Outer Limits: Edgeland Spaces and Cultural Self-Imaginings in the Film and Television of Post-Industrial Britain

“边缘地带”空间是跨越城乡分界线的城市外围环境。它们包括零售园区、高速公路服务、住宅开发和废弃或重新利用的工厂，形成于20世纪70年代英国制造业危机造成混乱的工业区周围，尽管它们直到世纪初才被正确分类。本文将通过研究后工业时代开始至今的电影和电视中的边缘地带，来探讨边缘地带在英国文化想象中所扮演的角色。该项目将引用各种类型和模式的例子，从社会历史和美学理论的角度来研究屏幕上的边缘地带，以确定它们的话语意义，并考虑这些可能如何参与主要由英国身份的主导叙事升华的文化感受。将特别关注这些进程与后工业变革的深远影响之间的联系，后工业变革的影响在边缘地区特别明显，围绕其界限，多种经济和社会力量汇聚。这项研究的关键文本涵盖了从克利奥巴纳德的《自私的巨人》（2013年）和卡尔弗朗西斯的《街头生活》（1995年），到理查德汉福德的儿童系列《垃圾堆的斯蒂格》（1982年）和罗恩派克的纪录片短片《分配》（1976年），同时还包括公共安全和土木工程方面的档案材料。

'Edgeland' spaces are outer-city environments that straddle the urban-rural divide. Encompassing retailparks, motorway services, housing developments and disused or repurposed factories, they formedaround industrial zones disarrayed by the British manufacturing crisis of the 1970s, though they wouldnot be properly classified until the early 21st century. This thesis will explore the roles edgelands haveplayed in the British cultural imaginary by studying their filmic and televisual representations from thepost-industrial era's beginnings through to the present day. Citing examples from various genres andmodes, the project will examine on-screen edgelands from socio-historical and aesthetic-theoreticalperspectives to determine their discursive significances and consider how these might engage culturalfeelings largely sublimated by dominant narratives of British identity. Special focus will be given to linksbetween these processes and the far-reaching reverberations of post-industrial change, the impacts ofwhich are particularly manifest in edgeland areas, around whose liminal bounds multiple economic andsocietal forces converge. Texts key to the study run the gamut from Clio Barnard's The Selfish Giant(2013) and Karl Francis' Street Life (1995), to Richard Handford's children's series Stig of the Dump(1982) and Ron Peck's documentary short On Allotments (1976), while also taking in archival materialson public safety and civil engineering.