Social Conditioning Example

1 Sarah Goins Social Conditioning and Fairy Tales: A look at Fish Tank Andrea Arnold’s 2009 film Fish Tank is a social realist, emotional film based on the life of Mia, a fifteen-year-old living in government-run housing in urban England.. From a feminine and psychoanalytic discourse, using the theories from psychologist Carl Jung, I will show that Arnold inundates this film with a fairytale leitmotif that illuminates how the artificial constructs in which Mia lives have conditioned her to believe that a man will save her from the socioeconomic and societal disadvantages.. For example, when Connor carries Tyler to bed he calls her “Sleeping Beauty,” Tyler watches celebrity show-and-tell programs, which give her the notion that having more makes one glamorous and happy, and when Mia needs money, 2 she goes to Connor’s place of employment.. She never speaks of having a job, nor is she seen coming or going from a job, but she tells a friend on the phone of the happiness she has found with Connor and consoles her friend not to worry because “she’s gonna meet someone.” Jeanne Dubino explains how romance narratives have conveyed the message of patriarchal order that defines rigid gender roles for both men and women: “Romances bolster patriarchal ideology, continuing to affirm the centrality of men in women’s lives and to harness the desire of both men and women for a gendered other.. But this lack of maternal instinct in the mother pushes Mia to leave her home and make a life of her own, “There are some maternal figures that are entirely destructive from a human point of view, and others whose negative effects are followed by change and renewal” (Birkhauser-Oeri 27)..