Why is there such a lack of working-class directors?
There has long been a debate around the class disparities affecting actors, especially in the United Kingdom, where a large majority of the biggest stars have hailed from privately educated backgrounds. Yet, there is also a massive issue regarding the class differences between directors, too, with a distinctive lack of filmmakers identifying as working-class.
In fact, in 2020, the Creative Industry Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) found that only a quarter of people employed in the United Kingdom’s screen industry are from working-class backgrounds. The issue is similar across the pond, with most American filmmakers emerging today possessing some form of class privilege. It seems as though it is harder than ever for directors to enter the industry, with many factors preventing budding creatives from being able to simply pick up a camera and make a movie.
There used to be a lot of interest in working-class stories in British cinema, particularly during the 1960s, with great movies from Billy Liar to Bronco Bullfrog depicting honest tales about less privileged characters. Still, both of these movies were made by filmmakers who went to private schools (John Schlesinger and Barney Platt-Mills, respectively).
Luckily, some artists who grew up in working-class areas emerged during this era, like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh – their tales of lower-class life endure to this day. Movies such as Loach’s Kes or Leigh’s Meantime depict realistic struggles facing those from less fortunate backgrounds, emphasising the government’s lack of care for its citizens.
Why are working-class filmmakers so important?
It is vital to have working-class creatives tell working-class stories authentically, subsequently reflecting the real lives of many people who are otherwise marginalised on screen (and in real life). The reality is that millions of people across the world live in poverty or identify as working-class. Therefore, a diverse and representative range of stories and characters should be depicted on our screens because cinema genuinely impacts real life, significantly perpetuating and influencing our views of others from different backgrounds. That’s why it’s so important to have nuanced depictions of working-class people on screen, a social group so often discriminated against.
Even so, working-class filmmakers deserve the opportunity to make films as much as anyone else – of course – regardless of whether they’re about class issues and working-class life or not. Cinema has the capacity to bring so much joy and connection, and for the industry to be dominated by middle and upper-class directors suggests that the arts and high-quality entertainment are not meant for people from a less privileged background.
This is incredibly untrue – art should be for all – but how are budding working-class directors meant to enter the industry when there are so many systematic and social barriers working against them?
Most film industry jobs are located in big cities, whether that be London or Hollywood, which are incredibly expensive to live in, excluding those who cannot easily live in such areas. Entry-level jobs, such as being a runner, are hard to come by unless you miraculously have industry connections, and they are often unpaid or require a car. We must also consider that working-class people are less likely to go to university, and those who do go are also less likely to enrol in creative courses such as filmmaking, instead opting for something with a higher guarantee of employment.
Then we have the issue of governmental disregard for budding creatives. The UK government has frequently pulled arts funding and even actively discouraged people from entering the arts sector. As recently as 2020, advertisements encouraging creatives to explore jobs in other sectors, such as “cyber”, were created by the UK government, suggesting that the arts shouldn’t be taken as seriously.
While there are filmmaking schemes put in place by organisations like the BFI or The Sundance Institute, there are still minimal opportunities for budding lower-class directors, who might not even consider this a realistic or sustainable investment due to their economic circumstances.
Charlotte Regan, who released her debut film, Scrapper, in 2023, explained to Close Up Culture that being from a working-class background typically puts you at a disadvantage in the industry. She explained, “You’re expected to work for so long unpaid in film that it isn’t the easiest to come from that working-class world and step into the industry, especially when you don’t know a single person in it.”
While filmmakers can certainly tell stories about lives they haven’t lived themselves, there’s something dangerous and even fetishistic about certain incredibly well-off directors who make movies about extremely poor characters and storylines. A great recent example of this is the film Lola by Nicola Peltz-Beckham, the daughter of one of the United States’ richest men.
She just made her directorial debut, Lola, which sees her play a stripper with a transgender sibling, facing poverty and struggle in a way that Peltz-Beckham, who grew up in a very expensive house in New York, could never even comprehend. Labelled by many Letterboxd reviewers as an example of “trauma porn” and “extreme cognitive dissonance,” the negatively-received film is a prime illustration of nepotism and class privilege in the industry, with Peltz-Beckham fetishising a lifestyle that she is so far removed from for the sake of entertainment and a pseudo sense of understanding.
The lack of working-class female directors
Another fascinating point to explore is how this class debate also intersects with issues such as the lack of female and non-white filmmakers. There is already an inherent lack of directors who aren’t straight white men, so with the added ‘disadvantage’ of also being working-class, many already marginalised artists find themselves even less well-equipped to enter the industry.
Interestingly, a large portion of female filmmakers are from privileged class backgrounds, reflecting the difficulty faced by women in breaking into cinema. A small percentage of directors are female – just 24% of directors and writers who worked on the 250 highest-grossing movies of 2022 were women. Yet, when we think of some of the biggest or newest female directors on the scene, almost all of them are from extremely wealthy backgrounds, from Greta Gerwig, Sofia Coppola and Chloé Zhao to Charlotte Wells, Rose Glass, Joanna Hogg and Emerald Fennell.
This is not to discredit their achievements as female directors, telling many fantastic and well-needed stories in such a male-dominated landscape. Rather, this highlights how much harder it is for working-class female filmmakers to break through, having to break down both class and gender barriers.
How can the film industry become more inclusive?
It appears that issues coming from all corners, ranging from widespread classism, nepotism and prejudice in the industry to governmental disinterest in the arts, have resulted in a huge disparity in class representation in the film world. We need directors from less privileged backgrounds – people like Andrea Arnold, who grew up on a council estate with a single mother, which undoubtedly informed her incredible films Wasp and Fish Tank – to tell stories that make cinema a more interesting art form.
The industry’s white male middle-classness promotes a certain ideology, one that aims to keep the social milieu and patriarchal hegemony in order, preventing class consciousness or revolt. This needs to change, but for this to happen, the industry needs to address its class problem, and the government need to do better, recognising the highly important and transformative nature of art, specifically filmmaking.
We still have a long way to go, but if people become more aware of the blinding disparities at the heart of the industry, maybe things will slowly begin to change.
