@article{ART001798084},
author={KIM, YOO},
title={The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer},
journal={Journal of Modern English Drama},
issn={1226-3397},
year={2013},
volume={26},
number={2},
pages={145-171}
TY - JOUR
AU - KIM, YOO
TI - The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer
JO - Journal of Modern English Drama
PY - 2013
VL - 26
IS - 2
PB - 한국현대영미드라마학회
SP - 145
EP - 171
SN - 1226-3397
AB - If Thatcherism attempted to recast and forge new relationships between past and present, the people and the state, and between people themselves, the plays of Edgar, Hare, Churchill, Brenton and Griffiths in the 1980s were a crucial ideological intervention against the Thatcherite hegemony of the repressive constructions of the nation. What distinguished the works of Griffiths and Edgar in the 1980s from those of other political dramatists was their vigorous exploration of the dilemmas which concern the agents of social change in Thatcher’s Britain. Swerving away from a simple, agitprop critique of the values of the Thatcherite ideology, the plays of Edgar and Griffiths reflect the sense of crisis in Labourism during the 1980s.
The plays of Griffiths and Edgar provide an acutely penetrating picture of conflicting class identities or motivations in the 1980s. Focusing on the changing political circumstances and the subsequent class identities/formations in the plays, this paper explores the dramatists’ growing concern with the political capacities of revolutionary agents in the 1980s.
In Griffiths’s Oi for England(1982) and Edgar’s That Summer(1987), class consciousness is seen as the central key to explore people’s motives and to determine their political actions. The two plays are the immediate and urgent response to the fierce confrontations in Thatcher’s Britain, respectively the racial conflicts of 1981 and the miners’ strikes between 1984 and 1985. Oi for England is an investigation of the relationship between working-class culture and racism in the Thatcherite climate, whereas That Summer is a critical debate on what motivates the self-employed middle-class intelligentsia in face of the travails of the striking miners. These two plays, taken together and set against each other, successfully raise a larger critical debate about the possibility of cultural bonding between different classes.
KW - Thatcherism;Trevor Griffiths;David Edgar;class identity;working-class racism;middle-class revolutionary;political motivation
DO -
UR -
ER -
KIM, YOO. (2013). The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer. Journal of Modern English Drama, 26(2), 145-171.
KIM, YOO. 2013, "The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer", Journal of Modern English Drama, vol.26, no.2 pp.145-171.
KIM, YOO "The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer" Journal of Modern English Drama 26.2 pp.145-171 (2013) : 145.
KIM, YOO. The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer. 2013; 26(2), 145-171.
KIM, YOO. "The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer" Journal of Modern English Drama 26, no.2 (2013) : 145-171.
KIM, YOO. The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer. Journal of Modern English Drama, 26(2), 145-171.
KIM, YOO. The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer. Journal of Modern English Drama. 2013; 26(2) 145-171.
KIM, YOO. The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer. 2013; 26(2), 145-171.
KIM, YOO. "The Political Theatre of Trevor Griffiths and David Edgar in the 1980s: Changing Class Identities in Oi for England and That Summer" Journal of Modern English Drama 26, no.2 (2013) : 145-171.
