evening around half past seven.
For years I was fascinated by its "realism". COUT streets an Elsie Tanner shops were just like the Concepta ran. Me and me mates felt a real sympathy with Lucille Hemat come stander, rae Coronation Street. Even now, 15 years later, the 'counter culture' of Lenin and Socialist Challenge have a habit of losing out if I am at home on Monday or Wednesday Ogden and all those other young sters who rebelled against stifling atmosphere of street.
After all Coronation Street spoke our language, it even had our Lancashire dialect, seemed to mirror our lives and that of the grown-ups that we KNEW No other series has ever been as successful in portraying working the deep uncertainties felt by TECT life disintegrating before their eyes it is this combinatioo of realism" and nostalgia that has made running semes in the history ol British TV.
Although working through the prejudices of middle class scripe writers. Stan Ogden is zy indolent and stupid. Th thing bal is a form of sedin- unemployment is not quency.
HAIR CURLERS Hilda Ogden Andy Capp with hair-curiers is an object of ridicule. Like a lot of working class women age, she is lately, ber kids have her. her Change he see sompany of their gossip.
and it solitical activity seems to commitment have been cut to stituenes are passise.
housing, Whenever the characters class, they are seen on that Irmas, whom l anything.
They that lemale of hel and Ena Sharples.
Elsic Tanner, sex life is non knows how men 'above" councillor, whose on works of imagina oing favours for the custome Rovers Return.
i the owes ma. 113 60 - they never discuss how he should vote abou cuts in schaols, hospitals and strike is causing chaos for the regulars at the Rovers Return, so low, mutters words of wisdom about 'the more obscure the issue the longer the strike is likely to rehels ainst the Street sid its value you know that it is almost certain they are going to leave the series.
the Lucilles and the sympathised with, were not going to change were written out and despatched to some candy-floss land like Loodoo or Australia be all right. The other youngsters like Deirdre and Ray Langton who had their kick-back, succumbed in due time, and quietly became young versions of Len Fairclough Street's who make up woman of the world, has had at least three marriages and Chris many affairs. have ended in disaster, generally because she has set her sights on her social status.
After each failure she goes back to her place in the Street and the tion dealin Nobody can change the value Or Coronation Street. Newcom ers are citber assimilared or they go away. This is the old commuthe larch. The Street is a secure oasis of terraced houses, What few coppers are around an nothing like the ones that tried to outside SUBSERVIENCE There are no West lodians ou unchanging world of working class subservience. Its message is loud and clear: as long as the working class stays with its own and does not get involved in things which do not concero it, everything wil Despite tbe fact that it gets the Repents right, and often asturely focusses on both the problems and bigotry of working people particularly the self-emplosed the publican and shop assistants most of its cast it never credits working peopl with any ability to change their livest then why should i? The and essentially patriotic working class is pleasing and - rEassurE te pur bouch ional ideas are ridiculed in th link by STEVE POTTER amplifying treat - we can say that In the become purely cultural and TEL MURAH sendemic phenomenon; while in developed in an ambience too retarded to permit a realisation SUCH SHE HEIT ICED Marie ideas are truditions? found expression in non This passage from an inletvic Marxist Lucio SUTHE neatly the reason wily New Lell Books have decided to produce a critheat reader oo western Narxisn . The book will be valuable to those seeking of theorists includine Lukacs, Horkheimer and Ma Sartre, Althusser and Dontain that rare pine i suct Delia Valpe. particalar books — an index But the book is also part of a consoldation of assemac critique of the positions advanc ed by the majority of the radica Jeft in the 1960%. The majority of the articles appeared in New Left Reviem from 1970 onwards. The I articles, Gorz on Granaci, preode that date Gorz's vigurous defence ol Sartre is equaily rebutted by Ronald However, there is no such cri to John Mertingon's article, thi cone and content of which (it wa readers of Mardsm Today in its categorical rejection Given the pro-eminence Gramsci in the pantheon of 'West ern Marxism', the book is there fore curiously imbalanoed as a critical render, This is not to sag tha: NR has not carried such u critique of Gramsci. Ao essenti
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I was about eight or nine when I first glued my backside to the seat in our sitting room in Morecambe to watch