The Politics of Art & Authenticity

http://dearcinema.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Wasp-2003.jpg

Andrea Arnold’s film, Wasp, depicts the story of 23 year old Zoe and her struggle to raise her four children, while also holding on to the small social life she attempts to have.  When people view this film they cannot help but be annoyed and furious at Zoe for being unable to feed her kids, and bringing them to a bar so that she can have her one night out.  But at the same time, the audience also feels sympathy for Zoe that she is trying to get by with the little nothing she has, and still loves her children through it all.

When I watch films, I always study the title and how it relates back to the film.  Every title serves a purpose for a film and it wasn’t put there by mistake.  In the case of Wasp I wasn’t sure at first why Arnold would give such a film this title.  There were moments in the film where the camera would focus in on a wasp; once in Zoe’s apartment and later on during the climax, when the wasp is on her baby’s face.  I looked up wasp on Wikipedia.com and it used words such as “parasite” and “pest” describing it as preying on other species.  I realized that the wasp in the movie symbolized the fear and danger that Zoe faces each day of her life; trying to feed her children, just struggling to get by, and attempting to enjoy her life.  She has all these issues that are parasitic to her life and she can’t escape them.  Her life almost completely collapses when the wasp nearly stings her baby.  Zoe lives a parasitic life and is prey to all of the struggles she faces each day.

During the film, I also observed the camera techniques that Andrea Arnold used.  She had used the free-camera style, which made the picture shaky at times.  I think she did this to give it more a one-on-one feeling, as though the audience is right there next to Zoe and her family, and experiencing everything.  It also illustrates Zoe’s hectic and chaotic life.  Arnold also uses a lot of close-ups that are usually still.  These are usually in moments right before something bad happens in Zoe’s life.  She also utilized close-ups on objects that helped to describe Zoe’s character. The camera techniques played a large role in for the concept of the film, and without it I don’t think it would’ve given off the same feelings.

“Wasp.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia.com, May 2011. Web. 21 Sep 2012.

Loud, in your face and honest are the best words to describe the short film Wasp by Andrea Arnold. Wasp gives us a glimpse into the life of Zoe, a young struggling mother who has the burden of raising four young children. The oldest child being no older than eleven years old. Zoe is a completely dysfunctional and inadequate mother who has absolutely no money and apparently no moral standards. She curses frequently at her children and make them wait for her while she flirts with a previous boyfriend named Dave. However what makes the film so striking and affective is the way Arnold portrays Zoe and her family.

Arnold deploys many techniques in order to clearly depict the horrible living conditions and the tough reality that Zoe and her family face everyday.  Arnold uses close ups so that the audience can get a clear look at the characters. You are able to see the dirt and grime on Zoe and the children and you can practically smell them. In the short, the shoulder mounted cameras gives the viewer the sense that they are following the family. Altogether Arnold puts together this short with scene after scene of cringe worthy material. From the scene where the eleven year old, the most responsible person in the film, feeds the family ribs from the floor to the scene where the baby almost swallows a wasp. This short is a cringe fest.

Arnold does this with a clear purpose. She strings together these shocking scenes to evoke sympathy from the audience so that one can understand the plight of Zoe.  As the film comes to a close I started  to sympathize with Zoe and understood that she was a child herself with too much responsibility and not enough help. I began to see that Zoe is only a twenty three year old girl that still has stickers of David Beckham on her shower. All she needed was to catch a break.Luckily enough she did catch a break when Dave came along and helped her by feeding the family and driving them home. As perplexing as it was that is why Arnold ended the film with an upbeat ending as the short closed with the song “Hey Baby.” It was because at that moment things seemed to turn around for this family. They had food. They had Dave. They had hope.

How can she effectively raise her children when she still exemplifies childish characteristics herself? This is a major question that Andrea Arnold raises in her short film, WASP. Zoe, a struggling single mother of four, seems to be in her early twenties, an age that is characterized by partying and nights on the town which customarily aren’t things that aren’t associated with being a parent. Zoe sees an old friend on the street and agrees to meet him that evening for a drink at the pub and in doing so neglects the role of responsible parent for the evening. In this way we are given the

opportunity to see how unprepared Zoe is to care for these children through her decision-making. Poor decision-making skills are also something that is associated with the late teens and early twenties because we simply lack the experience to understand the repercussions and act on what psychologists call the “pleasure principle.” Although proving to be a poor mother at times, there are brief glimmers of hope for these children because one can see Zoe’s intense love and for them through her fight with the other mother and her fear of losing them to social services which is why I believe Arnold creates a positive ending. Zoe is a poor mother now but a good, loving person at heart; qualities that every good mother possesses.

