Social Realism is a iconic genre of film that over time has developed and morphed along with our society, keeping it contemporary. It acts as a mirror, reflecting the issues and problems in a brutally honest and gritty style, removing the glamourised image of a perfect world that other genres in Hollywood portray. It often picks at political and social topics and tackles them straight on, giving its audience an insight on the true face of a issue as appose to the polished version that is depicted by other media forms such as the news or T.V. shows - they are almost forms of social protests.
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Films from the social realism genre focus on the lower, working classes. They highlights social and political issues such as drug abuse, knife crime, homophobia, sexism, mental health, racism, islamaphobia, teen pregnancy and so on.​
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They make use of hand-held camera work which is often quite shaky and unsteady. This highlights the imperfections and instability of the issues that they explore. It also gives an imersive feeling and emphasises the genres core goal of being realistic. Fast paced editing is used in this genre to underline how contemporary problems are and how they are contantly changing, making it hard for the audience to keep up which reflects real life where social issues can often overwhelm you.
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Social Realism orginates from Italian neorealism. There are many simularities as Italian neorealism films are also set amongst the lower working classes and represent taboo topics with a head-on approach, such as poverty, oppression and injustice. The works of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica are popular films from this genre (Italian neorealism).
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Social Realism initially made its way into British cinema through the works of popular writers such as Charles Dickens (and Thomas Hardy) who wrote novels such as "Oliver Twist" which explored the conditions of child labour and poverty in the 1800s. One of the first films to highlight the importance of realism in film was "A Reservist Before the War, and After the War" by James Williamson which emphasised the overlooked topic of unemployment that returning servicemen faced. After WW1, the British middle class generally responded well to realism whereas the lower classes favoured Hollywood films. This could be due to the lack of escapism that social realism provide. People in lower classes would rather escape from their own problems rather than have them follow them. Due to this, realism became more stigmatised with eductaion and high seriousness. This led to them becoming more of an art form to be experineced in arthouses whereas the more light-hearted Hollywood movies made their way into the multiplex cinemas. As the wars passed, British cinema increasingly started to mirror the changing roles of women in war-time society; their increasingly responsibilities as they started working in the military and industrial sector. This was shown in films such as "Target for Tonight" (1941), In "Which We Serve" (1942) and "Millions Like Us" (1943). Eventually as censorship regulations relaxed, topics such as prostitution, abortion, homosexuality, and alienation could be explored more freely and without restriction.
HISTORY OF SOCIAL REALISM
Through Suraiya and Kayleigh's research into the history of the social realism genre, we learnt about the origins of this gritty genre and why over time, it has become so popular- especially among a British audience . Discovering that the genre has its roots buried deep in art, we discovered that the genre is a reflection of problems of issues at the time of production. This led to Kinza and Mustafe creating a Tiki-Toki timeline to create a visual representation of examples of iconic social realism films and their relevance to the time period they were released in.