Cameo Performance and Industrial Allegory in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The Souvenir
Part II
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21785000 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Luke Robinson (0000-0002-8324-8786, University of Sussex, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 227-246 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of British Cinema and Television (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1743-4521 • E-ISSN: 1755-1714 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/jbctv.2026.0813 |
| OpenAlex | W7167686416 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This article explores Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir (2019) and The Souvenir: Part II (2021) as reflexive commentaries on casting and structural exclusion in the British film industry. Contra the history of non-professional casting, Hogg’s tendency to recruit ambiguously non-professional performers from within her inner circle exacerbates her cinema’s racial and social exclusivity. This dynamic is revealed in The Souvenir and The Souvenir: Part II through Hogg’s use of cameo roles that collapse the diegetic and extra-diegetic spaces of her films, drawing attention to the social and industrial networks underpinning both her filmmaking and UK cinema more broadly. In The Souvenir, the sudden appearance of Richard Ayoade and his wife, Lydia Fox, enacts a drama of exposure that hints at how class and racial difference structure access in the British film industry. The Souvenir: Part II works to bury this knowledge through a diegetic drama of diversity that naturalises structural exclusion via a narrative of artistic inspiration. But Charlie Heaton’s cameo as actor Jim undercuts this logic, directing attention, through an on-screen drama of sexual reproduction, to the ways in which class and racial homophily work to reproduce inequality in the film industry. Ultimately, The Souvenir and The Souvenir: Part II are not simply auto-fictional reflections on the artistic process, but industrial allegories that explore how Hogg’s cinema participates in the British film industry’s characteristic structural exclusions, and the part her use of non-professional performers plays in this process
Allegory · Drama · Film director · Filmmaking · Hollywood · Movie theater · Narrative · Queer · Reflexivity · Cinema and Media Studies · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Theater, Performance, and Music History
| Highly cited | No |
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