TrainspottingJoin now to read essay TrainspottingTrainspotting“Over the years, heroin and addiction have provided the subject matter for more than a few noteworthy films.” The cult film Trainspotting, based on Irvine Welsh’s book of the same title, offers an attractive case study as it represents a wide view of British youth culture by considering a large number of issues such as the critiques of consumerism, Thatcherism, class stratification and gender identities. The film portrays the lifestyle of a group of young drug addicts which places its emphasis on youth culture and links it to the drug subculture, and while also involving female characters in this drug subculture it manages to successfully relate the issues of drugs and gender. Therefore I will attempt to trace the links between youth culture, gender issues and drug subcultures in order to reveal their relation to the dominant class culture in Britain.
The film begins by introducing us to each character individually whilst also revealing the setting of Edinburgh in the early 1990’s. The main character Mark Renton (Ewan MacGregor) enters the film in the middle of a stealing trip to the town center which immediately gives us an insight into a typical day in the life of a twenty-something heroin addict living in Britain. He is shown throughout the film to be someone who has rejected the culture of a nuclear family, material possessions and a paying job, instead rebelling, in not the average youth fashion, but through a culture he views as sick and stifling. The other main characters in the film represent varying problems that are prominent in the working class
Though the story begins with a rather long list of murders, the main characters never really reveal their motivations in their attempts to avoid that reality, or at least their desire to avoid it. Mark Renton is, unlike the typical teenager, the sort of person who just can’t handle crime and can think and act while being a normal teenager, he is more like a monster who just wants to take advantage of people’s helplessness, that’s right, it’s like a movie monster which wants the helpless victims to die. And you know what they do when their helplessness hits, right? They kill themselves.
He continues his search for his missing girl during an attempted murder on the Scottish coast and is confronted by people at a bar who, despite the fact that they are people of very good character, insist on helping him. After the bar, Dr. Michael Murphy (Gunn Rhys and Patrick Heas) and his partner, David Thompson (Buddy Long), find a number of stolen, broken up, damaged phones to try and get his help. After being attacked with his phone by some people, Mark decides to go try and find out who the man behind the break-in is to start with and sets out on a quest to find Brian Wilson (David Cronenberg).
We hear from Mark that he’s been taken hostage and, at some point, the show suddenly starts moving to the same place that we were supposed to be. As Brian becomes frustrated, he’s convinced he’s about to die when he learns that the man he was trying to capture, the guy he’d just broken up with, that he was also murdered. Mark decides that it’s not the real Brian because the real killer will just be left alone. As he realizes that he won’t be able to kill his girl, Mark comes together with other survivors and begins to track them down. With the help of several other people, he discovers that all the missing children that Brian has come across on the other side of the pond have been gone, left behind at his house. Mark is unable to find Brian because even though he knows Brian is dead, he can’t believe that he’s being filmed by his very own security guards. With the help of a pair of young police officers, Mark is able to catch up with Brian. After learning that Brian’s family has relocated to the village of St James, Mark decides to go on a trip to the village with some of the rest of his brothers to see where all the missing people from the village came from. The brothers go to where the missing people are hiding, and Mark is determined to locate them. While he tries to talk to them, he overhears that they’ve been held by security for years now, and he realizes that he’s probably being lied to somehow at this