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

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'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.