This Is England Contextualised

Shane Meadows typically produces films that verge on being Cinéma vérité, or kitchen sink dramas, due to their subject matter. Kitchen sink dramas are social realism films set in the Uk, and they follow everyday life, are typically gritty and discomforting to watch, dealing with social issues like crime and poverty. Meadows’ films tend to follow characters living in working-class Britain, experiencing aspects of that society what reflect the time period they are set in. For example, This Is England follows young Shane, whose father has died in the Falklands War, which he copes with by joining a gang of skinheads, who themselves become a vestige of blatant racism that grew in expression in 1980s Britain. It also contains background imagery that represents a rise in anti-Thatcher sentiment at the time, and a rise in anti-Muslim activism and political campaigning.

In this way, his films reflect many of the qualities of kitchen sink dramas. However, they are not kitchen sink dramas, rather Meadow’s own execution of real social aspects of Britain in his films. This is largely due to the fact that his films attempt to manipulate the audience, e.g., through music. He uses non-professional actors much of the time and largely fluid scripts that are only set in stone a short time before filming begins, with the actors improving much during rehearsal. They include themes like violence, which Shane experienced in abundance during his childhood. “The Velocity, the hatred, someone stamping someone’s face into the corner of a room. – That never leaves you.”. He often tries to emphasise how heroic it is for some people to just live a normal life. “For some people just to lead a sober life is heroic, way better than running a conglomerate or making political decisions.”

Many of his films feature the use of fake father figures that his more youthful characters wrongly put their hopes and aims onto. He examines the negative effects of an older, dangerous stranger on a happy friend group, which he also has experience in his younger years, such as when he was kidnapped and held at knife point by an ex-boyfriend of his girlfriend. In fact, many of his films and characters are inspired by his own stories. He straddles the line with kitchen sink dramas. When he was young, he supported runaway’s from children’s homes. He joined a skinhead gang around the age of 11 for protection from bullying, some of which was aimed at his father, and got involved in petty crime like stealing and drug-usage. He became violent himself, in one instance encouraging the older-boyfriend of his sister to beat up a younger, innocent kid.

He uses his own personal trauma to help make his films, which he in-turn uses to help his trauma. This is why so many of his stories are so personal, e.g., Shaun from This Is England serving as an alter-ego for Shane when he was younger. This explains why characters like Woody in the film are often portrayed as father-figures, and we see the descent into hate from a more understandable perspective, but still see it in all its ugliness and brutality, as Shane did in his youth.