. (in MacKenzie 2014, 347)

For Solanas and Getino, first cinema was what Hollywood produced
and second cinema was European art cinema which they were critical of
due to its focus on individual characters (in MacKenzie 2014, 353). Third
Cinema was intended to be collective—to speak for the many, and to be
critical of systems that exploited and oppressed people. Cuban filmmaker
Julio García Espinosa’s ideas on ‘imperfect cinema’ have also been influen-
tial. He stated in 1969 that ‘Imperfect cinema finds a new audience in
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

those who struggle, and it finds its themes in their problems’ (in MacKenzie
2014, 339). For Espinosa, cinema should be ‘committed’ and ‘partisan’
(in MacKenzie 2014, 338) and should be democratic—made by the peo-
ple and less concerned with ‘quality or technique’ (in MacKenzie 2014,
341). Another important figure from this time was Glauber Rocha with
his 1965 pivotal idea of the aesthetic of hunger which manifested in the
Brazilian Cinema Novo movement. Rocha was an experimental and Avant-­
Garde filmmaker and his films such as Black God, White Devil (1964) were
very influential. The aesthetic of hunger was realised in films that explored
class and inequality, with the hunger being literal (due to hardship) and
metaphorical (due to a hunger for expression) and realised through the
violence necessary for anti-colonial messages to be understood by the col-
oniser (in this case—representational violence within film) because ‘vio-
lence is normal behaviour for the starving’ (in MacKenzie 2014, 326).

South Asia
This interest in portraying working-class life on screen can also be seen in
films from the Golden Age of Indian cinema (generally acknowledged as
running between 1940 and 1960). India has a long and rich history of
filmmaking and this history has gone through various transitions due to
changes in the political and social context, such as the impact of British
colonisation and the rule of the British Raj, through to Independence and
Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Chakravarty (1993, 15) suggests
that Indian films can therefore not be analysed without an understanding
of the context of Indian history (particularly that of colonisation and
decolonisation, and culture (with acknowledgement of the variety of lan-
guages spoken and religions practiced). After the end of British rule, a new
wave of Indian cinema emerged. The films of this period were neo-realist
in style and dealt with social concerns (Ahmed 2015, 35). They also ran
parallel with more popular forms of cinema and the same period saw the
growth of commercial cinema which was created for entertainment
(Bordwell and Thompson 2003, 640). The bulk of these commercial films
were in Hindi and became known as masala films due to their mixing of
genres such as romance, drama, action and the musical. The parallel cin-
ema produced some classic films that were centred on the lives of rural
poor characters and contained ‘political critiques’ (Bordwell and
Thompson 2003, 641), such as Bimal Roy’s 1953 film Do Bigha Zamin
(Roy was Bengali but this film is in Hindi) and Satyajit Ray’s famous 1955
16 S. ATTFIELD

Pather Panchali—which is a story of childhood in a poor rural village, shot

on location and noted for its ‘restrained acting’ (Bordwell and Thompson
2003, 434).

Africa
In Africa, film by Black Africans didn’t really emerge until the end of
European colonialism in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but when it did,
it often featured the poor and marginalised and operated as a form of
Third Cinema—which resisted colonial forces (Murphy and Williams
2007, 63). In 1963, Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène released a
short film, Borom Sarret, about a cart driver in Dhaka—this was the first
professional film released by a sub-Saharan Black African. Sembène fol-
lowed up with Black Girl in 1966, which told the story of a young African
woman who travels to Paris to work as a nanny. Sembène was a Marxist
(Gadjigo 2010, 116) who viewed film as a form of ‘evening school’ (in
Rapfogel and Porton 2004, 21) and he was aware of the ideological nature
of film and believed in its potential to ‘raise issues and trigger discussion’
among audiences (Sembene in Rapfogel and Porton 2004, 25). Sembène
had turned to film as a medium when he realised that many Africans were
illiterate and that his Marxist message was only able to reach the elite
minority (Opondo 2013, 39). Sembène was a big influence on other Black
African filmmakers such as Safi Faye, whose 1975 drama Kaddu Beykat
was also focused on rural people making their living from working the land.
This historical survey is not exhaustive of course (there is no reference
here to the early films of east and south-east Asia or the Middle East), but
it illustrates the rich variety of working-class representation that has been
a feature of film since the technology was invented, developed and distrib-
uted globally.

Methodology (Choice of Films and Approach)

As already stated, this book uses an interdisciplinary approach, which
allows me to consider the chosen films from a number of different angles.
Class is complex, and no one discipline is sufficient when attempting to
analyse texts from a class perspective. There is an emphasis on textual
analysis though because my main concern is with representation. To deter-
mine whether working-class people and experience has been represented
in nuanced and sympathetic ways requires close readings of the film texts.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

These close readings are accompanied by consideration of the context of

production, and where appropriate, the context of the filmmaker. I am
interested in the potential differences between representations of working-­
class people created by working-class background filmmakers and those by
filmmakers with other class backgrounds. Is there a noticeable difference?
Do working-class background filmmakers bring different perspectives? Is
it possible to suggest that a working-class filmmaker might bring a sense
of authenticity to their films (acknowledging that claims of ‘authenticity’
can be contentious)? This does assume the filmmaker as ‘auteur’ which
suggests that filmmakers operate as the principal creative force behind a
film’s production and that their films, therefore, are likely to contain ‘a
stylistic signature and a distinctive worldview’ (Rushton and Bettinson
2010, 4). This is not without problems, because analysing films on this
basis does not take into account the collaborative process and the influ-
ence of other members of the production team such as cinematographers
and art directors, the screenwriters and the performers (although these
roles are mentioned in some of the discussions).
The close readings and consideration of context are also discussed with
an acknowledgement of audience. Do working-class cinema-goers watch
working-class films? Not all the films are accessible to a wide audience. In
some countries (such as Australia), film distribution is dominated by
American companies that have monopolies and control what gets distrib-
uted. This has the effect of squeezing out local content and favouring
Hollywood studio films. Because of these restrictions, the independent
films that might contain working-class content have limited distribution,
often confined to inner-city art house cinemas, and so working-class audi-
ences with only mega-plex cinema chains in their neighbourhoods, miss
out on films representing working-class life. There is also the question of
whether working-class audiences want to see films about everyday
working-­class life. It might be possible that audiences are looking for
escape, and watching films that show struggle and hardship might be too
close to home for some audiences who are looking for entertainment and
distraction. I consider film to be art and to be educational and suggest that
working-class film has great scope to educate middle- and upper-class
viewers about working-class life, and can empower working-class audi-
ences as the films can show that working-class stories are valid, important
and interesting.
The films included in this book have been chosen because their stories
focus on working-class people and experience. This is my main
18 S. ATTFIELD

requirement. I have not restricted films based on genre—any genre is fine,

because I’m looking at films in terms of the themes they contain. If a
theme is work—it’s entirely possible for a genre film (such as a comedy),
to be set in a workplace. While most of the films are independent (in terms
of production) and many can be categorised as art films due to their style,
I have included films that have been mainstream successes in their country
of origin. According to Klinger (2006), art film can lack ‘the mainstream’s
cultural currency’ (20), and the popularity of a film at the box office can
potentially lead to a greater impact in terms of effecting change. Dennison
and Lim suggest that mainstream film is often excluded from studies of
global cinema because popular films have not been regarded by film schol-
ars and critics as important enough because of a perception of a lack of
‘ideological resistance’ (2006, 10) which does not take into account the
ability of popular culture (mainstream or otherwise) to impact and influ-
ence a society. I have chosen films from around the world, and it is inter-
esting to consider how films from different parts of the world differ in
their treatment of working-class related themes, and where commonalities
might occur. I have included a lot of films—some have lengthy analysis/
discussions attached, but others are mentioned much more briefly. While
this might lead to some imbalance, I have taken this approach in order to
introduce the reader to as many films as possible—with the films written
on more extensively operating as exemplars within the theme under dis-
cussion. Fuery suggests that it is useful to include a large range of films in
a film-analysis because it can, as he states make ‘critical concepts become
clearer if we see them in different contexts’. I hope that the reader will
have their appetite for the films whetted by the briefer descriptions and
will be more sated by the longer analyses.
I have restricted the timeline to films released between 2000 and 2019.
This is to allow a focus on contemporary films, and a cut-off date is neces-
sary otherwise the book would never be completed! There are the inevi-
table exclusions—some films are not included because there isn’t space.
Others because they fall short of my list of requirements. And there will be
many films that I’ve simply missed, because I didn’t have access to them,
or found out about them too late to be included. Studying film from
around the world does have some obstacles—mostly in accessing films that
have not been released on DVD or available via streaming services. I have
a long list of films that I have not yet been able to access. As an English
only speaker, I am relying on subtitles, which can mean that some nuance
of dialogue is lost in translation. As well as the narrative of the chosen
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

films, I am also interested in how filmmakers use cinematic devices and I

consider the ways in which various aspects of the mise-en-scene have been
used to convey themes and ideas, as well as the sound and music design.
This approach combines the examination of narrative choices along with
aesthetic choices, and in some examples, I argue that the aesthetic choices
are more significant than narrative choices in terms of representing
working-­class life (this is seen particularly in the work of Taiwanese film-
maker Tsai Ming Liang for example).

