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The ‘Liberal Left’ Response to Twenty-First Century Nationalism: Le Week-end (2013) and I, Daniel Blake (2016)

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Nationalism in Contemporary Western European Cinema

Part of the book series: Palgrave European Film and Media Studies ((PEFMS))

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Abstract

Nick Pearce has argued in the New Statesman that, ‘The liberal left cannot retreat to the comforts of moral outrage and political protest. The new times demand a progressive engagement with the politics of identity and belonging, as well as renewed radicalism on economic policy and social protection’ (Pearce 2016). Given this situation, how have British filmmakers (challengingly characterised by Ken Loach, in accepting an award for I, Daniel Blake at the British Academy Film Awards, as being ‘with the people’ and against ‘the rich and the powerful, the wealthy and the privileged’ [Loach 2017]) responded to conservative voices of protectionism and an increasing confidence within right-wing European groups? What has been British cinema’s response to Pearce’s call for ‘a progressive engagement with the politics of identity and belonging’? What are the possibilities for UK filmmakers necessarily needing to place their work within the current European political context? This chapter will attempt to consider these questions through an examination of two films: Le Week-end (Roger Michell 2013) and I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach 2016).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Frequently, as with these examples, the starting point might be seen as an attempted reclamation of history, a determined shaping of the socio-historical contexts within which it is suggested the contemporary political landscape needs to be viewed. Le Week-end considers the present through the lens of the political activism of the 1960s. I, Daniel Blake sees the contemporary situation through the lens of a post-war, consensually agreed, welfare state.

  2. 2.

    ‘Political power, then, I take to be the right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property’ (Wootton 1993: 262). In his introduction to this book, Wootton makes it clear that for Locke ‘although the world was given to all men in common, men can by labour appropriate private property without having to obtain the consent of their fellow commoners’ (1993: 81).

  3. 3.

    ‘that which begins and actually constitutes any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society’ (1993: 311).

  4. 4.

    ‘global activity is projected to contract by 1.3 percent in 2009. This represents the deepest post-World War II recession by far. Moreover, the downturn is truly global: output per capita is projected to decline in countries representing three-quarters of the global economy’ (International Monetary Fund 2009: xii).

  5. 5.

    It should be recognised that in positioning themselves in this way in relation to relatively recent historical periods, both films run the risk of doing nothing more than championing nostalgia for a (believed to be) now lost, (British) past.

  6. 6.

    In its opening weekend in October 2013 Le Week-end took £324,000 and played in 124 cinemas (Gant 2013). It never played in more than 127 cinemas and by its sixth weekend on the circuit it was down to less than 20 cinemas (‘Le Week-end’. Box Office Mojo). In its opening weekend in October 2016 I, Daniel Blake took more than £400,000 from 94 cinemas (Gant 2016). By its third week this film had moved out to 273 cinemas and had taken more than £2 million, making it the biggest ever opening in the UK for one of Loach’s films. In its sixth week I, Daniel Blake was still playing at more than 120 cinemas, although figures dropped off after that date (’I, Daniel Blake.’ Box Office Mojo). Le Week-end did almost as much business in cinemas in the USA as it did in the UK. I, Daniel Blake did almost a third more business in France than it did in the UK. In the first instance, having Jeff Goldblum in the cast was presumably a factor and, in the second instance, winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival will have had an impact.

  7. 7.

    ‘the kind of gentle melancholy comedy after which you leave the cinema not sure quite how depressed you are supposed to be feeling’ (Bradshaw 2013).

  8. 8.

    For example, L’Implorante/The Implorer (1898–1905), La Valse/The Waltz (1889–1905), La Vague/The Wave (1897–1903).

  9. 9.

    There is a whole study to be written about bodies in relation to this film.

  10. 10.

    The extent to which working-class people were actually given increased opportunities to take degrees via the Open University is much debated and disputed (see, for example, Taylor and Steele 2011). However, it is certainly the case that widening working-class participation was the origin of the concept. Taylor and Steele’s book states, for example: ‘in March 1963, a Labour Party study group under Lord Taylor presented a report about the continuing exclusion from higher education of lower-income groups. They ‘proposed an experiment on radio and television: a “University of the Air” for serious, planned, adult education’ (2011: 100).

  11. 11.

    Mechanics’ Institutes formed from 1821 set up their own libraries and from 1850 public libraries began to be provided by local councils (McMenemy 2009: 23–29).

  12. 12.

