In the spring of 2015 I took FTV 277: Film Narrative and Social Change with Professor Robert Rosen. We spent the quarter analyzing the various tools and techniques used in advocacy filmmaking.
Pride on Film
Pride (2014) tells the fictionalized story of an organization of gays and lesbians who help support a mining community in Wales during the historic 1984-85 miner’s strike. The plot follows a young gay man named Joe who, while attending his first Pride Day Parade, becomes involved in a group dedicated to helping support the striking miners in the UK. The village of Onllwyn in the Dulais Valley is initially and understandably resistant to the help offered by this new group– Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM). In the end however, fears and stereotypes are replaced with solidarity and true friendships. After one year the faltering strike fails to obtain its goals and is called off. But, surprisingly the coal miners union becomes a strong ally of the LGBT community and help push through governmental reform on their behalf. Thematically, this British film speaks to overcoming prejudice and finding the commonalities between disparate groups, freeing them to offer support to strangers as well as accept the aid of others.
Pride is a stellar example of a multi-tiered advocacy film. The film’s advocacy focus first zeros in on the rights of the gay and lesbian community. However, it quickly also becomes an advocate for the labor movement. The emotionally charged “pride” invoked by the title becomes both union pride and gay pride. Blending these two advocacies together provides a powerful take-away message: personal interaction can draw people of radically different backgrounds and orientations together, dispel preconceptions, and result in solidarity. Groups traditionally and historically opposed to one another in the past banded together in the present to support each other in the cruel fight against those who unfortunately hold greater power and authority.
The continuum of advocacy agendas has a wide span from merely exposing a problem all the way to a call for immediate and radical action from the film to the viewers. This film comfortably locates itself between the two extremes. Pride’s goal is not to encourage viewers to rush out of the house and demand their government pass laws immediately for gay rights and workers rights. However, it assuredly wants you to believe in rights and civil liberties for the LGBT and labor communities. Its creators make clear where their loyalties and sympathies lie.
While Pride operates on the level of multiple advocacies, it also draws upon multiple genres. It neatly fits into the classic coming-of-age genre, which is also used to create its narrative structure. The protagonist Joe is a closeted 20-year-old living with his parents in the London suburb of Bromley. Over the course of the film, Joe transforms from a boy to a man. Through his involvement with LGSM he comes to terms with himself, allowing him to leave his homophobic family home. While most of the scripted characters have a real life counterpart, Joe is a fictional character created to provide structure to the script. His character was also created to establish a surrogate pair of eyes for the strait audience. Early in the film he becomes LGSM’s official photographer, cementing him as the primary gaze through which the audience experiences the events of the film.
While coming-of-age is a genre that the film relies heavily upon, the film also has parallels with sport or athletic competition films. It is all about rooting for the underdogs. The film follows not one set of underdogs, but two: the miners and the LGBT community. Like watching a live sports match, the audience cheers with every yard gained and feels the pain of every low blow. These seemingly disparate groups come together to form a single team and facing insurmountable odds, take on the undefeated champions. While the game is not won, and the miners return to the pit with none of their demands met, a more personal and more communal victory was won. Individual prejudices and preconceptions were broken down and a new solidarity between the groups was forged.
While the film has parallels with two genres—coming-of-age and sports competition—in an article for The Guardian about his influences and motivations in making the film, the director Matthew Warchus identifies a third genre: “in a way it is a classic romantic comedy,” he noted. “But the relationship isn’t between individuals, but between two groups, or communities.” Many of the familiar plot points in romantic comedy can easily be spotted in Pride. Instead of two mismatched and unlikely individuals, we have two unlikely and mismatched groups of people. The dramatic turn quintessential to the genre, when forces conspire to break up the couple, can be seen in the film in the scene when a minor character conspires to sabotages the union of the two groups through subterfuge. As in a classic romantic comedy, the resolution to the plot is the realization of what that relationship meant to both parties and their subsequent reunification after the subterfuge fails.
In deciding to tell this story as a comedy rather than a drama, the creators of this film made an unorthodox choice. They managed to make a comedy without glibly glossing over the hardships that these people faced in reality. They accomplished this by showing the positive actions taken by the protagonists, rather than dwelling on the horrible violence or mistreatment that precipitated these actions. For example, we only find out that local miners have been arrested through second-hand information. The physical clash that lands them is jail is never seen. Instead, a scene is set up where we are allowed and encouraged to laugh at the situation. Sian, a miner’s wife who ends up being a force to reckon with, learns from a LGSM member that people cannot be held without probable cause, and that what is happening is illegal. The gay community had learned from their own prior altercations with the police what is and isn’t legal for the authorities to do. Sian marches into police station, demands that the miners’ release, and schools the police on how badly they’ve violated the law. That much of her chastising speech is drowned out by the musical score is a weakness of this scene, and of the film. The considerable strengths of the actress and her character were underutilized at a key moment, although the audience completely understood the comic intent of the filmmakers.
