Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism

This book provides a cultural and aesthetic exploration of 1980s British cinema as a direct response to the government policies and political ideology of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Films during the Thatcher era bear little resemblance to the tastefully tedious adaptations so often associated with British filmmaking. Many filmmakers of the period shared a revulsion, to one degree or another, for Thatcher's ideology, though their methods of expressing their distaste ran the gamut of aesthetic options. In a paradoxical manner, their intense and unwavering hatred of Margaret Thatcher provided the spark necessary to force Britain's best visual artists to new creative heights that ultimately rejuvenated a stagnant movie industry. Lester Friedman has assembled a unique collection of original work by some of the leading scholars of British cinema, including Leonard Quart, Thomas Elsaesser, Peter Wollen, Antonia Lant, and Manthia Diawara. Through a variety of approaches each contributor addresses the relationship between ideology and cultural production in general, and the relationship between Thatcherism and British cinema in particular. Friedman forcefully demonstrates how filmmakers offer viable alternatives to officially sanctioned versions of the truth, while at the same time creating bold and serious works that reach far beyond the confines of geography and politics. Lester Friedman teaches English and humanities at SUNY Health Science Center,and Cinema Studies at Syracuse University. He is the author of the award-winning "The Image of the Jew in American Film" and editor of "Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema".

Table of Contents:
The Empire strikes out: an American perspective on the British film industry. Part 1 Cultural contexts and cinematic constructions: The religion of the market - Thatcherite politics and the British film of the 1980s; The last new wave - modernism in the British films of the Thatcher era; Images for sale - the "New" British cinema; History with holes - Channel 4 television films of the 1980s; The repression of communities - visual representations of Northern Ireland; Re-presenting the national past - nostalgia and pastiche in the heritage films; Free from the apron strings - representations of mothers in the maternal British state. Part 2 Film-makers during the Thatcher era: Power and territory - the emergence of Black British film collectives 1980-1990; Women's independent cinema in eighties Britain - the case of the Leeds Animation Workshop; The body politic - Ken Russell in the 1980s; "Everyone's an American now" - Thatcherist ideology in the films of Nicolas Roeg; Insurmountable difficulties and moments of ecstacy - crossing barriers in the films of Stephen Frears; The masochistic fix - gender oppression in the films of Terence Davies; Allegories of Thatcherism - the films of Peter Greenaway; Private practice, public health - the politics of sickness and the films of Derek Jarman.