Rising East Online

Review: Living on Location

Ali Gray

It’s not all pearly queens and jellied eels in the East End of London, you know. Believe what the government tell you and East London is a site of regeneration, buzzing with activity for the coming Olympics, a shining example of what makes our capital great. Alternatively, if you believe what you see on television, every street, square and court in East London is the setting for serial dramas such as robbery, arson, date rape, teenage pregnancy, weekly pub fights, street brawling, incest and at least three deaths per month (you have to marvel at the genius of the Walford estate agents who keep Albert Square populated, despite its sky-high mortality rate). If you believe what modern cinema tells you, the East End of London is full of pinstripe-suited gangsters, striding in slow-motion down the street to an indie soundtrack, shooter in hand, no doubt on the way to ‘rub out a grass’ or pay back a seedy character by the name of Hatchet Harry or Sid the Stabber. Is cinema’s depiction of East London’s criminal underbelly even vaguely accurate, or is it as far removed from reality as the regurgitated soap opera storylines we see every week?

Take Exhibit A, Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. A huge hit on release, it sent the soon to be Mr. Madonna’s star into the ascendant and rocketed the British gangster film to the kind of heady heights not seen since the days of The Long Good Friday. The characters of Lock Stock… all dress impeccably, walk with a swagger, swear incessantly and are always on the lookout for get rich schemes (most of which, naturally, fall on the wrong side of the law). In Ritchie’s world, gangsters are good-natured but misguided fellows who love their mums, lawmen are small and weedy, debt collectors look like footballers and there’s no situation that can’t be rectified with a swift game of poker.

Sure, it was never meant to be a completely accurate depiction of London life, but it inadvertently opened the door for a stream (and stream is the right word, folks) of watered down knock-offs, all trying to trade on cheeky cockney charm and caricatures of real-life gangsters like the Krays and Ronnie Biggs. Before you knew it, East London had been characterised as an almost cartoon-like hive of villainy, populated by mobsters, bad guys, criminals and petty thugs, all of whom would beat you to death with a potato masher if you so much as looked at them, you muppet.

Obviously this is not the case. East London has its crime problems just like any part of the country, and yes, it has its history and has a certain ‘romantic’ notion of thuggery attached to it. But is it really acceptable for modern gangster films to exploit this history, and in some cases, make light of it? The most notorious gangsters committed some truly horrific crimes, so why are the characters in Guy Ritchie’s world merely portrayed as ‘rascals’ who’ll quickly win the hearts of the audiences with a quip and a smile? A certain degree of artistic license has to be allowed, granted, but to play on the stereotype of the sharp-suited East End gangster in this day and age is lazy filmmaking, not to mention grossly inaccurate.

By contrast, let’s look at Exhibit B. Saul Dibb’s Bullet Boy (2004) tackles violence and crime not in a stock manner but in ways which are both realistic and original. Set in Hackney, it charts the progress of a young offender released from prison, and his slow descent back into his old routine of guns, drugs and crime, all without resorting to cheap tricks and clichés like fat old men cussing each other in a dingy back room bar. This is violence how it really happens on the street – it’s ugly, unnecessary and every time a shot is fired, the consequences are inescapable. It feels like a different world from the fantasy created by Guy Ritchie (who, by the way, went to a private school) and although it doesn’t paint a particularly pleasant picture of life on ground level in East London, it is at least telling it how (some of) it is: high street banks are more likely to be robbed by desperate, inexperienced young offenders than they are a group of wisecracking likely lads who like holding their guns sideways. You’re more likely to be mugged by a crack addict with a flick-knife than you are by someone who has just stepped out of the H&M autumn catalogue.

Having lived in East London myself now for well over a year, I can honestly say I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my surroundings, which are far from the low-life image of the area previously imprinted on my brain by TV and films. For the most part it’s a thoroughly pleasant place to live (if you avoid Upton Park after a heavy defeat) and the people I’ve met have been decent, law-abiding folk, none of whom have threatened to chop me into bits or throw me in any rivers. On the other side of the coin, I’ve also had friends beaten up, known people to get mugged at gun point and have myself been involved in a highly comical pub scam that Del Boy would be proud of. I’m not saying these things don’t happen, simply that they are by no means the defining characteristic of the area; and it’s not big and it’s not clever to glamorise them or exploit them in the name of entertainment. East London is a diverse, constantly evolving location to live in, and I for one am glad that the stereotypes are continually proved wrong. Besides, it sure beats the hell out of living in Essex. Now that’s a nightmare.

Ali Gray is studying Journalism.

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