Wednesday, 11 January 2012

To what extent can the contemporary british films Fishtank and Eden Lake be said to offer a negative representation of youth?

To some extent the films can be said to offer both negative and positive representation of youth, both films are portraying negative stereotype's of the antisocial youth. 

In Fish Tank we see Mia, a troubled and antisocial adolescent girl, who lives with her mother and sister, in a populated tower block. We see the negative representation throughout the film, in one scene she receives a letter from a behavioural school saying she has got a place but she rips it up and throws it out the window. This displays an negative even aggressive attitude towards education, something that would benefit her and that is a stereotypical characteristic of youth.

She is at the stage in her life when she is between childhood and adulthood and is physically and emotionally maturing, and this is denoted in her personality. She desperately wants to be seen as an adult yet she displays her innocence and naivety throughout the film. She is begining to rebel against the identity dictated to her throughout her earlier years by schools, her mother and other figures of authority, and is trying to create her personal identity as the young adult she see's herself as. She does this through trying to find acceptance in her peers for example her friends and the traveler she befrends and eventally runs away with. Her charecter is portrayed in accordance with popular notions of adolecence as 'a period of storm and stress' and her confusion about her identity shows her incompleate emotional development and results in her deviant and antisocial behaviour.

Her search for an identity and for career, leads her to a dance audition at what looks like a strip club,  she is only fifteen at this time and lies and tells the judges she is seventeen. this could be seen as a result of none of her familys intrest in her passion for dance and as an attempt for attention.

No comments:

Post a Comment