‘Where you from, you sexy thing?’ Popular Music, Space and Masculinity in The Full Monty

Abstract

Questions of class, masculinity and diversity are a recurrent theme in debates about The Full Monty (1997) but, despite their prominent role in the story, songs are not discussed as a significant element in the film's representation of white working-class masculinity. In this article, I examine The Full Monty's soundtrack, showing how the characters’ wounded masculinities are (re)constructed through music and considering the connotative baggage brought into the film by songs, often heard through visible devices which act as a signifier alongside the music. Songs of other non-dominant identities – women, non-white and queer – enhance The Full Monty's audiovisually inclusive image, amplifying these identities despite their otherwise problematic representations and serving as a temporary reclamation of damaged white working-class masculinity after the dismantling of heavy industry in post-Thatcher Britain. However, despite its aural reimagining of a diverse working-class masculinity, the way women, non-white and queer characters are represented weakens the musical connections between jobless white men and these non-dominant identities.