What is social realism?

Social Realism is an artistic movement that is expressed in visual or other realist arts. It shows social and racial injustice and economic hardship through unvarnished pictures of life's hardships and often depict the working class activities as heroic. In painting, the style depicts scenes that convey a message of social or political protest with a hint of satire.

Art Movement:

The movement became important in 1930s US during the Great Depression. As an artistic movement it is related to American scene painting and regionalism. Many Artists who subscribe to Social Realism were painters with socialist political views. The movement therefore has some commonalities with the Socialist Realism used in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, but the two are not identical. Social Realism is not considered an official art and allows space for subjectivity. Socialist Realism has been described as a specific branch of Social Realism in certain contexts.

Social Realism has been summarized as follows:

Social Realism developed as a reaction against idealism and the exaggerated ego encouraged by Romanticism. Consequences of the Industrial Revolution became apparent; urban centers grew, slums proliferated on a new scale contrasting with the display of wealth of the upper classes. With a new sense of social consciousness, the Social Realists pledged to “fight the beautiful art”, any style which appealed to the eye or emotions. They focused on the ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor. They recorded what they saw (“as it existed”) in a dispassionate manner. The public was outraged by Social Realism, in part, because they didn't know how to look at it or what to do with it (George Shi, University of Fine Arts, Valencia) 

In film:

In cinema, Social Realism is a style that finds it's roots in the Italian neorealism movement known for naturalistic, substance-over-style works. Filmmakers such as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica are known for their films in this style. Although the roots of this type of film are Italian it is considered to be Britains main form of Cinematic style. For Britons their early cinema used common social interaction found in Dickens and Thomas Hardy. One of the first British films to emphasize realism's value as social protests was a film from U.K director James Wiliamson, A Reservist Before the War, and After The War which memorialized the Boer War serviceman coming back home to unemployment. Repressive censorship during 1945-1954 prevented British films from more radical social positions.

The United States was one of the last countries to adopt this style of cinema.  Kine Weekly marketed as an invaluable record of British film and television industries development, in 1947 wrote "Americans have shown  they want pictures reflecting the simple emotions. We are trying to crash into their market by offering them gloom-sadism-and-soft-focus. We must aim at the box office and not the art gallery. It is no good aiming over their heads. It will not help us earn dollars.” British Social Realism cinema has an objective distancing from what the characters think and feel, or a naturalism in its character spines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_realism