When the name, Richard
Curtis, is brought to mind, one instantly thinks of confetti-ridden happy
endings, gleaming wedding gowns and the several key questions that float around
his scripts: what makes us English and what is the English ideal? Yet his
romantic comedies can be seen to neglect a comprehensive vision of English
society, ignoring the working class and solely focussing on the educated, moneyed
elite.
This year marks the
twentieth anniversary of Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), arguably Curtis’s
most popular and successful screenplay. In this film, along with several of his
others, the Oxford-educated screenwriter seemingly sets out to portray the
quintessential English life, playing with twee stereotypes and middle-class caricatures
to cement an idea of what it means to be English. Many jokes are centred on
this thought during the narrative, such as when Hugh Grant’s protagonist, Charles,
remarks: “Do you think there really are people who can just go up and say,
"Hi, babe. Name's Charles. This is your lucky night?"” To which
Matthew responds: “Well, if there are, they're not English.” This self-aware
and self-referential comedy is a key feature of Curtis’s scripts.
Yet this hazy,
idealistic, middle-class bubble of ‘true’ English life is only broken at one
instance, in Four Weddings, to represent a lower class environment.
Significantly, the only moment that does delve into this territory is when the
only funeral of the film takes place. Black smoke billows from the factory
chimneys as the characters line up in black to mourn their friend, Gareth. Not
only does this distinct working class environment and industrial, grey backdrop
mirror the tragedy of the death of the extravagant and high-spirited character,
it also implicitly associates darkness, poverty and misery with the working
class. In the dense midst of weddings, four to be precise, happiness and
moneyed comfort, this class distinction is even more prominent.
There is a marked
difference when we compare Curtis’s depiction to the work of other contemporary
British screenwriters who inject comedy, colour and vibrancy into their working
class representations. Shane Meadows, another prominent British film maker, portrays
a contrasting exploration of class in his films, most notably in This is England,
the film (2006) and TV series (2010-). This is
England '90 is due out this year. Though
often dealing with the bleak, harsh realities that his characters have to face,
his scripts are scattered with light-hearted relief and humorous fun through
the escapades of Woody and company, in a thoroughly working-class and grittily
realistic environment. This is far removed from the dreamy, middle class,
English ideal of Four Weddings.
Perhaps this avoidance
of working-class reality in Curtis’s creations is for the benefit of the
American audience. Around 20 to 30 per cent of his films' global grosses regularly come from the US. The stereotypical American
perspective of British culture made up of toffs, suits, appealing eccentricity
and clipped plummy accents is central. Hugh Grant has immortalised this
charming, bumbling Brit forever. For audiences across the pond, these films show
a glamorised English world of sunshine, sentiment and confetti. It is also important to note that the central
love interest in many of Curtis’s imaginary worlds is an American outsider. This
is an archetypal character in Curtis’s back catalogue and comes in the form of
Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings, Julia Roberts in Notting Hill (1999) and Rachel
McAdams in About Time (2013). They act as a counterpart to their English lover,
the enchanting foreigner, who further highlights the ‘Englishness’ surrounding
them.
About Time contains all
the traditional features in trend with his previous films. Domhnall Gleeson,
plays the Hugh Grant equivalent looking for love, in this story of well-off
individuals in a white-dominant community. It is optimistic, with not even a
whisper of financial hardship or day-to-day problems. With money never being an
issue the protagonist can just worry about the important things in life, like
falling in love.
Whether it is snobbery
or a comforting ideal of domesticated life, this dreamy, one-sided version of
British life is limited and only inhabits the white, middle class. Ethnic
minorities are hidden from view and most strikingly so in Notting Hill. The real
London borough is diverse and multi-cultural yet in Curtis’s representation it
appears to be comprised, once again, of people of white, middle-class origins.
So it appears that Curtis’s films are less about class divide and more about
certain class avoidance. They are feel-good films for a certain middle-class
audience about people who make up that middle-class audience themselves.
First published on Screen Robot at http://screenrobot.com/author/katie-avis-riordan/
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