Chapter Outline
As mentioned, this book is organised around themes rather than regions.
The point of the book is to analyse the films and examine their representa-
tions of working-class life, rather than describe a selection of films from
various countries. To base, the book on regions would mean cursory
inclusions of some countries, and many exclusions. Instead, each chapter
explores themes relating to working-class experience. This structure is
designed as a ‘polycentric’ approach which tries to avoid homogenising
regions and cinema production (Nagib et al. 2012, xxii). I am also aware
of the criticisms of ‘world cinema’ as a definition due to the way it has
been used to categorise film from outside of the west (Gorfinkle 2018, 8).
‘World cinema’ or ‘global cinema’ tends to focus on films from non-­
English speaking countries and has been used in ways that have exoticised
films from the global south. There is often an assumption in western film
analyses that the audiences of ‘world cinema’ are western and white and
the films have therefore been analysed through a white (and colonial) lens
(Dennison and Lim 2006, 1). This doesn’t allow for the audiences watch-
ing the films in the origin country, or the diasporic audiences watching
from around the world. There is a sense that ‘world cinema’ has been
made for western consumption and the local audiences, and the intentions
of filmmakers to reach those audiences have been ignored. This ‘othering’
of world cinema also does not take into account the ‘transnational cine-
matic flows’ (Gorfinkle 2018, 3) of filmmaking and assumes the west as
the centre rather than understanding how film practice has emerged and
evolved in a global context but with very local and specific adaptations and
transformations (Sarkar 2010, 38). As Nagib suggests, there is no ‘center’
of the world—and ‘world cinema is simply the cinema of the world’
(2006, 35).
20 S. ATTFIELD

Chapter 2 considers the ways in which work and unemployment is

depicted in contemporary cinema. This is a rich vein to explore because
many filmmakers have focused on working-class labour, and the difficul-
ties that occur when work is not available. There are films set in workplaces
such as Ji-young Boo’s 2015 Cart, set in a South Korean supermarket and
Boots Riley’s 2018 Sorry to Bother You, set in a US call centre. These two
films also include representation of workers organising through strikes or
other industrial action. Ken Loach’s The Navigators (2001), focuses on
British railway workers and shows the negative impact of privatisation on
workers’ conditions and work safety. Nana, by Tatiana Fernande Geara
(2015) is a documentary about women in the Dominican Republic who
work as nannies for rich people on the island or on the US mainland. Man
Push Cart (Ramin Bahrani, 2007) features an immigrant worker trying to
make ends meet in New York City. The chapter examines whether work
has been depicted in convincing ways, and considers how to compare por-
trayals of work in very different contexts, from urban European factory
work, to rural labour in the developing world.
Chapter 3 is focused on working-class culture and the ways in which
working-class people express themselves. This can mean an understanding
of collectivist working-class culture, but it also refers to working-class lei-
sure and pastimes such as sport or engaging with popular culture. This is
England (Shane Meadows, 2006), depicts a group of young working-class
people in Northern England who find pleasure in ska music, but it also
shows the impact and consequences of racism. In Marcel Rasquin’s 2010
Hermano, we follow two boys in Venezuela who share a love for football.
Boy (Taika Waititi, 2010), shows the importance of popular music in a
small working-class Maori town in New Zealand. For many working-class
people, consumption of, and participation in, popular culture is an impor-
tant method of escape from the daily grind, but it also has potential to be
used as tools of resistance.
In Chap. 4 there is an examination of class from the perspective of
immigrants, diaspora communities, asylum seekers and refugees. This
includes films about ethnic minority youth such as Serhat Caradee’s 2009
Cedar Boys about Lebanese youths in Western Sydney. In Aki Kaurismäki’s
2011 Le Havre, a worker tries to help a young immigrant. Welcome (2009)
by Philippe Lioret is about a French swimming coach’s interactions with a
young Iraqi-Kurd immigrant in the port town of Calais. The Journals of
Musan, a 2011 South Korean drama by Park Jung-bum, is a grim tale of
North Korean defectors living in Seoul. Films exploring these themes
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

often also portray the tensions between established working-class com-

munities and newer immigrants, as well as the commonalties that are rec-
ognised and camaraderie that develops.
While many of these issues do intersect in the previous chapters, in
Chap. 5, I focus more closely on the intersections of class, gender and
sexuality and look at films that contain a more explicit gender slants and
explorations of diverse sexualities. Some of the films deal with homopho-
bia in working-class communities such as Matthew Warchus’ 2014 biopic
Pride, about the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners activist group who
formed relationships with miners and their families in a Welsh mining vil-
lage during the 1984 Miners’ strike. Pelo Malo is set in a Venezuelan hous-
ing estate and centres on a young boy exploring his sexuality and gender
identity (Mariana Rondón, 2013). Barry Jenkins offers a poetic represen-
tation of gay identity in a US working-class Black community in Moonlight
(2017) and Sean Baker’s Tangerine (2015) presents a slice of life of trans
sex workers in Los Angeles. Many of the films chosen feature strong female
characters who navigate sexism and misogyny, both in their working-class
neighbours and at the hands of bourgeois characters. This is seen in
Florence Jaugey’s 2009 La Yuma, which depicts the determination of a
young woman who takes up boxing in an impoverished neighbourhood in
Nicaragua. It’s also evident in Rungano Nyoni’s 2017 I am Not a Witch,
which is a funny and disturbing look at the marginalisation of women in a
rural Zambian setting. And in Girlhood, 2014 by Céline Sciamma, about a
group of African French girls living on a housing estate on the outskirts
of Paris.
Chapter 6 explores race and ethnicity in a working-class setting, with a
particular focus on Australian Indigenous experience. There are a number
of Australian Indigenous films that demonstrate the legacies of colonialism
and the ways in which Indigenous people have been relegated to the bot-
tom rungs of the social ladder. Warwick Thornton’s 2009 Samson and
Delilah is a hard-hitting portrayal of life for two homeless Indigenous
teenagers and Satellite Boy by Catriona McKenzie (2012) centres around
a young Indigenous boy trying to save his home from a mining corpora-
tion. These films show how Indigenous people experience layers of oppres-
sion; racism in the form of racist and abusive individuals and institutions
and judgement and discrimination based on their poverty and low-class
status. The chapter also includes films that utilise genres such as the musi-
cal and romantic comedies (The Sapphires, 2012, Top End Wedding, 2019,
both directed by Wayne Blair) to bring audiences into the cinema with the
22 S. ATTFIELD

promise of entertainment, while including subtle political messages in

the films.
The book also contains a short afterword which poses some further
questions and possible directions for future research. Ultimately, the aim
of the book is to show how filmmakers have represented the diversity of
working-class experience from around the world, and to analyse and eval-
uate the films in terms of the representations offered and the potential
they offer to challenge stereotypes about class and working-class
experience.

