Blackwell Reference Online

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The rats are government who stave off death! Who plaster posters level with your eye Who make lugubrious demands for breath Obedient from you to fly To be X-rayed, immunized, enslaved Tested, docketed, depraved To keep your miserable machine in shape By giving for the maximum of years Protection from the wisdom that you ape Because you lacked necessity for tears … Death is the horrible, the terrible, the brute That sometimes floats from heaven by parachute. Death is the end, my friend, the narrow gate That never can be closed by a rat-run State. From Alan Sillitoe, The Rats A standard quip about British cinema (apart from the observation that it is American cinema with different accents) is that it tends to excel at social engagement rather than entertainment. Although a plethora of exceptions comes to mind, the generalization has a ring of truth about it, as if Britain's niche in world cinema is the social problem film, the sociological treatise, or even some kind of socialist intervention with a human face. In the era of devolution and postcolonialism, of course, a burning question is whether it is useful anymore to write in terms of British cinema at all? One could make the argument, nevertheless, that British cinema has shown a consummate skill in representing social crises, more prominently during long periods of Conservative Party rule (the 1950s to early 1960s and the late ... log in or subscribe to read full text