The term Angry Young Men was a journalistic catchphrase applied to a generation of British writers, who in their work attempted to shake up what they saw as being the cosy and stale cultural values of mid 1950s Britain.
Taken from the title of Leslie Allen Paul’s autobiography, Angry Young Man, the phrase became current with a production of John Osborne’s landmark play Look Back in Anger (1956). The group it exemplified not only expressed discontent with the staid, hypocritical institutions of English society—the so-called Establishment—but suffered from disillusionment with itself and with its own achievements and social standing.
In doing so, they became a new, salient force in English drama, focusing their literary eye on the working classes, portraying the drabness, mediocrity, and injustice in the lives of these people. By bringing the plight of the working class to the attention of the educated middle class, this group of writers worked fiercely to empower the outsider as a sympathetic character, which was no mean feat in a socially conscious and strictly class oriented England.
Included among the angry young men were the playwrights John Osborne and Arnold Wesker and, albeit unofficially, Joe Orton as well as novelists Kingsley Amis and John Braine – all writers now considered to be some of Britain’s finest literary minds.
Of these writers, Kingsley Amis significantly hit upon a cultural nerve with his first novel Lucky Jim which is considered by many to be the exemplary novel of fifties Britain. Considered a seminal work, it was the first English novel to feature an ordinary man as anti-hero.
Now, a new generation of English writers is being heralded as the successors to the mantle of the new ‘angry young things’ where the anti hero is present as a matter of course and very different ideas pertaining to the state of modern life are explored. Many, however, seem to be unsure just exactly what these writers are actually angry about.
The key figures in this new generation of highly influential writers – Patrick Marber, Joe Penhall, Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, (dubbed the Brit-Pack by one reporter), come from a cross section of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, and their works highlight the trials and tribulations of modern life as they see it.
However, more than one critic has questioned whether the anger they portray is as culturally and socially relevant today as that of their counterparts in the 50s and 60s.
The output of this new generation of writers goes by many names – New Brutalism, The Blood and Sperm Generation, Cool Britannia and, most commonly, In-Yer-Face-Theatre. Drama critic, Aleks Sierz, in his influential tome In-Yer- Face Theatre – British Drama Today typified this genre of writing as being anything new on stage that was violent, shocking or provocative – a style of writing for the theatre that broke taboos and exploded prejudice.
In determining its appeal to modern audiences, he posited that “this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, it forces audiences to react; either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced that it is the best thing they have ever seen and want all their friends to see it too.”
Others, however, such as theatre director Chris Mead, have questioned the validity of the belief that the work of this new contingent can be compared with what the writers who collectively typified the Angry Young Movement of the 1950s and 60s were trying to achieve. Mead asks, “do these names signify the triumph of marketing over substance? Are these nasty newish British plays just full of puerile shock tactics or do they mark a genuine shift in the form and content of theatre?” Indeed many commentators agree that many of these plays are opportunistically conceived, modish and written to formula.
Mead also queried whether all of the hype over the newest generations of writers was just that. Style over substance. Arguing that the attention accorded them and their work was simply much ado about the young: “the transfiguration of the new, the naughty and the young purely because it was, and they were, new, naughty and young—an inversely sentimental charmed circle of youth.”
Of this new generation, the late Sarah Kane stands out as being the writer closest to her 1950s counterparts in terms of her ability to tap into the social and cultural zeitgeist of the modern era. When her first play, Blasted, premiered in 1995 she literally went from being an unknown to one of Britain’s most controversial playwrights overnight. Blasted, which drew parallels between Bosnia and Britain was greeted with almost universal condemnation. Jack Tinker of the Daily Mail described it as: “This disgusting feast of filth,” whilst Charles Spencer of the Telegraph called it “this vile play,” further commenting that Kane mistakenly believed “the ability to provoke shudders of disgust is all a playwright needs”.
Since her suicide in 1999, however, her works have been repeatedly revisited and reassessed and she is now considered to be one of the most significant British writers of the 20th century.
Mark Ravenhill, considered by many to be the modern day incarnation of similarly gay 50s playwright Joe Orton, scandalized the theatre establishment with the production of his first play, provocatively entitled Shopping & Fucking an exploration of what is was like to be a gay man in modern day Britain. Using confrontational subject matter to explore what he considered to be deeply rooted social problems inherent in the gay community, his work, which one critic typified as “an exploration of the nature of addictions, identity and a culture that promotes avoidance and escape by any means possible,” has met with both critical acclaim as well as scathing criticism. However claims that his work was intentionally provocative with the primary aim of selling tickets off scandal with no new literary ground really being broken have done little to make his work any less popular.
So too, Joe Penhall with his award winning play Blue/Orange – a controversial piece which looked at the highly topical issues of race and psychiatry – commented that in his opinion, the British Theatre Establishment as it existed today, was “an inherently conservative business, increasingly run by marketing and finance departments”. One in which the voice of the writer is both creatively stifled and financially restrained by the need to produce commercially viable works that garner the attention of the money men, (who fund precious few new productions from the plethora of works by starving young writers desperate to receive the holy grail of their first big break.)
All of which is hardly a conducive breeding ground for socially conscious and politically incendiary works, as produced by their literary predecessors who took inspiration from the outrage and pain they felt at the state of the world as it was then.
Patrick Marber, whose scathingly witty play Closer, which caught the sexual amorality, bad manners and longings of the late 1990s to perfection, is another key figure. Yet in a recent interview looking at his success on the British stage he commented: “You can always find the misery to write a play…there’s always stuff lurking around. I have a pretty good life at the moment… I’m just happy earning a living with my pen.” Not exactly the words of a literary revolutionary.
In a work of collected prose entitled Damn You England John Osborne wrote the following:
Legend has been deliberately circulated that a revolution has begun to take place. As yet there has been little fighting in the streets, a great deal of whispering behind closed doors, with odd, isolated, blustering outbreaks; but the machinery of government goes on much the same as ever…You still want to be a revolutionary? You’ve plenty of time. The party has scarcely started.