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 CHAPTER 2

Work and Unemployment

One of the earliest moving pictures is a 38-second film made in 1896 by

the Lumière brothers called Carmaux, défournage du coke. The film shows
workers in a French steel works pulling coke from a smelter. The men hose
the hot coke and try to break it up using large metal poles. In the year
before, 1895, at the Lumière’s first public screenings, they included La
Sortie de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon—a 46-second scene of workers leaving
their factory and Les Forgerons, which featured two blacksmiths at work.
These short snippets of working-class life were not incongruous with the
new art form, because the medium of film emerged during the heyday of
industrial production (Mennel 2019, 7), and the Lumière brothers there-
fore were tapping into very visible elements of society at the time.
Depictions of work such as these continued (as discussed in the historical
overview in the introduction to this book), with an emphasis in the west
on films that centred on a ‘working-class masculinity defined by industrial
labour’ (Mennel 2019, 11).
According to Zaniello, workers have featured in US film since its begin-
nings, but he qualifies this statement with the suggestion that such repre-
sentations have not always been sympathetic, particularly when they have
included stories and characters that are union related (1996, 1). And since
the late nineteenth century, work in the western world has been exten-
sively documented visually by photographers interested in the conditions
of workers, as can be seen in the photographs of Lewis Hine, a social
reformer who took photographs to highlight the dangerous conditions of

© The Author(s) 2020 27

S. Attfield, Class on Screen,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45901-7_2
28 S. ATTFIELD

labourers such as children working in factories and construction workers

employed to build the Empire State Building in New York City
(Strangleman 2004, 186).
But how often is work represented in contemporary cinema in ways
that are realistic and feel authentic? How many films represent working-­
class occupations (blue and white collar), and where they exist, are they
convincing—do they provide the viewer with an understanding of that
type of job? What about working-class people who are unemployed—is
the reality of unemployment accurately depicted? And how do films por-
tray workers in both the formal and informal economies—is a film about a
drug dealer a film about work? It could be—in the same way that a film
with a central character who is a coal miner might not feature their work
at all. Mazierska asserts that work is such a dominant feature of adult life
that it should be ‘good material for cinema’ (2013, 1) and she also sug-
gests that it’s possible that some work in films is missed by critics because
they do not ‘understand what work is/can be’ (2013, 2). It is possible
therefore that Julia Robert’s character, Vivian Ward, in Pretty Woman
(1990) is not considered to be working when she accepts the proposition
from Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) which diminishes the labour involved
in sex work. O’Shaughnessy (2011) cites French film writer Jean Louis
Comolli who suggested that work in film is usually only seen in ‘frag-
ments’ which has tended to ‘eliminate work’s complexity, duress and
boredom’. And these fragments have generally focussed around work
when it has been ‘halted’, through, for example, a ‘strike or an occupation’
(60). If we spend so much time at work, or looking for work, or surviving
due to lack of work, it seems strange that work doesn’t feature more
explicitly in contemporary films, and even films about working-class peo-
ple don’t often focus very closely on actual work conducted.
This chapter will consider the ways in which work, in its variety of
forms, is depicted in contemporary global cinema, and evaluate these rep-
resentations in terms of their authenticity and nuance. The chapter also
includes a discussion of films focusing on unemployment—a state that is
often never too far away in the consciousness of working-class people.
Films chosen depict workers in traditional blue-collar occupations as well
as the growing white-collar working class. The films also include portray-
als of urban and rural workers, and those engaged in the formal and infor-
mal economies. Some of the films feature workers in steady and secure
work, while others reveal the ‘hustle’ of life moving from job to job in the
informal economy, or of workers trying to make a living in the ‘gig’
 2 WORK AND UNEMPLOYMENT 29

economy. The chapter looks at the various choices made by filmmakers in

these representations and explores how cinematic techniques have been
employed to bring work and workers to life on the screen.

Changing Nature of Work, from ‘Jobs for Life’

to Zero Hours Contracts (Sorry We Missed You)

There is growing job insecurity worldwide (Bieler et al. 2008, 2667)—this

is one of the big shifts in the nature of work since the rise of global neo-­
liberalism. Precarity affects millions of workers worldwide, both in the
west and in the developing world. These changes have been reflected in
film, particularly since the global financial crisis of 2008, and the work
depicted on screen often represents jobs that are characterised by insecu-
rity. This shift towards precarious work and how precarious ‘invisible
workers’ are portrayed on screen has been acknowledged by Zaniello
(2020, x1) who discusses a number of feature dramas, documentaries and
film installations that feature (and advocate for) precarious workers around
the world. It seems appropriate then to begin this chapter with an analysis
of Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You (2019) which, despite being set in the
UK, arguably speaks to the experience of workers in many locations. This
is a film that could be characterised as an example of what Elsaesser (2018)
terms the ‘cinema of abjection’ which reveals ‘what neoliberalism does to
human beings’ (129). This film is an angry critique of the UK govern-
ment’s austerity measures and is an indictment of the impact of neo-­
liberalism on working-class people. Watching films like this is very personal
for me—my working-class background means that I understand the issues
portrayed in the film first hand. The characters could be my working-class
family or friends and as a result Sorry We Missed You is not easy viewing
(Attfield 2019, para. 1).
Sorry We Missed You follows Ricky (Kris Hitchen), Abby (Debbie
Honeywood), and their two children, Seb (Rhys Stone) and Liza Jae
(Katie Proctor). Ricky’s work in the construction industry has petered out
due to a building down turn and he is persuaded by a friend to work as a
van courier for a parcel dispatch company. There are some catches though.
While the job is described as self-employment, with the flexibility of not
answering to a boss, in reality Ricky is expected to follow the strict rules of
the dispatch company and is immediately thrown into debt as he has to
pay for his own vehicle and essential equipment. To make a decent living,
30 S. ATTFIELD

Ricky has to deliver a ridiculously high number of parcels each day. To

enable this, he has to forgo meal and rest breaks and his physical and men-
tal health begin to suffer. The intensity of Ricky’s work takes its toll on his
family life too, as the stress and exhaustion lead him to lash out verbally at
his wife and son and his absence from the family particularly affects his
troubled teenage son. Abby meanwhile is trying to manage on a zero
hours contract as an agency home-care provider. She is responsible for
looking after vulnerable people in the community, but the pressures placed
on her by her employer mean she is unable to provide even the most basic
of care unless she works into her unpaid time (which she often does). The
situation for Ricky and Abby is dire as Ricky becomes more trapped in
debt and the financial strains wear down the family relationships. The film
is grim, there doesn’t seem to be any hope, and even though workmates
and members of the community try to help each other out, all are let
down by the system.
The film depicts both Ricky and Abby at work. We follow Ricky as he
loads his van and attempts to make his deliveries. The tension increases as
the film progresses as it becomes clear that Ricky will not be able to keep
up with the required pace. There is a constant sense of dread as we sit with
Ricky in his van, or go with him to knock on the doors of customers. Will
he fall asleep at the wheel? Will the customer be home to sign for the pack-
age (without a signature he won’t be paid)? Abby is shown preparing food
for her clients, washing, dressing and feeding them and sitting with them
to provide some much-needed company. The unfairness of the system
they are caught up in is portrayed effectively, and the authenticity of the
situation is assisted by the realist aesthetic favoured by Loach. The camera
(and therefore the viewer), follows Ricky and Abby and brings us close
into their world (both in their workplaces and at home). The colour pal-
ette is muted, adding to the sense of despair and naturalistic performances
from the actors lends a sense of realism. There is something about the
expression on Kris Hitchen’s face—and the frustrated and weary tone of
his voice, that suggests the actor understands his character. It feels as
though he has lived through such scenarios, or has been very close and this
replicates the emotional and sensory aspects of class experience. The same
applies to Debbie Honeywood’s performance in the film. Her character’s
sense of care towards her elderly and disabled clients is palpable—the tac-
tility of her job is displayed and the importance of touch made clear. In
one scene, Abby allows an elderly client to brush her hair. This is an
incredibly moving moment—Abby sits on the floor as the woman gently
 2 WORK AND UNEMPLOYMENT 31

