Kitchen sink realism

The cultural movement was rooted in the ideals of social realism, an artistic movement expressed in the visual and other realist arts which depicts working-class activities. Many artists who subscribed to social realism were painters with socialist political views.^{[citation needed]} While the movement has some commonalities with Socialist Realism, another style of realism which was the "official art" advocated by the governments of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, the two had several differences. While social realism is a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern,^[4] Socialist realism is characterized by the glorified depiction of socialist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, realistically.^[5]

Unlike Socialist realism, social realism is not an official art produced by or under the supervision of the government. The leading characters are often 'anti-heroes' rather than part of a class to be admired, as in Socialist realism.^{[citation needed]} Typically, protagonists in social realism are dissatisfied with their working-class lives and the world, rather than being idealised workers who are part of a Socialist utopia in the process of creation. As such, social realism allows more space for the subjectivity of the author to be displayed.

Partly, social realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism^{[citation needed]}, which promoted lofty concepts such as the "ineffable" beauty and truth of art and music and even turned them into spiritual ideals. As such, social realism focused on the "ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor." (The quotation is from George Shi, of the University of Fine Arts, Valencia).^[6]

Kitchen sink realism involves working class settings and accents, including accents from Northern England.^[7][8] The films and plays often explore taboo subjects such as adultery, pre-marital sex, abortion, and crime.^[9]

In the United Kingdom, the term "kitchen sink" is derived from expressionist paintings by John Bratby that featured a kitchen sink.^[10] Bratby did various kitchen and bathroom-themed paintings, including three paintings of toilets. Bratby's paintings of people often depicted the faces of his subjects as desperate and unsightly.^[11][12] Kitchen sink realism artists painted everyday objects, such as trash cans and beer bottles. The critic David Sylvester wrote an article in 1954 on trends in recent English art, titled "The Kitchen Sink", in reference to Bratby's picture. Sylvester argued that there was a new interest among young painters in domestic scenes, with stress on the banality of life.^[2] Other artists associated with the kitchen sink style include Derrick Greaves, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smith.^[13]

Before the 1950s, the United Kingdom's working class were often depicted stereotypically in Noël Coward's drawing room comedies and British films.^{[citation needed]} Kitchen sink realism was seen as being in opposition to the "well-made play", the kind which theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once denounced as being set in "Loamshire", of dramatists like Terence Rattigan. "Well-made plays" were a dramatic genre from nineteenth-century theatre which found its early 20th-century codification in Britain in the form of William Archer's Play-Making: A Manual of Craftmanship (1912),^[14] and in the United States with George Pierce Baker's Dramatic Technique (1919).^[15] Kitchen sink works were created with the intention of changing that. Their political views were initially labeled as radical, sometimes even anarchic.^{[citation needed]}

John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956) depicted young men in a way similar to the then-contemporary "Angry Young Men" movement among film and theatre directors. The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. Following the success of the Osborne play, the label "angry young men" was later applied by British media to describe young writers who were characterised by a disillusionment with traditional British society. The hero of Look Back In Anger is a graduate, but he is working in a manual occupation. It dealt with social alienation, the claustrophobia and frustrations of a provincial life on low incomes.^{[citation needed]}

The impact of this work inspired Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, and numerous others, to write plays of their own.^{[citation needed]} The English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, headed by George Devine and Theatre Workshop organised by Joan Littlewood, were particularly prominent in bringing these plays to public attention. Critic John Heilpern wrote that Look Back in Anger expressed such "immensity of feeling and class hatred" that it altered the course of English theatre.^[2] The term "Angry theatre" was coined by critic John Russell Taylor.^[16]

This was all part of the British New Wave—a transposition of the concurrent nouvelle vague film movement in France, some of whose works, such as The 400 Blows of 1959, also emphasised the lives of the urban proletariat. British filmmakers such as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson (see also Free Cinema) channelled their vitriolic anger into filmmaking. Confrontational films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and A Taste of Honey (1961) were noteworthy movies in the genre. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is about a young machinist who spends his wages at weekends on drinking and having a good time, until his affair with a married woman leads to her getting pregnant and him being beaten by her husband's cousins to the point of hospitalisation. A Taste of Honey is about a 16-year-old schoolgirl with an abusive, alcoholic mother. The schoolgirl starts a relationship with a black sailor and gets pregnant. After the sailor leaves on his ship, Jo moves in with a homosexual acquaintance who assumes the role of surrogate father. A Taste of Honey raises the issues of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation.^{[citation needed]}

Later, as many of these writers and directors diversified, kitchen sink realism was adopted by television directors producing television plays. The single play was then a staple of the medium, and Armchair Theatre (1956–68), produced by the ITV contractor ABC, The Wednesday Play (1964–70) and Play for Today (1970–84), both BBC series, contained many works of this kind. Jeremy Sandford's television play Cathy Come Home (1966, directed by Ken Loach for The Wednesday Play slot), for instance, addressed homelessness.^[17]

Kitchen sink realism was used in the novels of Stan Barstow, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, and others.^[18]

Internationally, the kitchen-sink realism style has been used in various films across different cultures. For example, in the United States, such films as Nothing but a Man (1964, directed by Michael Roemer);^[19][20] One Potato, Two Potato (1964, directed by Larry Peerce);^[21] A Patch of Blue (1965, directed by Guy Green);^[22] and The Subject Was Roses (1968, directed by Ulu Grosbard),^[23] among others, have been specifically identified with the terminology.

The influence of kitchen-sink realism has continued in the work of other recent British directors, such as Ken Loach (whose first directorial roles were in late-1960s kitchen-sink dramas) and Mike Leigh. Subsequent re-emergence in the 1980s produced such female-centric contemporary kitchen sink-influenced films as Wish You Were Here (1987); Educating Rita (1983) and Shirley Valentine (1989)—both directed by Alfie's Lewis Gilbert; the titular twins' biopic, The Krays (1990); Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987); and others.^[24]

Other present-day directors who have continued working within the spirit of kitchen sink realism include Andrea Arnold, Shane Meadows, Lynne Ramsay, Clio Barnard, Peter Cattaneo, and Andrew Haigh.^[25] The term "neo kitchen sink" has been used for films such as Leigh's Vera Drake (2004), Loach's I, Daniel Blake (2016), Arnold's Fish Tank (2009), Ramsay's Ratcatcher (1999), Meadows's This Is England (2006), Haigh's Weekend (2011), Barnard's The Selfish Giant (2013), and Cattaneo's The Full Monty (1997). This also includes directorial debuts from actors Gary Oldman, Nil by Mouth (1997);^[26] Tim Roth, The War Zone (1999);^[27] Peter Mullan, Orphans (1998); Richard Ayoade, Submarine (2010); and Paddy Considine, Tyrannosaur (2011); among others.^[28]