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A British Comparison

Zhou Xuelin

in Young Rebels in Contemporary Chinese Cinema

This chapter presents a sample comparative study of youth cultures. It compares and contrasts the British angry-young-man films of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the Chinese young-rebel films of ... More

This chapter presents a sample comparative study of youth cultures. It compares and contrasts the British angry-young-man films of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the Chinese young-rebel films of the 1980s. The British films include Room at the Top (1959), Look Back in Anger (1959), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), A Kind of Loving (1962), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) and This Sporting Life (Romulus, 1963). Drawing on the Western literature on youth rebellion, it compares the social history of the two countries in terms of structural similarities, and presents some general conclusions about the nature of youth rebellion and how it should best be understood within its particular national and historical contexts.Less

Angry Young Men: Deewaar (The Wall, 1975, Dir. Yash Chopra)

Omar Ahmed

in Studying Indian Cinema

This chapter addresses how, unlike Hollywood, which has seen the rise of high-concept cinema overshadow the power a film star once possessed at the box office, Indian cinema, especially mainstream ... More

This chapter addresses how, unlike Hollywood, which has seen the rise of high-concept cinema overshadow the power a film star once possessed at the box office, Indian cinema, especially mainstream Hindi films, continues to underline the significance of film stars and views them as paramount to the development and marketing of most feature films. The angry-young-man persona of Indian cinema's biggest film star, Amitabh Bachchan, forged in an era of widespread political disillusionment, found its greatest expression in the 1975 super-hit Deewaar (The Wall), directed by Yash Chopra. The chapter moves away from Indian art cinema to the attractions of the mainstream film Deewaar. It engages with a range of key areas, such as the wider political context of the 1975 Indian Emergency and the angry young man as a sociopolitical symbol. It also looks at representations encompassing matriarchy, religion and poverty; Amitabh Bachchan's star image; and the lasting legacy of Deewaar for today's cinema.Less

Youth subcultures

Celia Hughes

in Young Lives on the Left: Sixties Activism and the Liberation of the Self

This chapter explores the political, social, and gendered dynamics of the activist left cultures that preceded the extra-parliamentary scene surrounding the VSC. It shows how young activists’ initial ... More

This chapter explores the political, social, and gendered dynamics of the activist left cultures that preceded the extra-parliamentary scene surrounding the VSC. It shows how young activists’ initial steps into these cultures invariably began with encounters with late fifties and early sixties sub-cultures, including ‘Angry Young Men’ and French existential movements, and CND. The chapter encompasses individuals’ radical reading, dramatic, musical, and other cultural and political experiences, to consider the meaning these held for youngsters in the context of their childhood histories. It addresses the gendered dimension of radical sub-cultural experiences in the early-to-mid 1960s, including young women and men’s experiences inside the YS and the Trotskyist groups, the IS and the International group (later known as the IMG). The argument is that masculine radical cultures added to the contradictory discourses constituting ‘woman’ and ‘man’ that visibly prevailed throughout the post-war society in which interviewees were shaping identities.Less

Conclusion: The Boom Ends

Patrick Deer

in Culture in Camouflage: War, Empire, and Modern British Literature

The Conclusion argues that the real rupture in British literary tradition comes not during the Second World War, but after it. In the late 1940s, the literary boom of the war years gave way to a ... More

The Conclusion argues that the real rupture in British literary tradition comes not during the Second World War, but after it. In the late 1940s, the literary boom of the war years gave way to a culture of silence about the traumatic effects of war. Reading the postwar work of Orwell and Churchill, it argues that — overshadowed by the monumental productions of official war culture, film and popular culture, and in sharp contrast to the boom in war writing of the 1920s — wartime writers found themselves out in the cold. These were the hostile conditions in which Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart pioneered the oppositional project of cultural studies. It concludes that this process of silencing was hastened by the insurgent Angry generation of the 1950s, who rejected the aesthetic and political complexity of wartime writing, and as critics denied it a place in the insular post-war canon.Less

Barry Reckord, the Race Relations Narrative, and the Royal Court Theatre

Amanda Bidnall

in West Indian Generation: Remaking British Culture in London, 1945-1965

“Barry Reckord, the Race Relations Narrative, and the Royal Court Theatre” shifts its analysis of the race relations narrative to the forefront of postwar London drama. Jamaican playwright—and one of ... More

