Analysing Media Language In 5 Shots: This Is England

The film starts with the opening credits putting the film into historical context with three minutes of historical footage, starting with the cultural figure from children's television Roland Rat, followed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the royal wedding between Princess Diana and Prince Charles, as well as several protests. It ends with images of the Falklands War, with mutilated bodies and covered up corpses of soldiers.

The exact date is immediately given as July 1983.


After the camera has zoomed out of a close up of a portrait photo, this shot displays a routine of the young boy getting up for school, in a medium long-shot. The mis-en-scene features a stereotypical image attributed towards young males, that of a football team poster. The boy is naked except for his underpants, which can connote a maybe more relaxed upbringing than if he was wearing pyjamas, which would suggest a bit more of a stricter,  traditional and middle or upper-class background. The fact that the mis-en-scene of the room is pretty bare and does not have a lot of objects, hints further at a poorer and working class background, as otherwise parents would like to spoil their children if they could afford to.
The boy is looking at a portrait photo. With the images of Falkland soldiers falling in battle and the date given, one can connote from this that the by has a lost a close relative in the war, most likely his father or older brother. This kind of portrait lying on surfaces on home being a stereotypical image of a lost loved one. The audience thereby feels sympathy for the young boy's loss, a feeling which is added by the colorless nature of his room, which can be seen as a metaphor for how his life feels.



This is an extreme long shot of a moving subject, giving a feeling of distance the young protagonist. He is walking towards a shop Him walking pass a group of boys his ages signifies his status as an outsider. The fact that the boys start picking on him for no reason creates antipathy for the other characters. However the boy's usage of swearwords soon after this shows a side that is not just a victim. The swearing of both the protagonist and the other boys signifies the rough nature of the area.

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Through a medium-close-up the boy is shown to be reading a comic. The boy is shown to be enjoying a typically childish thing to do with an undertone of innocence, this child-friendly atmosphere is increased by the comics in the background. The boy's status as an outsider is increased to that of a rebel by not listening to the shop owner's request to buy the comic.



This is a two-shot where vulnerability is expressed with use of the naturally taller height of the shop owner. Due to height differences the shop owner is in medium long-shot (down to the knees) and the boy in medium shot (down to the waist). The Indian shop owner is a common cliché in urban England. The boy has just been having his first pleasure of the day, but it is snatched away from him. There is repetition in the boy's usage of swearwords.

The long-shot shows images of youth culture, with the cliché of graffiti on walls. Sitting under The bridge connotes an area outside the main world, which signifies rebellion and a resistance to mainstream society, a form of counterculture. the hight of the skinhead right shows his status as the leader and a proactive character as he rises to help the suffering protagonist. This creates great sympathy for him as he is the first character to help the protagonist in his day of misery. In portrayal of the skinheads we have two positive representations, the one of a kind helping person displayed in the young male standing and the black man with a hat. Skinheads have a reputation of being Nazis. The two skinheads towards the left don't care much for the boy's predicament, and their skinhead look is even more extreme, so they appeal to the stereotypical expectations of street youths, sitting together and laughing everything off, despite it being obvious that the boy is suffering.