Is Trainspotting representative of a British National Cinema?

Is Trainspotting representative of

a British National Cinema?

“I hate being Scottish. We're the lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some people hate the English, but I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. We can't even pick a decent culture to be colonized by”. So sums up Mark Renton’s pride in his nationality and the stark honesty of the mid nineties masterpiece, Trainspotting. A British film with an undeniably bleak, very British setting and a very British cast. But what is a British film? And more importantly, how does it fall into the category of British National Cinema? The Home Office answers the former as follows; ‘Most people would define a 'British' film with reference to obvious cultural elements such as: a setting in the UK or a focus on British people abroad; a predominantly British cast; a storyline about some aspect of British life or notably by, or based on a work by, a British author.’ ‘The nationalities of scriptwriter, producer, director and, perhaps especially, the 'investment' seem less obviously significant. However, both artistic and financial considerations serve to complicate this issue’ (Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Sixth Report). The film in question undoubtedly adheres to this set of criteria yet it becomes apparent that the purpose of the film is not to promote these aspects as a marketing tool nor the right to brag that this is a great British film but to aid the narrative in every conceivable way and address the many underlying issues at hand. British National Cinema is quite easily identifiable, since Channel Four or now FilmFour started providing such funding, British films have been lent real star power and big budget marketing but the films are almost always set in regions of the UK. An example of British National Cinema often has a very strong regional identity, colloquial dialects and language, settings, characters and events all contribute to this. Trainspotting bears all of these traits yet at the same time delves deeper into the socio-economic situation in Britain at the time at which it was released.

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Trainspotting brilliantly represents the ‘drop out’ culture in Edinburgh, the wasters of society if you will. The setting is a bleak and depressed ‘Thatcherite’ Edinburgh of the 1990's. The film is essentially tracked from the viewpoint of heroin addict Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) and his lowly social circle of junkie friends. From the rock bottom comedown periods of depression and near fatal experiences through withdrawal to the ecstasy and heroine fuelled highs of the clubbing lifestyle. The film’s handful of characters each have a unique role to play and differing reasons for slipping into the murky underworld of drugs. Heroin is shown as both the saviour of their bleak existence as well as the anchor that keeps them from being productive members of society. Renton’s hallucinations provide powerful and fantastical imagery yet again, anchored in the grey, industrial world that Britain is so often depicted as. Trainspotting features black British humour accompanied by devastatingly sad scenes which provoke the viewer to think and care for the unfortunate band of misfits on screen.

On first viewing Trainspotting, it is easy to construe the main and only focus of the film as drug abuse, whether it is glorifying or deterring the usage of these substances is a debate in itself. But the film is also a frank look at youth subculture in Britain and the notion of national division. An obvious subculture of drugs, clubbing, unemployment, educational disadvantage, dead-end jobs and general low class life is apparent throughout the movie and the way in which this subculture movement reacts to the dominant social structure (Renton’s realisation of real world goals prompting his move to London) is the key to the way that Trainspotting is a true example of British National Cinema addressing the obvious issues in British society at the time. To appreciate this, it is important to delve deeper into the socio-economic conditions in Britain at the time.

Britain in the early 1990s was a country going through the repercussions of the ‘Thatcherite’ era. Through her three successive terms, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher had dictated the socio-economic climate, initiating the idea of the free-market economy into the British system. She had all but abolished the Welfare state and concordantly made life for the British working-class much more difficult, facing oppression from market forces and Conservative politics. The emergence of the obvious drug subculture is plain to see in Trainspotting. A response to the problematic working-class life of the early 1990s. In the Trainspotting novel, Mark Renton explains how society tries to impose its own logic onto individuals so as to ‘absorb them into the dominant system’, and that using drugs is a way of refusing what is being forced upon the individual by the system.

Considering the multitude of issues the film tackles, Thatcherism, the critical look at consumerism, the brutally honest portrayal of the class system, Scottish nationalism, the Irish issue, and gender identities, which are being directly or indirectly brought up throughout, it can be argued that drug use is in a sense promoted as a direct reaction to and an escape from, the capitalist British society of the 1990s, represented by all of the aforementioned political and social problems. When looking at the film from this viewpoint, drug addiction can be construed as an ultimate sub cultural attempt to abandon and rebel against the rapidly transforming British society. From a different viewpoint however, drug addiction itself seems to be stripped of any meaning as an understandable practise in the 90s as it cannot offer any precise and logical rationale or any other practical solution for the individual who is somehow supposed to survive in such a society. Basically, whether or not the drug abuse portrayed in Trainspotting is a coherent and distinct sub cultural creation or just a worthless, dangerous habit which makes life even worse for the characters in the film, is unclear. The ambiguity of the film can easily be understood however when one considers Trainspotting as presenting both of these opposing views and leaving the final decision to the viewer. The film’s intention is to present the issues, to let us construe our own idea of how the class system, the ways in which the lacking social system at the time affects these apparently worthless members of society in Britain. It is not a universal message nor a film that could be translated or remade and marketed in other territories but follows all of the underlying messages of Irvine Welsh’s novel and presents them in a most appropriate form; British actors, harsh colloquial dialect, slang and swearing and an indifference to show scenes of a most filthy nature. Britain at its worst.

Despite its very British grounding and socio-economic narrative, Trainspotting also heralded the emergence of a real identifiable Scottish cinema in 1996. The film was fully funded by Channel Four and pitched from the very beginning at an international market. But Trainspotting, unlike many British films, did not make an effort to omit the very negative aspects of national life nor present comical, palatable forms of it seen in films such as The Full Monty. The Scots are quite obviously not portrayed as the kilt wearing, jolly clan of folk so often portrayed in the media. The disappointments in Renton’s life are not purely limited to the harsh conditions of his working-class life, which make him frustrated about his class identity. He is also deprived of a national identity summed up perfectly by the quote at the beginning of this essay. The reason for his rejection and hatred of his national identity is his belief that unlike the Irish, who fought out for their country and eventually took a large part of it back from the English, the Scots let themselves to be colonized by a nation of “wankers”, hence, there are no sources of meaning in his life The film never seems to beat about the bush so to speak, British issues, conflicts, problems, failures in the system and failures in its people are all presented to the world ‘warts and all’, an air of uncensored authenticity via this film makes it, in my opinion, as representative of Britain and British National Cinema as it gets.

Bibliography

EVANS, Eric.J. (2004) Thatcher and Thatcherism. Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis Books Ltd; ISBN: 0415270138
WELSH, Irvine. (1994) Trainspotting. Minerva; ISBN: 0749396067
RICHARDS, Jeffrey. ALDGATE, Anthony (1998) Best of British: Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present. I.B. Tauris; ISBN: 1860642888

Internet Resources

The House of Commons – Culture, media and sport – Sixth Report – http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmcumeds/667/66705.htm

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