Hair and fashion

Both films use hair and fashion to signify how their protagonists' identities change and develop over the course of the narrative. Think about the following questions in relation to the suggested sequences, before going on to read and discuss Joel's comments.

• Taking the first and last scenes from both Pressure and Burning an Illusion, how would you explain the change in appearance of both Tony and Pat?
• What do you notice about the fashion and hairstyles featured in each film? Do they reflect cultural changes, particularly within black communities, between the mid- 1970s and the early 1980s?
• Dress in Burning an Illusion and Pressure is used to signify the transformation of both Pat and Del. How does their dress change as the films progress? What does this represent?

Compared to architecture and food, hair and fashion in the mise en scène can provide a much more specific reading of temporal placement. Despite the drastic changes that parts of London have undergone in the past three decades, much of the architecture in films such as Pressure and Burning an Illusion differ only marginally from that in Notting Hill.

However the frequency with which hairstyles and fashion trends change allow for a more culturally specific reading of temporal placement. The distinctive hairstyles and fashions of the 1960s are clearly definable in Scandal (Michael Caton-Jones, 1989, UK) and even more pronounced in Julien Temple's musical Absolute Beginners (1986, UK), an extremely stylised look at youth culture, fashion and racial tensions at the time of the Notting Hill race riots. Both films were produced in the late 1980s, and there is clearly an element of nostalgia for a bygone era reflected in the set and costume designs.

Neither Pressure nor Burning an Illusion are retrospective films. Instead, they are firmly grounded in their present day and actively draw upon contemporary issues and themes for the central focus of their narratives, reflected in their naturalistic use of 'costume'. Additionally, the relatively short span of time between the two films serves to provide a useful barometer of how various stylistic influences and changes impact upon black British culture and allow us to read the slightest nuances in juxtaposition to one another.

In the pre-globalist world of the 1970s, and before the homogenous, label-obsessed influences of hip-hop on international youth culture, the very distinctive dress sense of black British youth is in clear evidence throughout both films, yet within varying degrees of its evolution. Trainers and sports wear had not yet become the norm and amidst the insipient punk rock scene that was about to impact on mainstream British youth, a distinctly conservative tone still dominated black street style in Britain.

It is noticeable that in both Pressure and Burning an Illusion the variety of hairstyles and fashions are not as diverse as one would find amongst black communities today. Most tellingly, none of the major characters in either of the films have their hair in dreadlocks, a style that has particular resonance within Caribbean culture, specifically reggae and Rastafarianism, and has since become an almost universal emblem for protest groups around the globe, not just an expression of black identity.

Pressure

• Make a note of how Tony's style of clothing changes over the course of the film. How does this reflect his changing sense of identity and attitude to his social context?
• Read Joel's comments and discuss to what extent you agree or disagree with his analysis.

In Pressure Tony's attire, initially, swings between what seems to be a school uniform and his Sunday best, a clear binary to the combat jacket and Africana that Colin wears throughout the film and the more considered outfits worn by some of his peers. Colin's combat jacket draws heavily on US counter-culture aesthetics from which he derives much of his political rhetoric (radio broadcast about the Vietnam war are heard several times in the film), while the trench coats, checked sports blazers and hats worn by some of Tony's friends hint at the beginnings of the 'casual' movement that would soon evolve around the reggae scene in the mid-1970s. By the early 1980s, this fashion was already on the wane amongst Del and his friends in Burning an Illusion.

Indeed it is, symbolically, in Tony's attire that the viewer can first witness his state of flux. Attending his first activist meeting Tony sports a peaked cap and a light sports jacket, much to the interest of his friends. The hat (this is the first time he is seen wearing one) automatically links him, stylistically, to many of the other attendees. In the eclectic gathering, many of the men are wearing hats of one kind or another, such as traditional Scottish tams or knitted woollens, very popular styles amongst the Afro-Caribbean community at the time. Though such headwear may seem dated to modern audiences, they quickly became signifiers, unceremoniously dubbed 'tea cosies' by the mainstream, of black popular culture, much like the baseball cap or 'hoodie' today.

This style further symbolises Tony's relationship with an increasingly radical sensibility after he and his brother have been arrested and after Tony has left home. At the house, where he is now an active member of a militant group, making placards for a forthcoming demonstration Tony is surrounded by Afro wearing, dashiki clad 'brothers' full of revolutionary zeal and rhetoric. Interestingly Tony, despite his recent traumas, still views the situation with a degree of hope and does not see his treatment at the hands of racist police as indicative of society as a whole, unlike the nihilistic opinions shared around the table. Also for the first time, Tony's opinions begin to hold sway amongst others and fittingly, his image is subtly, yet deliberately, constructed to mark him out as an individual within the group, somewhere between the pan-African dress and the militant all black leather of the various group members.

Along with the costumes, hairstyles can play an important role in helping to define character identity and traits. For example, in Spike Lee's School Daze (1988, US), a musical about intra-racial tension on a university campus, one of the song and dance routines, entitled 'Good and Bad Hair' is set inside a hair salon. Similarly in Jack Starrett's black exploitation film Cleopatra Jones (1973, US) one character, Doodlebug Simkins, is so obsessed with his Afro that his last act before dying is to make sure it looks neat. This scene is later parodied in Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle (1987, US), where Townsend's hardboiled detective extracts information from a suspect by withholding his curl activator.

From the 1960s onward, the Afro had become a symbol of black political radicalism and militancy, worn by revolutionary activists such as Angela Davis. Originally know as the 'natural' due to the rejection of short groomed or straightened styles that radicals considered as appeasing to the mainstream; nevertheless, like most stylistic conventions, it became quickly absorbed into the very establishment it sought to distance itself from.

While the Afro has a mutely played out role in one scene in Pressure, hairstyles are used to make a profound statement about the position many blacks living in Britain found, and to a certain extent still find, themselves in. For example, when Tony returns home from the police station, he arrives to find the house ransacked by the police and his parents distraught for 'bringing down shame on them'. Amid the ensuing argument Tony finally dispels their cosy dream and tears his mother's wig of false, straightened hair from her head, a clear sign that he has rejected her middle-class, assimilationist values once and for all.

Burning an Illusion

• How does the clothing and hairstyles of Del, Pat and Cynthia reflect their identities? To what extent does it reflect the changes they undergo during the film?
• What do these three images from the film suggest about Pat's self image?

In Burning an Illusion there is a more pronounced use of hair and costume to chronicle the 'journey' of its characters, using a symbolic rejection of traditional western styles as a metaphor of political and spiritual awakening. After Del's imprisonment, both he and Pat, with the help of their friends, embark upon a conscious attempt to embrace their spiritual and ethnic roots. With Del in prison, the visual impetus for the couple's evolution is represented, specifically, through Pat's involvement in black activist groups, her personal education and the rejection of the values she once held dear. The most noticeable change takes place when Pat starts to dress and groom herself using traditional African materials, skirts, hairstyles and head-wraps. The communal aspect of grooming is also highlighted, when Cynthia is seen platting Laurna's hair, as they sit on the front steps of her house. This consolidates a sense of self-reliance and camaraderie among these women.

(For an in-depth analysis of gender in Pressure and Burning An Illusion, see Lola Young, Fear of the Dark: race, gender and sexuality in the cinema, Routledge, 1996. Also see Female Protagonists in British cinema.)

Pat's political awareness is equally pronounced in the western clothes she wears: during a prison visit to see Del, she wears a tee shirt with an image of the slain South African political activist Steve Biko on the front. Del immediately notices and comments on how nice and 'natural' she looks.