“Barry Reckord, the Race Relations Narrative, and the Royal Court Theatre” shifts its analysis of the race relations narrative to the forefront of postwar London drama. Jamaican playwright—and one of the quintessential “angry young men”—Barry Reckord was among the first to have a play selected by the English Stage Company for production at the reborn Royal Court Theatre. By examining Reckord’s first three plays, Flesh to a Tiger, You in Your Small Corner, and Skyvers, in the context of the Royal Court’s rise to cultural ascendancy, this chapter demonstrates how Reckord helped build the so-called cultural revolution that would write him out of its history.Less

Setting the Stage: Oliver Twist, Lionel Bart, and Cultural Contexts

Marc Napolitano

in Oliver!: A Dickensian Musical

This chapter provides context for the emergence of Oliver! by analyzing the musical’s development in the framework of various cultural and theatrical movements. Oliver!’s popularity is rooted in the ... More

This chapter provides context for the emergence of Oliver! by analyzing the musical’s development in the framework of various cultural and theatrical movements. Oliver!’s popularity is rooted in the enduring power of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, which had already become ingrained in Western culture from myriad theatrical and cinematic adaptations, including the all-important David Lean film. Bart’s adaptation built off this Dickensian tradition, though it was simultaneously shaped by the development of the postwar English theater through the efforts of the “angry young men” such as John Osborne and Arnold Wesker. Much as Osborne and Wesker moved the English drama away from the upper-middle-class drawing-room comedy, Lionel Bart moved the English musical away from comic opera and operetta and toward a cockney working-class musical tradition. The chapter concludes by tracing Bart’s early career and his work on music-hall style musicals at Unity Theatre and Theatre Workshop.Less

A New Reality: Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958)

Maria Elena Capitani

in British Women's Writing, 1930 to 1960: Between the Waves

Focussing on the crucial transitional year of 1958, Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey offers a valuable and often overlooked contribution to the genre of ‘kitchen sink drama’. Nevertheless, as Maria ... More

Focussing on the crucial transitional year of 1958, Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey offers a valuable and often overlooked contribution to the genre of ‘kitchen sink drama’. Nevertheless, as Maria Elena Capitani demonstrates, Delaney surpasses her ‘angry young male’ counterparts in her exploration of more of the preoccupations of the 1960s including homosexuality, mixed-race sex, teenage pregnancy and the survival techniques of an ‘underclass’. Capitani observes how A Taste of Honey has the unique capacity to register an epoch-defining moment in British social and cultural history at the same time as it expresses the ‘suffering of ambivalence’, to use Adrienne Rich’s term, of motherhood.Less

The Fifties and the Beginning of the Liverpool Scene

in A Gallery to Play to: The Story of the Mersey Poets

Between 1956 and 1958, Britain saw the emergence of a new and controversial ‘angry generation’ fuelled by three closely connected events. John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal ... More

Between 1956 and 1958, Britain saw the emergence of a new and controversial ‘angry generation’ fuelled by three closely connected events. John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal Court in London on May 8, 1956, followed by the publication of Colin Wilson's book The Outsider. Both men would be linked with Kingsley Amis, who created a new anti-hero, described as a ‘thoroughly cross young man’, in his novel Lucky Jim. The Angry Young Men, primarily concerned with intellectual restrictions, appeared on the scene around the time of the Suez Crisis and vanished after Harold Macmillan's election victory in 1959, a period also characterised by the rise of Elvis Presley and rock 'n' roll. In Liverpool, John Lennon formed a group called the Quarrymen, while Roger McGough came home from Hull University.Less

Indian Masculinities: Beyond Gender and Matriarchy

Hoshang Merchant

in Secret Writings of Hoshang Merchant

Gandhi feminized himself. Devdas is the lost man who would have enslaved India and the confused manhood of the newly independent India. Devdas is replaced by Bachchan’s angry young man in Indira ... More

Gandhi feminized himself. Devdas is the lost man who would have enslaved India and the confused manhood of the newly independent India. Devdas is replaced by Bachchan’s angry young man in Indira Gandhi’s macho India. Films like Mother India (1957) and Deewar (1975) show the mother-obsessed Indian manhood. Transgender Laxmi and Revathy are also telling the story. Aravanis are men pretending to be Krishna’s bride for a night at the eunuch festival at Vilipuram. Ardhanishwar is replaced by sex-reassignment surgery at Machllipatnam. Merchant dares to write the The Man Who Would Be Queen (2011).Less