Home Movies

The American Family in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Claire Jenkins

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781780761824
• eBook ISBN: 9780857737762
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Social Sciences

The American family has long been at the centre of the typical Hollywood narrative. But the depiction of the nuclear family within contemporary mainstream US cinema has not yet been closely studied. Home Movies addresses this oversight by assessing recent cinematic representations of the family in terms of cultural politics and representations of gender, sexuality, race and class. Focusing on a diverse range of popular films - from Meet the Parents to The Incredibles - Claire Jenkins analyses the father-daughter relationship within sequels and series; Meryl Streep's embodiment of the mother; the superhero family and extraordinary manifestations of the ordinary family; disaster films which depict the president as father; 'mom-coms' and Hollywood's representations of the non-traditional family. She combines film studies, gender studies and family history to demonstrate the complexities of Hollywood's family values.

1
Hollywood’s New Generation: Fathers and Daughters; Sequels and Series

The logical place to begin any discussion of the American family is with the father. As Bruzzi explains, Hollywood, as a patriarchal institution, has always favoured the patriarch.¹ Fatherhood has been played out in narratives concerned with masculinity and it is for this reason that the father–son relationship has dominated Hollywood film. At the core of this relationship is a concern for inheritance and the continuation of a suitably masculine lineage, seen in films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), the Star Wars series (1977, 1980, 1981), Back to the Future (1985), Catch Me if You Can (2002) and A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) amongst a plethora of others. Not only do these films centre on the necessary inheritance of the father’s traits but they also tell their stories from the viewpoint of the son, whose masculinity could be compromised by a weak father. This ideology is heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, backlash politics and the claims of the mytho-poetic men’s movement, all of which see the need for masculine figures of authority. However, in recent years the growing visibility of women in the public sphere has begun to challenge such politics, and has affected Hollywood’s family narratives. Since the 1990s there has been an explosion of father–daughter narratives, not necessarily replacing, but certainly adding to, the father–son stories. The increased visibility of the daughter signals a shift in the way in which the father is perceived by Hollywood and the way in which issues of generation and inheritance are understood. The daughter offers challenges to traditional gender roles that her mother – the domestic nurturer – cannot: she is the product of an (allegedly) emancipated generation and her lack of maternal ties allows her to more easily break gender conventions.

This chapter focuses on the father–daughter narratives that have emerged since 1990. On the surface these films appear to challenge expectations: such films as Father of the Bride (1991), Twister (1996), Contact (1997), Meet the Parents (2000) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), albeit very different in tone, demonstrate an acceptance of women’s changing roles inside and outside the home, and posit daughters as equal inheritors of the father’s traits. Hollywood’s father–daughter narratives have garnered very little academic attention, and therefore it is necessary to begin by outlining the key archetypes of these films. Although the films promise gender diversity, the majority of father/daughter films in which the father is present (rather than the absent fathers of Twister, Contact or Tomb Raider, for example) remain steadfastly concerned with masculinity and the role of the father, shifting the focus from the child (and in particular the son) – the central character of 1980s narratives such as Star Wars, The Karate Kid (1984), Back to the Future and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) – to the father. This allows concerns about masculinity to remain prevalent, while, on the surface, providing more varied family, and gender, dynamics.

Masculinity and inheritance remain foremost in contemporary father–daughter narratives, through the continuation of the father’s family that is played out in sequels and series such as the Lethal Weapon, Father of the Bride and Meet the Parents franchises. Although this expansion of the family allows the father’s role as patriarch to flourish, the relationship between father and daughter is frequently complicated due to the eroticization of the bond. Such an eroticization evokes Freudian understandings of familial relationships. This chapter theorizes the relationship between father and daughter in terms of inheritance, a theme that has been prevalent in Hollywood narratives of father and son but has never been fully explored as a central trope of the Hollywood family. The daughter functions as a symbol of threat to masculinity and masculine lineage, in narratives that often focus on ageing (another threat to masculinity) and the continuation of the family. Ageing and nostalgia – both linked to a ‘crisis’ the father suffers as his beloved daughter ages in films such as Father of the Bride, Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers (2004) – symbolize wider threats to masculinity. A crisis, whether real or assumed, has been noted by authors as diverse as Robert Bly, in his masculinist text Iron John (1991), and feminist Susan Faludi in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man (1999). What these two very different texts have in common is an understanding that men are unsure of their position in contemporary society. In the father–daughter films the tropes of ageing and particularly nostalgia function both as evidence of a crisis in masculinity, and as a way in which to evoke traditional versions of the patriarch. Films as different as Father of the Bride and Armageddon (1998) have embraced the father–daughter relationship, depicting the father’s attachment to his daughter as near-obsessive. For both George Banks (Steve Martin, Father of the Bride) and Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis, Armageddon) their daughter is at the centre of their life. Indeed, as Harry faces death at the close of Armageddon, it is his daughter’s life, not his own, that flashes before his eyes. The father–daughter relationship in this respect also plays out a nostalgic attachment to the past, and the father’s acceptance, or lack of acceptance, of the fact that he is ageing. Fatherhood has yet to be explored in these terms in any real detail. What is presented by the father–daughter narratives, then, is a renewed and refigured discourse about the way in which masculinity functions in the contemporary American family. Patriarchal structures remain prominent in the narratives of these films and the constructions of their families, and it is for this reason that the chapter focuses predominantly on sequels and series of films. Father of the Bride exemplifies this, and a similar extension of the family can be seen in the Meet the Parents franchise, in which, in both the first sequel (Meet the Fockers) and the second (Little Fockers (2010)), the next generation of the Byrnes/Focker family are introduced, and narratives about inheritance and family are self-consciously played out.

