Kitchen sink realism

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A Taste of Honey is an influential "kitchen sink drama". In this photo of the 1960 Broadway production, Joan Plowright plays the role of Jo, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who has a love affair with a black sailor (played by Billy Dee Williams).

Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a

British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art,[1] novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism which depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called "well-made plays
".

The films, plays and novels employing this style are often set in poorer industrial areas in the

English Midlands. Shelagh Delaney's 1958 play A Taste of Honey (which was made into a film of the same name in 1961) is about a teenage schoolgirl who has an affair with a black sailor, gets pregnant and then moves in with a gay male acquaintance; it raises issues such as class, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and EastEnders.[2]

The term "Kitchen Sink School" was first used in the visual arts, where the art critic

social realist-type scenes of domestic life.[3]

History

The cultural movement was rooted in the ideals of social realism, an artistic movement expressed in the visual and other

Socialist Realism, another style of realism which was the "official art" advocated by the governments of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, the two had several differences. While social realism is a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern,[4] Socialist realism is characterized by the glorified depiction of socialist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, in a realistic manner.[5]

Unlike Socialist realism, social realism is not an official art produced by or under the supervision of the government. The leading characters are often '

subjectivity
of the author to be displayed.

Partly, social realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism[citation needed], which promoted lofty concepts such as the "ineffable" beauty and truth of art and music and even turned them into spiritual ideals. As such, social realism focused on the "ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working class people, particularly the poor." (The quotation is from George Shi, of the University of Fine Arts, Valencia).[6]

Features

Kitchen sink realism involves working class settings[7] and accents, including accents from Northern England.[8] The films and plays often explore taboo subjects such as adultery, pre-marital sex, abortion, and crime.[9]

Origins of the term

In the United Kingdom, the term "kitchen sink" derived from expressionist paintings by John Bratby that contained an image of a kitchen sink.[10] Bratby did various kitchen and bathroom-themed paintings, including three paintings of toilets. Bratby's paintings of people often depicted the faces of his subjects as desperate and unsightly.[11][12] Kitchen sink realism artists painted everyday objects, such as trash cans and beer bottles. The critic David Sylvester wrote an article in 1954 about trends in recent English art, calling his article "The Kitchen Sink" in reference to Bratby's picture. Sylvester argued that there was a new interest among young painters in domestic scenes, with stress on the banality of life.[2] Other artists associated with the kitchen sink style include Derrick Greaves, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smith.[13]

1950s to 1960s

Before the 1950s, the United Kingdom's working class were often depicted stereotypically in Noël Coward's drawing room comedies and British films.[citation needed] Kitchen sink realism was seen as being in opposition to the "well-made play", the kind which theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once denounced as being set in "Loamshire", of dramatists like Terence Rattigan. "Well-made plays" were a dramatic genre from nineteenth-century theatre which found its early 20th-century codification in Britain in the form of William Archer's Play-Making: A Manual of Craftmanship (1912),[14] and in the United States with George Pierce Baker's Dramatic Technique (1919).[15] Kitchen sink works were created with the intention of changing all that. Their political views were initially labeled as radical, sometimes even anarchic.

British society. The hero of Look Back In Anger is a graduate, but he is working in a manual occupation. It dealt with social alienation, the claustrophobia and frustrations of a provincial life on low incomes.[citation needed
]

The impact of this work inspired Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, and numerous others, to write plays of their own.[citation needed] The English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, headed by George Devine and Theatre Workshop organised by Joan Littlewood were particularly prominent in bringing these plays to public attention. Critic John Heilpern wrote that Look Back in Anger expressed such "immensity of feeling and class hatred" that it altered the course of English theatre.[2] The term "Angry theatre" was coined by critic John Russell Taylor.[16]

