Brexit in popular culture
[4] Later that year the withdrawal was delayed a further 3 months and, struggling to pass his renegotiated deal in the way he wished, Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the 2019 general election on 12 December 2019.
[5][6][7][8] The response of artists and writers to Brexit has tended to be negative, reflecting a reported overwhelming percentage of people involved in Britain's creative industries voting against leaving the European Union.
[9] The visual artist Bob and Roberta Smith, writing in The Guardian newspaper during 2017, typifies this response: Post-Brexit, we face a dissolution of our museums and galleries comparable in its devastation to that visited on England in the 1530s, as philistine politicians slash budgets.
[23] The day after the referendum, gay niche erotica author Chuck Tingle self-published the 4,000-word book Pounded by the Pound: Turned Gay by the Socioeconomic Implications of Britain Leaving the European Union, in which a large coin from the future comes to see the main character Alex to explain him the danger of Brexit, and together they go back to the past to sway voters against voting to leave the European Union, "proving that all you need is love.
Rabbitman is a dark comic fantasy in which the events that lead to the election of a right-wing populist American president, and Britain's vote to leave the European Union, were the result of a series of Faustian pacts with the Devil.
As a result, Rabbitman is set partly in a post-Brexit Britain in which society has collapsed and people are dependent on European Union food aid.
[29] Post-Brexit Britain is also the setting for Amanda Craig's The Lie of the Land (published 13 June 2017), a satirical novel set ten years after the vote to leave the European Union, in which an impoverished middle class couple from Islington in north London are forced to move from the heart of the pro-European Union capital to the heart of the pro-Brexit countryside in Devon.
[32] Jonathan Coe's Middle England (published 8 November 2018) is a state-of-the-nation novel which re-introduces some of the author's earlier characters from The Rotters' Club (2001) and The Closed Circle (2004), and moves from the election of the coalition government in 2010, through the riots of 2011, the 2012 Olympics, the 2016 referendum and its aftermath, ending in 2018.
With a far-right party in power, only British-born people are permitted to remain in the country, and the book examines the consequences of populist and isolationist policies on the protagonist and his friends.
[34] Rachel Churcher's Battle Ground series is Young Adult dystopia, set in a totalitarian near-future UK after Brexit and Scottish independence.
"[41] Rosaura (an adaptation of Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca) created by actors Paula Rodríguez and Sandra Arpa was performed in London just after the Brexit referendum.
Bubble Revolution by Polish playwright Julia Holewińska, directed by John Currivan and co-created and performed by Kasia Lech at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival focused on growing-up in communist and post-communist Poland and experiences of speaking English as a foreign language.
The three productions used “memories rooted in their native and non-native cultures as a platform for the audience to engage with transnational conditions in today's Europe and the UK, and explore these and spectators’ own experiences through a translocal gaze”.
[41] In 2016, the television director Martin Durkin wrote and directed an 81-minute long documentary film titled Brexit: The Movie, which advocated with the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.
[45][46] In May 2016, the film premiered in Leicester Square, with notable figures such as Nigel Farage and David Davis (who later became Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union) in attendance.
[47] A review on Shadows on the Wall called it "a comprehensive, factual exploration of the issue, grappling with the referendum, its ramifications and the way the split vote has fractured British society.
[49] It depicts the lead-up to the 2016 referendum through the activities of the strategists behind the Vote Leave campaign, that prompted the United Kingdom to exit the European Union.
[58] Watch Dogs: Legion is an action adventure game set in a post-Brexit dystopian London, with Britain having become a surveillance state under Albion.
For example, a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that fake Twitter accounts could have added 1.76% in the pro-leave voting share.
[69] In November 2018, The Good, the Bad & the Queen released Merrie Land, which reflects on the United Kingdom's relationship with the European Union and being British during the prelude to Brexit.
[77] In March 2020, Riz Ahmed — the popular actor and one half of the rap duo Swet Shop Boys — released his first solo album, The Long Goodbye.
It has been described as a "concept album that reframes the UK's relationship with British Asians as a "toxic and abusive" love affair that has reached its breaking point in the wake of Brexit and the rise of the far-right."
[83] Johnson told The Sun: "Leaving the European Union will be a monumental moment in British history, so let's deliver a commemorative stamp that shows the world we've got Brexit licked".
[88] In October 2019, Académie Goncourt chairman Bernard Pivot tweeted (in translation): "I propose to insert the word 'brexit' (without capital letter) into the French language.
