Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed parts of this film, but every Mullan film I've seen shows working class people as continually miserable and subjected to violence. I know from real life that this ISN'T true.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
I understand where you're coming from, but ordinary, uneventful lives don't make very dramatic films. Mullan usually injects some humour into his Glasgow films to lighten the gloom. NEDS was hilarious, tragic and also rather magical in certain scenes. I think there's an element of real life because Glasgow can still be a violent, unpredictable place for some people.
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"I understand where you're coming from, but ordinary, uneventful lives don't make very dramatic films."
They don't have to be uneventful lives, but this kind of "grim up north" (of the Border) thing is getting to be a stereotype. Some working class folk have horrible lives. So do folk from other classes, but there's more to it than that. NEDS touches on that in the school scenes, and with the American aunt, but not enough IMHO. I knew his dad was going to be a drunken wife beater - I was surprised he wasn't on drugs too, or religious.
"I think there's an element of real life because Glasgow can still be a violent, unpredictable place for some people."
Every city does. But apart from a toxic football culture, there's more to Glasgow working class life than this.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
You're right, there is more to most working class lives, but not all and that's the story Mullan chose to tell. In a place I used to live in Glasgow, there were three little boys (about 11 or 12) who tried to make my life a misery. They were horrible little neds-in-the-making. I spoke to the local policeman about them and he said two of them were brothers and their parents were drug addicts/alcoholics and didn't care what the boys did. In a way, I felt sorry for those kids because they were already going down a path that could lead them to a bad place even at that age. They were wise to their rights, but unfortunately incrediby ignorant and worryingly nasty.
You can say Mullan stereotypes the working class, but stereotypes are often based on very recognisable people. They may be exaggerated for effect, but they exist. Yesterday I swear I saw a Rab C. Nesbitt on the bus!
Remember it is a sub-section of a class of people in a set region. Having grown up around that time and around Glasgow myself, I can confirm (sadly) that these are not stereotypes. That is how life was *shrug*. A few things even took me back with their uncanny accuracy, things I had long forgotten about. The whole thing about their culture having gangs, and a "young" version of the gang was something that blighted many areas. The gang "sign" of the Y with the other letters transposed over the stem of the Y was how all the signs were written.
share" The gang "sign" of the Y with the other letters transposed over the stem of the Y was how all the signs were written."
They do that over here as well.
Anyway, my original point is that I think the working class in Scotland is broader and has more variety than anything shown in films like these. There were interesting hints of something different here, the relative from abroad (most Scots have those, but they're strangely absent in many films), even the Latin class. (Most folk forget that up until a few decades ago, a lot of schools in Scotland taught Latin, and not just private ones.) It's like the working class always has to be portrayed as miserable, narrow and violent, there's more to it than this.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
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I agree that Mullan's film represents one segment of the working class/poor and therefore does not stereotype working class people.
I don't feel the film is critical of these people, but critical of a society where classism is ruining people's lives. Mullan does a great job of highlighting this and I will recommend this film to many people as a wonderful example of how classism needs to be challenged and how classism can literally kill...
"I know from reading this statement that you ARE an idiot."
How so? Because the working class people I know don't all fall into Peter Mullan's stereotypes?
Not every working class person is an unemployed razor wielding heroin/alcohol addicted radge.
Mullan's stereotypes PLAY RIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF RIGHT WINGERS like David Cameron who suggest such folk are all work-shy, addict or criminals, and need to have their benefits cut to sort them out.
If Mullan made these kinds of films about black people, he'd be accused of being a racist. Instead he makes out poor people to be a bunch of violent feckers. Some folk think Scots are all like this thanks to him as well.
Nice troll by the way, I love personal comments.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
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"he leaves that to the black community to tell stories of their own culture. "
Erm, yeah. There was a whole bunch of dubious films made by blacks for blacks in the 1970s, I believe that they were called "blaxploitation". A lot of them played right into stereotypes.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
"he leaves that to the black community to tell stories of their own culture. "
Erm, yeah. There was a whole bunch of dubious films made by blacks for blacks in the 1970s, I believe that they were called "blaxploitation". A lot of them played right into stereotypes.
Stereotypes by definition arise from a general truth. Pessimistic or not, I thought it was a pretty realistic portrayal of life in that time and place. I grew up in the Rivers housing scheme in Foxbar in the '70s (it's now been razed and totally redeveloped) and I can tell you, as a kid I was afraid to go out to the ice cream van at night because of the gangs hanging about. The clue's in the title. This is a film about a certain segment of working class society and within that particular culture life is more often than not grim and violent and hopeless.
"That, - Captain Bligh, - that is the thing; - I am in hell, sir - I am in hell."
"Stereotypes by definition arise from a general truth."
Kind of. A lot of working class Scots I've known are a bit like this, but a lot of them aren't as well. We get a lot of films and books about working class people who take heroin/too much alcohol etc, are obsessed by football and so on, but not much about working class trainspotters or professional snooker/darts players etc.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!