An Evaluation of Views of the City and Nostalgic, Unreconstructed Forms of Working Class Masculinity Found in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000).
The release of both Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Ritchie, 1998) in 1998 and Snatch (Ritchie, 2000) in 2000 came at a crucial time in the state of masculinity in Britain; when it was under scrutiny in Britain. These two seminal Guy Ritchie texts came around in a period where new ideals of masculinity were being developed and the rise of feminism, as it entered its third wave, meant that “women made increasingly confident inroads into the workforce, especially in the white-collar and service industries” (Monk, 1999: 179) leaving many British males, unemployed and emasculated. This was reflected on film and Ritchie, a new voice in British cinema, felt it was necessary to revise the representation of masculinity. As Spicer suggests, “British culture’s central type has been the gentleman, a product not of modernity and the city, but of tradition” (Spicer, 1999: 83). This is directly opposed with the criminal underclass, ‘wide-boy’ characters featured in Ritchie’s works, representative of the New Lad lifestyle storming Britain in the late 1990s, as “one answer to current male fears of women, a misogynist response to a post-feminist male panic” (Spicer, 2003: 192). The importance of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels cannot be understated, “with its ethos of irreverent New Laddism, it had a resonance that enabled it to transcend its meagre budget and sketchy plot and appeal to a much larger audience. Its success at the box office released the pent-up enthusiasm for British crime films that had been fostered by magazines such as Loaded, Uncut and Total Film” (Murphy, 2009: 397) as well as the formulation of the idealist new man, the Richard Curtis texts and heritage films of the 1990s, the rise of third wave feminism and the impact of 1960s and 1970s cinema presenting latent forms of masculinity. The relationship between masculinity and film in this period is one that I am going to explore in this essay, focusing primarily on Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, as it marks one of the first real explosions of the new lad lifestyle in cinema, but I will still be remarking upon the importance of Snatch and other 1990s British crime texts. I will be exploring the way the city is represented in these texts and the significance of that representation in British cinema. I will also discuss elements of masculinity regarding the contrast to other British cinema in the 1990s, the impact of New Laddism, the worth of nostalgia for pre-feminist masculinity to these texts and the effect that these representations had on British cinema following the huge successes of these texts.
Firstly, I will unpack the idea of “an excremental vision of the city” within Ritchie’s texts. The image of London, and Britain in general, had been frequently fantasised and glorified in the heritage texts of the decade but also the Richard Curtis produced romantic-comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (Newell, 1994) and Notting Hill (Michell, 1999). They provided an ideal, beautiful backdrop for the narrative to unfold such as picturesque countryside Somerset and rural Scotland in Four Weddings alone. Whereas Ritchie chooses to portray the underworld of Britain and in particular London. Though, it is obvious due to the strong Cockney slang that these films are set in London; “locations are chosen for their generic suggestiveness rather than their specificity of place. Instead of expansive tourist vistas, we are shown the more claustrophobic village London – a world of minicabs and sex shops, spielers and lock-ups, pawnbrokers and bookies, and tarted-up pubs with bare brickwork and stripped floors” (Chibnall, 2009: 378). The image created here is one of imperfection, a culture that spawns the types of characters we see, but at the same time embrace the setting, for any complaint or desire to move to suburbia would be seen as effeminate, weak and ‘un-laddish’. This is not seen as problematic and is instead celebrated, something that is shown continuously throughout Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels as the portrayal of urban working-class masculinity is regressive from its portrayal of men to the complete absence of women. Furthermore, the concept of a lack in employment for men is reflected in the setting and environment; “Ritchie’s ladland can be seen as regressive in a number of senses. It is an environment in which conventional paid employment has been largely eliminated, or is confined to repressive jobs such as being a policeman or traffic warden” (Chibnall, 2009: 377). This is shown in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels when a traffic warden is shown to be weak and inferior to the male criminal class, being made to be the brunt of a long-lasting joke of the narrative. The chase of a large sum of money and narcotics in Lock, Stock or the hunt for an 86-carat diamond