Scarica essay about billy elliot e più Guide, Progetti e Ricerche in PDF di Sociologia solo su Docsity! Cattin Teresa, September 2022 Billy Elliot: a critical analysis Billy Elliott is what we can call the perfect example of a coming-of-age movie. But is a lot more than a simple story of how a little boy manage to follow his dreams, its also a very good representation of the British working-class society by the end of 20th century. In a very realistic but still tender way, the director, Stephen Daldry touches important themes that can be analyse using a sociology prospective. The main character is a 11-year-old boy that lives the small and fictional town of Everington, in County Durham, during an important period of British History, the Miners-Strike of 1984. After the death of the mother, he lives with his father, his brother, and his sick grandmother. Billy’s family is part of the working class, and both his father and his brother strike to fight the closure of collieries and the trade unions. The atmosphere of violence and revolution is present since the beginning, with the paramilitary antiriot surrounding the village. The social background it’s very important to understand this movie. In social movement the sense of community and support is fundamental. The British society has a strong class consciousness, were the working class share the same values. One of the most important sociologies of the end of XX century, Pierre Bourdieu, analyses the impact of the environment which we grow up in the building of the identity. He argues that people from lower social classes rely more on mutual assistance and solidarity than people with higher social status, cause the lack of resources limits their possibility of influence their environment by themselves. The emphasis on class consciousness in the working class is closely associated with Marxist theory. The social class affects the way they communicate. The inability of express with worlds the emotions and the thoughts are well portrait in the movie, where is often preferred a physical interaction, with violence or love gesture. Both the father and the brother of Billy, seems to use anger and violence to express the unresolved grief for the death of the mother. The end of XX century its still a deep male-dominated society, with a rigid patriarchal system. That become a significant obstacle when Billy discovers a passion for the ballet, a practice always considered for woman or homosexuals. The theme of gender and stereotypes limit the possibilities to build a better future for male and female but also in the day-to-day life. In the article “Doing gender”, written by West and Zimmerman (1987), they affirm that “Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential, or biological.” Society pushes men and women to behave in a certain way, and that structure and influence all social mechanisms (Bagnasco, Barbagli, Cavalli, 2012). Billy’s father forced him to take boxing classes, the epitome of heteronormative masculinity. The gym where he practices could be seen as the metaphor of this differences. The boundaries are defined: boys are close in a boxing cage and forced to learn how to fight to defence themselves, girls are taught how to be feminine and delicate. In this context, the ballet teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson become a maternal figure for the protagonist. She if the first one to see the hidden talent of the kid and believes that he capable enough to study at the Royal Ballet School. The only way Billy knew how to communicate was thru his body, and dancing becomes an alternative to the violence as a way to express himself. Despite the conflicts he faced with his family, he convinces his father that he his talented and he brings him to the audition for the Royal Ballet. He must overcome more difficulties than most of the privilege kids. Not only socially, but also financially. It is clear than Billy, unlike the other kids at the audition, has only one
