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

“边缘地带”空间是跨越城乡鸿沟的城市外围环境。它们围绕着被20世纪70年代英国制造业危机打乱的工业区而形成，包括零售园区、高速公路服务、住房开发和废弃或改造的工厂，尽管它们直到21世纪初才被恰当地分类。本文将通过研究边地在后工业时代开始到现在的电影和电视表现，探讨边地在英国文化想象中所扮演的角色。该项目将以各种类型和模式为例，从社会历史和美学理论的角度审视屏幕边缘地带，以确定它们的话语意义，并考虑这些文化感受如何在很大程度上被英国身份的主导叙事所升华。将特别关注这些过程与后工业变革的深远影响之间的联系，这些变化的影响在边缘地区尤为明显，在边缘地区，多种经济和社会力量汇聚在一起。这项研究的关键文本包括克里奥·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），理查德·汉福德的儿童系列《垃圾场的Stig》（1982年）和罗恩·派克的纪录片短片《分配》（1976年），同时也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.