ABSTRACT

This article reads Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (2009) through Lauren Berlant’s conceptualisation of impasse and the affective rhythms of survival, which Berlant develops in their reflections on the cinema of precarity. This framework, I contend, has the potential to open up new avenues of inquiry within the study of Arnold’s work, usually discussed in relation to either British (social) realist cinema or the phenomenological representations of female experience. Situating Fish Tank within the broader framework of the cinema of precarity helps articulate a position from which to problematise the overemphasis on movement in critical writings on the film – which, as I will discuss, is also predominant in both affect theory and film phenomenology. I argue that with its simultaneous focus on movement and impasse, realised through framing and composition of the shot, camera movement, and repetition of visual tropes that convey confinement, Fish Tank is able to capture and aesthetically re-enact the impact of neoliberalism, while simultaneously paying attention to class and gendered styles of bodily adjustment to crisis ordinariness. I conclude that Berlant’s critical apparatus illuminates the formal and affective complexity of Fish Tank in new ways, and creates space to address larger questions of affect, aesthetics, and the profilmic body.

摘要

本文通过劳伦·伯兰特（Lauren Berlant）对僵局和生存情感节奏的概念化来解读安德里亚·阿诺德（Andrea Arnold）的《鱼缸》 （2009），伯兰特在对不稳定电影的反思中发展了这些概念。我认为，这个框架有可能在阿诺德作品的研究中开辟新的探究途径，通常与英国（社会）现实主义电影或女性经历的现象学表征有关。放置鱼缸在不稳定电影的更广泛框架内，有助于阐明一种立场，从该立场来解决电影批评著作中对运动的过分强调——正如我将讨论的那样，这在情感理论和电影现象学中也占主导地位。我认为，通过镜头的取景和构图、摄像机运动以及传达限制的视觉比喻的重复来实现对运动和僵局的同时关注，《鱼缸》能够捕捉并在美学上重新演绎新自由主义的影响，同时同时关注阶级和性别的身体适应危机平凡的风格。我的结论是，伯兰特的批判装置阐明了《鱼缸》形式和情感的复杂性以新的方式创造空间来解决情感、美学和亲电影身体等更大的问题。