After doing some research, I discovered that Andrea Arnold wrote and directed a movie in 2009, called Fish Tank, which actually looks like a really great movie. It is about a young British woman who is forced to come of age through her mother’s irresponsibility and un-ideal factors that are out of her control.

Sound familiar?

I wondered why this theme came up so much in Arnold’s work, so I googled her. Here she is:

This is a direct quote from Arnold herself: ” When people use that word, or ‘grim’ or ‘gritty’, I just think, ‘Oh, come on, look a bit deeper.’ My films don’t give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they’ve really been through something.”

Arnold is able to see past the surface, deep down into the gray where others tend to see black and white. She understands that a mother can have enough of her kids and just need a “f***ing night out,” without being a bad mother. She sees that a 23 year old girl with 4 kids and more than 4 potential fathers for those kids might just be a little misguided and lonely. And she has a passion for making her audiences get that too.

Whether or not “Wasp” is based on the filmmaker, Andrea Arnold’s life, is indefinite. But her childhood years surely had some effect on the film. “Wasp” tells a highly realistic story which causes the viewer to sympathize with Zoe, the protagonist. Instead of being filmed in the customary fashion, steadily, using a tripod, it is filmed with a hand-held camera, ultimately making the footage shaky. This
creates a film which is almost tangible to the viewer, as if he is with the characters and in their situation. With the close-up and zoomed-in footage, the viewer actually feels like he is trapped and caught in the drama. I think this film is based on conflict and that’s what makes it so real. I’m ambivalent in my reaction towards Zoe. On the one hand, her actions are unreasonable, but on the other hand, they are completely understandable. Also, there were so many moments during the film that I thought something tragic was about to happen: the kids would be run over by a car in middle of the street, or the four seemingly-drunk teenagers would do something, etc., but nothing catastrophic happened, and the even ended on a positive note. Arnold probably put in these scenes to amplify the realism: there is potential here for something bad to occur and the viewer is in midst of all of it.

Would you ever waste your hard earned money on beer while your children were starving? Most of us would answer, “no.” But one mother would answer, “yes,” and her life is portrayed in the short film Wasp.

Wasp is a heart breaking short film about a poor single mother that neglects her four children so she can have a night out on the town with other men. Wasp belongs to the auteur genre, and parts of director Andrea Arnold’s life are portrayed in this film using her unique voice. According to her interview, Andrea Arnold had a poor single mother with four children. The use of part of her own life makes the film more personal because her authentic emotions are more palpable to the viewer. Camera angles make this film more personal like when Zoe is frantically running down the stairs and the shaking camera captures her frantic and uncertain behavior.A hand held camera is also used to capture Zoe’s anxiety and shakiness about the possibility of losing her children. Music plays an important role in this film. Music symbolizes the shift in tone through the film.  Music is played after the fight scene to signal the shift of Zoe bringing her children to the bar, and music is played at the end of the short film to suggest the children might have a slightly better future ahead. Zoe loves her children and this is shown when she runs to her baby’s rescue after hearing his stinging scream.

Sources:

image: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3PPSVIEZjQo/TKYQPEA3rxI/AAAAAAAAAC4/bqS_nY6wHXE/s1600/wasp.png

interview: http://www.scotsman.com/news/film-andrea-arnold-interview-1-1355790

http://www.waspx.co.uk/iStock_flip%20wasp.jpg

On Wikipedia.com I found that Andrea Arnold’s mother was 16 when she gave birth to the future Oscar winning director. She raised four children on her own much like Zoe did in Wasp. When Professor Davis mentioned that this film reflected her childhood I thought perhaps Arnold lived in poverty but I didn’t think much more of it. It’s chilling to think about how similar the film and real life was to Andrea Arnold. On Wikipedia.com I also read into the synopsis of some of her other productions I found that the poverty stricken, damaged mother daughter relationship was a common theme in many of her films.] In directing her films Andrea Arnolds seems to incorporate her childhood to some degree, which is one of the characteristics of her personal filming style.

