Representation of the working class in Fish Tank

The 2009 social realist film, Fish Tank, an accurate representation of the lives of the working class, especially youths as the film focuses on a violent but vulnerable 15 year old called Mia. 

• Set in East London, the film portrays the working class in a negative way, showing adolescents smoking and drinking alcohol and a lack of social mobility leaves them trapped by their own values and representation. 
• Mia is represented as an aggressive yet naïve teenager, which is seen as a norm for the audience as other teens are heard cursing and acting in a hostile manner. Mia however is not part of a collective group as seen in the opening scene of the film where she confronts an old friend, Keeley, which ultimately leads to a physical fight, adding to the violent representation. Due to this loss of identity and social isolation, Mia is left to find happiness in alternative ways, such as dancing. 

• Mia’s passion for dance is symbolism for her escape from the working class as an audition gives her an opportunity to move up from her basic and misfortunate life in poverty. Mia also finds happiness by seeking male attention, and this attention happens to come from her mother’s boyfriend, Connor. 
• Connor is of a higher class than Mia and her family, and he is seen as a paternal figure to Mia and her younger sister, which Mia is not used to after growing up in a single parent family with her mother having little interest in her life. However this family structure means Mia’s behaviour is influenced by her mother as a role model as Stryker quotes ‘a consistent set of behaviours reinforce the identity of a person or a group’ – supported by Mia’s behaviour mirroring her mother’s (drinking, dressing and dancing provocatively). 
• Mirroring her mothers behaviour leads to a blurring of boundaries between a paternal and intimate relationship between Mia and Connor, as he becomes more suggestive and lustful in the way he talks and acts around Mia. This increases audience comfortability and Mia is underage – this manipulative behaviour also highlights how the middle class exploit the lower class through capitalist ideologies. 

• Throughout the film, Mia continuously visits a traveller site where an undernourished horse is seen chained to the ground. The horse is representative of Mia’s freedom as she is unable to leave her working class background to live her dreams of being a dancer. Later in the film, after a failed dance audition, Mia returns to the traveller site to find the horse had been shot by its owners as she was ‘ill’, along with her failing dreams and loss of Connor after being used, she breaks down in tears. This is the first time we see Mia upset which subverts the stereotypical strong and apathetic personalities of working class youths as she suddenly loses everything she relied on for happiness and hope. 

• By representing the youths as different to audience expectations, director Andrea Arnold shows the audience that the working class are not all they seem and the reality is they have no choice but to collectively live in poverty due to oppression from the ruling classes. ‘the mass media…place subjects in such a way that their representations are taken as reality’ – Althusser states, showing that although typical but realistic working class mise-en-scene is used such as council estates, crime and violence, the stories of why the working class live this way is shown through the thought provoking storyline.