ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to interrogate the performance of social class within cultural narratives of violence, to examine the politics that structure such violence, and, most crucially, to consider the conditions that produce disability itself as a category of apparent ontological difference. It argues that cinematic culture offers one such aperture through which to re-view the social conditions of human difference. The chapter aims to critically examine a British film that renders cinematic the bullying, torture, and murder of a young man with learning impairments by a group of working-class men who claimed to be his friends. In brief, the film charts the revenge tragedy narrative of Richard (Paddy Considine) as he seeks to avenge the death of his brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) who has been bullied, tortured, and murdered by a gang of local men, headed up by Sonny (Gary Stretch).
