BEATS OF LOVE
109. Abigail's Party DVD
PUNK-ROCK started our generation gap, but before that explosion, the teenager was born and grew up. Teenagers who defined themselves by buying and not making stuff. Who mimicked what they watched on the telly to style themselves, serviced their own ego and distanced themselves from their parents. Teenagers, a lot like me then.
In this fresh, new state of alienated consumerism, these teenagers would continue as adults, defining themselves as middle-class despite being born into houses with tin-baths, buying stuff, including 'brand new' homes and often parented punk-rockers who rightfully rebelled against them.
No art captures this unconscious state of blind aspiration that is still prevalent in society better than Mike Leigh's brilliant play. I've only seen it on DVD about fifty times. It survives because all the social antagonisms that the tragi-comedy teases out persist today. Their complete lack of any emotional transparency makes his class-obsessed characters, who instead only express themselves by what they consume, appear truly preposterous. Until we recognize little bits of ourselves in them.
His only proper middle-class character, Sue, looks as uncomfortable as we do watching it. However, whilst she's recognizing something shockingly novel, we're instead recognizing our own family's social shortcomings and the binge-drinking culture that was spawned in society at large.
Tragically, the punk-rockers in their more pronounced state of alienation failed to grasp that making stuff was essential in resisting Thatcherism. Sadly, they're now conjoined with their parents in that same middle-class bunker mentality.
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