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MASCULINITY AND THE MIDLIFE CRISIS IN AMERICAN CINEMA

A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

Cinema Studies

Andrew Warren Clark

San Francisco, California

Summer 2018 Copyright by Andrew Warren Clark 2018 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Masculinity and the Midlife Crisis in American Cinema by

Andrew Warren Clark, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University.

RL Rutsky Associate Professor of Cinema MASCULINITY AND THE MIDLIFE CRISIS IN AMERICAN CINEMA

Andrew Warren Clark San Francisco, California 2018

The term Midlife Crisis, coined by psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques in 1965, is typically attributed to white middleclass men who have reached a critical impasse, a point at which they believe their lives have passed them by. This condition generally reflects middleclass anxieties associated with work, money and marriage, three things that have grown to define white American men in the 20th century. Along with the feminist movement and the more reactionary men’s movement, there is an obvious clash of ideals that creates a conflict that contributes to the Midlife Crisis. American cinema engages with this critical impasse, and whether it passively addresses it with humor, or engages with it more intimately, these films are nevertheless a response to these rigid societal institutions. In this paper, I explore how these issues are addressed in film. From Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970) to Bill Murray’s various incarnations, the cinematic representation of Midlife Crises has become increasingly common, questioning, if not rejecting standard heteronormative institutions altogether.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this Thesis

l ______7 /2^//^ Chair, Thesis Committee Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank the San Francisco State Cinema department who provided a firm foundation of knowledge and support, as well as a wealth of opportunities for education and growth. This project would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of my committee, particularly my Thesis Chair, RL Rutsky. I want to thank my cohort who welcomed me into their arms, challenged me academically and gave me the home away from home I didn’t know I needed. Lastly, I want to thank my partner Danielle

Macdonald whose loving support in the midst of my own Midlife Crisis encouraged me to see this project through to its completion.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...... 1

The Midlife Crisis and its Suburban Roots...... 9

Tales of Suburban Madness: Midlife Crisis and the Suburban Asylum...... 13

The Long Way Home...... 18

Reflections on Masculinity in the Late 20th Century...... 27

Subjugated Masculinity: A Return to the Fam ily...... 30

Bad Dads and Broken Homes: The Next Generation of Crises...... 34

Conclusion...... 40

Bibliography...... 44

vi FIGURES

1. Figure 1 ...... 6

2. Figure 2 ...... 15

3. Figure 3 ...... 20

4. Figure 4 ...... 22

5. Figure 5...... 35

6. Figure 6 ...... 39

7. Figure 7 ...... 44 viii

Introduction

The Midlife Crisis is arguably one of the most well known psychological conditions in

American culture. It speaks to a period of restlessness often experienced at middle age, a restlessness that often leads to youthful regressions and transgressions. Elliott Jaques is the first to coin the phrase, and it wasn’t until his groundbreaking article “Death and the

Midlife Crisis,” published in 1965, that the condition received critical attention. Jaques’ article gives weight and definition to this period at midlife, dissecting the mechanisms that inspire it.

The individual has stopped growing up and begun to grow old. A new set of

external circumstances has to be met. The first phase of adult life has been lived.

Family and occupation have become established... parents have grown old, and

children are at the threshold of adulthood. Youth and childhood are past and gone,

and demand to be mourned... The paradox is that of entering the prime of life, the

stage of fulfillment, but at the same time the prime and fulfillment are dated

(Jaques: 506).

In short, Jaques is speaking of a psychological impasse, a moment where an adult reaches a particular crest in life where the most monumental and influential achievements are behind them. For Jaques, youth and all of its exuberance, trials, successes and failures, 2

rest on one side of the fence. On the other side lie the hard truths of lost dreams that coincide with the realities of aging and death. Though Jaques chose to study artists, the more extreme examples of this condition, his findings provided definition to a psychological condition affecting modern every day citizens.

The Midlife Crisis enters into the cultural lexicon because of Jaques, but without the technological innovations of the 20th Century, there would simply be no time or energy to have a Midlife Crisis. Walter Pitkin, author of Life Begins at Forty, observes that the modern innovations of the industrial revolution simplified hard labor and extended the lives of both men and women. Pitkin extolls the virtues of machine labor and a thirty- hour workweek where, “men and women alike turn from the ancient task of making a living to the strange new task of living” (Pitkin, 7). With machines carrying the burdens of labor for men and women alike, naturally lifespans increased. Pamela Druckerman notes:

By the time Elliott Jaques published “Death and the Midlife Crisis” in 1965, the

average life expectancy in Western countries had climbed to about 70. It made

sense to change your life in your 30s or 40s because you could expect to live long

enough to enjoy your new career or your new spouse. (Druckerman: 2018)

The luxury of time and energy enables this experimentation that Druckerman speaks of, and there’s no doubt that it’s because of this that the Midlife Crisis is exclusive to more 3

Westernized, affluent cultures. Without time - and money - there’s no energy or outlet for the trivial luxuries of the Midlife Crisis.

Jaques never expected how much influence his article would have. Jaques’ research inspired Gail Sheehy’s groundbreaking book “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult

Life”. Published in 1977, Sheehy picks up where Jaques left off pealing back the layers of defining moments of adulthood. When investigating the Midlife Crisis in regards to the

American Male, the sociological and cultural developments following World War II are an important departure point. It reflects a growing dilemma of discontented white

American men returning from war. This shift from the battlefield to the suburbs inspires a flurry of literature, most notably Sloan Wilson’s “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit” in

1955 and Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road” in 1961, both exploring ideas around conformity in the 1950s and the discontented male. For John Updike’s Harry “Rabbit”

Angstrom, the titular character in his five part Rabbit series, this discontent breeds restlessness, excess and infidelity, demonstrating many of the hallmarks of what grow to define the modern-day Midlife Crisis.

More than anything, the Midlife Crisis points to a crisis of the American family. It destabilizes these normative institutions and jeopardizes the traditional American values that become such a large part of the American narrative following World War II.

Unstable families plant the seeds for the decay of the traditional American family where absent fathers, broken homes and dual-income families leave a generation without guidance. What starts as male discontent splinters and manifests into the existential 4

malaise of Generation X and Y. I only touch on the Quarter-Life Crisis briefly relating

how the Midlife Crisis as a cultural moment has had a significant impact in shaping the

way a new generation relates with the world. This next generation of Crises is wide open

for investigation and includes a myriad of angles for exploration like gender, race and

sexuality. Masculinity and Midlife Crisis is just one piece to a many-layered cake.

With a psychological lexicon that includes terms like male menopause and male hysteria

that precedes Jaques’ term, the Midlife Crisis can now dissociate male discontent from its

more feminine roots. This disassociation, along with the destabilizing cultural impact of

feminism that decentered men from the socio-political conversation, and the subsequent

reactionary men’s movements that follow, all color the Midlife Crisis and how it fits

within the contemporary cultural lexicon. Underneath the supplemental sports cars, illicit

affairs, and adolescent regressions is a negotiation and renegotiation of identity and

ideologies. What might be characterized as a spinning of the wheels is instead more a

protracted state of arrested development. American Cinema appropriately takes up the

torch in the suburbs. This protracted state, as exemplified through films like Seconds

(Frankenheimer, 1966), The Swimmer (Perry, 1968) and Husbands (Cassavetes, 1970)

leave men literally and figuratively lost between worlds as they navigate their respective

crises, and it’s here where the Midlife Crisis narrative finds its truest form.

