Films Dealing with a Subculture

Trainspotting is a film depicting the drug culture in the United Kingdom, and the American audience at least is less familiar with this milieu than with its own drug subculture. Controversy developed between those who saw the film as reflecting a reality that had to be understood and addressed and those who saw the film as glorifying drug use and so as creating a problem that might not otherwise exist. The harrowing nature of the lives of the young people in this film, however, would seem to mitigate any potential for glorification. The film reflects the social context of its time in this debate, a debate between the belief in free expression and in control to reach some end, a debate between seeing drugs as so terrible that even excessive means might be needed to stop their use and seeing the issue as overblown so that society should restrain its repressive impulses.

In the film, several levels of the society of the time are explored, and while some might see drugs as the essential social problem of the era, the filmmakers see somewhat different dynamics at work for many young people. In this film, peer pressure extends beyond the use of

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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 856
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page)

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