I have chosen to focus on the representation of woman in Britain, using contemporary British film as a case study. I will examine wasp and fish tank by Andrea Arnold. I will also consider feminist theories of gender and Althusser's theory of Interpellation in my answer.
Historically female characters have been represented as the curtailing wives, prospective wives or married lovers for the central male characters ambitions perhaps most notably in 'A kind of Loving' and 'Saturday Night, Sunday Morning'. Of course there were exceptions of course. New Realism is a contemporary movement in British film directors, such as Andrea Arnold aim to produce "a more truthful cinema" We may assume that a more truthful representation of women is a particular goal. Arnold has used the rules of Dogme 95 ("The vows of Chasity") - developed with Danish Director Lars von Trier - to achieve this; Her representations are shaped by all Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in, Only Diegetic sound to be used The camera must be hand-held; filming must take place where the action takes place,The film must be in colour. No special lighting, Optical work and filters are forbidden, No superficial action (No murders, weapons, etc.), No temporal or geographical alienation, No genre movies, the aspect ratio must be 4:3, not widescreen and the director must not be credited.
Andrea Arnold uses the ‘Vows of Chastity in Wasp to present British women as trapped by their domestic lives. Andrea has carefully chosen locations of shots, of high run down blocks of flats, stair cases cramped and doomy, a shot of a locked gate, all suggest to the audience that Zoe is trapped, with the majority of the shots, with the children close by. That she always has to look after them, not allowing her to have a life outside of them, any freedom away from them. The audience is made to feel both sorry and annoyed at Zoe. They feel sorry that shes in this situation and we can associate with her, that she lacks personal freedom, But The audience also feels that if she wants to have children then she has a responsibility to look after them to put them first.
In Fish Tank and Wasp, the mothers are both single mothers bringing up children with very little Money and will often be considered as being neglectful to their children. They do not feel that they themselves have given the children a bad upbringing, but will blame everything else including their own children on the situation. In FT in the closing scenes, the audience see Mia farewell to the family, the mother is portrayed as uncaring “Haven’t you gone yet” and just dances while drinking and smoking as Mia says Goodbye, She doesn’t even see her off to the car” while in Fish tank the Mother chooses to attend a date with a Man, than too look after the children who are left outside. In earlier scenes we saw that the children were hungry, but were fed with a bag of sugar between them, but during the date we see the Mum using all of her money to buy a round of drinks than to use the money to pay for the children to have a meal. Also During a sequence in Fish Tank, Mias family are driven to the family by Connor, where it could be considered that sexual rivalry is present between mother and daughter. Sigmund Freud Oedipal triangle, which states that The daughter is jealous of the Mum and wants to be loved by the Mums lover, while the Mum is Jealous of the daughter, as she is ‘the younger version’ of her and feels threatened by her own daughter. In a dramatic twist in Fish Tank, at the discovery of Conors hidden life, Mia takes the extreme unthinkable measure of kidnapping Conors daughter, this in turn, transforms Mia into a Mother figure to the girl, A mother is meant to take care of the child, to look after and to protect, but Mia transforms to her own harmful mother role. In a turn of events Mia does in anger throw the daughter into the water, however this brought out the caring mother of Mia, to save her and to hug her after and takes her home.
Although the portrayal of the failing mothers is not shown through out the film and it can be argued that they are caring mothers, especially in wasp. When the mother brings food to the children outside the pub, with the pubs music playing. She dances with the children, to try and keep them entertained, and to show that she is still thinking of them, as she tells them that she told the DJ to play that song for them. Although left out, the mother feels the children will be more secure at the pub, so that they can come and get her if needed, rather than just leaving them at home alone. This is also emphasised during the scene with the Wasp. The caring mother in her even though not revealing the real reason persuades the date to not drive anywhere from the pub and when the Children scream, she runs out to them, to help them and look after them. The audience feels sympathy for Zoe at this point, that she really does care, but she doesn’t have the help she needs to provide her children with the best care, but the love for them is clear.
In these 2 case studies, it is often evident that the Children are the main carers for the family. In Fish tank, we have this idea that Mia and her sister don’t have a good relationship, that they don’t care for each other. However in the goodbye scene the audience witnesses a change in attitude to each other, the love and the cheekyness, that Mia sister really looks up to her and that Mia really cares for her. This is also evident in Wasp with Kelly, the eldest sister caring for the other children, sharing the food between them equally, while the Mother is inside. She wants to fix the hunger the siblings are feeling, so acts herself in order to look after them.
Winship (2008) states that the predominant view of women in the media is constructed by a male prospectus. This is known as the male gaze, so dominant is the male gaze that women are complicit, defining themselves according to what Men want, so are often portrayed as sex objects, that feel pressured to look like how Men want to view them . E.g. Sexually. When for casting for the lead actress in “MorvernCallar” the director purposely chose someone she thought looked like they could work in a supermarket and who looked bit bored in their picture. This allows us as the audience to focus more on the plot of the film and also allows us to connect their lives with ones similar in real life. Though in the films I watched the women selected are purposely chosen not to look as though they were fashion models, instead they were meant to look like the sorts of people you would expect to see living in council blocks. This allows us as the audience to focus more on the plot of the film and also allows us to connect their lives with ones similar in real life. We do see in “Fish Tank” the male gaze when Mia dances for Conor, which then ends up in the pair having sex, this was also shown earlier in the film with Mias mother and Conor at the flat party, again this similarity is seen in ‘Wasp’ with Zoe comparing herself to Victoria Beckham and Dave – David Beckham. In preparation for the date, Mia dresses up in clothes than a Man would like to see a woman wear.