With life and locales for dramatic filmic narratives shifting from the Western plains and war-torn ditches to the trenches of suburban American homes, the Midlife Crisis

narrative becomes a space for navigating a new definition of masculinity and a much 5

more complex set of feelings and emotions. Films like The Best Years of Our Lives

(Wyler, 1946) detail these shifts along with the psychological complexities of three men

returning from war. In it, Al, Fred and Homer return stateside following World War II

and face a series of setbacks re-adjusting to civilian life. The film reveals the

psychological impact of war as these displaced men return to a life they’re no longer

equipped to inhabit. The most obvious example is, of course, Homer (Harold Russell), a

Naval seaman who has prosthetic hooks for hands, the result of an accident that burned both his hands off.

However, each man experiences a level of restlessness and angst in re-inhabiting his

former civilian life, an impossibility that the film practically decries through Fred (Dana

Andrew), a returning bombardier fighter pilot. After his wife’s enthusiastic remark,

“we’re right back where we started, Fred exclaims, “We can never be back there again, we never want to be back there again.” As Kaja Silverman notes, of the three men, Fred

is the only one of them returning from war that actually has a vested interest in making

civilian life work. Fred paints a modest image of the American Dream with a “good job, a

mild future, and a little house big enough for me and my wife (Silverman 1992: 68).

However, because of his socio-economic status and lack of relevant, transferable

experience, Fred is relegated to his previous soda jerk job at the drug store, a move that undermines his contributions and service as a bombardier and, in effect, his masculinity. 6

Figure 1 The Aviation Graveyard

The penultimate scene of the film proves for Fred, at least in Boone City, that the

American Dream isn’t attainable. With his life in shambles, Fred has just purchased a one-way ticket anywhere, as long as it’s out of Boone City. After he does this, he stumbles onto the junkyard. When Fred wanders through the lot, the image becomes that much more atomizing as the camera dollies out to reveal, in perfect rows and columns, an endless array of decommissioned warplanes.

The film reiterates its central conflict of rehabilitation and assimilation in one of its starkest images. Just as Fred takes his old post in the cockpit, the non-diegetic sounds of combat instantly transport him back to the war, revealing a man psychologically rooted in the past but bound physically in the present. At this point it might seem that Fred’s future, as well as his compatriots, is bankrupt. The Best Years o f Our Lives chooses to resolve 7

this issue when Fred encounters the foreman of the junkyard who, interestingly enough,

is in the business of fabricating suburban homes out of decommissioned warplanes.

This image in The Best Years o f Our Lives could easily serve as a match-cut to that of the

American suburbs. Contextually, it feels like a natural progression from one moment in

American history to the next. Moreover, as Silverman argues, The Best Years o f Our

Lives serves as a great example of not just the changing geological landscapes of post

war Hollywood, but a change in the ideological landscapes as well. She argues that films

like The Best Years o f Our Lives represent “the ‘fatigue’ not only of American values, but

also of traditional masculinity” (Silverman 1992: 33). Instead of offering up glorified

monolithic images of war and the West, American Cinema begins offering up

representations that sharply contrast the archetypical tough guys from mid to late

twentieth century cinema. Midlife Crisis cinema reveals men at odds with their identity as

soldiers, veterans, bachelors, employees, fathers and husbands. It provides an important

structural framework, definition and language for exploring these fractured and

discontented masculinities.

The cinematic Midlife Crisis covers a full spectrum of new representations. From light,

neurotic comedies like The Seven Year Itch (Wilder, 1955), one of the first mainstream

depictions, which humorously follows a father left to his own devices after his family

leaves for the Summer, to Sam Mendes’ dark and cynical window into the life of a

suburban father experiencing a midlife renaissance in American Beauty (1999). In some 8

ways, these two films bookend this period of cinema, establishing the tropes, venue and treatment of the cinematic Midlife Crisis. And while the tropes often dictate the treatment, as 10 (Edwards, 1979) or Middle-Age Crazy (Trent, 1980) reveal through adolescent regressions and fantastical daydreams, the venue plays an even more crucial role. 9

Midlife Crisis and its Suburban Roots

The suburbs are at the epicenter of the Midlife Crisis. A response to the population boom following World War II, the suburbs become the answer for the housing demand for all of these new families. [1] Not coincidentally, the suburbs play a distinct role in shaping the ideology around marriage, children and family life in post-war America. Michael

Kimmel notes, “The suburbs had become a central fact of postwar America and the new arena for proving one’s manhood. Over the first half of the century, suburban housing developments had gradually risen from a tiny slice of American dwelling to its majority form of housing” (Kimmel 1996: 236). Kimmel continues:

In our stereotypic image of the 1950s was an era of quiet, order, and security.

What we like to remember as a simple time, “happy days,” was also an era of

anxiety and fear, during which ideas of normality were enforced with a desperate

passion. (Ibid)

This original intention of this ‘majority form of housing’ that Kimmel speaks of was to offer a piece of the American Dream for every family. However, suburban life raises questions about what the American Dream represents. These new communities shift from the strong sense of rugged individualism and nationalistic pride that the American Dream previously stood for in favor of affluence, security and conformity. As Maya Montanez

Smukler points out, “Home ownership represented social status... buy the house, have the

1 Demographics point to a population jump of thirty million between 1950 and 1960. (Oakley, 111) 10

family that lives in the house, and you have achieved the American Dream” (Smukler

2008: 1).

In his seminal essay Status Seekers, a sharp response to this new wave of societal values,

Vance Packard asks, “What happens to the personalities of people who live in communities where the houses for miles around are virtually identical, and the people seen are all from the same socio-economic slice?” (Packard 1960: 55) Furthermore, as C.

Wright Mills argues, “When white-collar people get jobs, they sell not only their time and energy, but their personalities as well... they must practice the prompt repression of resentment and aggression” (Packard 1960: 77).

The uniformity of post-World war II American suburbs are visually and ideologically linked with conformity. The suburbs become a distorted projection of white heteronormativity in twentieth century America where traditional gender roles and identities are reestablished and reinforced through television and media outlets. [2] The suburbs in effect are a boiled down simplified construct. White flight removed white families from densely populated urban areas in an effort to provide space, but these spaces are by design devoid of originality and independent thought.

Barbara Ehrenreich traces everything back to conformity. She argues, conformity

“described everything and explained nothing,’ [it] ‘became the code word for male discontent” (Ehrenreich 1983: 30).