brushes her hair and Abby cries silently, both for her client, whose main
need is human contact, and for herself, because of the constant heartbreak
of her job, and because there is no one caring for her.
Loach’s ability to create affect—real feeling—is what makes his films
stand out in terms of British films focusing on working-class experience.
The politics is embedded into every aspect of his films’ narrative and mise
en scène. In Sorry We Missed You, we experience the cramped living condi-
tions of the family in their rented home and notice the chipped paint on
the walls. The characters look tired—this is carried through their facial
expressions and body language. They often slump, defeated by exhaustion
or the unfairness of the systems. For most of the film Abby wears a uni-
form—Loach shows very clearly how class is marked on the body. There is
no mistaking their working-class status. It is displayed via work uniforms,
and through the constant frustration, anger and distress on the characters’
faces and through their voices—they have been beaten, there is no relief in
sight. Ultimately, this is a very depressing film, but an important one.
While there are arguments to be made against only creating bleak pictures
of working-class life—this film operates as a political tool and brings the
plight of characters like Ricky and Abby to light. Loach shows, that despite
their best efforts, people like Ricky and Abby can’t get ahead, because the
system is stacked against them. This is an uncompromising political
approach that clearly fits in with Loach’s commitment to his Marxist prin-
ciples of filmmaking.
Loach’s film undoubtedly contains a political message, but are there
films that just depict working-class people at work—doing their jobs,
going about their daily activities? Such films do exist as actuality films or
documentaries, but it would be rare to find a film portraying work without
some commentary or narrative included. While I might enjoy watching
workers on a production line demonstrating their high levels of skill and
dexterity, this is unlikely to be the subject of a feature film. When work
does appear, it is usually not the main feature, although the work place
might be. The narrative tends to focus on other issues, such as a work
place conflict (either personal or industrial), or a workplace drama, such as
an accident, or the work is shown to give the audience an idea of a charac-
ter’s life, but the camera doesn’t usually dwell on the actual work activity.
Despite the relatively short screen time devoted to depicting actual work,
there are a number of films from around the world that use the workplace
and the nature of work as a focus. What follows is a discussion of films that
feature work or a workplace prominently.
32 S. ATTFIELD

Industrial Disputes (Cart, Sorry to Bother You)

There have been some classic Hollywood films that have featured union
activity and industrial action, but in the decades following the early pro-­
worker years of cinema, the mainstream have tended to present a negative
view of union officials as corrupt and obstructive such as On The Waterfront
(Elia Kazan, 1954). Some more contemporary Hollywood films have been
more sympathetic, including Martin Ritt’s 1979 Norma Rae which tells
the true story of a female cotton mill worker attempting to improve work-
ing conditions in her workplace, but generally, films about union activity
are few and far between in Hollywood (which is linked to the rise of anti-­
left sentiment during the second Red Scare of the McCarthy era). Lisa
Milner (2014) has pointed to the importance of film in promoting union
activity and encouraging workers to organise in their workplaces. She
points to the history of union activism in Australia that included the film
production from the 1950s and peaked with the accomplished and persua-
sive films of the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit, who employed
Marxist principles of filmmaking to disseminate messages around worker
safety, worker housing and other issues important to the working classes
(186) in films that operated as ‘visual representations of union solidarity’
(Milner 2014, 195).
There are some contemporary films that focus explicitly on union activ-
ity. In Ji-young Boo’s 2015 Cart, the central protagonist, Sun-hee (Yum
Jung-ah) discovers that she, and her fellow casually-employed colleagues,
are to be laid off by the big South Korean retail company they work for.
Sun-hee and her workmates, who are mostly women—many middle
aged—decide to fight against the redundancies and begin strike action and
an occupation of the store. Their actions are met with hostility from man-
agement and violence from the police who are sent in to break up the
strike. The women maintain their resolve despite the ensuing drama and
hardship they face. Cart is a conventional film, in terms of its style and
narrative structure—it employs the tropes of melodrama to engage the
viewer and create empathy with the characters. The store is portrayed as a
cold and unwelcoming place, with use of washed out blue tones to con-
note this uncaring feeling. Workers in the store are initially depicted with
uniformity—dressed in identical, spotless uniforms and bowing in unison
during the pre-shift group pep talks. They follow the rules and try their
best to please their bosses. The filmmaker introduces a group of charac-
ters, but the focus remains on Sun-hee, and this allows the viewer more
 2 WORK AND UNEMPLOYMENT 33

time to get to know her character and feel for her plight. We see how hard
she works in the store, and how she tries to keep a stable family home for
her two children (her husband works away from home, and remains
unseen). In contrast to the cool colour palette of the store, the small fam-
ily home has yellow and orange tones that suggest the warmth of the
mother towards her children. These warm tones are also used in scenes
with the women of the store meeting to discuss their plans, and during the
occasional time we see them enjoying a communal moment of pleasure
(such as eating together).
The melodrama genre is effective in this context—the film is primarily
about women, and the emphasis on the relationships that the female col-
leagues form, and the strength they draw from each other, fits well into a
genre that has been described as a ‘women’s genre’. While this description
may have been used in the past (especially in a Hollywood context) to
disparage so-called women’s films or weepies (Haralovitch 1990, 60) the
genre has been used by filmmakers—notably Douglas Sirk (Halliday 1972,
60) to make films with messages about gender and female empowerment,
packaged in an entertaining way to appeal to a mass audience. Ji-young
Boo’s film doesn’t have the gritty realism of Ken Loach’s work, but it uses
the tropes of melodrama to bring the audience close to the characters’
cause. This is significant, because striking is not common in South Korea,
and women are generally held accountable to conservative values.
Melodrama is a popular genre in South Korea (Jin 2010, 61), and female
characters are often confined to roles as mothers, wives and dutiful daugh-
ters, but they are also depicted working, whether in the home or outside
(McHugh 2001, 8). Transgression is often punished and conservative
gender ideologies are upheld. In Cart, Sun-hee is a wife and a mother, but
she does subvert these roles when she takes on the role as a union organ-
iser. She also subverts the conservative ideal by demonstrating her working-­
class experience. Sun-hee cares for her children, but she relies on her son
to look after his younger sister, when Sun-hee is working or involved in
union activities. Her husband is absent—he is working away at sea and
Sun-hee is effectively a single parent. The women in Cart are working
class, and don’t fit in with the usual image of middle-class respectable
housewives in many South Korean melodramas.
There is an element of ‘feel good’ in Cart, but in a similar way to
Loach, there is not a happy resolution to the film. The women are empow-
ered by their collective action and the film depicts the precariat fighting
back (Zaniello 2020, 137) and the strike strengthens their bonds and
34 S. ATTFIELD

teaches them about their rights, but they don’t win the dispute and some
of the workers are not reinstated. This is where the melodrama intersects
with the true story that the film is based on—a 2007 strike by retail work-
ers employed by the E-Land company that lasted for 510 days (Young and
Broadbent 2015, 229). This strike had been called after hundreds of
mostly female employees on temporary contracts were fired and replaced
by outsourced workers ahead of a change in industrial law that would have
seen the temporary workers converted to continuing positions (Young
and Broadbent 2015, 234). The film highlights the employment precarity
faced by women in Korea, as Young and Broadbent (2015) state, ‘since
the beginning of industrialization to the present day, irregular work has
been the major form of women’s work’ (234) and this has implications for
unionising and organising in workplaces (Young and Broadbent 2015,
234). Ji-young Boo has packaged a pro-union, pro-collective action film
in a popular and recognisable genre for South Korean audiences.
As a complete contrast in terms of style and genre, is Boots Riley’s
2018 Sorry to Bother You, an American film that tells the story of a young
African American worker who takes a job at a call centre and has to decide
whether to climb the corporate ladder or join his fellow workers in collec-
tive action. The film is a comedy with a surreal twist—it is not a realist
drama or a melodrama but the depiction of working-class life is still con-
vincing. The central protagonist, Cassius Green (LaKeith Stanfield) lands
a job in a call centre and learns quickly that the best way to make sales (and
therefore money) is to adopt a ‘white voice’. Cassius is able to emulate a
white voice expertly and becomes a star employee who is promoted to
‘Power Caller’ and given the key to the executive elevator and he embraces
an aspirational approach. In the main call centre pool—depicted as a
gloomy, tatty and dated environment, the workers decide to fight for a
decent wage. They are only paid sales commission and they start to
demand a retainer for the hours of work carried out. The workers are
organised initially by Squeeze (Steven Yeun), a veteran of workplace dis-
putes and union organising. Squeeze persuades his colleagues to go on
strike and the whole pool joins the action except for Cassius who is lured
by the promise of money and prestige as a Power Caller. Cassius breaks the
strike and joins the ‘scabs’ who continue to enter the building under
increasingly brutal police protection.
On paper, the scenario doesn’t look too different to a conventional
industrial dispute story, but Sorry to Bother You could not be more differ-
ent to a film like Cart. Riley sets the story in a parallel existence. Much of
 2 WORK AND UNEMPLOYMENT 35