Some filmmakers and critics operate under the assumption that a film needs to fall into the dramatic category in order for it to be taken seriously and make an impact on society. There was no dearth of pain and struggle in these events that Pride’s writer, Stephen Beresford, could have focused on. In addition to the failed strike, the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic is in full swing. The film does not ignore the AIDS crisis. It makes clear that some of the LGBT community thought it misguided to support strangers in Wales when people in their own community were dying every day from the disease. However, the writer chose a character that we see only once to voice this, and the comment is quickly lost in the fray. Another off-color joke from Joe’s brother-in-law about what the AIDS letters really stand for returns us to the context later in the film. And one of the film’s most charismatic characters, Mark, who is also the leading organizer, runs into a former lover who begs him to be careful and take care of himself. But it isn’t until the end of the film that the AIDS disease personally affects any of the main characters. We learn in the closing credits that the real person Mark, on whom the character was based, died of AIDS at the age of 24.
Another unorthodox choice that kept the grimmest of the realities at bay is how little physical violence was seen on screen, even though it’s an important aspect of the story. While we see brief clashes with the police, they are mostly limited to name calling and standing behind riot shields. The only time that we actually see physical police brutality is in the historical footage shown at the beginning of the film. When Gethin is brutally attacked, we only see the events leading up to it and the aftermath of his injuries in the hospital.
Pride’s multi-tiered narrative is its strongest tool in crafting its multi-tiered advocacy. While Joe’s story provides the scaffolding of the film, the plot is also composed of many small stories that when told together are more moving and effective than any single story could be. Similar to the Oliver Stone film, JFK, the story that frames Pride is the journey of its protagonist, but multiple smaller stories both broaden and deepen the context while creating more personal connection, engagement and empathy in its viewers. In JFK we don’t follow Kennedy, or anyone directly involved in the shooting. Instead our protagonist is Jim Garrison who enters the timeline after the assassination of the president and the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. Thus the story is not about the assassination itself, rather it is the story of the investigation and the impact that has on the lives of its characters. In a similar strategy, the makers of Pride chose not to focus on the strike itself, but on the impact it has on the men.
Another strategy that strengthens the film’s multi-tiered narrative is the use of poly-vocality, meaning the story is told from the perspective of more than one character. That’s not to say that there isn’t a protagonist we follow from beginning to end, who goes through a full arc of character growth and transformation. We have that in Joe, but this story, the filmmakers make clear, is much too large to be told from a single perspective. Mark, Gethin, Dai, Sian, Maureen and others add their voices and valuable perspectives to the narrative.
Gethin’s perspective is particularly effective and moving. The owner of Gay’s the Word bookshop in London, Gethin is warm, sheepish, reticent and utterly engaging. Early in the film we learn that he will not be joining the group in Wales, where he was raised. Leaving a homophobic family and community there fifteen years earlier made Wales a place too emotionally-charged for Gethin to return to. One of the strengths of using Gethin in the web of poly-vocality is the intimacy he brings to the film. Much of the film focuses on the big group story, but Andrew Scott’s vulnerable and soft-spoken portrayal makes Gethin’s story personal. The scene depicting his reunification with his mother after fifteen years of estrangement offers very little dialogue, but all of the nuance and importance of the event can be heard in the cracking of his voice.
Dai’s character also adds valuable perspective. In the village where the main action occurs, Dai is a local miner who acts as ambassador between LGSM and the mining community. His voice is one of optimism and reason. In a discussion with Mark, he succinctly sums up one of the film’s primary advocacy messages: “There’s a lodge banner down in the welfare [lodge], over 100 years old. We bring it out for special occasions, you know. I’ll show it to you one day. It’s two hands, like this. That’s what the labor movement means. Should mean. You support me, I support you. Whoever you are, wherever you come from. Shoulder to shoulder. Hand to hand.”
In the same village of Onllywen, where much of the action takes place, our main antagonist is Maureen, the widow of Cliff ’s brother. She originally rejects the plan for the LGSM to visit the town as is customary for other groups who have contributed funds. Her argument is that it is not she who is prejudiced; rather the miners would be the ones that will have a problem with it. It is Maureen who organizes the union vote on whether to continue accepting LGSM’s support. By manipulating the time at which the vote is scheduled, she performs an act of subterfuge, causing those supportive of LGSM to miss the vote. After the strike fails, the miners who will be returning to work hold a somber parade through the village. Maureen stands silently outside her front door holding a framed photograph of her husband who died in a mining accident. We are encouraged to believe that it was not evil or prejudice that drove her actions, but rather a misplaced and deep-seeded sorrow that caused her to be such a destructive force in the community.
While multi-tiered narrative and poly-vocality comprise Pride’s main advocacy strategies, the filmmakers’ choice of location also plays an important role in setting the tone and establishing realism. By shooting the film in both London and Wales, the filmmakers reinforce one of their primary objectives: crossing boundaries and building bridges. They anchor much of the London action in or near the Gay’s the Word bookstore, owned by the quiet Gethin, while most of the action in the Welsh village takes place in or near Welfare Hall. A cultural bridge is thus built between metropolitan gay bookstore and rural small town hall.
