Human Traffic, Britishness and Authority

Human Traffic is a very British film, in my opinion. It is directed by a British director, stars many British actors and features a lot of British music artists. It revolves around the British drug culture and clubbing scene, parodying the style of expose documentaries such as Rave in one part.

I would not say that the characters really have a ‘British reserve’ – which is the general disinclination to show emotion, feelings or to act in any way that could be viewed as slightly off centre. For instance, the characters are generally quite open and they certainly do not have any qualms about behaving in a way that is not culturally normal.
They seem fairly open; for instance, Koop and Jip talk about Koop’s father’s mental health, and Koop regularly talks about his paranoia over his girlfriend Nina.

The only character who really seems to have any kind of reserve might be Moff, who does not mention his utter loneliness to the others, but he still acts in a way that is not quite traditional, through selling drugs.

The reinvention of the National Anthem is quite interesting and demonstrates this lack of reserve, as it is effectively a bastardisation of the National Anthem, which is deemed as a very inherent part of Britishness and our monarchy. The song demands that we be ruled over - ‘long to reign over us’ and states that the queen ‘give[s] us cause’. However, characters in the film are resisting authority and aiming to be individual from the very beginning, and this suggests why they may have created their own national anthem, which very much reflects issues that are important to them.

Questions on the National Anthem

1.     I believe the Monarchy is an important part of British culture and identity but I do not think they reign over us in the sense they once may have. Nowadays they carry out duties and visits more often than getting involved with parliamentary matters, and of course our Queen can no longer send us into war, contrasting the lines which state ‘scatter her enemies and make them fall’, as this is not something that has much to do with the Queen anymore. I do feel the Queen plays an important part in British culture but I do not feel they have the same power and rule that they once did.

2.     I believe in the last four lines of the National Anthem  - ‘May she defend our laws/and ever give us cause/to sing with heart and voice/God save the Queen’. This is because British culture still celebrates the monarchy to a huge extent and I highly doubt this will change any time soon. The Royal Family as a cultural icon are highly significant, as shown through the celebrations of the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and the excitement leading up to the birth of their son, Prince George. This definitely ‘[gave] us cause to sing with heart and voice’. I think we also enjoy the fact that we feel the Queen would defend the best interests of her subjects in parliament, although the extent to which this happens is not quite clear.

3.     I don’t think that much more of the National Anthem is particularly relevant anymore. I especially disagree with the section that states ‘scatter her enemies/and make them fall/confound her politics/frustrate their knavish tricks’.  I would not say that the Queen has any real enemies, other than those who oppose the Royal Family, and hence this section is no longer really relevant in my opinion. I feel that the Royal Family is now a cultural symbol rather than a real power and hence this section falsely represents this.

Questions on the New National Anthem

1.     I feel that Jip rewrote the National Anthem to help to reflect British culture more effectively and to make it more relevant for himself and his peers. For instance, the National Anthem seems to reflect on solidarity and pride in communities, but in Jip’s version, it states ‘our generation/alienation/have we a soul?’ This reflects the fact that he has feelings that are quite the opposite of what is highlighted in the original anthem. He feels lost and like an outsider, but he also states that his peers also feel this way. He also comments on modern developments and how they are negatively impacting us -  ‘techno emergency/virtual reality/we’re running out of new ideas’. This new national anthem is definitely much less optimistic than the original but it is more relevant to a postmodern era, which is shown by ‘I’m trying to be myself/understand everyone’, which is akin to postmodernist concepts such as the idea of choice, and reality being subjective to each individual.

2.     I believe the new national anthem is easier to identify with despite being 15 years old, as it addresses more issues that people are now facing in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, which ultimately are concerned over our future, our place in the world and the role of technology in all of this.  These worries and the feeling of anomie (a condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals) can be highly problematic in society, which reflects the fact that the new National Anthem is not as optimistic as the original. It sums up feelings that many people can identify with and this is likely to be of more value to the people who sing it than an old version that is no longer applicable in the majority of cases.

How were the ‘authority figures’ in Human Traffic represented?

1.     Moff’s father is presented as a scary authority figure. He works within the police and hence the relationship between Moff and his dad is quite tentative as Moff being involved in not only drug taking, but also selling drugs, means that they clearly hold different values.

The difference between the two men is shown clearly at the scene where they are at the dinner table on Sunday. The style of the footage is different – for instance, Moff is shown with his hands being much larger than his head, and this seems to be showing him from a low angle. The father is shown in a more regular way, and this emphasizes the differences between them. Also, he is shown rewinding the things his parents have said to him and clearly being exasperated by them. This is interesting as it shows the fact that even though they have more authority than him, he is not just going to accept this as inevitable.

He then stands up, after ‘deleting’ his grandmother, and for once he has the upper hand, with the camera filming him from a low angle, showing him as being quite powerful. We see his mother flinch and she is portrayed as smaller than him.

2.     Jip’s mother is not really much of an authority figure. Although he seeks her approval in the fact he doesn’t want her to see him when he’s coming down from his drugs high, he seems to be protective over her, talking about how he used to stick around when she was with a man in order to take care of her if something bad was to happen. He also says that he has to ‘stop [him]self from running upstairs and beating the living s**t out of the man who’s there with [his] mum’, which seems to represent the way that a father typically tries to keep his daughter innocent.  The camera angles here show the mother and her son on the same levels, and there is no real difference between them. In this respect, there is no authority figure here.

3.     Koop’s dad is an utter role reversal between a son and his father. He goes to visit him every day after work, and he is asked questions such as ‘so how long have I got to stay here?’, which is similar to the kind of questions a bored child might ask. Koop replies that he doesn’t know, the same way that a parent might do to avoid telling their child an answer that might upset them. Of course, Koop could equally be saying this because he truly doesn’t know – making him appear vulnerable. The two men are sitting down, but Koop seems to be slightly higher up than his father, with the older man looking up at him to ask questions. This encourages the idea that Koop is an authority figure for his father, and not the other way round, which is more traditional.