Social realism research

Social realism is an artistic movement that portrays contemporary social, political or economic conditions in a way that is as realistic as possible.

Social realism is just one of many art movements. It is usually expressed in a visual way. Social realism represents the harsh realities of today’s society with no added glorification. For example, racism and poverty in shocking, ‘in your face’ images of life’s struggles. This genre focuses on heroic working class people’s activities using realistic settings, events, situations and experiences. These images are usually in the forms of paintings or photographs.

Social realism in film originated as part of the Italian neorealism movement, with such film makers as Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. However, British social realism in film surfaced in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. At this time, this genre was commonly referred to as the British New Wave.

Social realism in film is considered Britain’s main form of cinematic style. One of the very first British films to highlight social protest as a valuable part of socialism was a 1902 film made by a man called James Williamson, the film was called ‘A reservist Before The War, and After The War’. This particular film depicted the cruel, unforgiving reality of brave servicemen returning home after the Boer War to lives of poverty as they became unemployed, even though they fought tooth and nail for their country.

The phrase ‘Social Realism’ implies the portrayal of real life events. Social realism portrays British society – us as ourselves - ‘normal’ human beings, who face everyday domestic and social challenges, in film, for example, the film ‘This Is England’ (by Film4) shows us British people of that time, the mid 1980’s to ourselves.

Realism and social realism are both linked to each other because both realism and social realism involves an aesthetic judgement of how the vision of reality has been produced, as well as how it relates to, or is in dialogue with, other representations because they both relate to real life dealings.

Although realism and social realism are similar in some ways, they are dissimilar in other ways too. This is because realism links in with other traditions as well as some specific films, however, social realism stands better as a genre on its own. This is because social realism can not be linked to any other film genre and still work in the same way. This is because the genre of social realism is specific and would therefore, not work well with other genres to produce a hybrid.

Social realism is a genre that is known and recognised across the world in various traditions. For example, social realism was embraced by Hindi cinematic films in the 1940’s-1950’s.

The U.S.A was one of the last countries to accept the genre of social realism on a wide scale. The acceptance of this genre of film for America was down to someone called Kine Weekly. They said that the U.S.A ‘must aim at the box office and not the art gallery’. This quote simplified, suggests that the U.S.A needed to diversify from its old ways of representing social realism which was more through the use of paintings rather than cinematic films of current times.

France, however, still prefers to express its ideas of social realism in artistic pictures and photographs. This is because France introduced this style of painting in the mid 1800’s as a reaction to predominate the Romantic Movement of this time in France, so this country may feel they have to keep up the tradition.

Social realism films have their own style, such  as the portrayal of real life, with all settings, props, story lines and characters as naturalistic as possible.

Some of the themes and issues raised in social realism films are poverty, crime, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, life’s daily struggles and relationships.