Task 2.1 - Comparing Andrea Arnold’s ‘Wasp’ and Lynne Ramsay’s ‘Gasman’

A short film is usually a low budget, indie film that drops the audience straight into the thick of the narrative. It usually doesn’t come full circle, often ending on a cliff-hanger of sorts, as with a small run time it is hard to create a fully developed narrative. Short films are usually created so people can show off their creativity and skills which then allows them to be ‘spotted’ by bigger companies who will later fund them in developing full feature films.

In Wasp, there is a neglectful mother who is metaphorically the wasp. She constantly puts her children in danger for her own gain by doing things such as leaving them outside a pub all night so she can have a drink with a man she met earlier that day after coming back from fighting one of her neighbours… This is reckless behaviour with no sense of caring for those who she should love the most making a wasp a fitting metaphor. The wasp is a fitting metaphor because most people just see them as there to hurt you as they do not offer any benefits to anyone but themselves.

The children are exposed to drunk people and are forced to eat left over food from off the floor. Whilst eating, a wasp flies into the baby’s mouth causing the children to scream and panic. This causes the mother to pull away from kissing her male counterpart and rush to the kids where she does nothing but say ‘don’t sting him’. This once more shows her lack of care, as their mother she should be not put them in potential danger in the first place. This scene could show however, how she doesn’t intend for them to get hurt and she is just trapped in this life, like the wasp trying to get out the window earlier on in the film.

This representation of single mothers and Britain is completely inaccurate in my opinion, it makes it seem that every single mother from that part of the country openly endorses this type of behaviour. It also shows that this is what happens when women do not fulfil their stereotypical housewife role which everyone knows for a fact, is not the case almost 100% of the time.

The use of the children singing popular songs from the 90s, despite the severity of the situation, is contradictive but also represents the innocence of the children to not know any better as they have no reason to seem upset as it is just a regular day to them.

The camerawork is also ‘frustrating’, but in a positive way as it adds to the distress of the audience through the over use of handheld camera and the stylistic effects used make the camera appear old and grainy to reinforce the themes of poverty that drive the narrative of the film. The film is naturalistic and seems unscripted, almost like a documentary. The reason this is done is so that we feel as if we are watching it all unfold, but it also makes it impossible to help even though we want to because it feels so real.

Gasman is set in Glasgow in the 1970s, straight away we can see how life was hard as one of the children was playing with sugar, linking both films with a theme of poverty. In Wasp the children are dirty and underfed. They are also wearing dirty clothes that don’t necessarily fit them very well, this is due to their mother being on her own. In Gasman, it is essentially the same situation but the children appear to have better clothing which can be put down to the fact that they have a father on the scene, they aren’t necessarily fed better but they are dressed better.

There is a difference in camerawork as Gasman uses static cinematic shots such as a tilt up the railway tracks to bring the father and his children into the shot compared to the jittery handheld camera in Wasp. As well as this, Lynne Ramsay likes to use shots such as extreme close ups to convey meaning such as when the man’s other (ex)partner. The man takes two children off of her and they immediately mingle with the other children there which shows that the children have no worries despite the fact that the life they live is full of struggles, just like in Wasp.

Also like in Wasp, the father takes the children to what appears to be a Christmas party so he can drink with his friends. Whilst at the party however, the children find out that they both have different mothers but the same father which causes the two girls to turn on each other and begin to ‘fight’. As this gets revealed it soon cuts to them walking back in the dark down the railway, the lack of light stays for the rest of the film as it represents the depressing truth that the children have found out. Both films make us of natural lighting, turning darker towards the end, to convey meaning. The reduction of light also coincides with the storyline as develops in a negative direction.

Much like Wasp, Gasman is not accurate in terms of representation as it shows men as being unfaithful and wanting to sleep around even though the majority of men would stay faithful to their partner. Both films represent Britain as being dystopian and a bad place to live which in reality, is not the truth. Both directors differ in style but effectively portray a similar message, Andrea Arnold likes to use distressing, fast paced, handheld shots but Lynne Ramsay likes to use long lasting shots, that keep the target on screen for a large amount of time to convey meaning.