Generation and inheritance are not new concerns for Hollywood sequels: a number of 1980s series focused on the father–son narrative, such as the Star Wars trilogy, that epitomized the franchise film built around a family drama. Films including Back to the Future and the Indiana Jones sequels capitalized on this success, so much so that William J. Palmer declared the 1980s to be a decade of sequels.² Both Palmer and Jeffords discuss sequels of the 1980s as closely related to the political ideology of the era, Palmer in terms of the decade itself being a remake of, or sequel to, the 1950s – evidenced in Reaganite politics that sought a return to ‘family values’. Jeffords similarly experiences an echo of 1950s ideals in the family-based sequels of the 1980s. She believes the father–son relationship was emblematic of the relationship between Reagan and his vice-president (and also notes that the return to buddy films in the 1990s echoed the more buddy-like relationship between Clinton and his vice-president).³ Bruzzi extends this discussion of fathers in 1980s sequels, suggesting that the ‘serial nature of these films proposes and exalts the immortal father’,⁴ allowing these sequels to create a symbolic father-figure who embodies a traditional masculinity. However, where the father–daughter sequels challenge existing structures is through their focus on the father as a figure in crisis rather than as a symbolic site of masculinity. This challenges the way in which inheritance is perceived. In the father–daughter films it is significant to the father as a way of asserting masculinity, whereas in the 1980s action films it was the concern of the son who, inevitably, would be like the father.

The interest in family heritage (exploited by the Meet the Parents franchise, and in particular Little Fockers, in which Jack (Robert De Niro) has traced his ancestry and is now overtly concerned with who will be the next male patriarch of the Byrnes family) is a clear feature of American films, imbuing in the family a sense of history that is lacking in a relatively ‘young’ nation. The family, then, becomes the marker of American history, heritage and pride, and the very nature of sequels/series supports this. These series begin with marriage and then, as they develop, focus on childbirth and the continuation of the family, with the father/grandfather as patriarch. They are bound by heteronormative structures. However, these films offer a renewed focus on the father within the domestic sphere, and as such they offer a clear discourse about parenting and what it is to be a ‘good’ father. Whereas the structures underlying the films are conservative, good fathering is perceived as soft, emotional and liberal, and thus there is a tension between masculine and feminine traits that the good father must possess.

The Father–Daughter Relationship

Although the 1990s mark a clear shift towards more father–daughter narratives, Hollywood had embraced the relationship in the past. During the first part of the twentieth century the centralized father–daughter relationship was common in Hollywood films such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), in which daughters occupied a privileged role within the family. In Meet Me in St Louis the four daughters of the Smith family are given more narrative time than their inconsequential brother, and even the family’s patriarch Alonzo (Leon Ames). Indeed it is his daughters’ desire to stay in New York after Alonzo is relocated with work that eventually changes his mind about a move, demonstrating softness and sentimentality in the strong bond between father and daughters. The women of both this film and Cheaper by the Dozen are feisty characters, daughters and mothers alike. While the father is head of the household, they manage to exert power over him through charm and gentle manipulation. Such narratives were superseded in the 1950s by father–son films that viewed ‘fathering as a vehicle for examining masculinity’.⁵ However, the father–daughter relationship declined in films of the 1950s and 1960s for numerous reasons, not just the increased interest in masculinity. This shift came at the same time as a wider recognition of the sexual tensions at play in the represented father–daughter relationship. Whereas father–daughter narratives of the 1940s had presented reasonably positive relationships, those father–daughter narratives that did exist in the 1950s raised ‘the notion of incestuous desire’.⁶ The subtle differences between the relationship of Meet Me in St. Louis, made in 1944, and Cheaper by the Dozen, made in 1950, support this claim. While incestuous desire is not explicit in either, the father of Cheaper by the Dozen is more concerned with his daughter’s romantic relationships and chastity, positing himself as her sexual protector. Devlin suggests that the disappearance of the father–daughter relationship in popular culture coincided with a shift in psychoanalytical ideology that led to the model of father as sexual protector becoming an increasingly uneasy one.⁷ It cannot be ignored, though, that the women’s rights movement ignited around the same time, and the problem of father–daughter incest was recognized.