2 For more on this, see Lynn Spigel’s Make Room For TV. 11

Ehrenreich’s rich, socio-historical exploration of the issue documents a specific

demographic of discontented white-collar men. For Ehrenreich, the gray flannel rebels

seethed just below the surface, trapped in a cycle of soul-crushing conformity and

consumerism. This cycle created a false sense of security, but security nonetheless. She

continues:

The gray flannel rebel stayed where he was because he could not think of

anywhere to go. If he blamed the corporation for his emasculation, he was not

about to leave his job... If he blamed women, he was not about to walk away

from the comforts of home. (Ibid)

The gray flannel rebels of the fifties were essentially trapped. They could flee and break

off from society altogether like the Beat Generation or accept their fate as quiet, cynical,

emasculated men who occasionally dabbled in arts and leisure. But for most middle-class white men, their fate was sealed. When confined to the suburbs these tract homes become the claustrophobic venue and serve to magnify the anxieties of the present, binding the

physical with the psychical. 12

Tales of Suburban Madness - Midlife Crisis and the Suburban Asylum

Old age realizes the dreams o f youth; look at Swift: in his youth he built an asylum, in his old age, he him self entered it. - Soren Kierkegaard

Home is a polarizing place for the Midlife Crisis. The early cinematic examples in the

canon present home as a space of tension and unrest. In The Seven Year Itch, Richard is

cast an outsider in his own home. When his wife and son leave for the summer, he’s

given the space to evaluate his place in life, and here there is no shortage of commentary.

Richard’s aimless wandering from room to room and critical monologue about doctors,

house rules and healthy diets and lifestyles all set a humorous, albeit unwelcome tone.

Richard’s hazardous encounter with Ricky’s roller skate incident, and Helen’s sudden but

frequent chastising materializations all stand to remind the viewer of their presence and

Richard’s unrest and anxiety in the domestic space.

Bigger Than Life (Ray, 1956) presents a much darker, manic image of the domestic

sphere. Like The Seven Year Itch, the film centers on the home, but in this case, the

destruction of it. Bigger Than Life is taken from the real-life events documented in a

controversial medical article published in the New Yorker in 1955 (Senses o f Cinema).

Ray uses the story to comment on the state of the American family in the suburbs. The

film is a product of its time, given the state of the studio system, but Ray’s reputation of

subversion provides one of the most radical Midlife Crisis narratives in the canon. 13

In the film, Ed Avery (James Mason) is a grade-school teacher who moonlights as a cab

dispatcher to make ends meet. When Ed starts having headaches, they eventually lead to

blackouts, and he’s hospitalized and diagnosed with a rare, terminal heart condition that

gives him six months to live. He agrees to try an experimental drug called cortisone, but

when he mistakenly increases the prescribed dose, he completely unravels, suffering

manic-depressive episodes that jeopardize the safety of his family.

Ed’s rare heart condition reveals what Ehrenreich refers to as the ‘cardiological fragility’

of white-collar men in the 20th century. This fragility speaks to the ‘wear and tear’ of life,

or as Dr. Hans Selye calls it, “the winding down of invisible machinery within the body”

(Ehrenreich, 1983: 76). Ed’s fragility and, moreover, mortality are made aware from the

start of the film. Here, as the camera dollies in on overhead shot of a pocket watch, the

film score pivots, twisting discordantly as Ed’s hand tightens up and clutches the back of

his neck. This image and gesture set the film in motion and cast an element of finite time

and mortality across Ed’s character. Indeed, it’s only a matter of time for Ed and men like

him.

Bigger Than Life doesn’t hold back in its scathing condemnation of normative familial

institutions. The pressures of providing are made clear from the start of the film.

Concealing his second job from Lou, Ed rushes to the dispatcher station and then home to

only be reminded that, “the water heater is out again.” Ed, like Richard, becomes 14

increasingly more vocal about his disenchanted views on he and Lou’s dull and boring

life.

Fleeting nostalgic comments like, “Remember the days when we used to resent our

vacations because they interrupted our work,” resonate across the film, alluding to a time

of inspiration instead of stagnation. Travel posters punctuate this sentiment, lining the

walls of the Avery household, and make their way into nearly every interior shot of the

film. Posters emblazoned with exotic locales like France, Bologna and his most recent

acquisition Bryce Canyon (as his school board colleague points out) are reminders of a

lust for life that has since been snuffed out. These posters further magnify Ed’s stagnation

and the reality that he is trapped, trapped within the walls of his marriage and his home.

It’s only fitting that the Avery household becomes the venue for Ed’s nervous

breakdown.

Robin Wood explores the architecture of the Avery household in Bigger Than Life,

specifically the central staircase in the film. Wood notes that the staircase is “the heart of the Avery home,” where “most of the major conflicts and confrontations occur - from the

argument with his wife about their ‘dullness’ that provokes Ed Avery’s breakdown to the

climactic battle with Wally which culminates in the shattering of the banisters” (Wood

1972: 56). The destruction of the central stairway, or the heart of the Avery home as

Wood phrases it, is fitting, given Ed’s proposed murder-suicide and the complete

annihilation of the Avery family. Furthermore, Ed’s failing heart can be connected to the 15

crumbling physical structure in the home and that of that of the American family as a whole.

Ed’s breakdown is neatly resolved by linking it to a simple misuse of the drug, a reality that contributed to Ray’s reticence for categorizing and labeling the medication (TCM).

In light of this, Ray goes to great lengths to dispel any doubt the viewer may have about the future of the Avery family, leaving a lasting impression of discord in the closing shot of the film. Ed’s ‘recovery’ is overshadowed by the reality that he will remain on the medication indefinitely. And, though there is no mention of his immediate mortality, death lingers over this final discordant image.

Figure 2 Bigger Than Life; “Family Discord

Perched in his hospital bed, Ed regains consciousness, dismissing the doctors and urging his family to come closer. As Ed pulls Richie and Lou into his arms, the camera zooms in, and Ray presents something far less harmonious than the sweeping orchestral track implies. Ed is at the center of the asymmetrical shot with Richie and Lou flanking him to 16

the left and right of the frame. Their embrace creates a sharp diagonal line that cuts from

the top right-hand side of the shot to the lower left-hand corner of the frame. The

pendulum-shaped shadow that ominously hangs over Richie’s head recalls the opening

shot of Ed’s wristwatch, but it also signifies the reality of his burden. With his father’s

death looming over the family, the weight falls squarely on Richie’s shoulders. This

closing shot speaks to the disintegration of the normative American family, broken

homes and the dysfunctional men that are born from them, a topic that Nicholas Ray’s

material is no stranger to given his previous effort Rebel Without A Cause (1955).

Bigger Than Life is a product of its time; it’s because of this that the film sidesteps one of the major taboos of the era: divorce. In the film’s closing scenes, it’s absurd when Lou

says, “Yes, I have fa ith . Faith in my husband and my son and the family we can be together,” especially after everything she’s endured. Yet, as Lou desperately clings to the

ideology of the traditional American family, Ray suggests that its construct is also

crumbling. Ehrenreich speaks to the spike in the divorce rate in the 1960s and 1970s and the cultural acceptance of viable alternatives for men and women alike (Ehrenreich 1983:

120), and as these statistics shift, the men and their respective Midlife Crises are offered

some form of liberation from the prisons they’ve made for themselves. 17

The Long Way Home

I put food on the table, and a roof overhead, but I ’d trade it all tomorrow, for the highway instead. - Tom Waits; The Long Way Home

As the ideology surrounding the domestic sphere shifts, so do the narratives. Taboos

around divorce loosen and the divorce rate spikes in the 1960s and 70s. As a result of this, broken homes become more commonplace, and the venues for the Midlife Crisis

shift away from domestic spaces out into the open. In the cinematic world, the New

Hollywood Cinema is taking shape. Influenced by the French New Wave, this American

film movement inspires much darker subject matter and experimental film styles that

revel in the recesses of American consciousness. Films like Who’s Afraid o f Virginia

Woolf (Nichols, 1966), Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967) and The Graduate (Nichols,

1967) are born from dysfunction and discord. The New American Cinema movement

features a wave of films that challenge the status quo both conceptually and stylistically.

Robin Wood’s text Hollywood From Vietnam To Reagan... and Beyond deconstructs

one of Hollywood’s most complex eras in filmmaking. His analysis of male buddy films

is useful in understanding the structure and locales of Midlife Crisis films. The buddy

film is a unique subset of 1970s film primarily featuring two male leads. With the

absence of women, men in buddy films are free to wander outside of normative

institutions. Wood argues (that) “the basic motivating premise of the 1970s buddy movie

is not the presence of the male relationship but the absence of home” (Wood 2003: 203). 18

Home, as Wood argues, “is to be understood not merely as a physical location but as both

a state of mind and an ideological construct” (Ibid).

The Midlife Crisis films of the era are no different. The absence of home as locale and

ideological construct proves to have a profound impact on these films. Films like

Seconds, Husbands and The Swimmer effectively escape the confines of domesticity, but

in doing so, they drift to the margins of society existing in a transitory state that mirrors their state of mind. This drifting grows to define the psychological condition of the

Midlife Crisis. It’s in these marginal spaces where the Midlife Crisis finds its space to

reconcile - or reject - the realities of aging and death, and it’s through this process that these films reveal that they are just as much about the space away from home as their

didactic returns to it.

The cinema of Midlife Crisis proves that, as much as it plays within these marginal

spaces, these films are defined by their didactic returns home. These “homecomings” - though they’re anything but welcoming - are marred by the idea of returning to the

source of trauma. Silverman uses her example of The Best Years o f Our Lives to link the

trauma of war - and the desire to repeat it- to the death drive. She views this action “as a

force within the subject which seeks to reduce it to a psychic nothingness” (Silverman

1992: 63). For Silverman, this “trauma manifests itself in surprisingly explicit ways - as the compulsion to repeat experiences which are so threatening to the coherence of the

male ego that they come close to exposing the void at the center of subjectivity” (Ibid). 19

For the Midlife Crisis, this void at the center of subjectivity manifests itself through the repetition of leaving home and returning to it.

In Husbands (Cassavetes, 1970), Archie (Peter Falk), Harry (Ben Gazzarra) and Gus

(John Cassavetes) mourn the sudden death of their childhood friend Stu. This sudden traumatic event leads them away from home down a path of self-actualization that inspires a series of writhing declarations about friendship, aging and the death of dreams.

The film retreats to the liminal spaces of trains, bars, bathrooms, casinos and hotel rooms that mirror as three men mourn the current state of their lives and marriages. The three men end up in a London hotel, each with a woman in tow, attempting to reconstruct some semblance of heteronormative coupling.

The unconscious desire to return to these heteronormative roles in the hotel room reveals this void at the center of subjectivity for the three men. These empty, adolescent interactions reveal the lack within each one of these men to be anything but boys imitating men. For Archie and Gus, this leads to their inevitable return to their families back in the United States. However, Harry’s fate is much more open-ended. Throughout the film,

Harry adamantly proclaims that he’s “not going home”. Harry chooses to turn his back on his wife and children and stay in London as a playboy on the fringes of society. It’s here where the film leaves him flamboyantly dressed in his tattered, pleated tuxedo shirt. 20

Figure 3 Harry Abandons his Family in Husbands

The film concludes with Archie and Gus at the foot of their suburban driveways awaiting the scorn of their wives and children. Here, Archie meticulously takes inventory of the toys they bought their kids from the local airport. As Archie pours over the inventory, a gesture that emphasizes the desire to both provide and ‘keep up with the Joneses,’ Gus anxiously asks ‘What’s he gonna do without us?’ Archie fires the same question back at

Gus. The two men are, of course, referring to Harry. In an image that conjures up a multitude of roles, none of them overtly or traditionally masculine, the men are incapable of imagining any kind of life or identity for Harry outside of the one they’ve subscribed to.

This question punctuates the film. It directly addresses the concern for their friend, as in what will Harry do without the stability of marriage, fatherhood and financial responsibility, but it also raises another concern: what kind of man can Harry be without 21

these societal structures? Indeed, what are these men if they’re not husbands and fathers?

Moreover, the general nature of the film’s title flips the mirror, asking the question: what

will society do without husbands and fathers? This much larger question addresses the

changing role of men in American society and the erosion of the home and family unit.

As for Cassavetes’ feelings on the matter, his canon of films speak to the decay of

traditional American institutions and values. Films like Woman Under the Influence

(DATE), The Killing o f a Chinese Bookie (Date) and Opening Night (Date) follow,

placing broken people and dysfunctional relationships at the forefront. Husbands is only just the beginning of his potent critique.

In Seconds (Frankenheimer, 1966), Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) finds a second

chance at life by way of an elite underground society that deals in death and rebirth. For a

nominal fee, this society, aptly titled ‘the Company’, offers to absolve Arthur of his life

and all his responsibilities via radical plastic surgery and relocation. When Arthur reveals

he was blackmailed into accepting, the founding member, played by Will Geer, posits,

“Isn’t it easier to go forward when you can’t go back?” 22

JB|

-w -I- ____

Figure 4 Parallel Lives in Seconds

When Arthur commits pen to paper, the film makes a radical match-on-action cut from pen to scalpel, writing and reshaping Arthur’s new identity as artist and painter Antiochus

Wilson. This gesture creates the link between life, death and rebirth that the Company so adamantly champions. Rebecca Bell-Metereau points to this surgery sequence as a culmination of a series of venues and actions that reinforce the human as flesh and existence as a meaningless process of aging and dying (55). Bell-Metereau’s point certainly rings true here. From the industrial meatpacking plant, to psychotherapy sessions that predesign creative paths and goals, Antiochus’ bohemian life is as much a hollow construction as Arthur’s suburbanite one.

Antiochus’ former life haunts him to the point of psychological collapse. This psychotic break sends him searching for Arthur back at his suburban home. Here, Antiochus/

Arthur encounters a house where, with the exception of the tennis trophy, his footprint and memory have been erased. His wife Emily (Francis Reid) reflects on their marriage, 23

speaking to the stagnant two dimensionality of a man who, as she puts it, had ‘long been dead’ in his job and his marriage. These reflections essentially leave both Arthur and

Antiochus homeless and, with nowhere to turn, Antiochus heads back to the company for another chance at rebirth. For Seconds to step outside of the normative institution means that you can never return to it. Antiochus’ desire for rebirth can only end in death and the film concludes by hauling him away on a stretcher to be disposed of.

A similar fate befalls Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) in The Swimmer (Perry, 1966). Based on John Cheever’s short story of the same name, the film reveals the mental collapse of a suburban socialite. In it, Ned devises a way to strategically swim home utilizing his upstate New York swimming pools. As this journey unfolds, Ned’s diminished social status and fallout within the community becomes clear with each new property he trespasses on. Lapses in chronological memory and age reveal a man trapped between the present and his past. Neighbor’s exaltations and exclamations over Ned’s sudden reappearance, along with the film’s didactic return to his abandoned home, suggest Ned’s rootlessness, and in turn homelessness, stretch back years.

Cheever describes Ned as a man who, “ .. .might have been compared to a summer’s day, particularly the last hours of one” (Cheever, 1964: 5). Cheever’s terse comparisons to the fading edges of summer resonate across Ned’s character: It’s as if Ned is caught on the wrong side of the season. Ned’s youthful bliss characterize his Midlife Crisis, but it’s this bliss that reveals a man out of the past set against the reality of his present. When a 24

spontaneous reunion with Julie Hooper (Janet Landgard), the family babysitter, leads to a nostalgic walk through the woods, the film pauses, as if digressing into a rose-colored memory.

This sequence is painted with colorful lens-flairs, dissolves and slow motion that are illustrative of Ned’s state of limbo and liminality. Nearly frozen and fused in time together, the two frolic in a state of youthful permanence. Here, Julie’s gaze and visage dissolves across Ned’s face and body as he boyishly leaps through the equitation course proving himself as a man and athlete. This point in the film acts as a threshold dividing the film between fantasy and reality. When Julie confesses her schoolgirl crush on Ned it leads to a misguided romantic advance. In refusing Ned’s advance, she shatters his fantasy.

From this point forward, Ned becomes both physically and emotionally mortal. Ned suffers an ankle injury that plagues him for the remainder of the journey making him vulnerable to the elements. The film reveals Ned’s emotional mortality through its heavy handed conclusion. In returning back to his dilapidated estate, Ned is reduced to psychic nothingness. The camera pans across the broken-down man and his former estate, and it becomes clear that it’s been years since anyone, let-alone a family has inhabited the property. The film delivers this image with such shocking brevity. This brevity underscores Ned’s compulsion to follow the Lucinda River home if it leads him here, huddled and broken. 25

The Swimmer's coarse conclusion in some ways acts as a fitting retribution for a

perpetual playboy and absent father. However, is it saying anything else? Ned’s desire to

take the unconventional Lucinda River back home through its series portages speaks to

this compulsory desire to repeat experiences that threaten his own ego. From the romantic

interlude to the series of physical tests, the film deconstructs Ned and his ego. By the

time Ned reaches his doorstep, he’s a far cry from the towering, chiseled Adonis from the

opening scenes of the film. Instead, he’s reduced to nothing, broken and homeless,

emotionally and financially bankrupt.

Like Husbands, The Swimmer, with its literal ‘broken home,’ comments on the artifice of

suburban life, the contemporary state of marriage and the inherent dangers of Midlife

Crisis. However, the physical and mental spaces in which these films exist suggest more than that: they suggest a crisis of masculine identity. Without the physical or

psychological space to operate within a multitude of identities -as husbands and fathers, bachelors and friends - men wander to the fringes of heteronormativity to find the space to do so. These spaces can be literal, as in the nightlife locales of Husbands, or figurative,

as in Ned’s catatonia and psychotic break. In the case of Seconds the doubling of Arthur

and Antiochus offers up parallel worlds with polarized lives, both with bleak conclusions.

There is no room for choice for Ned and Antiochus. The America of the 1950s and 60s is

ripe with Cold War tensions and the anticommunist rhetoric of Macarthyism. For men,

any deviation from heteronormativity potentially threatened their livelihood. If they 26

didn’t fit the established mold of faithful husband, employee and father, they ran the risk of having any number of accusations laid onto them, from their sexuality to their national loyalty. 27

Reflections on Masculinity in the late 20h Century

The Midlife Crisis films of the 1950s and 1960s reveal a rupture in traditional

masculinity. As the United States enters into the Vietnam era, the radical socio-political

changes of the 1960s and 70s undoubtedly influence this rupture. Indeed, as Judith

Newton observes, what it looks like - and means - to be a man is changing:

A widely shared, if unevenly achieved, equation of male breadwinning with U.S.

manhood, for example, has been eroded. At the same time, female feminisms

have radically challenged the moral authority of patriarchy and the myth of male

gender superiority, while gay and queer movements have challenged the

foundational position of heterosexuality in masculine identities for men. (Newton

2002: 176-177)

Newton’s observations illuminate this ideological shift away from the standard concepts,

images and language that make up the foundation of patriarchal masculinity. In addition

to the impact of feminism and new psychology, the discontentment and disillusionment

shared by men in 20th century America only add to the crisis of masculinity.

The Best Years of Our Lives gives us a small taste of the experiences that men had and

the bonds they formed at war, not to mention the strong sense of purpose they were given

fighting for their country. As this film - and many that follow it - shows, these

experiences are not transferable to the daily lives of husbands, fathers and employees. 28

These concepts become much more pronounced with the films of the Vietnam era. Films

like The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978), Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979) and Rambo:

First Blood (Kotcheff, 1982) present the graphic horrors of war from the internal

psychological lenses of the men who lived it as well as the external sociological and

societal implications for those who returned from it. The shift away from the glory of war to the horrors of it is no doubt in part due to the grass roots movements of the 1960s

centered on human rights and the Vietnam conflict. The New American Cinema has a

definitive impact in shaping the sentiment around this as well, demonstrating a lack of

confidence in the morals and judgments of the political leadership in the U.S.

The Reagan era attempts to recoup all of this. As Susan Jeffords asserts, the United States

is shifting away from the failures of the Vietnam War and back towards the imagery and

ideology of a societal superpower.

The depiction of the indefatigable, muscular, and invincible masculine body

became the linchpin of the Reagan imaginary; this hardened male form became

the emblem not only for the Reagan presidency but for its ideologies and

economies as well.

This imagery becomes explicitly clear in the presentations of Hollywood masculinity.

This hyper-masculinity, or “musculinity” as Yvonne Tasker refers to it in Spectacular

Bodies, places men - and America -at the center of narratives once again. 29

This is the era of Schwarzenegger and Stallone, two iconic figures who galvanize this

new image of masculinity. Tasker questions the overtness of this imagery. Her essay

“The Body in Crisis or the Body Triumphant?” offers a choice between two “polarized

understandings of the muscular hero.” She argues:

. t h e muscular hero, whose over-developed and over-determined body has been

taken by some to indicate the triumphal assertion of a traditional masculinity,

defined through strength, whilst for others he represents an hysterical im ag e. a

symptom of the male body (and masculine identity) in crisis. (Tasker 1996: 109)

Tasker’s essay, which is one piece to a much larger cultural analysis of masculinity,

decodes the imagery and functionality of the male figure. Along with Judith Butler,

Barbara Creed and Laura Mulvey, she questions the stability of a binary gender figure when speaking of these hyper-masculine features. The literally larger than life masculine

action figures of the 1980s are just that: action figures without any real substance. This

hyperbolic imagery reveals the current crisis of masculinity. Indeed, this is rich ground

for the study of changing images and representations of masculinity.

Men proved that they had a voice in all of this too. In fact, the Men’s movement is a

direct response to second-wave feminism and the reconfiguration of traditionally

masculine and patriarchal ideas. This socio-political movement attempts to redefine what

masculinity looks, sounds and feels like. At the core of this reevaluation is Robert Bly’s

Iron John: A Book About Men. Iron John attempts to repair the grief of breadwinning by 30

tracing it back to the industrial revolution. Bly’s masculinity subscribes to a deeper, more traditional connection with the biorhythms of nature as he attempts to universalize the male condition across all cultures through the parable of Iron John. Though this generalization is, at its core, flawed, Iron John ultimately provides an outlet for a disenfranchised - not to mention, mostly white Anglo-American male - sector of the population. This outlet and, ultimately, outcry receives its parodic treatment in television and cinema, essentially disarming any real sociological or political weight. [3]

As Barabara Creed maintains, just as the images and texts of the 1980s, “play with the notion of manhood,” this performative aspect of masculinity finds a home in the subsequent Men’s Movement and the Midlife Crisis films of the 1980s and 1990s as well.

For the 1980s Midlife Crisis film, the stability of the family unit is rarely called into question. Instead, as seen in films like Middle Age Crazy (Trent, 1980) and Vacation

(Ramis, 1983), these crises are diminished into comedic episodes. These mainstream films make light of the changing landscape of masculinity and negatively reflect on these new psychological trends and social movements. Here, the Midlife Crisis devolves into is a series of recycled tropes and comedic jabs. In many cases, a landmark birthday presents itself ensuring that the men, or men, are about to experience a Midlife Crisis

3 Al Bundy’s bachelor’s collective ‘No Ma’am’ in Fox’s Married With Children is probably one of the best examples of these parodies. 31

Subjugated Masculinity: Coming to Terms with Aging

You ever reach a point in your life when you say to yourself: this is the best I ’m ever gonna look, the best I ’m ever gonna feel, the best I ’m ever gonna do, and it ain ’t that great? - Mitch (Billy Crystal); City Slickers

The Midlife Crisis films of the 1980s and early 1990s act more as compartmentalizations

of the moment. Born from the original ideas of spatial and psychological liminality, they

become formulaic, instead introducing the crisis as a means of resolution. Where the

bildungsroman is typically a coming of age story, these films feature narratives about

coming to terms with aging. They dismiss the Midlife Crisis as a complex emotional

passage, instead using it as a tool for men to ‘try on’ different personas designed to arm

and re-masculinize men, then reintroduce them back into their previous roles under the

guise as changed men. This set-up proves imitable as men follow suit, trying on more

youthful personas, outfitting their lives with iconic red Porsches and buxom blondes. At

this point, there is no question as to what a Midlife Crisis film should look like.

The 1980s are a sparse period for Midlife Crisis-centric films. The stereotypical elements

are peppered into the frames of more conventional narratives. [4] Films like Middle Age

Crazy (Trent, 1980), with its bullet-point presentation, might be one of the few

exceptions that centers around male Midlife Crisis. In it, Bobby Lee (Bruce Dern)

seemingly has it all: a beautiful wife in Sue Ann (Ann Margaret) and a successful

business as a taco stand developer. However, a monumental fortieth birthday changes all

4 National Lampoon’s Vacation's Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) whose outlandish fantasies resemble The Seven Year Itch is a great example of this. 32

this. On the night of the party, Bobby circulates the party and is handed the hallmarks of

midlife anxiety centering around his career, age and health. These lead to a fantastical

fantasy where he officiates his own funeral and replays the how and why a man like him,

“who had it all,” could die. With Bobby’s Midlife Crisis set in motion, he sets out with the appropriate checklist in order to successfully navigate the rough terrain ahead before

returning safely home, with his masculinity intact.

In films like City Slickers (Underwood, 1991) and its reinterpretation Wild Hogs (Becker,

2007), progressive, well-intentioned wives suggest - and often champion - these asides to get men out of the house and scratch the Midlife itch. Both films employ the Wild

West and the open road respectively as arenas for recalibrating masculinity and

refortifying male friendships. In the case of City Slickers, the three men’s masculine

reeducation comes appropriately from Jack Palance’s “Curly,” a visual and ideological throwback to the Hollywood Western heroes of yesteryear. Both City Slickers and Wild

Hogs mirror the Iron John circles of the Man’s Movement becoming safe spaces to

mourn and negotiate a shifting ideological landscape in the comfort and safety of traditionally masculine locales, all without jeopardizing the security of home. Moreover, these films become a voice for an increasingly marginalized section of the population and the fading glory of traditional brass tacks masculinity.

City Slickers features Mitch (Billy Crystal), a middle-aged man on the cusp of forty.

Mitch bemoans the current state of his life to his wife and his boss reflecting on the 33

negative aspects of aging and his dissatisfaction with his career. At Mitch’s thirty-ninth

birthday party his friend Ed (Bruno Kirby) presents his birthday gift: two weeks in New

Mexico driving cattle. Mitch initially balks at the idea, citing the conflict of visiting his

wife’s parents in Florida. However, when Barbara (Patricia Wettig) demands that he

goes, “to find his smile,” Mitch, Phil (Daniel Stern) and Ed head west to live out their

childhood Cowboy dreams.

City Slickers sets up Mitch’s recalibration from the onset of the film. The initial shot of

Mitch’s morning commute pins him inside a crowded aerial tram above New York. The

subsequent shots feature an overhead extreme long shot of New York skyscrapers,

followed by a crowded street-level shot. Mitch is framed against the towering concrete of

New York’s skyline. He’s atomized in a sea of people and then dejectedly crammed into

an elevator. These stifling shots atomize him, stripping him of any individuality or

agency; they establish a passive existence in his day-to-day world. Mitch’s ensuing

conversation with his boss about personal and creative plateaus further reinforce his

listlessness.

When Mitch attends career week for his son, Daniel (Jake Gyllenhall), he follows the

impossibly heroic tale of Mr. Morelli (Robert Costanzo), a crass construction worker who

regales the class with a story of how he lifted a crane off of a woman. When called to

introduce Mitch, Daniel initially lies, saying his dad is a submarine commander before

announcing he works for the radio station. When Mitch steps in front of the class to 34

describe his job, the class fails to grasp the intangible white-collar work of an advertising

salesman. Mitch unravels, recounting the previous meeting with his boss. Mitch laments

his own emasculation, saying, “the minute he took away my authority, I should’ve quit,”

and Mr. Morelli punctuates the moment with a mocking masturbatory hand gesture.

Mitch publically humiliates his son, who is now hiding his head on his desk. With Mitch

now disarmed as a husband, provider and father, he’s all set for recalibration.

As the title of the film suggests, City Slickers creates a clear delineation between ranch

and city life. The wide-open spaces are a stark contrast to the opening sequences of the

film. But the film doesn’t stop here. Where City Slickers glorifies the purity of ranch life,

it does so by trivializing the city’s “nouveau almondine” luxuries. As ranch owner Clay

Stone (Noble Willingham) announces they’ll be going to work in the morning, his

reiteration of the word work implies that ranch work is the only type of work that has real value. He continues, “you came out here city slickers, you gonna go home cowboys,”

delivering the tagline and premise of the film.

The following sequence acclimates the three men to their new surroundings. They try on

different variations of cowboy costumes and masculine identities that involve spitting

Red Man chewing tobacco and riding horses and cattle rustling. However, the real

masculine recalibration doesn’t occur until Curly, played by Jack Palance, arrives. Curly

acts as a masculine compass for the film. He embodies the mythological values of the old western hero: he’s tough, laconic, chivalrous and judicious. When Curly makes his screen 35

debut, he rescues the girl, Helen (Bonnie Rayburn), emasculates the villain and rides off into the sunset in one fell swoop. As the group basks in his dust, Mitch appropriately responds is, “that’s the toughest man I’ve ever seen in my life.” And, naturally, Curly is the one to accompany the group on the cattle drive.

Figure 5 Curly settles into the subconscious background of City Slickers

Curly is omnipresent for the majority of the film. When he’s not on screen, Mitch is weaving his mythology to anyone who will listen. When he’s not in the foreground of the cattle drive, he subtly settles into the subconscious background of the film. After Mitch scares the herd with a coffee grinder he smuggled in, Curly takes him under his wing and the two bond in the open range. Mitch marvels at the simplicity of Curly’s cut and dry explanations of work, love and existence. Curly’s comment that cowboys “are a dying breed” is a moment for reflection, but more importantly, a moment for change.

Jeffords reflects on the films of 1991, saying: 36

There’s hardly a mainstream film from that year with a significant male role that

does not in some ways reinforce that the hard-fighting, weapon-wielding,

independent, muscular, and heroic men of the eighties. have disappeared and are

being replaced by the more sensitive, loving, nurturing, protective family men of

the nineties (Jeffords 1993: 197).

Jeffords cites City Slickers as one of these filmic examples that demonstrate men who are

‘sensitive, generous, caring, and, perhaps most importantly, capable of change’ (ibid).

With Curly’s untimely death in the film, the group is left to lead the herd on their own.

But, more importantly, Curly’s death leaves room for change. In place of Mitch’s cynicism is a more caring, protective nurturing side illustrated through the calf birthing scene and the subsequent rescue scenes. For the first time all three men open up and allow themselves to be vulnerable about their lives and they bond, sharing their feelings around the campfire.

City Slickers ’ climactic conclusion places the men against the elements in one last trial to save the herd. When the herd gets separated because of a storm, all seems lost and Phil suggests they give up. When Ed exclaims, “a cowboy doesn’t leave his herd,” the word herd also extends to the trio of friends. More importantly, this axiom infuses the old cowboy ideology with the new male. The film, and the three men recognize this passage as an opportunity. Phil sees it as a “do-over”, Ed as a chance to grow up and commit to his partner. When Laura gives Mitch permission to quit his job, he dismisses it, saying 37

“I’m not gonna quit my job, I’m just gonna do it better, I’m gonna do everything better.”

When Laura suggestively repeats ‘everything’, a wry smile crosses Mitch’s face and the two kiss. And with this statement, City Slickers posits that the recalibration was and is enough for Mitch to find renewed purpose in his old life. 38

Bad Dads and Broken Homes: the Next Generation of Crises

The turn of the century reveals a shift in focus from a myriad of Midlife Crisis figures to one: Bill Murray. In October of 2010, San Francisco gallery Spoke Art debuted a series of original paintings under the moniker “Bad Dads: A Tribute to the Films of Wes

Anderson.” In the exhibit, Spoke Art showcased the work of nearly seventy different artists, all re-conceptualizing scenes and characters of Wes Anderson’s films in acrylic, watercolor, oil on canvas and, in the case of Nigel Sanders’ submission, oil on Rubik’s cube. But, the exhibit is much more than a tribute. Spoke Art’s “Bad Dads” series, which is celebrating its eighth incarnation this year, gives artists and fans an opportunity to insert themselves into their favorite Wes Anderson moments. When on display, these exhibits resemble a finely crafted patchwork quilt with multiple subjectivities: a labor of love and appreciation.

The event permits artists to breath new life and perspectives into the lives and scenes of

Wes Anderson’s films. Artists illuminate cherished moments, coloring the fragments of films with their own subjectivity; for those that choose conceptual pieces like Aaron

Jasinski’s “We Are Legion,” these pieces serve as further reminder of the cohesive quality of Wes Anderson’s style and themes, but perhaps most notably, the way Bill

Murray’s roles transcend from one to the next.

For fans attending opening night, they’re invited to - and most of them do - come dressed as their favorite Wes Anderson characters. The success and growth of the series, 39

has spawned an East Coast version in New York City, a testament to the cult appreciation

surrounding the Wes Anderson franchise.

Figure 6 The Many Faces of Murray; “We Are Legion” by Aaron Jasinski

The popularity of Spoke Art’s “Bad Dad’s” series speaks to the cult status of the films of

Wes Anderson. However, given the title and theme of these events, Murray’s “Bad Dad”

is often the center of these inspirations. The series gives people a venue and a medium to

celebrate the many incarnations of Bill Murray in these films. Though Murray’s

relationship with Wes Anderson reaches back to Rushmore (1998), it wasn’t until he

played broke-down actor Bob Harris in the midst of a Midlife Crisis in Coppola’s Lost in

Translation (2003) where he really found his feet.

Lost in Translation features Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob Harris (Murray), two

lost souls who encounter one another in Tokyo. Bob is an American celebrity on shoot

for a whiskey commercial and Charlotte accompanies her husband John (Giovanni 40

Ribisi), an up and coming photographer. The two meet in a hotel bar and instantly hit it

off finding a common bond in their respective quarter life and midlife crises.

Lost in Translation is a critical success, winning the Academy Award for best original

screenplay and receiving nominations for best picture, director and best actor for

Murray’s Bob Harris. Coppola says that she wrote Lost in Translation with Murray in

mind. In fact, she said she wouldn’t make the film without him. Coppola said that she

spent five months tracking Murray down, leaving messages on his mythical 800 phone

number. (Los Angeles Times) But why was Murray so important to the project? What

exactly does he bring to the role?

Nathan Rabin catalogues Murray’s screen presence in a 2014 piece for Dissolve. When

referring to Murray’s work with Coppola, Anderson and Jarmusch, Rabin points to one thing that is characteristic of all of these roles:

In Broken Flowers and Rushmore, he simultaneously seems to be giving

all of himself and nothing, to be exposing his soul and a paralyzing inner

emptiness. When that ironic distance shatters, as it does often in his more

recent films, the result can be devastating (Dissolve).

Turning back to Lost in Translation, Roger Ebert argues that the film is “.o n e of the

most exquisitely controlled performances. Without it, the film could be unwatchable.”

Ebert, however, doesn’t stop here: 41

Not for a second, not for a frame, does his focus relax, and yet it seems

effortless. It’s sometimes said of an actor that we can’t see him acting. I

can’t see him not acting. He seems to be existing, merely existing in the

situation created for him by Coppola. (rogerebert.com/ great movie).

