Drugs and similar destructive behavior are major social problems addressed by a number of films in recent years. These films develop around a subculture and evoke certain images associated with such milieus, often using stereotypical images as shorthand to introduce the audience to the world of drug abuse and other marginal behavior.
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 drugs and instead shapes lives around a subculture devoted to staying outside the current social system at whatever cost. This is reflected in the way the plot develops for the main characters, a group of young Scots devoted to drink, drugs, and causing trouble. This is a stereotypical portrait with considerable truth in it just the same. Work is seen as an escape from the subculture, though it is one that often fails to be effective when faced with friend...