CONTRASTING STUDY: Grimsby (Working Title, 2016)

Grimsby poster

This is NOT a social realist film! We are, however, using this comedy (spy/action satire) to help us clarify the characteristics of social realist films: we'll contrast the media language of this with what we've observed is conventional for the social realist genre...

PRODUCTION: Working Title, Big Talk, Village Roadshow [US partner] +2 others
DISTRIBUTION: Sony (UK), Colombia (UK); [no China] 36 territories
BUDGET: $35m
BOX OFFICE: UK $7.5m, US $7m; World $25m

BBFC 15, MPAA R (quite high)


SOME CONTEXT: An example of the impact of the changed, reduced status of WT within its parent big six conglomerate, NBC-Universal. WT had been receiving $600m funding every 7 years, with clearance to greenlight any project up to a $25m budget - but that has been reduced to a 'first look' deal, meaning Universal can decide whether they want to 'pick up' a WT project or not. In this case they didn't, Sony (and its subsidiary Colombia) did ... and maybe Universal were wise, as it failed to even recoup its budget, never mind the 2-3 times budget generally accepted as needed to move into profit.

The Gant rule obviously doesn't apply: its a very British film - so much so that the title had to be changed for US and international markets as the place name Grimsby has no recognition and is essentially meaningless and confusing outside the UK (unlike London). 

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IDENTS

• Sony ident is the first
• Big Six production
• Very unlikely to see a Big Six name on a social realist film
• Columbia
• subsidiary of Sony
• Village Roadshow Pictures
• US production partner
• virtually unheard of for UK social realist flick (unlike for comedy
• WT did not get an ident
  

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SOUND

• Begins with famous song (R Kelly)
• small indie companies do not have the budget to get copyright licenses 
• non diegetic well-known commercial track as an audiobridge over idents to main scene
• social realist films do not usually start with music (often have incidental music)
• lyrical music is also uncommon for social realist
• e.g. Tyrannosaur, but This is England has some
• OST features Ed Sheeran!

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FIRST SHOTS

• Not ELS establishing shot

  

  MCU -back tattoo, sweat, beer can, football shirt

• unusual choice of MCU
• no fade-in (black screen before shot after ident 4)
• Close-up of huge back tattoo ('ENGLAND' and 3 lions) 
• football tattoo
• sweat
• beer cans visible in background 
• Master shot
• reveals scene to be a bed shop
• Tightly framed shots for the opening sex scene are made comic by use of a master shot revealing the location
• poverty is being signified by massive sale posters hanging all over the shop ('lowest prices in Grimsby')
• very low prices $89.99 for a double bed

master shot - low prices, sale

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REPRESENTATION

• Stereotyping begins immediately

  

  MCU (cropped) - facial hair, scruffy look

• overgrown hair and facial hair
• sideburns
• ridiculous tattoo
• football top
• beer can
• and then reveal of moronic antisocial behaviour
• Comparison to social realist:
• The realism of social realist films can lead to showing antisocial behaviour
• e.g. Tyrannosaur protagonist is violent, racist and unemployed
• e.g. This is England swearing throughout, violence, underage drinking etc. 
• Immediate heteronormativity 
• opening sex scene
• idea of male provider (the male protagonist is the one to say "we'll take [the bed]")
• though this also signifies that he is the protagonist as it cuts back to his face/reactions

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Is very short for an opening scene - contrast with This is England and Tyrannosaur etc.

just 30 seconds into the opening sequence which is then followed by another famous commercial song (Blur)

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TITLES

titles

• Serif font
• shot 1 is typical of a social realist though
• grim street red brick terraced houses, heavily graffitied
• many houses are loaded up
• Mise-en-scene
• contrast to This is England - Shaun leaves his bike outside showing the community of the working class neighbourhood as he trusts it won't get stolen
• Grimsby only shows the decay (harsh 2 dimensional stereotype of working class)

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GENRE EG2: This Is England

(SAM'S WORK)

Production: Big Arty Productions, EM Media, Film Four, Optimum Releasing, Screen Yorkshire, UK Film Council, Warp Films
Distribution (US): IFC Films, Netflix, Red Envelope Entertainment, IFC First Take
Distribution (UK): Optimum Releasing
Lighting: attempts to reproduce naturalistic lighting for example at the beginning in Sean's house, in the school and in the cafe are lit to make them look as naturalistic as possible.
Setting: often on location in urban areas somewhere in the north of England to add a strong sense of realism.
Hand held shots: making the audience feel they are part of the action

