The Precariat
Year: 2025
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Focusing on British cinema, this chapter offers a tentative answer to the question of whether the precariat is indeed the new dangerous class that Guy Standing imagines it to be. It asks whether British films about precarity, like New Wave films and Thatcher-era films before them, are open to charges of miserabilism and political quietism. It examines the potential conditions of solidarity that these films envision, or fail to envision, and considers the extent to which they inscribe themselves within the British tradition of social realism. The chapter argues that British films reflect a declining sense of working-class unity and purpose while displacing questions of class consciousness and class struggle onto issues of national identity, globalization, gender relations, and civil rights.
Author: Temenuga Trifonova
Language: English
Topic: Cinema History and Criticism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4410793727