In
My Name is Joe, the problems of working-class
Glasgow, Scotland, during the period of high unemployment
under Margaret Thatcher’s era are highlighted. Although the
film was highly acclaimed in Britain when released in 1998
and relegated to an art film theatre circuit in the United
States in 1999, because the setting and dialog are unfamiliar
to Americans, the message is far more realistic than anything
recently produced in Hollywood about blue-collar Whites. Directed
by Kenneth Loach, My Name Is Joe is on a par
with Boyz ‘n the Hood, since it shows the consequences
of insecure employment in a capitalist economy where the welfare
of workers is subordinated to profits for management. What
are these consequences? Clearly, alcoholism, an inability
to pay the rent and buy the food to sustain families, which
in turn are a seedbed for organized crime, especially the
distribution and use of drugs and even the temptation of women
to become prostitutes. The link between unemployment and crime
is nothing new for sociologists, but the portrayal of how
one develops from the other is the genius of the film. The
individualistic mass society that the new capitalism in Britain
seems to forge is nevertheless held at bay heroically by the
way in which family and friendships remain glued together.
Alcoholic Joe Kavanagh (played by Peter Mullan) insists on
helping his best friends from debt and prostitution, whatever
the cost to himself. Much of the movie also focuses on how
much the down-and-out members of the working class turn to
athletic competition as the one joy in life, so a particularly
insightful point is made when one team demonstrates that it
is too poor to afford decent uniforms and must take off its
filthy shirts in the cold in order to play soccer. An interesting
aspect of the film, that Scottish accented English has to
be subtitled in order to be understood, demonstrates quite
eloquently why the class structure in Britain resists upward
mobility, as only those speaking the Queen’s English can rise
to the position of the most prominent character in the film
who is not subtitled—the social worker Louise Goodall (played
by Sarah Downie) who is trying unsuccessfully to reintegrate
those out of work into an economy that has no need for these
otherwise decent citizens. Rather than the corruption of the
working class, on which the film focuses so eloquently, the
invisible corruption of the society by the economy is what
we cannot see with our eyes. But the degregation is there,
and only those prepared to see that corruption will find My
Name Is Joe to be an eye-opening experience. MH
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