Costuming fictional working-class lives: Jimmy McGovern’s The Street (2006-2009, Granada Productions)

This thesis explores common contemporary understandings and representations of workingclass lived experience, using British television industry practices involved in costuming fictional working-class lives as evidence. It specifically examines the costuming within Jimmy McGovern’s hybrid drama series The Street (2006-2009, Granada).

Critical analysis of television costume has gained momentum since the mid-1990s (Baert, 1994; Church Gibson & Bruzzi, 2004; Lugli, 2007; Warner, 2014; Brownie, 2014; Boumaroun, 2018; Wolthuis, 2020; Mullholland, 2020) however, the focus thus far has not been on the connection between costuming and representations of social class. Emphasis broadly remains on specific production/s, the work of costume practitioners, or the relationship of ‘fashion’ to screen clothing. Additionally, work on television drama's effects on audiences does not pinpoint screen clothing as a driver of wider social, cultural, or political implications.

This research therefore adds to this emerging area of study to consider how the sartorial representation of the working class may affect mainstream societal understandings and responses to class experience. It suggests that the language of costume influences relationships to class position, despite or in- spite of, the political intent of the production. The mixed methodology triangulates primary material from practitioner interviews, viewer focus groups and textual analysis of the extended case study that draws upon the industry experience and subject position of the researcher.

The aims are to explore the perceptions of working-class experience represented and to consider how the language of costume works to inhibit or successfully articulate the perceptions and/or the narrative intent of the production. By integrating theory and practice across disciplines, this research identifies that sartorial representations are limited since they are encumbered by genre-specific production practices compelled to employ a reductive visual language. As a result, the implicit meanings woven into the language of costume symbolize a presumed rejection and absence of class consciousness, which is subsequently perpetuated as the norm. What is reflected are techniques of adaptation and/or resignation demanded by the class structure, for the benefit of the class structure.