This was all part of the British New Wave—a transposition of the concurrent nouvelle vague film movement in France, some of whose works, such as The 400 Blows of 1959, also emphasised the lives of the urban proletariat. British filmmakers such as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson (see also Free Cinema) channelled their vitriolic anger into film making. Confrontational films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and A Taste of Honey (1961) were noteworthy movies in the genre. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is about a young machinist who spends his wages at weekends on drinking and having a good time, until his affair with a married woman leads to her getting pregnant and him being beaten by her husband's cousins to the point of hospitalisation. A Taste of Honey is about a 16-year old schoolgirl with an abusive, alcoholic mother. The schoolgirl starts a relationship with a black sailor and gets pregnant. After the sailor leaves on his ship, Jo moves in with a homosexual acquaintance who assumes the role of surrogate father. A Taste of Honey raises the issues of class, race, gender and sexual orientation.[citation needed]

Later, as many of these writers and directors diversified, kitchen sink realism was taken up by television directors who produced television plays. The single play was then a staple of the medium, and Armchair Theatre (1956–68), produced by the ITV contractor ABC, The Wednesday Play (1964–70) and Play for Today (1970–84), both BBC series, contained many works of this kind. Jeremy Sandford's television play Cathy Come Home (1966, directed by Ken Loach for The Wednesday Play slot) for instance, addressed the issue of homelessness.[17]

Kitchen sink realism was used in the novels of Stan Barstow, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe and others.[18]

Since the 1960s

The influence of kitchen sink realism has continued in the work of many more recent British directors, most notably Ken Loach (whose first directorial roles were in late 1960s kitchen sink dramas) and Mike Leigh. Other directors to continue working within the spirit of kitchen sink realism include Shane Meadows, Andrea Arnold, Clio Barnard, and Lynne Ramsay.[19] The term "neo kitchen sink" has been used for films such as Leigh's 2004 Vera Drake.[20]

List of films

List of plays

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-19-860476-1
    .
  2. ^
    Heilpern, John
    . John Osborne: The Many Lives of the Angry Young Man, New York: Knopf, 2007.
  3. ^ Walker, John. (1992) "Kitchen Sink School". Glossary of Art, Architecture & Design since 1945, 3rd. ed. Retrieved 20 January 2012.
  4. ^ Todd, James G. "Social Realism". Art Terms. Museum of Modern Art, 2009.
  5. ^ Korin, Pavel, “Thoughts on Art”, Socialist Realism in Literature and Art. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971, p. 95.
  6. ^ "Social Realism". Retrieved 2008-05-04.
  7. ^ "Everything you need to know about Kitchen Sink Dramas - Reader's Digest". www.readersdigest.co.uk.
  8. ^ MacCabe, Colin. "A Taste of Honey: Northern Accents". The Criterion Collection.
  9. ^ Ford, Lynsey. "11 Films That Explore The British Class System". Culture Trip.
  10. ^ "Art UK". Retrieved 2024-04-10.
  11. ISBN 978-0-19-923965-8
  12. ^ "John Bratby 1928–1992". Tate. Retrieved 6 January 2014.
  13. ^ "Jack Smith obituary". the Guardian. 2011-06-17. Retrieved 2022-10-26.
  14. ^ Archer, William (January 1, 2004). "Play-Making: A Manual of Craftsmanship" – via Project Gutenberg.
  15. ^ J L Styan, Modern Drama in Theory and Practice I, quoted by Innes (2000, 7).
  16. ^ John Russell Taylor. Anger and After, 1962, London: Methuen.
  17. ^ "Legacy of Cathy Come Home should fuel fury over homelessness". the Guardian. 2016-05-20. Retrieved 2022-10-26.
  18. ^ Schudel, Matt (August 3, 2011). "Stan Barstow, British author of 'A Kind of Loving,' dies at 83". The Washington Post.
  19. ^ Mitchell, W., "When kitchen-sink drama revolutionised British cinema," The Telegraph, 11 July 2017. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  20. S2CID 96470436
    .
  21. ^ "A ★★★½ review of Sparrows Can't Sing (1963)". letterboxd.com.
  22. ^ "Georgy Girl". Empire. April 5, 2006.
  23. ^ "Where to begin with kitchen sink drama". British Film Institute.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kitchen_sink_realism&oldid=1220779522"