COMPONENT 1 SECTION C - Secrets & Lies

Secrets & Lies (Leigh, 1996)

- Contemporary London
- Maurice - middle-class photographer in North London
- Cynthia - lower-class single mum in South London 
- Cynthia has conflict with her daughter Roxanne
- Hortense - looks up biological mother after her foster parents die
- Social class intrinsic to story - tension between Maurice and Cynthia
- Family past: secrets
- Stillness - long takes
- Everyday realism

Issues on women's perspective
- Monica - can't bear children which is a key part of womanhood
- Cynthia - struggles with the children she has - lives in poverty
- Both have what the other wants, and when they realise that they can embrace
- All female characters have little to no male presence in their lives - Maurice is the only male figure and he rejects traditional masculinity

Class issues
- Sibling rivalry/tensions - around money, status, and class
- Maurice took inheritance from his dad's death - moved to North London (new big house) and built his business
- Cynthia - rents in South London; single mum (two jobs when Roxanne was younger)
- She takes Maurice's money when he visits; she marvels at the space and luxury of his new house; tells Monica resentfully that she spent all the inheritance
- She is pleased for Hortense - her job, going to university, driving own car

Cinematography in "she's my daughter! sequence"
- Focus on Cynthia when everything/everyone else is in the background
- Cake being cut - metaphor for everything being cut open and revealed
- Everyone at medium close-up
- Focus on outsiders - awkward and uncomfortable
- Later, Cynthia and Roxanne are in the same frame to show their relationship being under pressure
- Lots of cuts (s/r/s) between characters, contrasts long-takes from earlier, creates tension and instability, the family are changing their definitions of each other

In Context: The 1990s: Race, Class & Politics
- Changing lifestyles: class divide vs climbing ranks; increase in middle-class households (with white goods, mobiles, internet); sexual liberty; Brit-pop and white feminism; 1996 - last Irish Magdalene laundry closed
- Class politics: Thatcher's Individualism vs New Labour; "no such thing as society"; welfare state; New-labour, move towards neo-liberalism; socialism and champagne socialism - drive to highlight disparities in class - British film-making (Trainspotting/Billy Elliot); focus on improving education
'Welfare to Work' - subsidies and benefits to get people back on the job market
'New Deal' - aimed at single mothers and the disabled to get them into work
'Minimum Wage' - aimed to make work pay higher than benefits
- Race, racism and the 90s: 
- In 2010, Communities Secretary John Denham said that 'class, not race' was the main cause of discrimination in Britain
- Class is the main issue in most British Social Realist films
- South African Apartheid officially ended on 27th April 1994 (Mandela elected President on 10th May 1994)
- Windrush Generation - those who arrived in the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1973
- 'White Working Class'
- Stephen Lawrence (1974 - 22 April 1993) - murdered by two with men who were never brought to justice despite CCTV footage of them doing it

Conflict through binary oppositions:
- Race - black and white
- Monica vs Cynthia - class - both have close relationships with Maurice
- Home of Cynthia vs M&M 
- Hortense is always wearing black - all other characters don't
- Maurice vs lack of other male characters

Levi-Strauss - Key Points:
- Conflict through binary oppositions creates meaning
- From a perspective of anthropological studies, not storytelling/filmmaking
- Explored through primitive cave drawings, visuals tell stories

Levi-Strauss applied to Secrets & Lies:
In the scene where Maurice has his title-dropping outburst, all of the film's binary oppositions, as laid out by Strauss, come to a head. Most importantly, the conflict between Monica and Cynthia, where one has money but can't have children, and the other has children but very little money, is shown to have pulled Maurice apart as neither character could find a resolution to their issue. This opposition also carries over to Maurice because who opposes the absence of other male characters and so is stuck between the women he loves whilst they hate each other with nobody to turn to himself. Within the film as a whole, these ideas allow Leigh to explore divides of class, race and gender (issues that are frequently reduced to binaries) so that, in the show-stopping finale these issues can clash out in the open and be resolved once characters can identify that these issues are out of their control. It's not Monica's fault she can't conceive, nor is it Cynthia's that she is in the working-class, and these issues are only major issues due to societal pressures. However, Strauss's binary oppositions are flawed because they lack nuance in their simplicity, especially as race, class and gender aren't binary issues. It may also reflect on the way the characters are written, only existing in relating to the other, meaning the characters are meaningless without opposition. Whilst this proves Strauss's theory it also has the habit of reducing characters to parts of a society instead of fully-functioning individuals.

