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A Tired Fictional Genre Makes a Last Gasp Argument For ‘Grown Up’ Managerialism

by J. Sorel
26 February 2024 1:00 PM

Review of Wicked Little Letters.

To a far greater degree than the Republican Party, Britain’s governing class believes that the real spirit of the nation can be found in its countryside. The national stage is not located in big cities like London, but in the shires and market towns, where conflicts social and political can play out in miniature form. Virtually every one of the post-2016 tranche of Brexit novels – most notably Jonathan Coe’s Middle England (2018) and Bourneville (2022) – is set in small-town Britain. Political coverage in Britain is also bucolic in its assumptions. When a Westminster politician heads out into the shires, during an election or in the aftermath of a flood, it is thought that they will there confront what is an essentially perennial Englishness – an Englishness that, it is implied, in some way has their measure. It is in places like these that the temperature of the nation is taken.

But unlike Middlemarch, which depicts England on the eve of the Reform Bill through the goings-on in a small Midlands town, modern portrayals of these places show us a settled idyll. In the fiction and the programming of the 2010s, depictions of these towns and villages are an exercise in pointed whimsy. Forelock-tugging ploughmen; local eccentrics; and a clergy and aristocracy that still enjoy something like social deference – these are always the essential ingredients. This is meant above all to be comfortable terrain, an England that has always existed and will exist forever.

In these depictions, the kick to the narrative is always provided by some outside force that threatens to disturb this idyll: a dodgy developer, an obnoxious interloper from out of town or a kulturkampf issue that divides loyalties. The task for our heroes, usually a local worthy aided by an enlisted posse of eccentrics, is to restore the old equilibrium. This is the basic narrative device behind the cosy mystery stories of Richard Osman and Richard Coles, where acts of gruesome murder are counterposed against church bake sales and colourful bunting. 

The indispensable woman of this genre is Olivia Coleman. Her characters are known for being models of traditional provincial respectability. The people she portrays, we are told, are repositories of a musn’t-grumble English decency and decorum – which is held to be as eternal as the shires and market towns themselves.

But what if such a person suddenly screamed “Fuck”? Her decorous and polite characters often do. The device is the same: a beau ideal that has, briefly, been thrown off kilter.

But with Wicked Little Letters, which premiered on Friday, this carefully constructed set-piece has at last tipped in chaos to the floor. The film is not so much a picking apart of the genre as a keying up of each of its characteristics to the absolute maximum. The resulting atmosphere is one of fever and lunacy. The setting – the seaside town of Littlehampton in the aftermath of World War One – is not a collection of quaint eccentrics, but a traditional freakshow. The residents of Littlehampton are sub-sentient, swivel-eyed and illiterate. They burp, fart, shit, brawl and fuck one another with a glazed, dead-eyed mania. Figures of authority, like the local police chief and magistrates, are not merely self-important but simple lunatics: bug-eyed, shrieking, liable to burst at any moment. 

Wicked Little Letters is about Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman), an overripe version of the usual Coleman character. Edith is a pious, though vain and foolish woman who lives with her parents in Littlehampton, and has started to receive foul poison-pen letters from an anonymous source. The police get involved, and the finger of suspicion quickly falls on their neighbor Rose Goody (Jessie Buckley), a single mother tearaway who swears, fights, drinks and co-habits with her boyfriend. 

Rose is arrested and put on trial for libel. We soon learn, however, that Edith has herself been writing the letters, which she keeps in a portfolio hidden in her bedroom wall. Edith unconsciously hates her overbearing parents, especially her gruesome tyrant of a father (Timothy Spall), and writes these letters as a way to express her suppressed rage.

Olivia Coleman saying “Fuck” has been the go-to comedic device of English cinema for close to a decade. Here it is tested to destruction. It is essentially the only joke in Wicked Little Letters: Coleman’s character is a prim and proper English lady who’s been driven over the edge, and so her horrible letters are exercises in cutesy viciousness (Rose later makes fun of Edith for overusing the term ‘foxy’ in her missives). 

The assumption here is that this gag really is enough to carry an entire film on its own. It is not. This is a complacent piece of work, and it shows the exhaustion of the genre. 