There is not just a dearth of father–daughter films from the 1950s to the 1990s, but the relationship also remains conspicuously absent in literature theorizing family relationships. Victoria Secunda notes that:

Of all the pairings in the family, father–daughter is the least understood, least studied by social scientists, and lowest on the agendas even of ‘sensitive’ American fathers who are struggling to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past – especially with their sons.⁸

Consequently, Hollywood’s father–daughter relationships have not been theorized, yet it is clear that the relationship tends to fall into three broad categories: the eroticized relationship, that is treated as a dilemma; the tomboy – a daughter who inherits the seemingly masculine traits of her father, but who usually exists in a narrative in which the father is deceased; and the adored little girl and doting father, a relationship in which the father’s development is intrinsically linked to his daughter’s, but is privileged over her experience.

Eroticizing the Father–Daughter Bond

The eroticized representation, and reading, of the father–daughter bond in Hollywood films is linked to notions of sexual difference, and symptomatic of the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis on Hollywood’s family narratives. Yet, even in Freud’s work the relationship between father and daughter appears to be little more than incidental. To the son, the father is a figure of power and authority, and also, in Freudian terms, a rival. The father, in psychoanalytical discourses, leads or initiates the son into masculinity. In his brief discussion of fathers and daughters, Freud sets up a relationship between the two that has a basis in sexual desire, believing that the daughter’s attachment to the father is a result of attempts to distance herself from the mother, positing the father–daughter bond as an incidental, rather than crucial, relationship.⁹

As Devlin outlines, Freudian psychoanalysis became ensconced in American popular culture in the 1940s, when the father was encouraged to take a role in the daughter’s sexual development. During the post-war period fathers were encouraged to help daughters choose new lipsticks and dresses as a way of being involved in their lives: ‘A father’s love and devotion could be expressed through shared consumerism’,¹⁰ a consumerism that sexualized the daughter, and as a result of paternal approval such sexualization was celebrated. The relationship between father and daughter, and the eroticization of this relationship, was certainly acknowledged in popular culture of the time; plays, novels and films all explored the subject.¹¹ These texts assumed it was the father’s role to offer sexual approval to his daughter.¹² This eroticized relationship also played a part in Hollywood representations of fathers and daughters in films such as Rebel Without a Cause, Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen. In the last of these the father takes on the role of (sexual) protector of his daughter.

Such frameworks have become integrated into popular culture (in much the same way as Oedipal structures and Freud’s model of the primal father have affected Hollywood’s father–son narratives¹³). The eroticized and over-protective father has remained a well-worn trope of Hollywood’s father–daughter relationships. Indeed, when the father–daughter relationship re-emerged in the 1990s – largely due to the acceptance of women’s achievements in society – the focus on the father as sexual protector remained uncomfortably present, particularly in those contemporary teen films that focus on the adolescent daughter, including My Girl (1991), My Father the Hero (1994), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), She’s All That (1999), A Walk to Remember (2002), Hannah Montana (2006) and The Last Song (2010), all of which contain narratives of daughters and single or separated fathers. The films focus on this relationship as the daughter is embarking on her first romantic or sexual experiences. The father’s investment in his daughter’s life differs across the films, but he is always confidante and protector, a role played for laughs in 10 Things I Hate About You, in which obstetrician and single-father Walter Stratford (Larry Miller) is constantly in fear of his daughters becoming impregnated, to such an extent that he forces his youngest, Bianca (Larisa ...

Table of contents

• About the Author
• Bookreview
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Hollywood’s New Generation: Fathers and Daughters; Sequels and Series
• 2 Meryl Streep and Hollywood’s Maternal Archetypes
• 3 The ‘Super’ Family
• 4 Family Dysfunction and the Action-Melodrama
• 5 Race, Class and Hollywood’s ‘Alternative’ Families
• 6 Single-parents, Homosexual Unions and Reproductive Technologies
• Notes
• Bibliography