Social Realism 1: The phrasal term ‘Social Realism’ is thrown around by a lot of people, the majority of these people do not even know the meaning of the term. If you have a ‘social realism’ film about a group of black teenagers who live on an estate and they aren’t the nicest of people, you will then associate any black people with the people in that film. This is not the case, so the fact that whoever made this thinks it is ‘social realism’ is wrong. The fact is that any single film that is meant to be ‘social realism’ isn’t actually ‘social realism’, only when you are living your own life will you be in realism.

Realism or ‘realisms’

2: The critical consensus of realism is that it is a deranged view of the Western World. Which it is. Social realism came about at the time of the jump between country life to city life.

3: Philosophers and Artists, were some of the factors that helped continue the context of social realism throughout the nineteenth century.

4: The outbreak of cinema was a major part of the development of realism in the nineteenth century. A quote from film theorist ‘Siegfried Kracauer’ was that he believed that films were able to uniquely presenting real life. Zola, has stated that fictional representations of natural life should observe, study and record peoples actions in a similar manner to re create something ‘real’.

5: The suggestion is that the term should only be used with a prefix attached.

Truth? Truth? Truth?

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Realism in the Cinema1: Film and photography, emerged during the nineteenth century. This gave everyone a totally new perspective of what social realism is. Especially in films, which aren’t always accurate!

2: Photography brought a new dimension to capturing life as it comes. The fact that people were able to keep proof of times in life was extraordinary.

3: To make life seem as raw and gritty as possible.

4: There is no such this as truth in the media, everything is twisted to be made out to be more interesting than it actually is, especially in films.

5: Kracauer believed that film was uniquely capable of representing real life. Also Kracauer and Zola believed in an extreme form of realism in the media.

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7: Bazin argued that realism should provide room enough for audiences to find their own realities inside a realist film.

8: All of the approaches in the third paragraph seek to represent the truth through codes and conventions that have become associated with realism.

9: Branston and Stafford think that the difference is that things that come out of Hollywood are different as they are overdone and too much sometimes.

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Defining Social Realism 1: The term ‘Social Realism’ is so hard to describe as no body really knows what it is. There are so many different ideologies of what social realism is that no body knows what to believe.

2: Hill states that all current texts are linked to the past based on tradition.

3: A key feature is and this is particularly in British texts, is the way the way the character and place are linked in order to explore some aspect of contemporary life in a similar way to naturalism.

4. Hallam and Marshment explain this is some detail, noticing the key feature of what Samantha Lay has already said.

5. Lowenstein sees social realism as being bound up with moments of contemporary social crisis.

6. Raymond Williams’ four criteria for defining realist texts are:

Realist texts are secular

Realist texts are grounded in the contemporary scene in terms of setting, character and social issues

The issue of social extension, which means they over exaggerate social realism

The realist text focuses on the artist

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