Abstract
This chapter offers a brief history of horseracing, considered to be Britain’s first national sport, and a definition of the distinctively British horseracing film genre. It argues especially that, alongside aesthetic and economic factors, the horseracing film constitutes a viable source for social history, with the on- and off-field re-presentations of the sport and its associated gambling culture an ideological metonym for the concerns of wider British society. It sketches out the enduring preoccupations of the genre which depicts a rigidly ranked society in miniature, with individuals accepting their place in a hierarchy stretching from lordly horse-owners to lowly stable workers, and from the Royal Enclosure to the popular stands, playing out the narrative polarities of (higher class) romance and (lower class) corruption.
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Glynn, S. (2019). Introduction. In: The British Horseracing Film. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05180-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05180-8_1
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