Underbelly UK

The 1990s saw a notable cycle of British films that drew their subject or subtext from the problems of unemployment and social exclusion faced by a social stratum identified by some social and political commentators as an ‘underclass’. The cycle is loose-knit, spanning a range of genres (and, in keeping with wider trends of the 1990s, often mixing different genres), and including films aimed at both minority and mainstream audiences. The use of the term ‘underclass’ by its best-known populariser, the conservative American academic Charles Murray, ¹ and in the bulk of subsequent debate, has been condemnatory, portraying a class seen as parasitically dependent and work-shy rather than merely work-less. By contrast, my use of the term is descriptive, denoting a ‘subordinate social class’. ² In common with Murray's critics on the liberal centre and neo-Marxist left, ³ my discussion takes the ‘underclass’ to be a post-working class that owes its existence to the economic and social damage wrought by globalisation, local industrial decline, the restructuring of the labour market and other legacies of the Thatcher era. In what follows, I shall examine the cycle of underclass films in terms of what they say about gender, class and national identity in the context of the culture and politics of contemporary Britain.