the mise en scène is recognisable, but there are hints at the dystopian
nature of this world. As Cassius drives his beaten-up and constantly smok-
ing car, we see evidence of mass homelessness on the streets. There are
multiple people living in temporary dwellings built on the side of the
roads, or in their cars. This is not commented on by any of the characters,
and there is a sense that this has become totally normal and accepted. The
colour pallet is strong and rich and although the call centre is shot in
muted tones, the majority of the film pops with colour and rich tones add-
ing to a heightened reality. The acceptance of social inequality and injus-
tice is also portrayed by the ubiquitous advertising for ‘Worry Free’—a
company that is effectively running workhouses. Poor people move into
the Worry Free dorms and work as indentured labour for various compa-
nies. Very few of the inhabitants of Cassius’ world seem bothered by
Worry Free. The callousness of society is also shown through clips of a
television show that are broadcast throughout the film. The show is called
I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me, and consists of people getting beaten and
humiliated on live television. It is replayed without comment throughout
most of the film. The surreal elements of the film such as the sudden fan-
tasy elements as Cassius appears to literally enter the homes of the people
he is cold calling, do not detract from the pro-worker, anti-capitalist
themes of the film and Riley acknowledges that the devices he employs
have their origins in the magic realism of authors such as Michael Ondaatje,
Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose anti-colonial works
contain social and political commentary (Riley in Fuchs 2018, para. 6). In
the same way as Cart though, Riley’s film depicts growing solidarity
between workers as they realise they are stronger together. The industrial
dispute brings people together and the union organiser helps people to
understand the conditions of their exploitation. Even though the film
moves between comedy, surrealism and horror—the focus is ultimately
the same, and the world of work is centred. Sorry to Bother You also shows
the ways in which class and race intersect—while Cart was concerned with
the gender discrimination faced by the temporary workers, Sorry to Bother
You contains references to racism and to the exploitation of workers
of colour.
Despite the fantasy elements, the workers in the film are believable as
working-class characters. Cassius begins the film in a critical mode—ques-
tioning everything he sees, but his need for a job, and then his potential
to become rich quells his critical thinking (temporarily). This aspiration
can be understood—Cassius wants to earn money so that he can stop
36 S. ATTFIELD

living in his uncle’s garage and help his uncle meet his house repayments
and assist his girlfriend with her art endeavours. It makes sense that he
would be attracted to the extra money and better working conditions, and
his character is not portrayed as ignorant or evil for initially choosing this
path. His friends and workmates are disappointed in him, and eventually
this disappointment, coupled with witnessing the solidarity forming
among his former colleagues, works to persuade him that he has chosen
the wrong side to align with. The workers in the call centre eventually
have their demands met and they return to work. The capitalists have been
momentarily defeated by collective action, and the company owner is
forced to abandon his plans to create a race of super strong Equisapiens
(half human, half horse) after his experiments are exposed by Cassius and
the Equisapiens use their strength to fight back. But the film ends on an
ambiguous note when Cassius appears to be transforming into an
Equisapien in the closing shot. While the workers had a victory, they did
not defeat the system that will continue to exploit workers.
Whether Boo’s film is intended to educate audiences on the importance
of collective action is unclear, but Riley is an avowed anti-capitalist and it
could be suggested that his film is presenting a political view (and possibly
a call to arms). A more explicitly pro-union and worker organising film is
Made in Bangladesh (2019), which is a workers’ rights film made by
Bangladeshi filmmaker Rubaiyat Hossain. In the film, set in the capital of
Bangladesh, Dhaka—garment workers fight for better pay and conditions.
The film is centred around one of the workers, a young woman, Shimu
(Rikita Nandini Shimu) who lives with her husband in one of the slum
areas of the city. Shimu works in a clothing factory run by an unscrupulous
manager who routinely holds back the workers’ overtime pay, despite
requiring them to work all night in the factory to complete orders for
western buyers. The film begins with close-up shots of the women’s
work—the sewing machine needles, fingers expertly running the material
under the needle and feet operating pedals. It is a very noisy scene, with
the loud rattling of the sewing machines, the hiss of steam from irons and
the whirring of the ceiling fans creating a cacophony. The noise levels
continue throughout most of the film—Shimu’s neighbourhood are satu-
rated with traffic noise, the yells of people hawking their goods on the
streets, chickens squawking and rumbles of thunder. There is no escape in
Shimu’s home—there is a constant background hum of the activities and
conversations of the people living in the cramped and flimsy homes. After
a fire in the factory closes it down temporarily, Shimu meets a women’s
 2 WORK AND UNEMPLOYMENT 37

rights activist who persuades her to start a union at the factory in order to
give the workers protection during their demands for their overtime and
the reinstatement of unfairly sacked co-workers. Shimu is armed with a
book outlining the labour laws that (technically) protect them, and sets
out to convince her colleagues to sign up and to join her in encouraging
the other women to be part of the union. There is much tension and
drama, but eventually Shimu succeeds in having the union registered, but
not before facing several obstacles—there are the factory bosses who
threaten the women with termination, the fear felt by the women worried
that they will become targets of retaliation if they agree to join the union,
and her husband who orders her to stop organising. She also faces the
forces of bureaucracy and corruption when she lodges her application, but
Shimu is completely determined and refuses to be stopped in her mission
to unionise the factory. She succeeds by the end of the film after threaten-
ing to expose the corruption of the official entrusted with her application
and the film ends with a shot of Shimu’s face—a determined expression
and a sense of empowerment as she leaves the office with her registration
in hand. Hossain’s film follows the traditions of films from around the
world that have been created to educate and empower their audiences.
Shimu’s story reveals the difficulties of trying to organise a workplace,
particularly for women who are also marginalised due to their gender, but
her persistence leads to success, and the power of collective action is high-
lighted and celebrated. It offers an explicit message while garnering sym-
pathy and respect for a strong young woman who has been characterised
sensitively and authentically.

Migrant/Itinerant Workers (Last Train Home,

White Night, Nana, Man Push Cart)
There are a number of films globally that focus on migrant and immigrant
workers and while the circumstances of the characters/subjects vary, there
are some commonalities among workers who travel for work in terms of
their vulnerability to exploitation and the potential harmful psychosocial
effects of being far from home, family and community. Fan Lixin’s 2009
feature documentary Last Train Home offers the viewer an insight into the
impact on family life, and relationships with children for migrant workers.
Fan Lixin is Chinese, but now lives in Canada, and arguably brings an
insider’s perspective on Chinese society, but with the benefit of distance
38 S. ATTFIELD

