This Is England

Over the past two and a half media lessons we have watched This Is England. This Is England is directed by Shane Meadows. The film is set in 1983 and was released in 2006. The film is followed by 3 series that are each set 2 years apart and show the character progression. This is England showcases the many racial difficulties at the time and realistically shows what it was like, for some people, to grow up in the 80s. The film follows the life’s of a group of ‘skin heads’ living in a town in the Midlands. The leader of the gang is called Woody, who sees a young lad called Shaun walking home from school upset and from this Woody decides to adopt him into the group. As the group adapts to having Shaun as a new member and start to like him and accept him, they are disturbed by an old friend of Woody’s called Combo, who returns from prison to surprise Woody. Combo tries to rekindle his friendship with Woody but with them having so much time apart it becomes apparent that they have both changed. However Combo has changed to become very patriotic and ‘proud’ to be British and through this he is a very racist character which upsets the only black member of the group, Milky, and along with upsetting Milky, Combo also upsets a lot of other members in the group creating a group divide. This divide eventually causes a lot of pain and upset and leads to Combo brutally attacking Milky. 

I enjoyed watching This is England and feel it successfully handled the racial issues of the early 80s and provokes the realisation of how much things have changed since then. The storyline to This is England did well with playing with the audiences emotions and made you really empathise with the characters. Since watching This is England in class, I have started watching the following TV series Shane Meadows has made and hope they are just as good as the film.