is seen as more desirable than roles such as this, chiefly because the well-paid jobs in the parts of London we are never shown in these texts, have been purportedly taken by women. “Crucially, Ritchie’s lads need to learn not to work for someone else, or as Turkish puts it, be in someone else’s pocket” (Dave, 2006: 23) helping to show men at the time that it did not matter which part of the city you lived in or if you were unemployed. Those elements did not mean that you did not reach the definition of a man, which is what many feared, so says the cultural rhetoric. Instead you were the new lad of ‘Cool Britannia’, like the famous images in Loaded and countless others and even more importantly like your favourite film characters. The pessimistic, cynical look at the British city is presented slightly differently in Snatch. All of the ideas that Lock, Stock portrays are echoed, however there is an extra element in the depiction of America alongside London. One of the American characters is opposed to going to London and frequently makes a mockery of elements of the city as opposed to a glamorised, utopian view of America; making Britain look even worse in comparison. Ritchie portrays the vision of Britain in a way that the American audiences are unfamiliar to as they are, arguably, more accustomed with the Curtis pictures released in partnership with their own production companies. Ritchie can stretch the usual representation of Britain because of this interaction with America. He, perhaps, uses the character and the country overall as a guide or passenger for those audiences to latch onto and reduce the culture shock. However, the significance of this is that it does expose a new audience to the ideas that Ritchie wants in his texts. This is important in the context of Snatch as it is arguably where Ritchie begins to appeal to a more international audience; something that the romantic comedies of the 1990s did and an aspect that Ritchie opposed in 1998.
Prior to exploring the representation of masculinity by Ritchie, I feel that it is important and necessary to define what is meant by unreconstructed forms of masculinity. This refers in essence to masculinities not currently in line with the political or ethical sentiment of the time. However, the term does also create problematic connotations with certain forms of masculinity without the full exploration of their construction. This is supported by key speakers on masculinities such as Connell stating, “it is impossible to understand the shaping of working-class masculinities without giving full weight to their class as well as their gender politics” (Connell, 2005: 75). This is important here in that, despite masculinity having developed to be less dominant and controlling in marriage, the workplace and in society in general, the shifts in the economic and political environment allowed for these forms of masculinity to re-emerge.
The persona of the new lad personified in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels by the lead ensemble is the backlash, not only to the cinema of the 1990s, but also the societal pressures of the time as well. “The main media-led fashion in masculinity in the late 1980s/early 1990s, the new man – characterised in a frenzy of media discussion as supportive, in touch with his emotions, keen to share equally in the predominantly female burdens of childcare and housework and open to spending money on his appearance” (Monk, 2000: 158) is in total contrast with the attitudes of New Laddism. The image of the new man was idealised by the feminist movement in this era, and many of these qualities were criticised by publications such as Loaded for their effeminate qualities. An argument that as the male was losing power in the workplace, the media was attempting to remove the patriarchy altogether, something that the 1990s male feared and dreaded. As a result of this, it is argued that instead of adapting, some men began to look back at nostalgic images of masculinity in the 1960s and 1970s. Texts such as Get Carter (Hodges, 1971)were “enhanced by the creation of retrospective ancillary publicity during the 1990s” (Sydney-Smith, 2006: 89) and canonised as crucial genre texts by magazine culture. This was then, by nature, reflected in cinema and most obviously so in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but adapted into the evolving culture of regressive masculinity. “Lock, Stock Anglicised its ingredients, raiding the familiar elements of the British gangster tradition in its parade of lurid Cockney mobsters fighting it out with pastiche Scousers, catatonic middle-class dope dealers, and the dreadlocked black villains beloved of tabloid crime reporting” (Spicer, 2003: 192). It could be argued that Ritchie does little else than take the qualities of the 1960s working-class male and place them within a modern society and offering “contemporary anxieties of class and gender to express themselves as an admiring emulation of a stylish, masculinist, often ‘unrespectable’ individualism of the past” (Dave, 2006: 84).
