‘Stuff It’: Respectability and the Voice of Resistance in Letter to Brezhnev

Dolan, Josephine ORCID: 0000-0002-7669-9060 (2012) ‘Stuff It’: Respectability and the Voice of Resistance in Letter to Brezhnev. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 9 (2). pp. 247-261. doi:10.3366/jbctv.2012.0082

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Abstract

Exploring Letter to Brezhnev through concepts of respectability as feminine cultural capital this article suggests that the film’s affective impulse stems from its representation of a female, working class experience under Thatcherism. This experience is articulated through two structures of feeling derived from the intersecting conventions of social realism, and the consumerist and romantic tropes of the ‘woman’s film’. Through this intersection the daily abjection of women through degrading work or unemployment is traced, whilst being counterpointed to the escapist pleasures of a ‘night out’ constituted through the spatial and aesthetic shifts of the narrative, and the feminisation of the ‘jack the lad’ staple of British screen culture. In this way, Letter to Brezhnev exposes the centrality of respectability to women’s social mobility, or lack of it, thus offering a powerful critique of Thatcherite ideologies and women’s position as primary consumers within them. The article also offers a corrective to existing scholarship that has focussed on cinematic representations of a crisis of masculinity under Thatcherism to the neglect of its corrosive impact on feminine respectability.

Item Type:	Article
Article Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	letter to Brezhnev; structure of feeling; affect; class; respectability; cultural capital; thatcherism; social realism; woman’s film; escapism
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1992-1992.92 Television Broadcasts P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Creative Arts
Research Priority Areas:	Culture, Continuity, and Transformation Creative Practice and Theory
Depositing User:	Anne Pengelly
Date Deposited:	16 Sep 2020 11:14
Last Modified:	04 Feb 2022 16:45
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/8749

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