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Essay: This is England

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  • Subject area(s): Photography and arts essays
  • Reading time: 3 minutes
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  • Published: 17 October 2015*
  • File format: Text
  • Words: 715 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 3 (approx)

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Young 12-year old Shaun is going by himself and is lost through the start of his school holidays, until he got a chance meeting Woody and his fun and friendly Skinhead friends. He found a new way of life, like girls, parties, Ben Sherman shirts, Doc Martin boots and shaving his hair. The skinheads now welcomed Young Shaun. His life during the summer holiday has got a lot better, because he is having fun with his new friends. That is until Combo arrives and ruin everything, because of his bitterness, dangerous, racism. Shaun gets a girlfriend, they call her ‘Smell’, but her actually name is ‘Michelle’. Shaun’s dad died as a serviceman in the Falkland war. It has a big effect on Shaun, that his dad is dead, that’s why he doesn’t enjoy life, until he meets the Skinheads. Properly one of the Skinheads old friend, went back from prison, his name is Combo.

This is England, was made in England in the year 1983. Margaret Thatcher was selected as the prime minister in 1979 under the slogan ‘Labour is not working’. England had a very bad economic situation in the year 1979, and Margaret Thatcher tried to make it better for England’s very bad economic situation. England was plagued by a big number of unemployment. England was also in a war against Argentina in the Falkland war, that England actually won the war in the year 1982. This is England is a review at the early eighties of British working-class life through the eyes of young Shaun and his new friends/gang.

Combo was talking about the Falkland war where Shaun’s father died, suddenly Shaun gets mad and try to hit him. Combo sees Shaun as an opportunity to make Shaun member of his group, called BNP, so he can fight again for his father. Shaun is confused and in despair, he decides to member of the group. The group BNP see themselves as nationalist and not racists. They are against all people, that aren’t from England, so if you are a Paki you have to be thrown out of the country. They threat immigrant very bad, by using knife, although they attack a man in his shop, because they think he is stealing the English peoples place to work. Although Shaun misses Woody, Lol, Milky and Smell, and they also miss him, but they cant she him as long he is with Combo. Shaun likes to be with the big guys and also thinks it’s cool to be with the big guys.

Combo invites Milky to come to him, so Milky can get them some Weed. They are laughing and having fun together, suddenly Combo starts asking Milky about himself and his family. Milky tells Combo, that he have a big family and are having a great time with his family. Combo gets jealous about Milky, because Milky got almost everything and Combo doesn’t have any of these good things, so Combo starts hitting Milky and beating him up. Shaun tries to stop him, but Combo’s assistant Banjo stops him. Then Meggy stops Combo, by beating Milky.

The film ends up with Shaun throwing the England flag in the ocean, it’s a symbol, that he is over the group BNP and want to start over again with his life.

The message of the film is that you shouldn’t have prejudices of anyone, and it is all right to come from another nation. The title of the film tells a lot, and it is very strong and means that THIS IS ENGLAND, and nothing can England down. I also think that jealousy could be the message of this film, because Combo gets so jealous of Milky and ends up beating him.

I really liked this film, because it tells us a lot of what happened back at the early eighties of English working-class. It also tells us how the immigrants lived, and what the consequences of being an immigrant and how their living conditions were. And also that they were hated by some of the English people, but now all of them, some of them were good and bad. My finally rating of the film on a scale of one to ten, it would probably be on 8.

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