Rao, Isabel Joan Sutherland (2018) Screening the seventies: Representations of the 1970s in British film and television. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Preview

PDF WRAP_Theses_Rhodes_2018.pdf - Draft Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (1970Kb) | Preview

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

This thesis maps how the 1970s has been constructed in twenty-first century British culture. It analyses representations of the decade in British film and television made between the years 2002 and 2014. The thesis suggests that the repeated audio-visual return to the 1970s in contemporary Britain entails a recognition of the decade as a transitional period that saw the arrival of the changes that define our world today. It demonstrates how the manner in which the 1970s is remembered and understood is of considerable significance to how we understand the present. It also argues that the complexities and nuances of these representations have been largely unexplored.

The thesis has four chapters. Chapter One situates the detailed textual analysis that follows within the broader concerns of the thesis and existing scholarly literature. This first chapter develops the contours of the thesis’ argument and outlines the originality of the project. It argues that the nuance and complexity of the relationship between past and present in audio-visual histories is underexplored and subsumed in dichotomies that argue for their ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’ potential. This argument is developed through the proposition that insufficient attention has been paid to the formal, stylistic and narrational strategies used to construct the past on screen. The chapter proposes an approach which brings questions of tone, style, and point of view to the forefront of analysis.

Chapter Two groups generic engagements with the 1970s, the spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011), the conspiracy thriller Red Riding (Channel 4, 2009), and the retro police procedural Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-8). The chapter considers how these texts interweave the historic with the generic. It also affirms the importance of tone in considering how the past is shaped in the present, as the case studies are viewed in conjunction with writing on melancholia and mourning. Chapter Three challenges the usual definitions of British cinema by including texts that are set in Northern Ireland. It explores difficult and traumatic associations of the 1970s in representations of the ‘Troubles’ on screen in Five Minutes of Heaven (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2009), Shadow Dancer (James Marsh, 2012) and ’71 (Yann Demange, 2014). Chapter Four considers questions of identity and consumerism by looking at two films that engage with music and youth culture in locations far from the metropolitan core, Anita & Me (Metin Hüseyin, 2002) and Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D’Sa, Glenn Leyburn, 2012). Both films are marked as autobiographical or semi-autobiographical in nature and the chapter focuses on point of view and questions of retro and nostalgia. It explores how the texts facilitate a different relationship between past, present and future than previous case studies.

The thesis thus brings together a range of films and television programmes set in the 1970s, and through detailed textual analysis pays attention to questions of tone and the articulation of temporality in history. It demonstrates that the 1970s are being made and remade with considerable sophistication and nuance in twenty-first century texts. Attention to the tone and point of view of these texts gives insight into the struggles over the history of the present.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Nineteen seventies -- In motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Plots, themes, etc., Television programs -- Plots, themes, etc., Motion pictures -- History -- 21st century, Television programs -- History -- 21st century
Official Date:	August 2018
Dates:	Date Event August 2018 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Film and Television Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Brunsdon, Charlotte
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	vi, 238 leaves
Language:	eng

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads