Family Fictions : Representations of the Family in 1980s Hollywood Cinema

What do E.T., Fatal Attraction and Look Who's Talking have in common? As well as being amongst the most popular films at the UK box office of recent years all three represent dysfunctional families, families which profoundly transgressed contemporary ideological norms. The eighties were a decade in which the family occupied a pivotal position in an increasingly complex social and moral universe and film itself enjoyed a resurgence. Sarah Harwood argues that Hollywood cinema engaged in debates over the 'crisis in the family' in intense and complex ways, both feeding and resisting dominant social mythologies. In a fascinating analysis of films as diverse as Airplane! and Terms of Endearment, Family Fictions maps the functions, paradoxes and pleasures of familial representations in recent times. These startling analyses shed light on power and gender relations in contemporary cinema as well as on how the films themselves engaged with their broader cultural contexts. Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-12 Front Matter....Pages 13-13 Britain in the Eighties....Pages 15-25 Hollywood Cinema in the Eighties....Pages 26-35 Family Representations: The Family in Crisis....Pages 36-55 Front Matter....Pages 57-57 Family Fortunes: Key Representational Paradigms....Pages 59-72 Backlash Patriarch or New Man? The Role of the Father....Pages 73-101 Absence and Loss: The Evacuation of the Mother....Pages 102-123 Look Who’s Talking: Challenging Children and Parental Inversions....Pages 124-148 Family Dramas: The Family in E.T. — the Extra-Terrestrial....Pages 149-173 Conclusions and Futures — Stasis and Change....Pages 174-190 Back Matter....Pages 191-265 Family Fictions explores images and narratives of the family in recent Hollywood cinema. This is the first in-depth analysis of this important topic which explores how problematic representations of the family were in a period when the family was a pivotal political and social issue. Through close textual analysis of the biggest box-office hits of recent years, this book demonstrates the volatility of family representations and the instability of its narrative and ideological functions. Well-known films discussed, include Kramer versus Kramer , E.T . and Look Who's Talking . Sarah Harwood ; Foreword By Janet Thumim ; Consultant Editor: Jo Campling. Filmography: P. 248-252. Includes Bibliography (p. 253-258) And Index.