Looking at Class

This work brings together film and television practitioners, and students of cultural and economic change, and examines how the working class in Britain has been represented in the media in the second half of the twentieth century.

Television and film not only entertain and reflect social change, they may also participate and influence these changes -- the recent success of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot show popular British comedy based on such painful social transformations. Looking at Class brings together film and television practitioners with academic students of cultural and economic change to examine the media representation of the British working class in the twentieth century -- a time of decline for the manual working class when a complex service-based economy emerged. The book covers a large range of genres from documentaries to soaps and shows that complex cultural transitions can be communicated clearly in prose as well as in screen drama.