‘London’s moving East’
: film, television, and gentrification, 1980 to the present

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract

My research explores the crucial role of screen media in representing the politics of gentrification in East London. Although the accelerated pace of regeneration and its divisiveness affect the whole city and gentrification is now being studied at a planetary scale, East London has emerged as a laboratory for global trends in urban renewal since the 1980s, with the redevelopment of the Docklands, and it has continued as such with the regeneration of the area for the 2012 Olympic Games. The film and media I explore produce an archive of East London as a radically contested urban terrain where different communities and social actors negotiate access to public space and housing. I argue that the Eastern part of the city is today characterized as a transitional space and as a site of convergence and global connectivity, in contrast to its earlier depiction as the poverty struck and crime-ridden, but more authentically working-class “other” to the West End. In order to render the complexities and nuances of this mediascape and the different political stances towards gentrification it represents, I explore a wide range of formats, including feature films, television documentaries, television series and essay films. I contextualise these screen productions within the wider mediated constructions of urban space which contribute to the place-making of the area, from music videos to real estate promotions. I explore how the ongoing socio-economic transformation of East London taking place off screen is mapped on screen through three distinct modes of media activity: production, representation, and resistance. I situate my research at the intersection of film and urbanism, therefore drawing on studies of London on screen and spatial analyses of film and media and setting them in conversation with housing studies, sociology and geography. Although a socio-historical analysis of the media texts is at the core of my research, I also consider aspects of production and circulation that contribute to shaping the media landscape of East London, intervening in an area of film studies that is still not sufficiently studied: the role of film and media in representing gentrification and its counter-narratives.
Date of Award1 Jul 2020
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • King's College London
SupervisorMark Shiel (Supervisor) & Lawrence Napper (Supervisor)

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