On hating Billy Elliot

At the risk of being topical, I was reminded today of my utter loathing for the film 'Billy Elliot'. A sidebar link on Youtube was enough to set me off.

Being the worthless sort who seeks reinforcement through the prejudices of others, I googled "I hate Billy Elliot". There were slim pickings. I didn't search for manifestations of online love for BE-there aren't enough bricks in the world to throw, and my laptop has only the one screen.

The problem is political.

BE sets out to establish, in no uncertain terms, the utter futility and wrong-headedness of working-class solidarity and socialist engagement in the real world. The sheer togetherness of working class communities acting together to defend their livelihoods is seen as something that represses 'the individual', and is shown to hinder the full flowering of a person's talent-unless that person's talent lies in angry parading on windswept cobbles.

BE shows us the violence of the striking miners, as set against the violence of the police. The true violence was that embodied by the destructive policies of the Thatcher government, but this wilfully myopic narrative can't deal with that.

So when your tastefully derelict surroundings are laid waste, and the basis of your community's identity is ripped up, what's a young man to do? Why, become a metropolitan ponce, of course. No, really, that is exactly what it is saying: you can't do productive work with your neighbours, so come and cavort for the amusement of the ruling class.

It's a pity that the title character didn't hang around for  few years in Grimethorpe, or wherever the hell it was, because he might have been able to get a temp part-time non-unionised job in a lottery funded arts centre cafe. I reckon it would be called (lower-case) 'slagheap'.

BE is at once willingly stupid in its politics, and extremely politically engaged, and in that sense its closest rival is that Tom Hanks thing from around 1994-'Forrest Gump'. Which leads me to the worst thing about BE- for such a political film, it fails to openly commit to its own reactionary politics.

One good thing about BE. In the mid-90s, it was handy quick way to tell whether you were talking to an idiot: "Oh, I love Billy Elliot". Yes, I bet you do.