Again, looking into a blog commenting on several of Arnold’s films I found that she also uses close ups frequently. The author of the blog, ‘Cinema of Andrea’ felt that these close ups allowed her to feel a closer connection to the characters being filmed and gives us, the viewers a greater insight into the complexity of the character. I completely agree with the author of the blog. There were several instances in Wasp in which those close ups helped us to understand Zoe. The close up on the sticker regarding Barbie as we mentioned in class shows us that Zoe might be a mother, but she is far from mature. The close up on her feet earlier in the film when she’s speaking to David and the moldy bread in her kitchen are used to highlight the poverty in which Zoe and her children live in. Although the author ‘The Cinema of Andrea’ focused on the importance of the close ups on characters’ faces, I felt that the close ups of the objects were equally significant because they too help us to uncover the story behind the characters.

“Andrea Arnold.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Sept. 2012. Web. 20 Sept. 2012.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Arnold>.

“The Cinema of Andrea Arnold.” JustAtad. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2012.

<http://justatad.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/the-cinema-of-andrea-arnold/>.

Watching “Wasp” seriously messed with my emotions. I went from crying, to gasping, to nervously laughing all within a few minutes. There were several aspects of the film that caused this and that made it feel unique. One was the shakiness of the camera. This made it feel immature and haphazard, much like the main character herself. It also made the film feel less polished and more real, which made me respond as if I was seeing an intimate home movie of the characters. Also, the music playing throughout “Wasp” – mostly upbeat pop songs – was an interesting choice for such serious subject matter. It gave it a hopeful feeling that underscored the film and provided greater room for personal interpretation of the events shown. I think Andrea Arnold really makes her film stand out by using these subtle touches which encourage her audience to take pause and wonder how they should be responding to her film.

NOTICE HOW THE LITTLE BLONDE GIRL
IS HOLDING UP THE WRONG FINGER  🙂

At the opening scene of Wasp, you see a barefooted mother carrying her baby boy with his bottom exposed and running down the stairs along with her children. You can see the shakiness of the handheld camera that follows them down the stairs. The first scene entices you to want to learn more about this woman and her family. As the camera shows a scene of their distraught house, its obvious that they live in poverty and she is unable to feed her family. Andrea Arnold’s short film is about real social issues, a very young woman who has made some bad decisions in her life that is trying to take care her children. This short film is just a glimpse of Zoe’s everyday life. I felt as though I was right in there in front of her observing her everyone move. Arnold wants us to see her perspective and sympathize her life because society normally judges and ostracizes someone who was a teenage mother that’s unable to financially provide for her children. Although she has made some bad decisions in this film, such as leaving her children outside of the bar as she tries to rekindle an old flame, in the end, she truly loves her children and wouldn’t want anything bad happen to them.

Andrea Arnold’s protagonist in Wasp proves to be more than a simple, one sided person. If she was only who she seemed to be, I’d probably still be seething and condemning the woman of how bad of a mother she is.

I mean, any woman who leaves her three young girls plus a baby outside of a bar for hours on end as she flirtatiously plays pool deserves to be smacked, yes? Not to mention enabling two of the girls to play bumper strollers (with a real baby in one) on a parking lot close to a busy road with no adult supervision in addition to the nonchalant cussing embedded in their daily vernacular and the violent example of how to solve problems by rushing to the enemy camp barefoot and pulling hair finished with a synchronized flip of the finger. I guess it’s obvious that this film angered me. But I also loved it.
Zoe is a woman whose background and motives are mysteries that one can only wonder about. She represents a sub-sect of society that we all know exist but only laugh at and shrug off. Most people are quick to judge these people, shoo them into a category called Trash, shake their heads and be off with their own lives. But if one really thinks about each person, Zoe for example, you can’t help but feel sympathy. Most of us do not know what it’s like to be alone and really have nothing and no one. Well that’s Zoe, times ten. She holds her children close despite her inability to properly take care of them because they are all she has. They are all who provide her the respect, love, and attachment she yearns. Furthermore, she lives in this lower class pocket of society where economic and social factors proliferate this type of lifestyle. In no way do I think her decisions are wise or right but I do acknowledge her reasons. She loves her kids and she’s raising them as well as she knows how.

I’ve watched another short film set in the same type of town and culture.  I highly recommend you watch this little boy named Frankie.