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
13 - Is This England '86 and '88? Memory, Haunting and Return through Television Seriality
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
This chapter will discuss the Channel Four serials This is England '86 and This is England '88 in their specific television contexts. Although these serials form a transmedia narrative as sequels to the film This is England, we seek to engage with their televisuality, both textually (their style, their reference to antecedents and their use of archive television footage) and extra-textually (their promotional strategies and place within institutional discourses). Our analysis is framed by the serials' key themes – the weight of the past as revealed in returns, hauntings and traumatic memory – which are facilitated by the larger space of serial television and the multi-year timespan. Although the titles underline their period settings, the representation of Britain's collective past is not the serials' primary focus. Historical markers such as archive footage serve less as nostalgic cultural artefacts, sociopolitical interrogation or subcultural exploration and more as manifestations of memory in service of theme and characterisation. In particular, Lol's status as tragic centrepiece reveals a concern with subjectivity facilitated by the texts' interplay of different types of memory.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shane MeadowsCritical Essays, pp. 186 - 202Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013