Andrea Arnold represents youth culture in a number of different lights. To the eye it looks like he is giving them the youth of our country a bad name. Some people may argue that is what he is showing but what he is showing is a deeper problem in society.

He is trying to give the people who don’t get reported on fairly, in his eyes, a say and a chance to show their of the story. What I felt was that he was giving a say to unspoken Britain who are not given a fair chance in life and have to struggle to day to day activities. There are obvious problems in some of Britain youth through their background. The tendency is to slate them off, the media plays a big part in trying to define these people rightly or wrongly this is what the media has built them up to be.

By knowing that this is what people see in some of the youth today he plays on that mind and uses that stereotype to show them for who they are but he tires to use that and challenge the audience to question their view on these kids. He doesn’t change them for who they are but what he does is make them see it from the youth point of view. By doing this it gives the audience a better understanding of where they are coming from and their struggles in life. By seeing it from their side it gives the audience a better understanding of what it is like to be a kid growing up in a council estate where they have to fend for themselves. What Arnold challenges the audience to do is to make their own mind of these kids rather than being fed by the Media. It is telling them to think about their situation and how it would affect them physically and mentally and really being on the youth side in trying to drive this message through.

I believe that class plays a big part in “Fish Tank”. The girl’s family that we see would be seen as lower class and the boyfriend the man had would be seen as a higher class. We see the man taking advantage of this family and really he is only their for the sex and the fun of another relationship. But he played it in such a way that he built them up to just knock them back down by having fun with the girl’s mum and then going on the girl. He made them feel special but he as seen as a well off middle class family he could use them and dump them whenever he liked. He basically ruled the family and when he had enough he left. By showing it from the young girl’s point of view it shows the difficulties that she is going through everyday and we feel a bit of sympathy with her.

This links into Gender which also plays a big part. The men in “Fish Tank” are always shown to have a better prospective in life. It also shows the women’s aspiration throughout is low or have no aspiration at all. From the men who work in selling and using second hand materials to build cars and keep a life together to the man who played with the girl’s family and messed up all their lives. On the female side the livelihoods are shown at a low level. The only job interview that she goes to is basically a strip/nightclub dancing. In the area they live in isn’t highly educated where then men do the work and can scrap to keep these people afloat and the women are shown as objects not really being human being.

The race issue is a key part of this film. Andrea used a stereotypical view of a council estate in these block of flats of the sort of people which would live there, the white middle age working to lower class.