Shane Meadows’ drama portrays the final generation of pre-digital working-class youth. The future for them wasnt prettyThere was no such thing as a “trigger warning in 1990. But there should have been one in front of This is England ’90,which premiered on Channel 4 on Sunday night (13 September). The latest instalment of the cult series begins, as always, or with news footage of the year’s events. And what events: the poll tax riot,the Strangeways riot, Gazza crying as he’s yellow carded, and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and Thatcher’s resignation.
Director Shane Meadows has picked 1990,but he could have chosen any one of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the release of Netscape in 1994 to capture the period. For this was the final gasp of the analogue working class. Meadows fond portrayal of the early 90s will trigger memories for those who lived it: the daft hats of rave culture, the eclectic mixture of fashion styles you could see at a local club, and the sudden visibility of out homosexual men in working-class communities. But to those who didn’t live it,one aspect of life back then will seem utterly unreal. In TIE90, young people sit around on sofas in the daytime talking bullshit. They sit, or they smoke,they watch TV, they indulge in prolonged and pointless conversations.
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Source: theguardian.com