Edith is eventually found out, cackling maniacally as the paddy wagon takes her away. But look a little past this general bedlam and you’ll find the real heart of Wicked Little Letters. This is the local policewoman Gladys, who is the one who cracks the case and exonerates Rose. Gladys is a thoroughly Mayite figure, a dutiful, unsmiling, and conscientious social guardian. Gladys is one of the few sane people in Littlehampton, and certainly the only responsible adult. In the 2020s, cosy English fiction makes greater and greater recourse to grim figures of authority like Gladys. These are the only people – it is implied – who can maintain the old idyll in the face of challenges to social order, which is always ascribed to a kind of reefer madness. Littlehampton is mad; England is mad, and it is up to people like Gladys to corral these loopy bat-eared freaks into some semblance of civilised order. More than anything else, Wicked Little Letters is a depiction of the social theory of Mayism, of Starmerism. It’s an aesthetic of exhaustion that breaks down into absurdism; but it’s an absurdism that, tellingly, still never thinks to leave the English countryside.

Tags: ComedyCountrysideEnglandManagerialismTheresa May

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25 Comments
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JXB
JXB
1 year ago

Cancel culture is nothing new. Exhibit: A – Galileo Galilei. Excommunication was the Catholic Church’s version of cancel culture. Get excommunicated and family, friends would rebuff you, you lost your status in society and employment. Sound familiar?

In the days of Catholics v Protestants it was rife too, with either Protestants or Catholics being denounced – depending which bunch was ruling at the time – and sometimes spreading “misinformation” (aka heresy) had fatal consequences involving flames or a vat of boiling water.

6
0
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
1 year ago
Reply to  JXB

At the Pope’s request, Galileo wrote a pamphlet, explaining his (or Copernicus’) heliocentric theory, written in the Socratic investigate style. Unfortunately, the questioner was made out to be very dim, and was recognisable as the Pope, himself. It didn’t go down well, especially as the Pope was having to deal with complicated matters of state at the time.

And Galileo could have done what everyone else had done, and circulated his thoughts in Latin, not Italian.

The problem with his theory was that it was wrong, the planets don’t circle the Sun, which harks back to the ancient theory of epicircles. The paths are elipses. In addition, he had no data, unlike Kepler.

So, he was more like an obnoxious Al Gore than an Einstein.

1
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

It’s happening everywhere no matter the context. People must not offend, insult or even present a counter-opinion without expecting to get cancelled or penalized in some way. Freedom of speech is non-existent in reality. Just one very petty example, which is literally nothing compared with how the Left/media are demonizing Trump;

”ROME, July 18 (Reuters) – A Milan court has ordered a journalist to pay Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni damages of 5,000 euros ($5,465) for making fun of her in a social media post, news agency ANSA and other local media reported.
The journalist, Giulia Cortese, was also given a suspended fine of 1,200 euros for a jibe on Twitter, now named X, in Oct. 2021 about Meloni’s height, that was defined as “body shaming”.
In a response to a Reuters story on the verdict, Cortese wrote on X on Thursday: “Italy’s government has a serious problem with freedom of expression and journalistic dissent.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italian-journalist-ordered-pay-pm-meloni-5000-euros-mocking-her-height-2024-07-18/

8
0
Grim Ace
Grim Ace
1 year ago
Reply to  Mogwai

They do indeed. Shocking from a so called right wing party. Meloni is proving, maybe, as sensitive as any other woman??

4
0
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
1 year ago

I find almost everything left wingers say distressing. Why aren’t my rights being respected?

5
0
zebedee
zebedee
1 year ago

I’ve seen it argued that the reason why the Tenacious D tour was cancelled was because the venues cancelled because the insurers hiked the premiums because they now expected trouble.

3
0
Mrs Bunty
Mrs Bunty
1 year ago

Of course cancel culture is wrong, it’s nasty, spiteful and often disgusting. What’s the answer though, to be nice, caring and forgiving to the people that partake of it, turn the other cheek? That’s working out well so far! I am all aboard for free speech, whomever it offends, but we have to take back the language and get back to a level field, call out the child castrators, the actual racists, the women haters. How do we move the Overton window back to sensible rational discourse? The only thing I can see is to play them at their own game.

4
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  Mrs Bunty

Who decides what “sensible, rational discourse” is?

4
0
Mrs Bunty
Mrs Bunty
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

In my opinion, discourse that listens to both sides and doesn’t denigrate anyone for disagreeing i.e you don’t have to agree with what I’m saying but agree with my right to say it and counter it with facts not bile. Plus it will be nice when we can joke about things again.

