IS THIS ENGLAND? EXPLORING NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THIS IS ENGLAND (2007)

IsThis England? EXPLORING NATIONAL IDENTITY

in This Is England (2007)

By Anastasia Bernadette Lima

Thesis Advisor: Nathan Stormer

A Lay Abstract of the Thesis Presented

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts

(in Communication)

May, 2010

            Shane Meadows’ This is England (2007) follows Shaun, a 12-year-old boy living in a northern, coastal English town in the summer of 1983.  Shaun is lonely, on the brink of manhood and aching for paternal attention after his father’s death in the Falkland war.  A run-in with skinheads sweeps Shaun into a life of Ben Sherman’s, Doc Martin’s, marijuana and root-rock-reggae.  Yet his newfound “family” is challenged when Combo, an ex-convict, returns to the racially-neutral gang to recruit the skinheads for a white supremacy group, the National Front.  In this thesis I argue that This is England (2007) establishes a perspective on the fragmented state of national identity in contemporary Britain.  This fragmentation is related to changing notions of white, heteromasculine hegemony faced with the infiltration of the Other into postcolonial Britain.  The reaction against this threat incites violence, yet the violence that occurs in the name of retaining a nostalgic past identity only furthers the dissolution of what is desired to be reclaimed.This is articulated through the fictional narrative that occurs within the conditions of actual historical events, most notably the Premiership of Margaret Thatcher and the 1980s global shift toward neoconservativism.  Furthermore, I present the challenge of the film’s certification as a statutorily British film and argue that this creates a paradox of meaning between its own identity as “British” and its presentation of Britain as no longer definable. This is England also references binary styles of British filmmaking, that of “kitchen sink” and British heritage, and situates the narrative within a cinematic space of critical dystopia.  This locates England as a dislocation and incites a consideration of how the politics and policies of the 1980s directly influenced the contemporary state of British national identity fragmentation.  Ultimately, the film offers no conclusion or real answer for the question of  “thinking England.”  This is England problematizes the events of the recent past to question the conditions of postmodern, post-global national identity.  This invites further scholarship on the implications of contemporary identity fragmentation as the “imagined communities” of nations becomes increasingly indefinable.