How are ideas about class refracted in Hot Fuzz?

Hot Fuzz follows Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), a London Metropolitan Police Constable who excels at his job to such a degree, his superiors transfer him to a Sergeant position in the Gloucestershire countryside town of Sandford. Nicholas struggles to adapt from being an urban police officer dealing with knife crime and armed terrorists to being a rural ‘bobby’, as is evident in the scene where he is called to investigate an escaped swan. Mysterious deaths lead Nicholas to believe something sinister is happening in the village and he goes to extreme lengths to uncover a conspiracy created by the village’s elite who are unwilling to welcome change to their village.

During the scene in which the conspiracy is revealed, (1:20:00), the reason for each character’s death is revealed: Martin Blower (David Threlfall) for being an appalling actor and the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance did not want the dramatic society’s reputation to fail. Eve Draper (Lucy Punch) for having a “very annoying laugh”. George Merchant (Ron Cook) for building a large house which did not fit in with the village’s “rustic aesthetic”. Tim Messenger (Adam Buxton) for tarnishing the local paper with “tabloid journalism” and inaccuracies. Leslie Tiller (Anne Reid) because they did not want her to share her horticultural expertise with the “heathens” at Buford Abbey. All to ensure the village wins the Best Village of the year award. Every murder was because of a change the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance did not want to accept. The village’s elite had run the village how they saw fit for twenty years, allowing the villagers to live their lives in a “mundane, highly routine” way. (Fitzgerald, 2010, p. 205).

A recurring theme in Shaun of the Dead was that of the characters monotonously going about their everyday lives, unable to think for themselves, performing “repetitive, mindless tasks.” (Decker, 2016, p. 72). This occurs in Hot Fuzz within the lives of the villagers who are not at the head of the conspiracy, specifically, in Danny (Nick Frost). Whilst Danny is revealed to be involved in the conspiracy, (although unaware of the murderous intent of his father and Neighbourhood Watch Alliance), his everyday life consists of him going to work and performing mindless tasks, such as sitting in the police car watching people in the high-street, or for speeding cars, going to the pub after work, getting drunk, and going home to watch a film. Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent) says to Nicholas: “You’ve seen the people, they’re happy, contented.” to which Nicholas responds, “They’re living in a dream world.” Later, (1:40:00), after a gunfight at the local pub, Nicholas reasons “You can arrest us if you like, you can throw us in prison and go back to being blind submissive slaves, or you can be real police officers and help us bring an end to this absurd story”. Nicholas’ reasoning metaphorically awakens his colleagues from the prison of their own lives and from this point forward they are no longer bound by the lives they were living. This is evident in Sergeant Tony Fisher (Kevin Eldon), who has been portrayed as unable to think for himself at several points in the film, instead turning to Nicholas for advice and concluding “what he said.”. After his awakening, just before they storm the supermarket (1:42:00), the roles are reversed. Now Sergeant Fisher lays out the plan, with Nicholas concluding “what he said.”.

In their 2007 article, Jonathan Romney discusses how Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg prepared for Hot Fuzz: “While the team didn’t specifically look to comic models, they did watch films about cut-off communities…” (p. 40). The presence of class appears to have influenced how Hot Fuzz was written: Many members of the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance are middle-class, borderline upper-class. They are business owners, (Simon Skinner, Roy and Mary Porter), or hold highly respectable jobs, (Inspector Frank Butterman, Dr. Robin Hatcher, Rev. Philip Shooter) and look down on the lower class and working class. Their social position may reflect how small villages in the real world are run by their residents, with the village elders or higher class having more of a say in how things are run. In particular, the murders that do not get a specific reason during the reveal of the conspiracy are that of the “gypsy scum” travellers and “thieving kids”. Shortly after, we see the underaged drinkers, street performer and hoody thief the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance have murdered – all considered beneath them, or lower/working class, and all who may be seen as lowering the image of the village. Those that remain would fall under the “middle-England” definition: “These people are (lower) middle class, white (there are no immigrants among them), heterosexual, hard working and responsible.” (Inman, 2007, p. 192).

Neil Archer discusses the use of location within Hot Fuzz. “An emphasis on the various motifs of historically preserved middle-England life […] should not obscure the fact that much of the film’s action takes place within what Marc Augé (1995) has famously called the ‘non-places’ of contemporary urban and suburban experience.” (2016, p. 50). Non-places are used in Hot Fuzz in various ways, but importantly in critical scenes. The supermarket, for example, or the petrol station in which Nicholas decides to return to Sandford. These places are commonly associated with a working class: supermarket workers and petrol station attendants. The petrol station attendant easily resembles a zombie, which returns to the original discussion of “zombies taking on the drudgery of service work…” (Decker, 2016, pp. 72-73).

Lawrence Napper discusses (2012, p. 43) Andy Medhurst’s essay (1992, pp. 168-188) about comedy in the 1930’s and makes an interesting point I would like to expand upon: “Medhurst emphasises the way that comedy and identity are bound together, often along national and regional as well as class lines.” (2012, p. 43). Although discussing 1930’s comedy, this statement holds true in British comedy today. Hot Fuzz’s intended audience would be the working/middle class and the way the higher class is portrayed in the film enables that connection to be made to the audience’s own identity. In the film the conspiracy was created by the higher class, or those who perceive themselves as the higher class, and in the real world, an audience resentful of such people may even be able to envision such a scenario playing out in reality – comedy and identity are bound together, along a class line.

As we have seen, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz deal with class in their own ways. Shaun of the Dead may be interpreted as a class-piece designed to provoke a conversation about a post-Thatcher economy, with the representation of the working class’s jobs as “mundane, highly routine”. (Fitzgerald, 2010, p. 205): They are shown to be achievable, literally, by zombies, so could we not have considered people in those roles before the apocalypse as zombies anyway? Hot Fuzz, on the other hand, deals more with the “dream world” the village’s higher class have created for “the greater good”. These ideals are not in favour of a lesser class, or of those willing to upset the balance.