British Realism in A Taste of Honey and Trainspotting

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             Realism then comes not from Hollywood special effects but from the narrative, the concept of the film and its themes; these themes, now widely accepted as the norm, money, drugs, class, prostitution and sex, reflect the society itself so their credibility as 'real' can't be denied. The conventions used within such films also go a long way in creating a sense of realism. Often unknown actors, between the ages of 12 and 20 are used against a gritty, urban setting, typically a council estate to access the real; even without the concept of film and the intrusion of a camera, this scene is present over Britain with high unemployment and poor housing states. Each of these things in a filmic sense, although realistic, signifies realism rather than reality because true reality cannot exist in a recorded form. This links closely Bazin's idea of the multiplicity of realist inventions (Bazin, 1974; p.63) in which only through filmic techniques such deep focus, camera movement and editing that realism can ever achieved. Steve Neale notes however that ˜the recorded image can be realist but not real.' (Neale, 1985: p.96).
             Social realist films also focus on the types of characters that mainstream cinema often neglects; the characters that inhabit the social margins of society in terms of status and power the working or lower classes, as John Hill notes: "traditionally social realism within Britain has been associated with the making visible of the working-class." (Hill, 1999: p.135).
             The problem with Hill's statement is that there is nothing that makes the working-class more real than any other social-group or class. It is not a matter of simply representing the under-represented more that they are represented from different or specific social perspectives. The 'real' then comes from context as Hill notes later, "The idea that realism is linked to the representation of the Working-class derives in part from context, and specifically the perceived absence of (adequate) representations of this group within the dominant discursive regime.