“Billy Elliot”, a novel about a young boy from confined community, challenges the reader’s assumptions and values to reveal human paradoxes. Billy Elliot challenges gender stereotypes and assumptions in order to create new gender identities. Billy Elliot’s actions, by defying stereotypes and challenging paradoxes and anomalies in behavior, challenge these inconsistencies, contradictions, and anomalies. Billy’s actions and instinctive emotions, by challenging the assumptions that men do ballet, break family bonds and cause tension and anger. Billy’s struggle against assumptions has finally broken the paradox of society.
Billy Elliot has a life that is filled with the importance and necessity of support. Billy, his siblings and parents struggle to get along and have to make up despite the huge differences between them. The inconsistencies of human behaviour are evident when identity and values are challenged. In the scene, Jackie is confronted with Billy’s unusual gender roles. Jackie’s masculinity was challenged and he felt a natural anger towards Billy. Jackie’s anger is caused by the fear of losing family reputation and humiliation before society. This, despite loving his son, causes him to be aggressive. The director uses the aggressive dialogue towards the grandmother to emphasize the lack of family bonding and struggle for support. Dauldry also slowly changes Billy’s behaviour when he dances to “I love to Boogie”. The intercutting between Tony and Jackie, as well as Grandma, gradually emphasizes a sense of family, reunion and mutual support. The composer plays a non-diegetic uplifting sound to emphasize a feeling of relief and hope for Billy’s near future. This music, which is uplifting and non-diegetic in nature, highlights Jackie’s gradual change of behaviour when he starts to realise Billy’s potential. In the beginning, the film portrays a fractured, non-supportive family. Billy continues to dance despite the oppressive rules of society. Billy’s angst is reflected in his choreography as he dances throughout the town. His exaggerated dances reflect his frustration, but also act as a type of catharsis. The upbeat, non-diegetic music overpowers Jackie’s aggressive screaming. It represents the escape of dance as well as Billy’s ability to break through rigid gender stereotypes. In this scene, Billy encounters many metaphysical barriers. The brick wall is a symbol of his confinement to the social expectations of 1980s. A wide shot showing the ocean in all its blue glory foreshadows Billy’s freedom and ability to be free from his oppressive human experience. Billy’s dreams are restricted by the gender roles of society. Billy’s limited experience of life is due to his socially imposed’masculine standards’. Billy’s Dad Jackie, criticizes Billy, saying, “Ladies don’t do dance, they do football, boxing or wrestle”. The tricolon and polysyndenton are used to enact stereotypical sports for boys. Slow close-ups emphasise the tension building and escalation of a family dispute. It is accompanied by a high-angle shot that dwarfs Billy to make him seem inferior. Daldry created this scene deliberately, using the violence of Jackie as a diegetic tone, in order to illustrate Billy’s lack of freedom to express his passion or himself. Daldry, using music, film, camera and character interaction, endorses the anomalies, contradictions and inconsistencies of human behaviour which are a result of values and identity being challenged. Daldry also examines the pressures that can arise from conformity and adversity. These can be overcome with human and emotional connection.
