Thinking through Film: Popular Social Realism

Probably the dominant form of learning from popular feature-length films for Sociologists is through critique of ideology, or interpreting resistance to it (following the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies). Other traditions of thought go beyond ideology critique to consider knowledge that is produced by such films: indexical, multi-sensory, and conceptual. In this paper I will draw on work in anthropology (Lucien Taylor) and the philosophy of film (for example, that of Stanley Cavell) to consider how selected social realist films think in a multi-sensory way – including popular realist films. I will consider a popular social realist film in detail, analysing how it thinks with central sociological concepts such as power, inequalities, and social reproduction.