'Cathy Comes Home' - How far do the portrayals of the officials as heartless and the 'likeable' main characters make this documentary biased and propagandist?

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‘Cathy Comes Home’ – How far do the portrayals of the officials as heartless and the ‘likeable’ main characters make this documentary biased and propagandist?

The documentary ‘Cathy Comes Home’ was purposely made to raise awareness of the housing situations going on in 1966, and highlighted the difficulties of living.  This is shown through the eyes of Cathy, a young woman battling against poverty but slides into homelessness while at the same time having a growing family to support and care for.

        The opening shot is an image of Cathy waiting to cross a road.  There is a typical, happy 60’s song acting as a non-diagetic background song underneath the sound of traffic driving past, which we can also see, moving across the shot.  Cathy’s facial expressions are happy and carefree, which creates a good impression to the viewer and this portrayal continues throughout the documentary.  We learn more about this character once she is looking at the town around her whilst in a car, with a voice-over on the clip.  She informs the viewer of her thoughts on the town and her past experiences there of being touched up by a man for example, leading the viewer to believe she may have had a tough life so far.  Quick shots of the town’s people notifies the viewer that this is a working class area with a range of average citizens.  So the documentary will most likely be in relation to this type of people.

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        The positive image of Cathy is enhanced when we see her enjoying young love with her boyfriend, Reg.  While close up’s of them kissing are showing on the screen, romantic music is playing in the background to give a happy and comfortable feeling.  We then see them together walking through a park talking about their bright future ahead of them however the camera moves down as they do this to show a homeless man sleeping on a bench.  This sends the viewer an underlying message of poverty and that Cathy and Reg’s happiness will be short lived.  There is next ...

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