Rich kids like Benedict Cumberbatch killed off working class heroes

The Herald Scotland

29-07-2025

Covering pretty much all components of culture bar popular music, there are the International, Book, Film, Fringe, and Television festivals.
On this occasion, band of 'low-brow' culture, Oasis, play during them at Murrayfield for three nights. Of course, that has nothing to do with the festivals themselves. As many – over 200,000 people – will watch Oasis as attend the festivals.
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To perform in Edinburgh has become a major financial undertaking, costing thousands, with venues and promoters taking their cuts while performers incur most of the costs without knowing how much revenue they will generate in ticket sales.
Quite a few performers are not coming as the costs are prohibitive while quite a few will leave Edinburgh in serious debt. Those that do not leave in debt are already successful or are bailed out by the 'bank of mum and dad'.
Even to partake has become very expensive, whether in terms of ticket prices, travel, food, drink and accommodation.
None of this is the griping of a gallus Glaswegian, having a go at the Burghers for being the bohemian bourgeoise. The ordinary Burghers are themselves priced out of performing and partaking.
But it does speak to the exclusion of working-class people from the arts and culture in two ways.
The first is that the working-class is not much represented in the arts and culture. Popular culture does not really like the proles. The work of the likes of Ken Currie, James Kelman, Peter Howson and Irvine Welsh are not exactly commanding presences in this world.
Despite all the changes of social composition under neo-liberal capitalism, the working-class is still the biggest social class in society and the class that does the work to physically produce the wealth created by goods and services we consume. This means there's an almighty imbalance going on.
The second is that working-class people are routinely excluded from working within the creative industries that produce the arts and culture. The barriers are economic and cultural. The most recent data - for 2024 - shows that only 8% of those working in the creative industries are from working-class backgrounds. This is down from 10% a decade before that. Meantime, some 60% were from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds. The barriers are economic and cultural.
All this is graphically – if not also cinematically - illustrated in no better way than in film and television. Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Tom Hardy, and Eddie Redmayne lead the roll call of middle-class (or even higher class) male actors. 'Posh poops' is the popular put down of them.
Meantime, for the women, we have the likes of Kate Beckinsale, Helena Bonham Carter, Rosamund Pike, Emma Thompson, Emma Watson, and Kate Winslet.
Helena Bonham Carter (Image: PA)
Most went to private schools and then drama school or university with parents more than able to sufficiently subsidise them until they became very rich celebrities in their own right.
Coming from such social backgrounds, they have excelled in playing characters from those class backgrounds, pre-occupied with their class issues (which do not commonly concern managing the cost-of-living crisis, debt, unemployment, access to decent housing etcetera etcetera).
Those roll calls of male and female actors were English, so let's turn to the situation of comparable world-famous Scots. After all, many might have an expectation that our 'ain folk' are not only distinctly different but also bedazzlingly better.
We have the likes of Gerard Butler, Robert Carlyle, Martin Compston, Sean Connery, Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Karen Gillan, Shirley Henderson, Sam Heughan, James McAvoy, Ewan McGregor, Kelly McDonald, Dougray Scott, Tilda Swinton, and David Tennant amongst others.
Some of them can credibly claim to have come from working-class families and then had working-class jobs before hitting the big time. Connery delivered milk, McAvoy worked in a bakery, and Carlyle was a painter and decorator. Some of the others were from the respectable middle-class.
But can it credibly be argued that the likes of Connery, Carlyle and McAvoy have convincingly and sympathetically portrayed working-class lives any more or better than their fellow middle-class thespians?
In some senses, this is a bit of a daft question to even ask as not even those from working-class backgrounds portrayed working-class lives, sympathetically or otherwise.
That said, the answer is still a sad and salutary 'no'. Some of this is because of the parts they were offered and needed to take in order to get on and get ahead - as well as the existing culture and power structures of the world of film and television which they entered into - precluded this.
But some of this is also due to the social mobility and the personal politics that come with that.
The few working-class actors that make it and become big stars on the silver screen cease to be working-class no matter their protestations about not forgetting where they came from. Class is a matter of economic position.
Cossetted by a lifestyle of luxury and celebrity, they end up becoming the opposite of what they were. There's no jealousy involved here. They often have had to work very hard to get there and make many sacrifices along the way.
If they get to the point where they can pick and choose the roles to play or even write and direct their own material, whether they convincingly and sympathetically portray and represent the working-class will then be down to their own personal politics.
There's nothing mechanical or automatic that says they will or should do so. Take the case of Tilda Swinton.
Born in London to upper-class parents and privately educated, she studied at social and political sciences at University of Cambridge. She identifies as Scottish due to her family heritage. Whilst at Cambridge, she joined the Communist Party and then later the Scottish Socialist Party.
It's hard to find examples of where she has chosen to portray working-class lives in well-known productions. But she has had a fairly consistent run of playing politically progressive characters.
So, someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth has consciously chosen to depart from playing posh poops in period dramas like Downtown Abbey. Hugh Bonneville, also privately educated and a Cambridge graduate, did not.
Professor Gregor Gall is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow