Based on a true story: framing the present through depictions of the past in post-2010 biopics and historical films

The 2010s saw a threefold increase in the number of biopics and historical films produced globally – genres which, as James Chapman argues in his 2005 book Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film, "will often have as much to say about the present in which [they are] made as about the past in which [they are] set" (p. 1). This corresponded with a number of social and political issues with common themes of equality and awareness becoming increasingly prominent during the decade’s course, including debates about race relations in the United States, discussions around gender dynamics in the wake of #MeToo, the Refugee Crisis, and increased discussions concerning mental illness. This enormous increase in the genres’ production and period of social and political turmoil offers an opportunity to revisit these genres and examine them anew, particularly as all of those issues were represented in the British and American outputs of biopics and historical films, through the recreation of a variety of significant figures and events from the past.

In examining how and why filmmakers did so, this thesis maps the shifts in cinematic representations against the changes in the societal debates, and in doing so considers the efficacy of these genres in representing contemporary socio-political issues across the course of the decade. This is achieved through a two-step process of extensive research into both the prominent issues of the 2010s and the genres’ form and history, followed by application of that research to the chosen case studies through textual analysis. In doing so, this thesis not only presents an argument for how the era saw parallels between shifts in filmic representations and changes in societal debates, some of which demonstrated the limitations of mainstream narrative cinema at providing nuanced representations of specific social issues, but also that there were new cycles in the types of true stories that were recreated – particularly those concerning women and ethnic minorities, who have historically been marginalised within biopics and historical films. This PhD provides the first detailed analysis of the thematic cycles within these long-standing and significant genres during the 2010s, that demonstrates the extent to which factors such as genre conventions, production contexts and filmmakers’ backgrounds can inform how specific issues and demographics are represented. In so doing, this thesis provides an original contribution to knowledge that fills a gap in the discourse on both the genres and cinema of the 2010s.