The Ritchie texts such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels were an important revival of a genre that had lost a huge amount of its popularity in Britain since The Long Good Friday (Mackenzie, 1980)in 1980. Instead “as a brand, British cinema was trading in a narrow and aging market. Its image was chiefly art-house, with a populist leavening of sophisticated comedy and romance” (Chibnall, 2001: 38). This is where the idea of opposition comes in, as these texts directly contrast this familiar depiction of Britain and the people within it. The characterisation of the new lad is a direct antidote to the Curtis texts of the 1990s, where the British male is personified by Hugh Grant’s received pronunciation, bumbling and nervous characters. This is captured perfectly when Monk summarises that “a far wider range of representations with affinities to the new man ideal can be found in the shy, weak, flustered and overtly proto-feminist male heroes and lovers of 1990s post-heritage period dramas” (Monk, 2000: 159). It is no surprise that after the influence then of magazine culture and the re-emergence of classic 1960s gangster texts that Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels reached such a wide audience, despite the fact that Ritchie was an unknown director and its budget was relatively small. There is also the argument that the characters within the Curtis and Grant texts were produced and made popular by American influence, as “these films are indicative of attempts by British producers to forge closer working relationships between British and American film production companies, and to demonstrate that British cinema was capable of producing films with wide international appeal” (Mather, 2006: 1). This is then important for the success of a text like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels as it places so much emphasis on the British outlook, the emotions of the British male and the social environment of Britain. This also supports the idea of nostalgia even further, as this is indicative of, not only the gangster films of the 1960s, but also the Free Cinema Movement films in their important representation of the working-class.
Finally, I want to focus on the representation of Britain past the Ritchie texts and the overall importance of their focus on working-class masculinities and depiction of the city. Directly following this 90s gangster film cycle, British cinema focused much less on the identity of men but continued the vision of the city that Ritchie explores, “hence the destruction of Parliament in V for Vendetta, the fantasy of post-apocalyptic Britain in 28 Days Later and hence the desire to see the St. George’s Cross not waving but drowning in This Is England” (Brown, 2009: 415). The continued evolution of this idea and the gradual decrease in the new lad lifestyle on film could be derived from an increase in popularity of the metrosexual male. The metrosexual is a development from the new man, a more realistic and accepted form of a more feminised masculinity, it describes someone takes pride in their appearance and is more consumerist than even the new lad and was personified best by someone such as David Beckham. This is movement away from the “humorous, hedonistic and above all regressive escape from the demands of maturity – and women” (Monk, 2000: 162) of the new lad. This is captured well on film in the British comedy, Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004), in which the protagonist transforms from a problematic new lad who spends his time at the pub, much like the new lads of the 1990s. The character subsequently transforms into a metrosexual, caring family man with much more focus on his own appearance and his setting. This therefore parallels the fluctuating state of masculinity in working-class Britain across a very small period of time between the late 1990s and early 2000s and a great example of how Britain has progressed from the depiction of masculinities that Ritchie shows in his texts.
In conclusion, the texts of Guy Ritchie do fundamentally use the setting and portrayal of masculinity as a vital part of their construction and in turn, huge success. The films’ “uncomplicated, confident masculine style appealed to both working- and middle-class males” (Spicer, 2003: 192) and helped to breed a new culture. The sentimental yearning for a representation of undeveloped masculinity, fostered by a “perceived crisis in male economic power and gender privilege” (Monk, 2000: 157), was met. The combination of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and the community created by magazine culture meant the new lad earned a reputation as an oppositional force against the rise in the new wave of feminism, lack of jobs and the manufacture of the new man. “The new lads endurance suggested that his media inventors had astutely tapped into a male mood (and a new lifestyle market, older and more affluent that the word lad implied) already latent in the culture” (Monk, 2000: 162). The continuation of genre elements from films such as Get Carter and The Long Good Friday reminded men of a time where masculinity was apparently much stronger and the problems they were facing at the time did not exist. This made the texts created by Ritchie desirable and the ideas within them popular, forcing the ideas of masculinity and the city to be recognised further than the magazine culture that had inspired them. The texts stand out as a fresh, new representation of Britain as a whole in its way of showing a disreputable side of a professed glamorous London, and by using the nostalgic images of old gangsters to “inscribe into their dramatic schema the broad social upheavals of the late twentieth century” (Chibnall, 2001: 42). However, despite the progression in the portrayal of masculinity in British cinema, the desire for nostalgic images of toxic 1960s and 1970s working-class masculinities have not disappeared. Harkin notes that as far back as 2006: “the touchy-feely adult heterosexual they had begun to call a metrosexual had been rugby-tackled by a new kind of hard man. Much in the same way that the preening, sarong-sporting David Beckham was head-butted out of the limelight by Zinedine Zidane in the World Cup, the metrosexual had been replaced by something more solid – a man’s man” (Harkin, 2006: 22). This is something supported by Ritchie’s return to the gangland laddist film with the upcoming release of The Gentlemen (Ritchie, 2020). Ritchie even casts Hugh Grant, the image of the new man romantic comedies in the 1990s, in one of its key roles. This is particularly important as it shows the major impact that Ritchie’s vision has left on society and British film, as the Curtis pictures now are dissimilar to how they were, and Ritchie is still showing an excremental ‘vision of the city’ and proudly displays ‘unreconstructed forms of masculinity.’