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BoxOffice: $329k(US) /  £3,1m(UK) / $8,2m(Worldwide)
This Is England made around 10 more in the UK than in the US. It didn't perform well in the US is because the choice of the central protagonist (young boy, ginger) which doesn't make it glomerate and something Working Title [WT] would never do. Also the choice of cast (no A-list stars) and their accent makes it hard to understand for a lot of viewers and the social realist genre doesn't appeal to the US film market.


This Is England are rarely funded by the studio's system since they don't make much in Box Office, so they are often funded independently or through organisations such as the Film Council, National Lottery, Channel4. 

In addition, the film was a critical success winning many awards, and also a commercial success making over $8m on a cost of $1.5m

This is England is an Indie, low financed and social realist film. Being a social realism, the film tackles various issues within society, and looks at the points of view of different generations and social classes from the same time the movie was set. However, the movie was made around 2006, because certain political parties such as BNP and UKIP started to form in the early 2000's and there was a lot of controversy around them due to their racial policies and views. Because the movie is set in the 1980's it connotes how culturally diverse England was at that time, it therefore makes the viewer aware of the issues surrounding immigrants and certain people extreme view on them.

The movie addresses the culture and attitudes of the 'skinheads' and the English Nationalists and the consequent effects that this has on the various characters throughout the film. 

Narrative

Shane uses Todorov's narrative theory to make the movie even more realistic.
Equilibrium: Sean lives with his mother and his father was killed in the war which makes him very upset and in addition he gets bullied at school.
Disruption: Sean meets Woody and his gang, they befriend him and enrolled him into the gang and giving him a 'skinhead' uniform.
Recognition: Sean joins the gang around Combo and gets drawn in to the racist national front and their cirminal activities
Repair: Sean witnesses the violent attack on Milky and realises that Combo is a vicious racist bully
Restoration of a new equilibrium: The new equilibrium is that Sean rejects the racial ideology of Combo, symbolically throwing the flag into the sea.

Representation

The opening sequence is important is representing the social, historical and cultural context of the film. The montage of archive footage from 1980's TV series is shown in low and grainy quality which signifies the historical context. Also the music, typical late 70's SKA reflects the skinhead culture who adopted this genre of music.


Denotation
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The ripped wallpaper, old furniture and the fact that he is using a chair as a nightstand denote that this boy is not very rich.

Connotes/Connotation
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The font is worn off and gritty so we connote that it is a film about war.

Signifier
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The font is worn down so it indicates the environment is rough.

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Because the bicycle in front of the house wasn't locked and untouched it signifies that it is a safe area.

Binary Opposition/Opposite
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When Shawn(kid) meets Wally(adult)

Polysemy
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This is a picture of Shawn's father. It tells us that his father died during the war or just simply that he misses him.

Anchors/Anchorage
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The damaged wallpaper and old furniture shows that he is poor.

Commutation Test
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This first shot of Margaret Thatcher is confusing, we don't know if the movie is about her or what impact she exerted in the '80s.

Preferred Reading
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Nowadays people aged 60 could relate to this scene a lot more than teenagers.

Negotiated Reading
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The director is making fun of her but some people could interpret this in a different way but still get the same message.

Oppositional Reading
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This shot is quite odd. Probably the only reason why it's in the film opening is that it was made during the same time period as the film.

Narrative Enigma
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It only shows very little of the subject which makes the viewer want to know more.

Intertextuality
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Mise-en-scene links into the Boy George Culture Club which was a very famous culture followed by numerous teenagers at that time.

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(MY WORK)
Representation 
whether it is social realist or a rom-com, representation is always something artificially constructed by those creating the media text - lighting, costume, props, dialogue etc.

This is England poster

Demographics
Ways in which audiences are categorised (gender, socio-economic status, race, urban, rural, educated, uneducated, age etc.)