Propp's Character Tropes

1. Maurice
2. Cynthia
3. Hortense
4. Roxanne
5. Monica

1. Cynthia - key to story
2. Maurice - central to most characters
3. Hortense - catalyst for change
4. Monica - conflict but garners sympathy
5. Roxanne - limited further context

- All stories follow a clear narrative structure which repeats across all stories
- These stories feature recurring character archetypes:
The Villain
The Dispatcher 
The Helper
The Princess (or The Prize)
The Donor
The Hero
False Hero

1. Character trope subversion keeps the spectator off guard and allows for the story to break free from a clear narrative structure
2. It might make the audience return to the film/show more in order to see how this character arc is plotted out without them noticing and also add the element of surprise and tension
3. It reflects how Propp's archetypes aren't actually true to life, whilst allowing stories to be unpredictable meaning audiences will return to the cinema, it also allows the filmmaker to make comments about society or about filmmaking as a whole (how long until you stop rooting for Walter White, for instance)

Character tropes in Social Realism
- Social Realist films normally represent true-to-life characters and locations, whereas Propp's tropes were based on fairy tales
- Social Realist films were keen to show the effects on society and depict the problems endured by the working class and 'underclass'
- There is often no 'winner' in the game of class and politics
- Storylines interlink and characters are often both 'good' and 'bad' - like real people
- Often the 'villain' is a concept - drug misuse, poverty, government restrictions

Heroes in Secrets & Lies
There's no hero in Secrets & Lies because none of the characters do anything deliberate to change their circumstances, besides Hortense who impacts them all. Both Cynthia and Maurice are stuck in their routines until presented with opportunities and the only thing that brings everyone together is the reveal of all their secrets and lies. In that way, maybe the hero is honesty and the villain is deceit. Maurice may be a hero in Roxanne's eyes, just as Hortense is a hero in Cynthia's eyes

Laura Mulvey - 1970s
- second-wave feminism
- New Hollywood
- Visual narrative pleasure and the 'male gaze'
- Visual filmic pleasure - expense of making women objects for the viewing of men
- Directors (male) present women in this way (POV)

Todorov's Narrative Theory
- There is a distinction between the PLOT and the STORY
    Plot: summing up the 'action'/'events'
    Story: the plot is fleshed out with characters, emotions and context, and this         same plot can be constructed into a narrative into a number of ways - using          narrative devices
    - Story unfolds as 'cause-and-effect' from the first equilibrium to the last                equilibrium, with the final equilibrium being different from the first
    - Todorov identifies five key stages:
        1. Equilibrium
        2. Disruption - sets the narrative in motion
        3. A realisation of disruption
        4. Trying to put things right
        5. New equilibrium at the end

- Editing techniques (montage), flashback, elliptical editing, linear or non-linear narratives

Todorov in Secrets & Lies
1. Seeing the characters before Hortense calls Cynthia (when Maurice visits her for instance)
2. Hortense successfully contacting Cynthia
3. Cynthia asking Maurice to bring a friend to the BBQ, Roxanne noticing that Cynthia is going out
4. The BBQ family meetup, Cynthia tells everyone the truth
5. Everyone knows each other's secrets, Cynthia reconciles with Monica and Roxanne, Hortense gets to join Cynthia/Roxanne's family, Maurice's loved ones have all made up

Critical Theory
- A critical theory wants to unmask an ideology falsely justifying some from of social or economic oppression, reveal it as an ideology, and contribute to the end of said oppression
- Aims to provide a kind of enlightenment about social and economic life which itself is emancipatory, where the people come to recognise the oppression they are suffering as oppression and are thereby partly freed from it

Marxist Critical Approach
- 'workers of the world unite!' - class struggle, not race or gender
- capitalism = bad (and only an ideology with clear alternatives)
- 'masses' must be empowered to overcome their subjugation from the 'bourgeoisie'

Marxist Critical Approach applied to Secrets & Lies
- Mike Leigh is outside of the issues presented in the film (race, gender, class)
- Class issues; Cynthia oppressed by the fact she is working class, poor job in a factory, Roxanne doesn't want to achieve higher education, internalising class prejudices
- Leigh shows through the ending that class causes unnecessary hatred
- Roxanne overcomes oppression through the money from middle-class people 
- Much of the film is impartial to class issues, not advocating for social revolution but definitely critiquing capitalist oppression
- Focuses on female stories, feminist critical approach more useful as it still encompasses class issues but more specifically for women
- Film doesn't promote a utopian version but does highlight the problems caused as a result of sexism, racism and classism, all of which can be argued, by Marx, to be results of capitalism

Feminist Critical Approach
Female - sex/gender 
Feminist - supporter of equal rights for men and women
Feminism - the ideology of supporting equal rights for men and women
Feminist theory - looking at society and products/art from it which do or don't embody feminism

Timeline
1840s-1920s: first wave feminism, legal rights, votes
1960s: second wave feminism, counter-culture, Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique, tackles illusion that women should be fulfilled by marrying and having children and not working
1970s: influence of French female writers, focus on capitalism and the patriarchy, fuels radical approaches for social and economic changes
1990s: third wave feminism, focus on intersectionality
2010s: fourth wave feminism, focused on empowerment, incorporates intersectionality fully