Realism in the 1950s and 1960s

¶ … Kitchen sink realism

The concept of 'kitchen sink realism' became popular in England during the 1950s as a significant number of writers, playwrights, and screenwriters directed their attention toward writing words addressing young men who were angry with a series of things. Social realism was a dominant idea during the period and this is visible throughout works involving 'kitchen sink realism'. The genre focused on young Britons who spent most of their lives working low-paid jobs, staying in small apartments, and spending most of their resources on alcohol they drank in dirty pubs.

Kitchen sink realism is an essential part of British culture and the fact that it effectively replicates attitudes that were common in England during the 1950s and 1960s contributes to painting a true image of life during the period. There was nothing avant-garde about this genre, as it was meant to put across a social message and focused on associating this particular message with leftist ideas. "It drew attention to the condition of working-class lives: hardships, strong sense of community, and the injustice of limiting their upward mobility." (King 452)

In addition to impressing the general public through the sincerity it presented people with, the movement also emphasized the fact that it stood against traditional establishment. It indirectly encouraged the masses to get actively involved in criticizing government legislations and consumer thinking. By bringing into public attention the lives of otherwise uninteresting people and making them appealing, individuals involved in the current wanted to demonstrate that people in general need to go back to addressing their personal problems before attempting to be assimilated.

By considering kitchen sink realism during the 1950s and 1960s, one can gain a more complex understanding of how an expanding society managed to make its people feel further apart from each-other in spite of the fact that communities were becoming larger. Many of the characters created during the movement displayed feelings that directly condemned the social order for accepting to live in ways that directly damaged it. People were virtually brought to a stage where they were supportive toward having lifestyles that presented them with little to no happiness while also taking advantage of the limited privileges they could access. Kitchen sink realism almost provided the world with a paradox -- individuals who had very little and who struggled to be everything they could be in spite of this limitation.