Popular Culture in John Osborne’s Play “Look Back in Anger”
Popular Culture in John Osborne’s Play “Look Back in Anger”

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses Look Back in Anger (1956) – a play written in the style of social realism by English dramatist John Osborne – from the point of view of popular culture. Popular culture is seen here as a number of material and non-material aspects of everyday life in the first half of the twentieth century. The notion of popular culture is largely taken from John Fiske (2001), who maintains that the instruments of everyday life are crucial for the development of popular culture. The analysis is divided into three sections: the first one deals with anger as a popular feeling of the 1950s, which is also the dominant mood in the play; the second one is concerned with popular industrial products, such as newspapers, the iron, toys for children, etc., which serve emotional rather than industrial, practical ends; the third one is devoted to the usage of certain popular elements as a means of communication with art, mostly with the aim of escaping from harsh reality or fighting against it. The final aim of the paper is to prove that popular culture plays one of the leading roles in the realism of this drama.

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