Textual Analysis – ‘About a Girl’ (Percival,
UK, 2001)
The two main themes that are explored in this sequence are that of class
and age in relation to the protagonist. This essay will explore the
representations of this character.
The sequence firsts present age via the graphic
title-sequence which would have been applied in post-production. As shown here,
the font of the text and the way that the characters’ flick through suggests to
the audience that it is a phone screen that was more appropriate to the time in
which this film was produced. This then allows for the audience to play on the
stereotype that the character will be a young female, as hinted by the fact
that the word ‘girl’ is in the title, due to the fact that we assume that
teenagers are addicted to their phones.
After this title sequence, the film first
presents the character’s class way before you get to see other than her
silhouette because she is dancing and singing to a song in an extreme long
shot/establishing shot. Due to the fact that it is clear that the character
doesn’t have many material luxuries such as a device in which she can play her
music out loud, hence why a diegetic backing track was not added in
post-production. This also supports the idea that the fact that the character
is young because it is assumed that people of an older age would not dance
freely in a public place at this risk of embarrassment, showing that she has
not fully reached the self conscience stage of puberty.
Continuing into the sequence, the audience
begins to understand more about the character which both develops the themes of
age and class. For example, her speech and idiolect make it clear to the
audience that she is from, and the sequence is set in Manchester. This is
significant because due the traditional idea of the North-South divide of the
country, in which the North is significantly economically worse off, because
the audience assumes that the character is of lower social class with very
little money to spend. This idea is supported by the fact that the setting
clearly shows chimneys that were most probably used in the cotton industry as
the North is also seen as the industrial heartland of the country, despite the
fact that less money is in this part of the country.
As well as this, her speech is extremely
erratic because she jumps from one topic to the next in very little time. For
example, her dialogue literally switches from “Jesus” to “dental floss” with no
context or segways between the two. This is extremely effective, especially with
the complimentary editing of frequent, rapid cuts whilst recorded on a
shakeycam because the director successfully captures the essence of what it is
to be 13 (the age of the character later discovered in the sequence). Due to
such, the audience then gets the impression that this character lives her life
in the fast lane, but at the same time she lacks the common knowledge that she
will gain throughout puberty and her adulthood, showing that although she tries
to act older than her age – as shown through the hoop ear-rings and puffy
jacket – she is still a young child.
About a third of the way into the sequence, the character’s father is
introduced and he takes her to the pub for “a can of coke and a bag of crisps”
which she describes as “bliss”. This is a significant move in the director’s
exploration of social class because it shows that she considers something so
small as a massive luxury. This motif of luxurious food is further developed
within the sequence because she would consider a fancy drink a “Bacardi
breezer” which isn’t normally the case. However, as shown in the screen shots,
the camera starts as a long shot of the character but instead of continuing the
editing theme of rapid cuts, instead the camera pulls away to the second part
of this shot. This is significant because it amplifies the idea that the
character is actually very alone, as the audience can clearly hear in the
diegetic background her father’s mates having fun in the pub without her
because she is too young, further supporting this idea of age. Again, social
class is also prominent in this part of the sequence because of the ‘working-man’s
pub” and the factory looming over them both.
Towards the middle of the sequence, there is a
key moment in the cross cutting between past and present (present is filmed
with shakey-cam, past is filmed on a tripod) in which the mother is the main
focus of the two-shot. This moment clearly shows that the family are at the
lower end of the socio-economic ladder because the mother, which the audience
will stereotype as a strong figure, is giving in to the people’s tax that is
the lottery through a scratch card. The director shows this to the audience
because it creates sympathy for this character, because even though the money
could have been spent on more essentials, instead they choose to gamble it for
the slim chance that they will gain more money. Therefore, the desperation that
this woman must be feeling will mean that she will take any opportunity to make
more money.
Towards the end of the sequence as the character walks down the canal,
the location further proves the point that she lives in a socially deprived
economic area. For example, this midshot shows the rows of social housing
clearly but the canal is tainted with litter, so it is clear that this area is
uncared for. However, as the character is walking down this path near dusk,
something that you wouldn’t expect for her to do on her own, it is presented
that the character acts older than her actual age, but her situation has probably
been forced on her rather than out of choice.
Finally, after the clearly dramatic climax of
the sequence, the audience is shocked to hear the character sing her songs so
nonchalantly as if nothing ever happened in the diegetic dialogue. This idea is
further supported immediately after she throws the baby into the canal, as she
says in the diegetic dialogue “I’m still gonna get a 99 [ice cream]”. This is
quite shocking for the audience because typically, someone would be quite
distraught to do something so life changing as that, but the character just
dismisses it as something that is unimportant. Therefore, the theme of the
character being young in age is clear because she may not be old enough to
understand the significance of her decision or it may be her coping mechanism
for the whole experience. Furthermore, the final image that the audience is
left with before the title sequence is her walking on the dark side of the
screen, showing that she may have lost her innocence during the whole experience,
meaning that she has been forced to give up her childhood, possibly due to her
financial situation and the distance from her mother.
Overall, I think the director wishes for the audience to feel sympathise
with the character because her social and economic situations have clearly
deprived her of a childhood as she has been forced to make her own decisions in
how she will deal with difficult situations in her life. In doing so, it is a
sad sequence because this is an issue that will still be felt all across the
country and for people from all sections of society to deal with but this young
person, who is at her most venerable, receives no help from an authority figure
at all. Therefore, the ways in which the themes of age and social class are
presented are effective because they engage the audience.
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