Written on the Body

Abstract

The author considers two recent prize-winning films by women directors (one British and one American) with similar, if not identical themes. Placing them in the category first defined by David Considine as “the cinema of adolescence” the author considers the filmic traditions from which they arise. In both of the films under consideration—Fish Tank and Girlfight—the young female protagonists attempt to resist or subvert socially imposed restrictions. The author considers the way the entrapment of the working-class teenage girls at the centre of these films is represented by non-professional “actresses” selected because they come from the same milieu of run-down sections of cities as their on-screen characters. She explores the way in which these two writer-directors use their actresses to embody on screen issues of class, gender, ethnicity, and culture, and the near-impossible routes out of poverty. To do so, the author utilises theories from sociology, feminist theories of the body, as well as theories derived from film studies to examine these politically driven films.

Keywords::

• teen films
• Girlfight
• Fish Tank
• Kusama
• Arnold

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pam Hirsch

Pam Hirsch is a Lecturer in both English Literature and Film History and Theory at the University of Cambridge. She is the director of an undergraduate course called “Film, Culture and Identity” and a member of the inter-faculty team who teach the Screen, Media and Cultures MPhil course. E-mail: [email protected]