    Take what you want… I’ll pay,’ says Meg to Nick.

  13. 13.

    There is not the space here to further investigate the relationship of this film’s ‘cosmopolitanism’ to definitions of ‘new cosmopolitanism’ in the social sciences post-1989 but, for the purposes of this chapter, the linkage of ‘new cosmopolitanism’ to liberalism is particularly important. According to Fine: ‘While advocates of the new cosmopolitanism are prepared to acknowledge that nationalism may have had value in the past, not least in the pursuit of anti-colonial struggles or in the building of modern welfare states, they renounce the idea that solidarity ties must be conceptually linked to the nation-state and pronounce the death of nationalism as a normative principle in social integration’ (Fine 2007: 4).

  14. 14.

    London: Winning in a Changing World, Review of the Competitiveness of London’s Financial Centre, described London as ‘a hub for international wholesale finance,’ and ‘a magnet for capital and talented people,’ giving the UK ‘the largest international capital flows of any country in the world’ (Merrill Lynch Europe 2008: 6). In 2014, in the Financial Times, Janan Ganesh identified an ‘insistent feeling’ that ‘London has become too hospitable to foreign (especially Russian) money, too tolerant of various strains of extremism, too indifferent to British citizens priced out of their own capital city.’ The article went on to suggest the rise of the UK Independence Party was ‘ultimately a reaction against everything the city embodies’, but said the city was also ‘the last trump card that Britain has to play within the world’ and that the one ‘globally coveted asset Britain has left is this city’ (Ganesh 2014).

  15. 15.

    Cullen and Lovie record Harriet Martineau in 1840 reporting that, ‘nearly a million pounds had been added to the value of the town by Grainger’s work in just five years’ (2003: 23). J.R. Leifchild, in a book first printed in 1853 by Frank Cass and reprinted again in 1968, highlights Grainger’s approach to opposition to his business plans: ‘Some folk wanted to put a stop to his pulling down the old theatre, and intended to apply for a legal injunction; but within three hours from the sealing of the contract, the chimneys of the theatre were down, and, before any message could have reached London, the whole building had disappeared!’ (Leifchild 1853/2012: 63).

  16. 16.

    In July of the year I, Daniel Blake was filmed ChronicleLive, the online version of the Newcastle Chronicle, reported the unemployment rate in the North East had fallen to 7.4% but this meant it was ‘still by some distance the highest in the country’ (Kelly 2016). Newcastle City Council’s website with its focus on the city itself says: ‘Newcastle has a large number of people who are without work and claiming benefits. This represents 27,870 people or 15.6% of the working age population’ (Newcastle City Council 2017).

  17. 17.

    More recently, while attacking The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Loach 2006) for its simplistic view of history, MacCabe identified Loach as ‘perhaps the most important heir of that realist tradition which finds its roots in Rossellini and its justification in the representation of hitherto unrecognised elements of social reality’ and acknowledged Loach’s ‘unreconstructed left politics’ as ‘an enormous asset in refusing the comforting lies of the present’ (2006: 105).

  18. 18.

    Notice the roles given to servants in these scenes; Stéphane who is condescendingly and dismissively thanked by Morgan while handing out glasses of champagne, the servant who takes Meg and Nick’s coats, and then, Julie, the servant with snacks on a silver salver whose name Morgan repeats several times in what seem to be attempted tones of seduction.

  19. 19.

    For the primary example of this style see Millet’s Les glaneuses/The Gleaners (1857) held in the Musée d’Orsay (Musée d’Orsay, Jean-François Millet – Gleaners, n.p.). ‘Millet’s representation of class strife on a large-scale farm was…uniquely modern in the 1850s’ (Fratello 2003: 686). There was an influx of artists (including Millet) into Barbizon in 1848 during the Year of Revolutions but this was more likely to escape the political turmoil of Paris rather than to come together to emphasise any revolutionary intent in their art.

  20. 20.

    Mouffe describes the mistaken belief that ‘thanks to globalisation and the universalisation of liberal democracy, we can expect a cosmopolitan future bringing peace, prosperity and the implementation of human rights worldwide’ (2005: 1).

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  1. Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    John White

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  1. Independent Scholar, London, United Kingdom

    James Harvey

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White, J. (2018). The ‘Liberal Left’ Response to Twenty-First Century Nationalism: Le Week-end (2013) and I, Daniel Blake (2016). In: Harvey, J. (eds) Nationalism in Contemporary Western European Cinema. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73667-9_2

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