This Is England

• Large portion of the budget was a grant
• Warp production
• Had no IP or franchising initially (did become a tv show)
• Social realist
• Set in the North of England
• Not a huge amount of selling potential 

Opening montage
All footage shown on the television of the Falkland wars painted the English in a positive light, showing men with lost limbs, all footage showing them in a negative light would have been censored.
Shane meadows selects footage which does not paint the English in positive light (a criticism of Margaret Thatcher).

opening montage screenshot

• Denotation: 4 white men in a tank
• normative idea that military is a male/masculine territory
• exclusively Caucasian
• all aged 25-30
• younger ones are only soldiers, higher ranking officials would likely be older
• representation of tie with age and authoritative power
• appears heteronormative (although sexuality is not really made reference to)

Some reasons for success

• Protagonist:
• did not have a Northern Irish accent despite the film being set in Ireland
• McCarthyist ideology of Us and Them, with the local northern Irish population being the violent, wild, backwards and uncivil Other
• reinforces negative northern Irish stereotypes
• is more accessible to more audiences 
• BUT: at the end of the film throws the medal he earned for killing a bunch of Northern Irish people into the ocean
• creates a parallel
• symbolic of rejection of these values
• Reviews:
• was reviewed by the guardian (ABC1) on release date

Protagonist 

• Northern accent (not southern)
• unglamorous 
• In mainstream studio films this character would likely be the Other, butt of a joke, a negative stereotype, a 2 dimensional character
• e.g. Grimsby (a Working Title production): the father of a lot of bastard children, bad hygiene, lazy, extended joke at expense of the working class

The Skinheads

• All swear, drink underage, smoke, act aggressively, 

  

  having just shown up with beer he
  had to wait an hour for he then bullies Sean 

• is part of the social realist aspect:
• is not a 2 dimensional stereotype as this is not all there is to the characters
• a "warts and all" representation - complex characters

Industry
More niche representations have less chance of being successful as fewer demographics are able to identify with the characters

• Studio films have less varied representation of minority demographics as less people go to see them
• Indie films are more able to
• Britain used to set legal minimum if films screened in cinemas that must be British productions
• was a safeguard for British film cinemas
• without such protection American film would dominate
• when this law was dropped British cinemas nose-dived, and American cinema practically monopolised it
• This similar to laws in France and China
• a yearly quota of national films met be shown in cinemas, otherwise American products would dominate and national business would collapse
• Free market ideology is not successful for domestic market
• Without grants from BFI indie films with diverse representation would not exist 
• they are not commercial and unlikely to make profit
• would not be made without subsidy
• e.g. Tyrannosaur would not have been made due to the representation of the protagonist (a racist, violent, unemployed middle aged working class man)
• large audiences not able to identify
• Southern English accents are more normalised for international appeal due to companies like Working Title
• The control of the media industry by mostly American companies assures a certain degree of positive representation for them
• allows for some level of global power 
• idea of world police can be perpetuated
• e.g. the majority of sci-fi films are set in America or have America as the 'hero' of the world (Independence Day, Evolution)

Mickybo and Me vs. Son of Rambo

Mickybo and Me poster

A good example of how representation can limit a film is Mickybo and Me vs. Son of Rambo (blog post on it here).

in Mickybo and Me:

• 2 boys from northern Ireland are obsessed with a film
• did not get any screenings outside of Northern Ireland (only in cinemas for 4 weeks)
• WT2 production (indie style subsidiary of Working Title)
• accents were problematic, lack of identification
• budget was 5m pounds
• would not get a red carpet release, no stars so would not be on chat shows
• too difficult to market
• Most of the cast was English in an attempt to make it more marketable

in Son of Rambo:

Son of Rambo poster

• normative representation
• Caucasian boys, non-problematic accents
• Studio production

Universal/Studio Canal stopped funding Mickybo and Me distribution as they did not think it would be successful for wider release - were not prepared to take the risk with prints and marketing. The audience did not make the decision

Exceptions

Billy Eliot

• is a social realist
• set in County Durham (problematic accent)
• abut an effeminate boy who wants to do ballet (transgressive)
• BUT: had a fairytale American Dream ending
• made large international and domestic profit 
• Shows that less mainstream representation can be successful

Tyrannosaur

Olivia Coleman's fail to get a Bafta trended globally on twitter

• really only has star value in England
• Is not glamorous so even then her star status is limited more
• Obscure indie social realist film 

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