Kitchen sink realism

Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men. It used a style of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons living in rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.

The films, plays, and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the idiom. Another important writer in the movement is Paddy Chayefsky.

The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and Eastenders.

In art, "Kitchen Sink School" was a term used by critic David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted social realist-type scenes of domestic life.

History

Antecedents and influences

The cultural movement was rooted in the ideals of social realism, an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts working class activities. Many artists who subscribed to social realism were painters with socialist political views. While the movement has some commonalities with Socialist Realism, the "official art" advocated by the governments of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, the two had several differences.

Unlike Socialist realism, social realism is not an official art produced by, or under the supervision of the government. The leading characters are often 'anti-heroes' rather than part of a class to be admired, as in Socialist realism. Typically, they are dissatisfied with their lives and the world—rather than being idealised workers who are part of a Socialist utopia (supposedly) in the process of creation. As such, social realism allows more space for the subjectivity of the author to be displayed.

Partly, social realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism, which promoted lofty concepts such as the "ineffable" beauty and truth of art and music, and even turned them into spiritual ideals. As such, social realism focused on the "ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor." (The quotation is from George Shi, of the University of Fine Arts, Valencia).

Origins of term

In the UK, the term "kitchen sink" derived from an expressionist painting by John Bratby, which contained an image of a kitchen sink. The critic David Sylvester wrote an article in 1954 about trends in recent English art, calling his article "The Kitchen Sink" in reference to Bratby's picture. Sylvester argued that there was a new interest among young painters in domestic scenes, with stress on the banality of life.

Bratby painted several kitchen subjects, often turning practical utensils such as sieves and spoons into semi-abstract shapes. He also painted bathrooms and made three paintings of toilets. Other artists associated with the kitchen sink style include Derrick Greaves, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smith. The term was applied to a then-emerging style of drama, which favored a more realistic representation of working class life, and it was adopted in the United States to refer to the live television dramas of the 1950s by Paddy Chayefsky and others. As Chayefsky put it, this "drama of introspection" explored "the marvelous world of the ordinary."

1950s and 1960s

Before the 1950s, the United Kingdom's working class were often depicted stereotypically in Noel Coward's drawing room comedies and British films. It was also seen as being in opposition to the "well-made play", the kind which theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once denounced as being set in "Loamshire", of dramatists like Terence Rattigan. Kitchen sink works were created with the intention of changing all that. Their political views were initially labeled as radical, sometimes even anarchic.

John Osborne's play Look Back In Anger (1956) showed Angry Young Men not totally dissimilar to the film and theatre directors of the movement; the hero is a graduate, but working in a manual occupation. It dealt with social alienation, the claustrophobia and frustrations of a provincial life on low incomes.

The impact of this work inspired Arnold Wesker and Shelagh Delaney, among numerous others, to write plays of their own. The English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, headed by George Devine, and Theatre Workshop organised by Joan Littlewood were particularly prominent in bringing these plays to the public's attention. Critic John Heilpern wrote that Look Back in Anger expressed such "immensity of feeling and class hatred" that it altered the course of English theater. The term "Angry theatre" was coined by critic John Russell Taylor.

This was all part of the British New Wave—a transposition of the concurrent Nouvelle Vague film movement in France, some of whose works, such as The 400 Blows of 1959, also emphasized the lives of the urban proletariat. British filmmakers such as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson (see also Free Cinema) channelled their vitriolic anger into film making. Confrontational films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and A Taste of Honey (1962) were noteworthy films in the genre.

Later, as many of these writers and directors diversified, kitchen sink realism was taken up by television. The single play was then a staple of the medium, and Armchair Theatre (1956-68), produced by the ITV contractor ABC, The Wednesday Play (1964-70) and Play for Today (1970-84), both BBC series, contained many works of this kind. Jeremy Sandford's television play Cathy Come Home (1966, directed by Ken Loach for The Wednesday Play slot) for instance, addressed the then-stigmatized issue of homelessness.

Kitchen sink realism was also seen as apparent in the novels of Stan Barstow, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe and others.

List of films associated with kitchen sink realism

• Look Back in Anger (1959)
• Room at the Top (1959)
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)
• A Taste of Honey (1961)
• A Kind of Loving (1962)
• The L-Shaped Room (1962)
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
• A Place to Go (1963)
• This Sporting Life (1963)
• Billy Liar (1963)
• Girl with Green Eyes (1964)
• The Leather Boys (1964)
• The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
• Alfie (1966)
• Georgy Girl (1966)
• Poor Cow (1967)
• Up The Junction (1968)
• Kes (1969)
• Spring and Port Wine (1970)
• That'll Be the Day (1973)

Pop culture references

• Morrissey, a singer and lyricist from Manchester, England included several references to the working class issues of kitchen sink realism in his 1980s-era songs for The Smiths and during his solo career in the 1990s and 2000s. As a teen, Morrissey was fascinated by such kitchen sink dramas as Coronation Street.

• Irish singer/songwriter Gavin Friday's song "Kitchen Sink Drama" on the 1995 album Shag Tobacco reflects the challenges of working class life: "I woke up this morning / Dreading the thought of another / Dull and boring day / Hey woe is me."

• The 1989 made-for-TV film Norbert Smith - a Life featured Harry Enfield (as the fictional actor Sir Norbert Smith) in a film entitled It's Grim Up North, which parodied several of the situations and cliches of the kitchen sink dramas.

See also

• Ashcan School - one equivalent American art movement
• Naturalism

External links

• BFI: British New Wave
• Tucker, David, ed. British Social Realism in the Arts Since 1940, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.