The Demotic Impulse of the Kitchen-Sink Dramas

Abstract

In this article, I suggest a historical and theoretical re-evaluation of the British New Wave from the point of view of its demotic impulse. I begin by situating the kitchen-sink films within a broader framework of post-war innovation, driven by an aspiration to realism that reinvigorated British cinema and television within a novel historical conjuncture. I then investigate the specificity of British New Wave’s realism – with an emphasis on the films Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and A Taste of Honey – and consider their contribution to the development of an indigenous aesthetic, characterised by a demotic impulse. The relevance of the notion of demotic in the post-war cultural panorama can be attributed to the ‘equalising’ powers of the Second World War. As I will suggest, a prolific parallel can be established with another moment of historical transition during what Eric Hobsbawm called ‘the age of revolution’, in which the spirit of egalitarianism equally lay at the root of the search for a demotic. Here, I will focus on William Wordsworth’s poetic revolution to investigate the notions of egalitarianism and of demotic, which I believe can further our understanding of post-war realism in the British audio-visual landscape.