In a separate review, Ebert states:

He doesn’t play ‘Bill Murray’ or any other conventional idea of a movie

star, but invents Bob Harris from the inside out, as a man both happy and

sad with his life - stuck, but resigned to being stuck.” (rogerebert.com/

review)

In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan states:

Like Buster Keaton, his deadpan predecessor, Murray has a face that’s

tragically sad in repose, and the heroic way he copes with civilization’s

discontents makes you both laugh and shake your head in rueful empathy.

All three evaluations have one thing in common: they all speak to the elusive nature of

Murray’s screen presence. For Rabin, Murray gives “all of himself and nothing.” For

Ebert, Murray seems to be acting and not acting, and for Turan, Murray is both sad and

heroic in the way he approaches society. All three interpretations speak to Murray’s

elusive nature of a man that isn’t so easily categorizable. To put it simply, Murray transcends definition, and as the success of these roles has consistently proven, he transcends generations as well. 42

In his review of Lost in Translation, Turan alludes to a hunger for meatier roles for Bill

Murray from “the largest unorganized group of moviegoers in the country.” Though it’s unclear exactly to whom Turan is referring, there might be an answer in Generation X based on the proliferation of Murray’s paternalistic roles alone. Susan Gregory Thomas’s notes about Generation X are useful:

According to a 2004 marketing study about generational differences, my

age cohort went through its all-important, formative years as one of the

least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history. (WSJ)

Thomas speaks to the culture of divorce surrounding Generation X, saying that even if one’s parents didn’t get separated, everyone in America grew up within the culture of it.

Research conducted by the Pew Research Center cataloging social and demographic changes concludes “there is no longer one dominant family form.” The study reveals that the nuclear family, the traditional ideal American family which consists of a husband, wife and two children has been on the decline since World War II and the baby boom.

At that time 73% of all children were living in a family with two married

parents in their first marriage. By 1980, 61% of children were living in

this type of family, and today less than half (46%) are.

The 1980s prove to be a decade of change. While dual career homes become the norm, parenting falls to the wayside and kids are left to their own devices. Divorce divides 43

families and fathers disappear from the picture indefinitely. Instead of patriotism and

valor, fathers are now leaving their families for financial and personal gain.

A quick glance at the American youth films of the 1980s reveals a good majority of them

with broken homes and parents either passively engaged or absent altogether. Films like

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Heckerling, 1982), The Outsiders (Coppola, 1983), The

Karate Kid (Alvidsen, 1984), The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), and The Goonies

(Donner, 1985) and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Hughes, 1986) all feature kids left to their

own devices. And this is just a short list of the latch key films of the 1980s.

From his breakthrough role in Meatballs (Reitman, 1979), Murray’s camp counselor

proves a worthy conciliatory shoulder for flailing youth. In fact, the timing of Murray’s

ascension from Saturday Night Live to superstardom makes him a familiar, prominent

and, more importantly safe figure for youth to turn to. Turning to his contemporary roles,

Murray provides a link to the past in a cultural moment steadfast in its almost maudlin

appreciation for the nostalgia the 1980s. 44

Figure 7 A Father/ Son moment in Broken Flowers

Murray serves as not just a chronological connection to the past, but also a generational link within the constructs of these contemporary films. These late-period roles popularized by Anderson, Coppola and Jarmusch place Murray into a kind of broke- down oracle for a generation to engage with and project their pain, fears and anxieties of growing up without guidance. These films offer a window into the fantasies and delusions of keeping dysfunctional patchwork families, however broken they are, together. From Rushmore, to Lost in Translation, Broken Flowers and The Life Aquatic

(Anderson, 2003), Murray picks back the reigns of the paternal role. And each time he does so, he builds on the foundation of the last, adding new fissures into this disenchanted and disaffected man, offering a hand and an imperfect vision of the future.

Through it all, it’s almost as if Murray’s on and off-screen persona, one that’s filled with spectacularly whimsical moments, is saying, “it’s okay, nobody’s perfect.” 45

Conclusion

The most recent publications on the Midlife Crisis in The Atlantic and Forbes prove that there continues to be a wealth of information and interest centered around the Midlife

Crisis. This content continues to be both psychological and philosophical. For Kieran

Setiya, his decision to write Midlife: A Philosophical Guide was personal. His project became a “self- book to help himself’ navigate his own Midlife Crisis. For Setiya, a philosophy professor at the University of Pittsburgh, this was a pretty major departure from the fundamentally concrete subject matter of his previous books Practical

Knowledge and Knowing Right From Wrong. For me, when months of research turned into years, it became clear that my own motivations for taking on this project shared similarities with Setiya. The topic, however, remains as elusive as ever.

It seems it would be appropriate to turn to the broke-down oracle of Murray in a moment like this. In Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers Murray’s Don Johnston is given an opportunity to provide some philosophical advice to a wayward kid on a road trip. Johnston ponders, perched on his milk crate, then speaks up:

The past is gone, I know that. The future isn’t here yet whatever it’s going

to be. So, all there is, is this: the present. That’s it.

Johnston apologizes for not being able to offer anything better. The Kid reassures him, saying, “it’s much better than some fatherly sounding bullshit.” The Kid’s comment is 46

rooted in a general skepticism towards father figures. Though it’s unclear where the Kid’s skepticism stems from, it does speak to a desire for a genuine connection. Johnston facilitates this connection because he is a stranger; he’s neither the Kid’s father or friend and it makes him accessible. Johnston is a safe figure for the Kid to confide in. When

Johnston tries to force the label of father onto the kid, he violates this unspoken social contract and scares the kid away.

Murray’s incarnations act as a bridge in this way. He becomes a safe figure to look onto.

Elliott Jaques surmises that the Midlife Crisis is a process of reevaluation at Midlife that occurs in almost everyone. The exploration of this topic in its relationship to Masculinity is just one piece of the puzzle. The topic branches out to include much larger socio- economical issues that are certainly worthy of exploration. The critical successes of

Television series like Mad Men (Weiner, 2007-2015) and Breaking Bad (Gilligan, 2008

2013) continue to illuminate a culture’s obsession with broken men. Breaking Bad breaks conventions when bad dad Walter White (Bryan Cranston) resorts to making and selling methamphetamines to pay for his cancer treatments and provide for his family. [5] Of course, it goes without saying that the other side of the spectrum, what it looks like for women in the midst of their own Midlife Crises, is a topic that is certainly rich, deserves its own separate examination. And, though the condition predominantly appears within developed Western nations, the opportunities for separate analyses across cultures, races,

5 10.3 million viewers tuned in for Breaking Bad’s series finale, a record for the series. 47

genders and sexualities is wide open. The critical discussion and implications of Midlife

Crisis across multiple spectrums is only just beginning. 48

Works Cited

Cheever, John. “The Swimmer”. The New Yorker. July 18, 1964.

Collins, H. “Kafka's Double-Figure as a Literary Device”.Monatshefte. Vol 1, 1963. pp 7-12.

Davis, Derrick Russell. “Second Selves”. Essays in Criticsm. Volume 23, number 1, January 1973. pp 95-110

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