5
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago
Reply to  Mrs Bunty

🎯 Totally. Plenty of people on here that would apply to. I tend to get reduced to “an angry and aggressive woman” or criticised as being “boring”, “attention-seeking” and “obsessive” etc, by the very same people that bang on about free speech on here, or who proudly proclaim they’re “absolutists”. So they’re pro free speech whilst simultaneously criticising me for exercising my right to free speech, all because my opinions trigger them because they can’t hack being challenged, or they have nothing left in their arsenal other than playground insults or strawmen with which to counter. Such hypocrites are common. I think they’re 50% hilarious and 50% pathetic. It’s an ego thing, clearly.😁

3
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

The Left, they want their cake and eat it too!

1
0
Alan M
Alan M
1 year ago

This is the closest I come to social media. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people choose to make “jokey” posts – one man’s joke is another’s damnable insult and the possible reaction by now is surely well known. Keep your silly comments to your friends and keep them verbal.

0
-2
GunnerBill
GunnerBill
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan M

I’m wondering why you even bothered with this?

3
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
1 year ago

Can I just ask as a Farage fan, a luke warm one since 2020: do you think he would support a Nuremberg 2 style trials for all those parasites who supported the jabs, Drs on TV to celebs like Piers Morgan?

1
0
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago
Reply to  Ron Smith

Andrew Bridgen’s comment answers that:

https://old.bitchute.com/video/sird3nBG5OBf/

3
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  DHJ

Dear dear, I don’t know what to say about that!

1
0
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago
Reply to  Ron Smith

Possibly the worst choice for the worst sort of government intervention.

“Nigel Farage calls for Tony Blair to become UK’s vaccination Tsar”

“Much as I don’t like Tony Blair he does get things done, he commands respect, he is seriously bright.”

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/nigel-farage-calls-for-tony-blair-to-become-uks-vaccination-tsar-215370/

2
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
1 year ago

Even though I’d rather hear high profile left wingers show themselves up for what they really are I have a question.

Is losing your job your using the wrong pronouns in the same category as saying you’re really disappointed that Donald Trump’s brains weren’t blown out live on TV?

Last edited 1 year ago by Lockdown Sceptic
4
0
GunnerBill
GunnerBill
1 year ago

Yes but in this case it’s quite delicious!

Let us have one victory please!!

2
0
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago

Political violence is what results from the policies of the government, not from someone in
a band with songs such as “cock pushups” and “f*** her gently” making a quip.

2
0
Free Lemming
Free Lemming
1 year ago

‘While blowing out the candles of a birthday cake on stage, he made the wish: “Don’t miss Trump next time.”… It looks to me very much like a tasteless joke.’

In my mind this is key. I do not believe it was a ‘joke’ at all. The left mean it 100% when they say they want Trump dead, so then the ‘joke’ has to be considered within the context of intent, time and audience. The ‘joke’, and the subsequent gleeful reaction of the crowd, would encourage any other would be Trump assassin immensely. The problem we have is trying to define a rule for everything when some things should never be given rules; this is a symptom of a society that has lost its moral compass.

3
0
godknowsimgood
godknowsimgood
1 year ago

A lot of people (on Twitter for example) don’t seem to understand the difference between boycotting and cancelling. Boycotting is a totally acceptable freedom which every individual has, to make their own personal choice, while cancelling is taking away the freedom of others to choose differently. 

For example, if a comedian or musician says something I don’t like, I have the right to not buy a ticket to their show for that reason. That’s boycotting. Obviously nobody is compelled to purchase a ticket for any show, so there’s nothing wrong with boycotting.

But if venue owners decide they don’t like something a comedian or musician says, and they therefore cancel the show, or protesters or pressure groups cause a show to be cancelled, that’s imposing their beliefs on others who think differently and taking away their freedom to attend if they choose.

So if Trump supporters don’t like Kyle Glass making a joke about killing Trump, it’s their absolute right to not buy a ticket, to boycott him and his band. But nobody should have the right to cancel him, to prevent him making a living, and to take away the freedom of others to choose differently.

3
0
Mrs Bunty
Mrs Bunty
1 year ago
Reply to  godknowsimgood

Spot on.

3
0

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