Bodies of Resistance: A Sociological and Cinematographic Reading of Childhood and Working-Life Vulnerability in Ken Loach’s Cinema - Kes and I, Daniel Blake

F. Neşe Kaplan; Ali Barış Kaplan

doi:10.5195/cinej.2026.946

Bodies of Resistance: A Sociological and Cinematographic Reading of Childhood and Working-Life Vulnerability in Ken Loach’s Cinema - Kes and I, Daniel Blake

Authors

F. Neşe Kaplan Marmara üniversitesi https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5516-0552
Ali Barış Kaplan İstanbul Üniversitesi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7104-4866

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.946

Keywords:

Ken Loach, Kes (1969), I, Daniel Blake (2016), British social realism, class and welfare, social exclusion, cinematic form

Abstract

This article analyzes representations of childhood and working-life vulnerability in two films by Ken Loach, Kes (1969) and I, Daniel Blake (2016), using a sociological methodology and taking into account cinematographic elements. Filmed approximately fifty years apart, these films make visible the institutional mechanisms of oppression in modernity and their effects on vulnerable figures in society. This article examines the relationship between Loach’s distinctive formal choices (long takes, use of real locations, improvised performance) and ideological content within the social realist film tradition, through the critical frameworks of Bauman, Baudrillard, and Bourdieu. The findings reveal that in both films, the child and adult protagonists are constructed as images of resistance against the system; however, the cinematographic language presents this resistance within a framework that simultaneously embodies the system’s dominance. The article argues that Loach’s cinema can be read not only as a practice of social representation but also as a construction of a cinematic subject that creates critical consciousness in the viewer.

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Published

2026-10-15

How to Cite

Kaplan, F. N., & Kaplan, A. B. (2026). Bodies of Resistance: A Sociological and Cinematographic Reading of Childhood and Working-Life Vulnerability in Ken Loach’s Cinema - Kes and I, Daniel Blake. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 14(2), 399–435. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.946

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Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2026): Fall

Section

Articles

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