An
Exploration of the Oedipal Trajectory in Fish
Tank
An initial viewing of Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009) presents
the spectator with a raw, uncompromisingly bleak vision of life on an East
London council estate. The narrative feels somewhat dislocated and episodic,
with Mia, the film’s protagonist, having no clearly defined goal; rather, she
seems – at least at first – to ‘drift’ from one scene to the next. This feeling
of narrative rawness is complemented by the style in which the film is shot:
Arnold, showing influences of Italian neo-realism and French new wave, eschews
cinematographic ‘artifice’ in favour of handheld camerawork, natural lighting, semi-improvised
performances and an entirely diegetic soundscape. Indeed, the film shares much
in common with social realism, a genre popularised by directors such as Loach
and Leigh, and one of the UK’s key cinema-as-art exports since the 1960s.
Arnold would have us believe that Fish
Tank is a ‘slice of life’; an intimate look at the ‘realities’ of what it
means to be working class in modern-day Britain. Film, though, is artifice. Whether intricately plotted
or ‘improvisational’, self-consciously crafted or ‘homemade’, it is a
filmmaker’s representation of
reality, and, to this end, open to ideological dissection.
From a Freudian/Lacanian narrative perspective,
Mia might be said to undertake an Oedipal journey in the film. Seemingly at war
with her mother, Joanne, Mia pursues, and is pursued by, her mother’s
boyfriend, Conor. In Freudian terms, Mia is attracted to Conor because she is
experiencing penis envy: seeing that Joanne cannot provide her with a penis,
she turns to Conor. Conor’s function in the Oedipal narrative is binary,
because he is able to fulfil the role of both father and substitute mate
simultaneously. Paedophilic concerns notwithstanding (Mia is only fifteen), he
offers a semi-legitimate sexual liaison with Mia because he is not her
biological father. Mia’s association with him therefore plays on the notion
that the Lacanian female child turns to the father to provide her with a penis
in the form of a child, and thence to a substitute partner when she realises
that the (biological) father is ‘unlawful’.
Arnold is a female director. Feminists
argue that the representation of women in film is one of objectivity and
passiveness: they are there to be pursued by men and attained at the film’s
climax as the ‘prize’, enabling the male protagonist to complete his own
Oedipal trajectory and achieve social stability. Freud himself focused on the
male subject, and it is only comparatively recently that the female Oedipal
trajectory has been hypothesised. Under Arnold’s direction, Mia’s positioning
in the film is intriguing from a feminist ideological perspective, and the way
in which the spectator is sutured into the narrative encourages identification
with her as the protagonist. This is exemplified when Mia and Conor share
screen time exclusively. It is noteworthy in these sequences that a subtle
alteration is made to the classic shot/reverse shot suturing of mainstream
Hollywood cinema.
An example of such a sequence is the
meeting between Conor and Mia that takes place at approximately the halfway
point of the film, leading to them having sexual intercourse on the settee – in
terms of the classic three-act narrative structure, at the midpoint twist of
Act Two. In this sequence, Conor is presented from Mia’s ‘perspective’ in over-the-shoulder,
medium long and medium shots. As Mia is standing and Conor reclining on the
settee, he is also viewed from Mia’s eye-line, with the camera angled down. The effect of this is to encourage the spectator to identify
with Mia via distancing from Conor –
he becomes object. In the cutaways to Mia, however, she is generally shot at
three-quarter angle or profile, often in medium close-up or close-up, with Conor
off-screen. Therefore, the effect is to suture the spectator into Mia’s sphere
of action, thereby encouraging identification with her as subject rather than
object – at a juncture of her character arc in which she loses her virginity. This
is not to contend that Mia is not objectified in the film. Indeed, at times it
almost feels as if Arnold is challenging the (male heterosexual) spectator
through a conscious positioning of Mia as object – albeit one that discourages
scopophilia. In the aforementioned sex scene, the spectator is not encouraged
to view Mia as the Freudian Whore for sexual gratification; rather, she is
presented as the victim of the
Mulveyan male gaze.
Compare the sequence early in the film
in which Mia confronts a group of teenage dancers on the housing estate. Wearing
heavily sexualised costumes (crop tops that ‘point’ to the crotch, emphasise the shape of the breasts and expose
the midriff), the dancers are subject not only to the spectator’s gaze but also
to the diegetic audience around them – both Mia and a group of shirtless men
ogling them from the sidelines. The girls, though, ignore the diegetic
audience. Instead, they dance provocatively to camera. They – and, by
extension, Arnold – are once more challenging the voyeuristic male gaze. The
male spectator feels threatened by this highly sexualised mating ritual[1].
Conor’s own Oedipal journey represents
something of a crisis of masculinity – at least on the surface. By challenging
societal (and class) norms, he endangers his own Oedipally-resolved social
stability via the abandonment of his suburban, semi-detached house and nuclear
family. His wife, briefly, kicks him out. But by the time Mia comes to find
him, Conor’s wife (an invisible presence) has apparently taken him back: social
stability has been restored. The female Oedipal child – Mia – must also conform
with society in order to avoid ‘punishment’. Mia’s refusal to do this is borne
out in her visit to Tilbury, the suburbia where Conor and his family live. Mia
breaks into their house. The camera tracks with her in mid shot as she walks to
the living room. A series of quick cuts reveal, via whip pan POVs and
close-ups, the paraphernalia of childhood in the room. With Mia as diegetic
audience, we share her perspective of this discovery: Conor has been leading a
double life. Mia urinates on the living room floor and later kidnaps Conor’s
daughter, Keira. In Oedipal terms, this represents the notion of conflict[2]
in the Oedipal child when faced with the realisation that access to the father
is unlawful. By kidnapping Keira, Mia is perhaps attempting to remove her as
threat and take her place in the family unit. Urinating on the floor marks this
as her territory.
Perhaps ironically – given the film’s
feminist leanings – this is exactly what Mia does at the end of the third act.
The Oedipal female child never fully relinquishes desire for her mother. Instead,
in order to conform to society, she must simply suppress her desire. This can
be seen in the dance that Mia and Joanne share; a mating ritual that in this
case stands for the consummation of desire between mother and daughter. Mia
becomes normalised in society.
In the final sequence of the film, Mia climbs into a
car with Billy – a young traveller boy – so that she can accompany him to
Cardiff. Billy, the owner of a white horse, is effectively her knight in
shining armour – and she the damsel in distress. Mia has finally ‘come to her
senses’: she has been punished for going against the dominant patriarchal
society; she has suppressed her desires both for her mother and father; and she
has gone off into the sunset with her male saviour. The Oedipal trajectory is complete.
[1] Later
in the film, we discover that this ‘ritual’ is the direct result of male
hegemony when Mia auditions at a strip club under the scrutiny of a white,
middle class man who runs the place.
[2]
This Oedipal conflict is precipitated by Mia catching Conor and Joanne in the
act of sexual intercourse. She becomes voyeur, spying on them through a crack
in the door until Conor looks up at her. She runs off. It is noteworthy that Conor
seems to take pleasure in being observed.