The film’s realism is also established by another technique: the filmmakers’ fidelity to historical accuracy in their aesthetic choices. No anachronisms are present to draw the viewer out of the historical period and remind them that they are watching a film rather than events unfolding before their eyes in real life. The film’s extensive and arguably too prominent soundtrack is all period accurate and includes big hits emotionally evocative of the era. A lot of the songs are upbeat and made for dancing. “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club, and “Freedom” by Wham also help give a quicker beat to the film which, due to the number of characters, could easily get bogged down by minutia.
The film opens with Pete Seeger’s version of “Solidarity Forever” playing over historical footage of violent protests. This song is also prominently featured throughout the film. We hear it next at the LGSM headquarters right after they locate a village that is willing to accept their help. The group jumps up and down together in a circle chanting the song. The chanting is joined by era-appropriate guitar wails, plucking the audience’s heartstrings in a way that this entire film is completely adept at. The song also features in one of the great comedic and simultaneously didactic moments of the film. During the first van ride up to Wales from London, the female LGSM members substitute “every woman is a lesbian at heart” for the lyrics, much to the annoyance of their fellow passengers. When one of the minor characters, Reggie, tries to explain that you cannot make “grand sweeping generalizations” about groups of people, the singers expand the lyrics to include Reggie’s mother.
Another featured song with strong ties to the labor movement is “Bread and Roses.” The actress, Bronwen Lewis, whose character leads the miner’s hall in singing the song, actually grew up in that area of Wales. Ms. Lewis was born almost a decade after the strike, but her family have vivid memories of both the strike and the visits to the area by the LGSM. This casting choice underscores the filmmakers’ quest for realism. Locals were used frequently as extras. Using non-actors to fill a space that they have traditionally or historically been linked to lends an authenticity that could not otherwise be captured.
During our course of study we have discussed how all history is contemporary. In the past few years the gay rights movement has made powerful progress in its goals for marriage equality. In the last month alone, the United States Supreme Court heard controversial arguments in Obergefell vs Hodges that could legalize gay marriage for all states, and Ireland became the first country to legalize gay marriage by popular vote. Yet at the same time, gay citizens of countries like Nigeria and Uganda are forced by law to choose between exile and life imprisonment, and in many cases violent death. The filmmakers of Pride want the audience to remember that while large strides have been made, there is still a long way to go before the LGBT community around the world will be fully equal in terms of rights and privileges.
The battles and nuances of the quest for equality that the film advocates for will of course differ from country to country. That the film’s marketers are aware of this challenge is visible in the different marketing efforts made in different nations. The marketing of this film in the United States was accordingly slightly different from in the UK, where gay marriage was legalized in 2013. In the US, where gay marriage is legal in some states but not others, Pride was distributed by CBS Films and received only a limited theatrical release. Consequently, most of this film’s US viewership is in a home setting either on DVD or streaming. In January the BBC reported on two small but telling changes to the back of the DVD cover that was released in America. First, the banner that reads “Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners” that appears in a still from the film has been digitally removed. Second, the synopsis had been altered from “a London-based group of gay and lesbian activists” to “a group of London-based activists.” The US marketing of this film downplayed its LGBT categorization to appeal to a broader community, and only later promoted it as a LGBT film. On a positive note, the synopsis for the film on Amazon’s instant streaming service has added back in, or never removed, the qualifier of “lesbians and gays.”
An important piece of the marketing campaign in both countries was its status of being “Based on the Inspirational True Story.” The qualifier of “based on” gives the writer of the story the best of both worlds. It allows the film to be viewed as informative and educational about historical events. It also allows the filmmakers to craft a three-act narrative with a traditional and fictional main protagonist. They are not bound by historical accuracy, which allows them to craft the story in a more dramatic way. Freed from the constraints of historical accuracy while at the same time relying on historical context, the filmmakers were able to craft a powerful story that operates on the level of multiple advocacies, in multiple genres, and with a multi-tiered narrative. In so doing, they proved that advocacy films can achieve a focus broader than their specific advocacies. In this film two advocacies not often associated with one another–gay rights and labor rights–are successfully blended to suggest that groups traditionally and historically opposed to one another might forge a different future.
Sources
“Gay Banner Removed from Pride DVD Cover in the US.” BBC News Online. BBC, 5 Jan. 2015. Web. 23 May 2015.
Kellaway, Kate. “When Miners and Gay Activists United: The Real Story of the Film Pride. The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 31 Aug. 2014. Web. 20 May 2015.
Sisk. Emma. “How Welsh Singing Starlet Bronwen Lewis Turned Rejection on The Voice into Big Screen Pride.” Wales Online. Media Wales, 13 Sept. 2014. Web. 20 May 2015.
Warchus, Matthew. “Why I Made a Romcom About Gay Activists and Striking Miners.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 21 May 2014. Web. 17 May 2015.