References:
Brown, W. (2009). Not Flagwaving but Flagdrowning, or Postcards from Post-Britain. In R. Murphy (Ed.), The British Cinema Book (3rd ed.), (pp. 408-416). London: BFI.
Chibnall. S. (2001). Britain’s Funk-Soul Brothers: Gender, Family and Nation in the New Brit-Pics. Cineaste, 26(4), 38-42.
Chibnall. S. (2009). Travels in Ladland: The British Gangster Cycle, 1998-2001. In. R. Murphy (Ed.), The British Cinema Book (3rd ed.) (pp. 375-386). London: BFI.
Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity.
Dave, P. (2006). Visions of England: Class and Culture in Contemporary Cinema. Oxford: Berg.
Harkin, J. (2006, 16 September). The return of the real man, ‘manly men’ are elbowing the metrosexual male aside in films, books and advertising. But is this the comeback of traditional masculinity all that it seems?. The Financial Times.
Hodges, M. (Director). (1971). Get Carter. [Film]. UK: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios.
Mackenzie, J. (Director). (1980). The Long Good Friday. [Film]. UK: Black Lion Films.
Mather, N. (2006). Tears of Laughter: Comedy-Drama in 1990s British Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Michell, R. (Director). (1999). Notting Hill. [Film]. UK: Polygram Filmed Entertainment.
Monk, C. (1999). From Underworld to Underclass: Crime and British Cinema in the 1990s. In R. Murphy (Ed.), British Crime Cinema (pp. 177-193).
Monk, C. (2000). Men in the 1990s. In R. Murphy (Ed.), British Cinema of the 90s (pp. 156-166). London: BFI.
Murphy, R. (2009). Bright Hopes, Dark Dreams: A Guide to New British Cinema. In R. Murphy (Ed.), The British Cinema Book (3rd ed.) (pp. 395-407). London: BFI.
Newell, M. (Director). (1994). Four Weddings and a Funeral. [Film]. UK: Polygram Filmed Entertainment.
Ritchie, G. (Director). (1998). Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. [Film]. UK: SKA Films.
Ritchie, G. (Director). (2000). Snatch. [Film]. UK: SKA Films.
Ritchie, G. (Director). (2020). The Gentlemen. [Film]. USA: Miramax.
Spicer, A. (1999). The Emergence of the British Tough Guy: Stanley Baker, Masculinity and the Crime Thriller. In R. Murphy (Ed.), British Crime Cinema (pp. 83-95).
Spicer, A. (2003). Typical Men: Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema (2nd ed.). London: I.B. Tauris
Sydney-Smith, S, (2006). Changing Places: Touring the British Crime Film. Tourist Studies, 6(1), 79-94. DOI: 10.1177/ 1468797606071478
Wright, E. (Director). (2004). Shaun of the Dead. [Film]. UK: StudioCanal.
Connor Clarke Film 