that provides him with a critical eye. His status as a resident of Canada also
means that his films can escape the Chinese government censors. Last
Train Home is his debut and the film is notable due to the way in which
he uses the documentary form that is ostensibly about the conditions
faced by migrant workers in China to create a family drama.
The film follows the Zhang family—the mother and father, Changhua
Zhang and Suqin Chen, work in a garment factory in Guangzhou (in
southern China) and make the annual New Year holiday trek back home
to their village in Sichuan province in South west China—an epic journey
of over 1000 kms to visit their two children who are cared for by their
grandmother. They are just two among the 130 million workers who
travel across the country at Chinese New Year which is the largest move-
ment of migrants anywhere in the world (Li et al. 2012, 182). We get an
idea of the couple’s working conditions and of their reasons for working
so far away from their children. The device of the journey is used well—
the epic nature of the trip and the difficulties the couple face in purchasing
tickets and actually making it home in time for the holiday, stands in for
the experiences of millions of migrant workers across the country.
Depicting the journey gives an idea of the sacrifice made by the parents
and highlights the impact on the whole family. The style of the documen-
tary is ‘fly on the wall’—the camera follows the family and there is no nar-
ration. Although this is disrupted when Qin, the daughter, yells at the film
crew and invites them to keep filming her angry outburst and fight with
her father, a moment that Fan acknowledges as awkward and as having left
him wondering whether to intervene (Fan in Taylor 2010, para. 11). The
lack of narration means that the conditions experienced by the family are
revealed through their everyday activities—the cramped living quarters of
the factory, the less than safe looking working conditions. The filmmaker
also uses some establishing shots to show the city and its factories (and the
polluted air). This is contrasted with the almost idyllic scenes filmed in the
family village where the grandmother and children harvest vegetables and
live among beautiful, lush surroundings. From a western perspective, it
would be easy to wonder why the parents would move to such an appar-
ently inhospitable city when they come from a beautiful rural area—but
the audience comes to understand that there is no work in the countryside
and to live beyond a subsistence existence and to pay for their children’s
education requires a move to where the work is located. The film also
illustrates the reasons why Changhua Zhang and Suqin Chen would leave
their children behind. It is evident from the scenes in the city, that there is
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
not practised in the art of verse. So, oft, in an entertainment, where
for the sake of merriment it had been agreed that each in turn should
sing and harp, as the dreaded instrument was seen approaching, he
arose in shame from the supper table and went home to his house.”
However, we learn that Cædmon who was a serving man, had a
vision in which an angel asked him to “sing the beginning of
creatures,” and when the vision had passed, he remembered the
heavenly song, and thus Cædmon ceased to be shy, became the first
great poet of England and was permitted to be a monk.
As the gleemen and harpers were not fighting men, they had many
privileges not granted to the warriors. They passed, unchallenged,
through the fighting camps, and we have any number of stories of
kings and warriors disguising themselves as harpers in order to get
information about their enemies. A secret service system of the
Middle Ages!
In 878, Alfred the Great had been robbed of power and authority
by the Danes, so disguised as a gleeman and armed only with a harp,
he went into the Danish encampment. The royal minstrel was
received cordially, and while the Danish king was listening to the
songs, the harper (Alfred) was getting the information he needed,
and soon made a surprise attack with his troops and was victorious.
This is spying with musical accompaniment!
The Battle of Hastings (1066) caused great changes not only in
learning, customs, language, music, other arts and politics, but in life
itself. The French who, under William of Normandy conquered
Britain, were leaders in composing poetry and song, and they
brought over to Britain all their talents. Now romance began and
with it the art of glorifying in song and verse, deeds of valor and the
charms of lovely ladies. And here the troubadours and trouvères
make their entrance into our story.
France had had songs of deeds and action called Chansons de
Geste, which were tales of the brave Charlemagne, celebrating his
victory over the invading Moors from Spain. One of the greatest of
these was the Chanson de Roland. Other songs or ballads on
religious, historical, chivalric, or political subjects took the place of
our modern newspapers and were powerful at the courts and among
the people in the towns. When a man in court circles did anything
that some one objected to, one of the minstrel-poets was hired to
make up a song about it, which was sung everywhere until the news
was well circulated, and the person punished, often undeservedly.
However it made the men of those days think twice before doing
things against the rights of others, for they were really afraid of these
songs that were spread among their friends and enemies.
In the Battle of Hastings, Taillefer, a famous soldier-minstrel, led
the attack of the Normans, singing songs of Roland and of
Charlemagne. He struck the first blow in the fight, and was the first
one killed, but he went to his death singing. Tales of our own soldiers
in the great war tell us the same about the need and love of music.
 Chanson de Roland

The Chanson de Roland is the national epic poem of France, and

dates back to this Norman period. It celebrates the death at
Roncevals, of Roland, Count of the “Marsh” of Bretagne, in
Charlemagne’s expedition against Spain in 778. The work is divided
into three parts. The first tells of the fight between the French
(Christians) and the Saracens (Spanish Arabs), of the valor of Oliver
and of Roland, of the latter’s death, of Charlemagne’s miraculous
victory over the Saracens. The second part is a poem not based on
fact, in which Charlemagne fights Baligant, the chief of all the pagans
of the Orient; the western chief is victorious over the pagan chief,
who is utterly defeated and killed. This poem pictures the victory of
Christianity over Paganism. In the third part, the revenge is carried
further, by Charlemagne’s taking the Saracen city Saragosse, and
bringing back with him to France another of the leaders, Ganelon,
who was tried and condemned to death.
This is the leading French work of the Middle Ages, as it sums up
the greatest idealism, and brings to us that which they considered
most vital—the call of patriotism, of honor and of duty.
 Great Cathedrals and Feudal Castles

About this time began the building of the great Gothic churches in
France, England, and Germany. Rome had fallen, paganism had
gone, and the spirit of Christianity was taking great hold of the
people’s hearts. As a result of this feeling to praise God suitably the
great churches which we copy even today were built.
If “architecture is frozen music,” you can understand why music
and architecture developed at the same time.
This was also the age of Feudalism, when the noblemen lived in
castles with moats and drawbridges, and owned vast tracts of land
and whole villages. People were retainers, vassals and serfs, with no
freedom and no property rights except what the lords gave them.
They even had to give their masters much of the produce of the lands
which they cultivated. Of course, these feudal lords besides having to
be fed and guarded had to be entertained, and had to know what was
going on in the outside world. So, the minstrels and bards were
cordially welcomed, and wandered from castle to castle, receiving
presents of money or clothes, jewelry, horses, and sometimes even
houses.
 What Troubadours Learned Through Crusades

Every year during the early centuries of the Christian era,

hundreds of pilgrims journeyed to the Holy Land undergoing much
hardship on the way. They thought through this pilgrimage to be
forgiven for their sins, and win the approval of the Church, then far
more powerful than the kings. Toward the end of the 11th century,
Mohammedans had seized Palestine, and prevented the Christian
pilgrims from doing penance or worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre.
This led to a series of expeditions against the Mohammedans in
Palestine in which all the Christian countries of Europe united. These
expeditions were called the Crusades (1095–1271), and they have
been celebrated in story and song ever since. The Crusades gave the
rough uncultured men of the Western world the chance to hear the
poetry and the songs of the Arabs (Chapter VI), who at that time
were the most advanced in culture and arts. Although the Oriental
music with its complicated rhythms must have been hard to learn,
the Crusaders brought back much of real value and beauty,—a new
way of singing, new subjects for poems, and two new instruments, a
kind of guitar and el oud, in Europe called lute. The lute had a strong
influence on popular music, for it was the most commonly used
instrument for centuries.
 Romance Languages

Latin had been the language of France because the Romans lived
there so long, but later it became mixed with the rough dialect and
speech of the Franks and other Gothic barbarous tribes and was
much changed. From this mixture came rustic Latin, or Romanse
rustique, and modern French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are
still called Romance languages. A new poetry was born in Provence,
the south of France, and in Normandy in the north, written in this
Romanse rustique, and the oldest French songs were called lais, lay
or ballad. The great ruler Charlemagne collected these lais of
barbarian period and the trouvères and troubadours had wonderful
old songs of heroism to choose from.
In Provence they said “oc” for “yes” and in Normandy, “oui.” So,
the language of the south of France was called “langue d’oc” and of
the north “langue d’oui.”
 Troubadours, Trouvères, Jongleurs

