1 The phrase is spelt with no hyphen as a tribute to the song by John Lennon who coined the expression in 1970.
2 Historically, the concept stems from Marx’s theory referring to the ever-expanding working class due to the development of capitalism. In sociology, it is today understood as a process of downward social mobility (Cole 2019).
3 The full references of all the films mentioned in the chapter are available in the “corpus” section at the end.
4 An alternative view of working-class masculinity can be traced in some films of the first period, maybe because the hero is a clerk (Billy Liar) or a teenager (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Kes, Scum). Far from symbolising weakness, leanness is sometimes even more impressive than beefiness because it emphasises inner tension and fortitude.
5 This trend continues in the second period (Blow Dry, Dream, Prick Up Your Ears) but all these films also show that these assumptions are to be taken with a pinch of salt.
6 The expression was coined by sociologist Paul Willis in his article “Shop floor culture, masculinity and the wage form” [1979] and refers to the values developed by male workers in the workplace to regain self-esteem and agency while being exploited by the capitalist system. See John Clarke, Chas Critcher, and Richard Johnson (eds.), Working Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory [1979], London, Hutchinson, 1987, 185–98.
7 However, women are still dominated as they are now unskilled or semi-skilled workers and men their foremen/supervisors or employers (Girls’ Night, Late Night Shopping).
8 “wpm” stands for “words per minute” and refers to the rate at which words are typed by a secretary.
9 The title of the film refers to a well-known nursery rhyme whose lyrics are directly related to what happens to the heroine and her children.
10 Until the 1970s, women’s presence in pubs was only tolerated on weekends. Otherwise, they had to be chaperoned by their parents, their husbands or a male-dominated group of friends (Look Back in Anger, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alfie, Kes) not to be considered depraved (Room at the Top, A Taste of Honey). Recent films show the relative perpetuation of that custom (Nil by Mouth, Dockers).
11 A tomboy is a girl who enjoys rough, noisy activities traditionally associated with boys, and a virago is a domineering, violent, or bad-tempered woman.
12 Some critics have associated this hypermasculine figure in British films to that of the new lad, a sociotype put forward in the mid-to-late 1990s media in reaction to the softer, more sensitive and attentive new man that they had extolled in the late 1980s. The new lad is said to be a man whose attitude and behaviour glorify regained working-class virility, a return to the hard-body image of a man who does not shy away from sexism. However, films focused on the working class over sixty years tend to show that the new lad is not so much the result of a “return” to hypermasculinity as just an updated version of the same old figure of the working class hero. One could almost speak of a continuum in laddism since 1959. See Claire Monk, “Men in the 90s” in Robert Murphy (ed.), British Cinema of the 90s, London, BFI, 2000, 157-166; Claire Monk, “Underbelly UK, The 1990s underclass film, masculinity and the ideologies of ‘new’ Britain” in Justine Ashby and Andrew Higson (eds.), British Cinema: Past and Present, London, Routledge, 2000, 274-287; Spicer, 184-200. For lack of space, only two genres will be briefly developed.
13 A youth detention centre.
14 The masculinist backlash has also affected space. Basements, squats, crack dens, gyms, and illegal rings used for free fight are all places from where women are absent or whose presence is subjected to men’s good will (see Marin-Lamellet 58-59, 171, 214-216).
15 “Trad” comes from the type of music (traditional jazz) listened to by these youths in the late 1950s/early 1960s. “Mod”, from “modernist”, initially defined the clothing style of the members of that group. For more details on both, see Hebdige, 50-54.
16 For a detailed study of the skinhead look and subculture, see John Clarke and Tony Jefferson, “Working Class Youth Cultures” in Geoff Mungham and Geoff Pearson (eds.), Working Class Youth Culture, London, Routledge, 1976, 156, and John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and Brian Roberts, “Subcultures, Cultures and Class: A Theoretical Overview” in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds.), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Culture in Post-War Britain, London, Unwin Hyman, 1976, 56.
17 Interestingly, Jo in Shopping, the only girl in the gang who is seen as the hero’s equal, is presented like a tomboy because of the way she dresses, drinks, smokes and enjoys driving big cars.
18 For example, most of the characters played by Danny Dyer appear as fake geezers and real losers because his king-of-lads attitude gets mocked by his partners, whether male or female (Greenfingers, The Other Half, The Football Factory, Severance, Doghouse).
19 Significantly enough, Mickey’s victory (Snatch) over titanic opponents is only possible once he takes off his shirt and rolls his shoulders in a slow-motion low-angle shot, which seems to tremendously increase his strength and is the final stage in the revelation of his statuesque handsomeness.
20 A male “bimbo”: a good-looking but unintelligent young man.
21 Vinnie “the Axe” Jones is a former footballer who was notorious for his aggressive style of play. He presented Soccer’s Hard Men, a 1992 documentary glorifying foul play. Jamie Foreman, an actor and scriptwriter, is the son of Freddie “Brown Bread Fred” Foreman, a famous 1960s London gangster who worked for the Krays. With such a background, these two actors infuse their roguish persona into numerous gangster and hooligan films and are probably there to enhance the virility of the lead actors.
22 In fashion, workers’ clothes have become all the rage among urban hipsters, a trend known as “lumbersexuality” (see Brekke, and Goux 78-82).
23 According to Jezz Vernon, managing director of distribution outfit Metrodome, “the attraction to gangsters or football hooligans has a certain aspirational element to it. It might sound worrying, but we liken it to music: the mainstream in UK music has always liked poetic thugs, from Byron to Liam Gallagher. People like the paradox; both the masculinity of it, and the denial of it” (Pulver).
24 The hero has always been portrayed as a dandy and a narcissist as shown by the recurrent shots of workers who, just like gangsters, frequently check their looks, trying to reassure themselves, more or less complacently, as to their poise and elegance, in other words signs of their virility (see Marin-Lamellet 179-184).
25 “Using the image of manliness to sell products to men has been around since the dawn of advertising”. However, a recent Canadian study found that “publications with the highest rates of hypermasculine ads were aimed at younger men of lower socioeconomic status” (Krans). We can surmise the same goes for films.
26 Neither of them is working-class nor officially homosexual but some of their films have been considered gay films, like Goodbye Charlie Bright by its own producers according to Nick Love in the DVD commentary of the film (Metrodome, MTD5042). Nick Love has admitted he is obsessed with male bonding in the DVD commentary of The Football Factory (Momentum MP371D) and Guy Ritchie’s main interest in that of Rock n’ Rolla (Warner Bros Z1Y22384) is to detail the percentage of body fat of the entire male cast.
27 Mockney is a portmanteau word (mock Cockney) referring the pronunciation used by a person imitating a Cockney/East London accent, as if they were from a lower social class.
28 As Cass Pennant, a former hooligan who turned into a film producer, explains: “Film is purely owned by the middle classes. Only the middle classes can make the films, but they can’t have those lives. They belong to the working classes. The stories belong to the East End. It’s like a marriage”. Andrew Pulver, “Gangsters, Geezers and Guns: The Men behind Britain’s Booming Low-budget Crime-flick Industry”, The Guardian, April 2, 2015.