Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Contributors
- 1 Introduction: Shane's World
- 2 Structure and Agency: Shane Meadows and the New Regional Production Sectors
- 3 Twenty-first-Century Social Realism: Shane Meadows and New British Realism
- 4 ‘Al fresco? That's up yer anus, innit?’ Shane Meadows and the Politics of Abjection
- 5 No More Heroes: The Politics of Marginality and Disenchantment in TwentyFourSeven and This is England
- 6 ‘Now I'm the monster’: Remembering, Repeating and Working Through in Dead Man's Shoes and TwentyFourSeven
- 7 ‘An object of indecipherable bastardry – a true monster’: Homosociality, Homoeroticism and Generic Hybridity in Dead Man's Shoes
- 8 A Message to You, Maggie: 1980s Skinhead Subculture and Music in This is England
- 9 Changing Spaces of ‘Englishness’: Psychogeography and Spatial Practices in This is England and Somers Town
- 10 ‘Shane, don't film this bit’: Comedy and Performance in Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee
- 11 ‘Them over there’: Motherhood and Marginality in Shane Meadows' Films
- 12 ‘What do you think makes a bad dad?’ Shane Meadows and Fatherhood
- 13 Is This England '86 and '88? Memory, Haunting and Return through Television Seriality
- 14 After Laughter Comes Tears: Passion and Redemption in This is England '88
- Index
14 - After Laughter Comes Tears: Passion and Redemption in This is England '88
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Contributors
- 1 Introduction: Shane's World
- 2 Structure and Agency: Shane Meadows and the New Regional Production Sectors
- 3 Twenty-first-Century Social Realism: Shane Meadows and New British Realism
- 4 ‘Al fresco? That's up yer anus, innit?’ Shane Meadows and the Politics of Abjection
- 5 No More Heroes: The Politics of Marginality and Disenchantment in TwentyFourSeven and This is England
- 6 ‘Now I'm the monster’: Remembering, Repeating and Working Through in Dead Man's Shoes and TwentyFourSeven
- 7 ‘An object of indecipherable bastardry – a true monster’: Homosociality, Homoeroticism and Generic Hybridity in Dead Man's Shoes
- 8 A Message to You, Maggie: 1980s Skinhead Subculture and Music in This is England
- 9 Changing Spaces of ‘Englishness’: Psychogeography and Spatial Practices in This is England and Somers Town
- 10 ‘Shane, don't film this bit’: Comedy and Performance in Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee
- 11 ‘Them over there’: Motherhood and Marginality in Shane Meadows' Films
- 12 ‘What do you think makes a bad dad?’ Shane Meadows and Fatherhood
- 13 Is This England '86 and '88? Memory, Haunting and Return through Television Seriality
- 14 After Laughter Comes Tears: Passion and Redemption in This is England '88
- Index
Summary
I just remember Christmas being shit … I wanted to make a sort of broken Nativity play.
Shane Meadows, ‘‘Tis the season to be brutal’, Independent on Sunday, 27 November 2011This is England '88, set over three days at Christmas, begins starkly with three awakenings. Lol (Vicky McClure), her chirpy platinum-blonde hair from '86 now a fierce Chrissie Hynde black, looks haggard and unhappy at being woken by a toddler whose appearance indicates that Lol's affair with Milky in '86 has had consequences beyond their mutual betrayal of Woody. An alarm clock wakes Woody (Joseph Gilgun). We last saw him at the end of '86 arranging a surprise wedding for Lol while she was battering her father to death with a hammer. Now he leaps out of the bed he is sharing with a buxom gingery blonde. Like Lol, he looks ten rather than two years older. His Paul Weller Mod haircut of 1986 is changed to a severe middle-aged neatness reminiscent of Bryan Pringle's cuckolded husband in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). Finally, to Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), who is lying in a close embrace with Smell (Rosamund Hanson), her elaborate hair moulded into an elfin bowl cut. He is no longer a child, but he sulkily resists her playful sexual demands.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shane MeadowsCritical Essays, pp. 203 - 209Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013