The troubadours, whose very name brings to mind a charming

picture of romance, chivalry and adventure, were the poet-
composers of Provence a land of sunshine where men were brave and
courteous, and women beautiful and gracious. The words
troubadour and trouvères, come from trobar, trouver, meaning to
find or to invent, for these troubadours and trouvères were the
inventors or composers of poems which they set to music.
They wrote their songs on the four-lined staff in square notes,
without written accompaniment. The accompaniments played on the
lute, the guitar, the vielle, or sometimes the harp, were probably
made up by the jongleur, (joglar, jouglar, in English,—juggler) who
sang the songs, had trained bears, danced and played tricks. Then as
now there were composers and performers. The troubadours and
trouvères were as a rule, nobles and even royalty. Five kings
belonged to their number, the greatest of them were Richard Cœur
de Lion, William Count of Poitiers, Alfonso, Thibaut de Champagne,
and King of Navarre.
The troubadour seldom sang his own songs, as this was the
jongleur’s duty. There were many more jongleurs than troubadours,
and they belonged to a much lower grade of society. The jongleurs
traveled from place to place, from castle to castle, with their
instruments slung across their backs, and their songs in a little bag at
their side. They were heartily welcomed wherever they went, but if
they found the doors of the castles closed to them, they soon
gathered a crowd in the public squares, where they performed to the
joy of the townspeople.
Can you imagine the pleasure these strolling entertainers gave to
the people who did not have motors, movies, radios, gramophones
and theatres for their amusement? How happy the custodian of the
castle must have been when he looked across the moat and lowered
the drawbridge for the welcome minstrels!
The jongleurs grew so numerous, and their music became so poor
that they were nuisances, little better than outlaws and beggars. How
easily a good thing can be overdone!
 In the 14th century they banded together in perhaps the first
musical union on record. They appointed leaders, called kings of the
minstrels or jugglers. At first they were hired by nobles and
troubadours as entertainers with the rank of servants. Even the
monasteries received them with joy during the early days; later they
were denounced by the Church, and forbidden to enter the
monasteries, for they had sung of evil things instead of lovely things
and had acted unseemly. During Lent, they were forbidden to appear
in public, so they wisely used that time to go to schools of minstrelsy,
where they learned new songs, and tried their skill at composing. In
these schools they were also taught to play their instruments.
Sometimes we hear of women minstrels, who sang, played the flute,
danced, and performed tricks to the endless delight of the audience.
(See lining of the cover of this book.)
The jongleurs, at their best, seem to have “gotten in” everywhere,—
at the courts of kings, in all the tournaments, festivals, pilgrimages,
and weddings. A wedding wasn’t complete without them! At the
knightly tournaments and jousts, the minstrel was a most necessary
person, for, did he not take the place of newspapers, and give
accounts to a waiting world of the results of the exciting
tournaments?
Massenet, the French composer, wrote a lovely opera called The
Juggler of Notre Dame, from one of the old miracle tales of a young
juggler sheltered by the monks of Notre Dame. Everyone brought
rich gifts to place at the feet of the Virgin Mary, but being a pauper,
he had nothing but his songs, dances and tricks, which he offered the
Virgin by going through them as best he could in front of the shrine.
So shocked were the monks by his seeming lack of respect, that they
wanted to drive him out! At this moment the miracle took place. The
image of the Virgin came to life and stretched forth her arms
protectingly to the young juggler, showing that she accepted his
offering given in all sincerity and simplicity.
As all the countries of Europe took part in the Crusades, the
troubadours’ songs were heard by others than the French, and their
music spread rapidly. Richard, the Lion-Hearted, King of England,
was a famous Crusader and a troubadour of skill. He invited
jongleurs over from France, one of whom, Blondel de Nesle, became
his devoted companion during the Crusade of 1193, and saved
Richard’s life. Richard was taken captive by Leopold, Duke of
Austria, and was cast into a dungeon. The English did not know
where to look for their monarch, but Blondel undertook the search,
going from place to place, singing songs which he and the king had
written together. One day as he sang, from the tower of a castle came
a voice which he recognized as Richard’s, singing the same song! And
soon the royal troubadour was released.
 The Troubadours

This new art of poetry and song was called “The gay science of
chivalry and love-service.” Indeed many of the poems about knightly
adventure were addressed to some fair lady, real or imaginary,
known or unknown. Curious as it may seem, the names of most of
these songs came from the Arabian, because the Europeans met
them during the crusades and during the Arabs’ conquests and
roamings in Europe.
The names tell you what the songs were about. Chanson and canzo
both mean song, and we see these names today on our concert
programs. There were story telling songs called the chansons de
toile, songs of linen, which told of the lovely damsels at work
weaving, of their beauty, and of their thoughts, for the women of
castle and cottage alike wove the cloth out of which the clothes were
made. Then, they had dramatic songs and dancing songs called
estampies (from which comes our word stamping); the reverdies, or
spring songs, to celebrate the Spring festivals; the pastorelles in
which the heroine was always a charming shepherdess; the sera or
serenade, an evening song; the nocturne, a night song, and love
songs were often sung under the beloved ladies’ windows! The alba
was a morning song. The sirvantes, or songs of service, sung in
praise of princes or nobles, or telling of public happenings were
important. These were often accompanied by drums, bells, pipes and
trumpets.
We have debating societies in our schools and colleges, and
questions of the day are discussed in the newspapers, but in the
troubadours’ day, debates were made into songs, sung by two people,
and were called tensons. Many curious and rather foolish questions
were made the subjects of these songs.
Sometimes these popular songs found their way into the Church,
and were made into fine church music, and sometimes a bit of
melody from the Church went through the hands of a troubadour
poet and was turned into a rounde, ballata, sera, or pastorella.
This poetry and song of Provence lasted until the middle of the
14th century, for in the twelve hundreds the revolts against the
abuses of the Church rose to such seriousness that massacres took
place, towns were destroyed and many nobles and troubadours lost
their lives.
 Trouvères

Shortly after the troubadours began to compose, in the north of

France came the trouvères who profited much from the music and
poetry of their southern brothers.
However, the trouvères did not have the warm, lovely dialect of the
southern troubadours. As they were closer to the Church, their songs
were more religious, had less variety of subjects, and the melodies
were like Church music.
Although the troubadours did much to shape the rhyming stanzas
in poetry, the trouvères helped in the gradual forming of the later
French and Flemish schools of music, as you will see.
The jongleurs played on an instrument called the vielee which was
great-grandfather to our violin. The short pieces played before the
songs and accompanied by dances, were the first pieces of
instrumental music in the Middle Ages. The combination of song,
instrument and dance was called balerie or ballada from which
comes our dance ballet. There was also a piece called rounde, rota,
or rondo, composed so that different voices and the instrument came
in at different points, each singing or playing the same tune, but
arranged so that the parts sounded well together. Perhaps you know
Frère Jacques or Scotland’s Burning or Three Blind Mice. These are
rounds.
One of the most beautiful rounds in existence is an English song
which dates from 1250, the period of all this “gay science,” and it is
looked upon as a masterpiece. It is supposed to have been written
either by John Forsete, a monk, or by Walter Odington. It was
written in the old square neumes on a six line staff. The name of this
“Six Men’s Song” or round for six voices, is Summer is icumen In.
One of the best known trouvères was Adam de la Hale who wrote
Robin et Marion, said to be the very first comic opera. It was
performed at the court of Naples in 1285.
The trouvères collected tales of Normandy, Brittany, and of
Charlemagne’s reign, and so preserved valuable musical and literary
material.
 So these troubadours and trouvères made the age of Chivalry
romantic and beautiful to us who came long after them, in spite of
much unpleasantness, prejudice, war, massacre and hardship.
 Minnesingers

Along the river Rhine in Germany near that part of France where
the trouvères sang, lived the Minnesingers. They sang love songs,—
minne was the old German word for love. Like the troubadours the
minnesingers were of the nobility, but they rarely hired jongleurs or
anybody to perform their songs; they sang them themselves, playing
their own accompaniments on lutes or viels (viols).
Many songs expressed adoration of the Virgin, and others praised
deeds of chivalry. Differing from other minstrels, they made songs
about Nature and Religion full of feeling, fancy and humor, but the
minnesongs were not so light-hearted or fanciful as those of their
French neighbors. They had marked rhythm, beauty of form and
simplicity, and were more dramatic, telling the exploits of the Norse
heroes in many a glorious story.
Their story was far more important to them than the music which
for a long time was like the stern plain song of the Church. “We
should be glad they were what they were, for they seem to have
paved the way for the great Protestant music of the 16th century,”
says Waldo Selden Pratt in his History of Music.
You can get an excellent idea of the minnesong in Wolfram von
Eschenbach’s Oh Thou Sublime Sweet Evening Star, which Wagner
wrote in the spirit of the ancient minnesingers in the opera
Tannhäuser. Tannhäuser was a real minnesinger, taking part in a
real song contest, held by the Landgraf (Count) of Thuringia, 1206–
7, who offered his daughter Elizabeth’s hand to the winner, whatever
his rank. We find Elizabeth also in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, so when
you hear it you will know that it is history as well as beautiful music!
How remarkable that, in the days of feudalism, when the nobles
practically owned the so-called common people, talent for music and
verse stood even above rank! After all there is no nobility like that of
talent. Even in the 13th century this was understood, and to either
commoner or peer winning the song tournament, the lady of rank
was given in marriage.
Wolfram von Eschenbach, the minnesinger, visited the courts and
sang in many tournaments. Giving Wagner a character for the opera
Tannhäuser was not all he did as Eschenbach wrote a poem from
which Wagner drew the story for his Parsifal.
Walther von der Vogelweide, one of the most famous
minnesingers, was so fond of birds, that when dying he asked for
food and drink to be placed on his tomb every day for the birds.
There are four holes carved in the tombstone; and pilgrims today,
when they visit this singer’s grave, still scatter crumbs for them, who
probably in their bird histories record that Walther loved song even
as they!
Prince Conrad, Konradin he was called, son of the last Swabian
King, was the last famous minnesinger. Everyone battled for other
people’s countries and lands then, and so Conrad, heir to the crown,
joined a Sicilian rebellion against France, and was killed by a
troubadour, the Duke of Anjou.
 Mastersingers

