Kitchen sink realism (or
kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in
theatre,
art,
novels,
film and
television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as
angry young men. It used a style of
social realism which often depicted the domestic situations of
working class Britons living in rented accommodation and spending their off-hours in grimy pubs to explore social issues and political controversies.
The films, plays and novels using this style are often set in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the idiom.
The cultural movement was rooted in the ideals of social realism, an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts working class activities. Many artists who subscribed to social realism were painters with socialist political views. While the movement has some commonalities with Socialist Realism, the "official art" advocated by the governments of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, the two had several differences.
Unlike Socialist realism, social realism is not an official art produced by, or under the supervision of the government. The leading characters are often 'anti-heroes' rather than part of a class to be admired, as in socialist realism, who are dissatisfied with their lives and the world, rather than idealised workers who are part of a socialist utopia (supposedly) in the process of creation. As such, social realism allows more space for the subjectivity of the author. Partly, social realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism, which promoted lofty concepts such as the "ineffable" beauty and truth of art and music, and even turned them into spiritual ideals. As such, social realism focused on the "ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor." (George Shi, University of Fine Arts, Valencia).[2]