After poor Conrad’s time, the art of minnesinging declined, but as

people must have music, a new activity sprang up among the people
or “folk” instead of among the gentry and knights. The folk who took
part in this were called the Meistersingers or mastersingers and their
story is very thrilling and picturesque.
This was the day of the Robber Baron, when Germany was broken
up into little kingdoms and principalities. Any rich and powerful
noble could start a war to steal away the rights of another ruler, and
become ruler himself. This was no pleasant state of affairs for the
people, for they were in constant terror of death, of the destruction of
their crops, or new taxes. Life became so perilous that people left the
farms and went to the cities for protection. The feudal system began
to fail, for the people would no longer be slaves, and gradually took
up trades and formed themselves into guilds. The warring nobles had
neglected music for conquest, so these workers and artisans, hungry
for it, formed music guilds as well as trade guilds, drew up rules for
making music and poetry, and held prize competitions. In these
music guilds there were six grades of membership: first, member;
second, scholar or apprentice; then, friends of the school; singer,
poet, and finally mastersinger or Meistersinger. You can get a real
picture of their day in the greatest comic opera ever written,
Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, and you can make the acquaintance of
Hans Sachs, the most famous Meistersinger (1494–1576).
Heinrich von Meissen, known as Frauenlob (Praise of Women), is
said to have founded the Meistersinger movement over a hundred
years before Hans Sachs’ time.
Til Eulenspiegel, whose merry pranks have been delightfully told
in music by Richard Strauss, a present day composer, was also a
Meistersinger.
The origin of the name “Meistersinger” is disputed. One historian
tells us that it was given to every minnesinger who was not a noble,—
in other words, a burgher-minstrel. The other historian claims that
the title Meister or master was given to any one who excelled in any
act or trade, and afterwards came to mean all the guild members.
 From the 14th century to the 16th, hardly a town in Germany was
without music guilds and Meistersingers. Although they lost power
then, the last guilds did not disappear until 1830, and the last
member died in 1876. They must have passed the long winter
evenings pleasantly for they met, and read or sang poems of the
minnesingers or new ones composed by the members themselves.
These guilds must have been great fun, for they had badges and
initiation ceremonies and the kind of celebrations one loves in a club.
They had complicated, narrow-minded rules called Tablatur
which today seem quite ridiculous, so much has music matured and
thrown off the chains which once bound it!
When the guilds grew too large to be held in the different homes,
the churches became the meeting places for practise and for the
contests.
The highest praise we can give the Meistersingers is that they
carried the love of music and song into every German home and
made it a pastime of domestic life. Their influence spread not only
through Germany, but throughout all lands. The composers who
followed were glad to have their songs from which to draw
inspiration for the popular religious songs at the time of the
Protestant Reformation. Even though they did not make up any very
great words or music, they spread a love for it and made people feel
that the following of music as a career was worthy and dignified.
It is interesting to know before we close this chapter, that the
English, well into the 16th century, after the passing of the
troubadours, trouvères, minnesingers and mastersingers, still
celebrated the exploits of the day in ballads called the Percy Reliques.
 Vielle or Hurdy-Gurdy

If you had lived in the Middle Ages you would have seen the
strolling players traveling around with a queer looking instrument
known by many different names,—vielle, organistrum, Bauernleier
(peasant lyre), Bettlerleier (beggar’s lyre) or hurdy-gurdy. This was
a country instrument, not often seen in cities, and was shaped like
the body of a lute without a long neck. It had wire strings, sometimes
gut, and a set of keys; the sound was made by turning a little crank at
the bottom. The vielle or hurdy-gurdy is a cross between the bowed
and the keyed instruments. In the 12th century it was called the
organistrum, a large instrument which took two men to play. It
flourished in the 18th century throughout Europe.
And so, now on to folk songs, although we would like to linger in
this romantic period of wandering minstrels.
 CHAPTER IX
The People Dance and Sing

Folk Music
All the World Has Danced and Sung

We have watched the human race grow out of its state of primitive
yells and grunts, or babyhood, telling its stories and expressing its
feelings in crude music. We have seen it sing and dance its way
through the ages during which its men were semi-barbarians, like
the Franks, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Saxons, Celts, and Angles into the
period when these same tribes became the French, German, Belgian
and English nations.
Music was not a thing of learning as it is today, it was merely a way
of talking, of enjoying life, and of passing on to others deeds and
doings of the time. Early people said in poetry and song what was in
their hearts. They knew nothing of musical rules and regulations and
passed their songs along from father to son through the long years
when the world was young, and their best songs have in them the
seed of musical art! A modern Greek folk singer said: “As I don’t
know how to read, I have made this story into a song, so as not to
forget it.”
This music of the people, by the people and for the people is Folk
Music and we shall see how these simple, tuneful bits have
influenced the world of music because, as H. E. Krehbiel said, “they
are the heartbeats of the ... folk and in them are preserved feelings,
beliefs and habits of vast antiquity.” Don’t you believe that studying
history through folk tunes would be fascinating? People today have
found out much about the different races and tribal events through
them.
It is impossible to find out who wrote the five thousand folk songs
of England and the more than five thousand of Russia and of Ireland
and all the others, for it was not until the 19th century that folk songs
and dances became a serious study. The fact is, that a true folk song
doesn’t want to find its composer for it loses its rank as a folk song if
its maker should turn up! Isn’t that curious? But it is not quite fair,
for surely we should accept as folk songs those which have sprung up
among them, or have become a part of their lives through expressing
their thoughts and feelings, even though the composer’s name has
not been lost. We divide folk songs into two classes,—Class A, the
composerless songs, and Class B, those tagged with a name.
Isn’t it exciting to think that folk songs and dances of the ancient
Greeks, the Aztecs of Peru, the Chinese, the Irish and Russian
peasants and our American negroes have things in common? It
seems as if they might have had a world congress in primitive times
and agreed on certain kinds of songs, for every nation has

1. Songs of childhood, games, and cradle songs.

2. Songs for religious ceremonies, festivals, holidays, and
Christmas Carols.
3. Love songs and songs for marriage fêtes, and weddings.
4. War songs, patriotic songs and army songs.
5. Songs of work and labor and trades.
6. Drinking songs, comical, political and satirical.
7. Songs for dancing, rounds, etc.
8. Funeral songs and songs for mourning.
9. Narratives, ballads and legends.
So it comes to pass, that many a time when nations, due to wars
and wanderings and vast passings of time, have forgotten their
origins, the singing of a song will bring back the fact of some far
distant relationship.
One day a party of Bretons, in 1758 (long after the Welsh and
Bretons had forgotten they were of the same race), were marching to
give battle to some Welsh troops that had descended upon the
French coast. As the Welsh soldiers marched forward, the Bretons
were amazed to hear their enemies singing one of their own national
songs! They were so surprised and so overcome with sympathy that
the Bretons joined in and sang with the Welsh. Both commanders,
speaking the same language, gave the order “Fire!” But neither side
would or could fire. Instead, the soldiers dropped their weapons,