MASCULINE SURVIVAL and PATERNAL RESTORATION in 1990S HOLLYWOOD
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FATHERING THE FUTURE: MASCULINE SURVIVAL AND PATERNAL RESTORATION IN 1990s HOLLYWOOD by KATIE BARNETT A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of American and Canadian Studies School of English, Drama and American and Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham April 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT The 1990s in the United States saw a particular cultural anxiety manifested in the crisis of masculinity, in which American men were perceived to be suffering from a loss of power and diminished authority. As President Clinton heralded a final push towards the millennium and the creation of a better, brighter future for the nation, concerns emerged over the ability of straight, white, middle-class men to access this same future. In this pre-millennial period, fatherhood is presented as the solution to this state of masculine crisis. Hollywood in particular invests in this notion of masculine crisis and the need for rehabilitation through fatherhood, indulging in one of the key tenets of Lee Edelman’s theory of reproductive futurism: that of the future being realised through an investment in the child. This thesis examines a number of Hollywood films produced between 1989 and 2001, with the aim of demonstrating how fatherhood is persistently constructed as the key to masculine survival during a period of considerable anxiety over the future. Chapter 1 explores the perceived erosion of paternal authority by the law, focusing on representations of the family court in Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Falling Down (1993), The Santa Clause (1994), Liar Liar (1997) and I Am Sam (2001), and the way in which survival is reliant upon a transfer of power back to the disenfranchised father. Chapter 2 examines the construction of gay fatherhood in The Birdcage (1996), The Object of My Affection (1998) and The Next Best Thing (2000), exploring the extent to which the promise of survival is predicated upon sacrifice, and how fatherhood becomes the reserve of ‘good’ gay men within the context of the AIDS epidemic. Binding together fatherhood and survival, while remaining beholden to a heteronormative model of the family, ensures that the future becomes accessible only to gay men who are willing to assimilate into, rather than challenge, the dominant model. Chapter 3 focuses on the death of the child and the threat of ‘unparenthood’ in Paradise (1991), Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), The Good Son (1993), The Ice Storm (1997) and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001). In these films, survival is threatened by the death of a son. Facing the erasure of their future, fathers must be restored, channelling their survival through the prospect of another child and the end of mourning as a state that only heightens their status as non-fathers. Chapter 4 examines the reverse of this issue, the death of the father, as it occurs in Field of Dreams (1989), The Lion King (1994), Twister (1996), Contact (1997), Armageddon (1998) and Jack Frost (1998). This final chapter focuses on the figure of the ‘returning father’ and the importance of establishing a paternal legacy through the child, in order to survive beyond the self. Recognising that he will not be entirely erased at the point of death if he is able to establish a link with his child, the father’s return can be understood as a quest for a form of immortal survival. By rehabilitating American men on-screen as fathers first and foremost, crisis can be averted and survival guaranteed. The reality of human mortality is obscured in favour of a vision of a promised future, one that becomes accessible through a turn towards fatherhood. The promise of survival, and the cultivation of a paternal legacy, defends against the apocalyptic notions of erasure that occupy Hollywood—and the U.S.—at the end of the millennium. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Michele Aaron, for all her guidance and support over the last four and a half years. The department of American and Canadian Studies at Birmingham has been my home since 2009 and I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given during my time here. I would also like to extend a huge thank you to the department of American Studies at the University of Hull, where I spent four excellent years. In particular I would like to thank Edward Abramson for inspiring me to go further. Thank you to my friends for providing, at various points, advice, adventure, and perspective. In particular, Becca for being my partner in crime; Jenny for sharing in the madness; and Charlotte for the long emails and the even longer car journeys, and for never being too far away. Thanks also to Anna and Cerys for all the tea, cake, and disaster scenarios that made home such a good place to be. Thank you to my family, without whom I would be a very different person in a very different place. My grandparents, Shirley and Albert Barnett, have given me an immense amount of support throughout my PhD and I am grateful for all their help. My late grandfather, Colin Peck, was also unfailing in his encouragement and though he didn’t get to see the start of this, I hope he would be pleased that I reached the end. Thanks to my brother, Thomas, who saw most of these films with me the first time round (and the second time, and the third…), and to Jayne for all her support over the last few years. Huge thanks to Jon, for climbing this mountain (and that one) with me, for always believing I could do it, and for filling the last few years with numerous adventures. Finally, thanks to my parents, John Barnett and Jacqueline Lawrence, for all their love and support right from the beginning, and for making all this possible. CONTENTS 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………… 1 1.1: Approaching the millennium: The 1990s and the future of American men……………………………………………………………… 7 1.2: The Restoration of the Father: America’s “fatherhood crisis”……….. 12 1.3: Clinton in crisis: From ‘son’ to ‘father’……………………………….. 19 1.4: “The Saviors and the Saved”: Reproductive futurism and fatherhood as a saving mechanism………………………………………… 26 1.5: Fatherhood in Hollywood cinema: An overview…………………….... 30 1.6: Chapter breakdown……………………………………………………. 35 2. Chapter 1: The Law vs. The Father in Hollywood’s Family Courts…………….. 49 2.1: “Just Us”: The Law as Intruder………………………………………... 55 2.2: The father’s struggle for power……………………………………….. 58 2.3: The prescription of a particular kind of fatherhood…………………… 67 2.4: Practicing what they preach: Lawyers with failed families…………… 82 2.5: Phasing out the father: The role of the stepfather…………………….. 88 2.6: Conclusion: The best interests of the father……………………………93 3. Chapter 2: “I could be the guy that says goodnight”: Gay fatherhood and the limitations of survival………………………………………………99 3.1: Survival and its limitations in a ‘post-AIDS’ landscape……………….102 3.2: The “bad equation” and the “logical family”…………………………..108 3.3: “Like” a family / “As” a family……………………………………….. 117 3.4: Sacrifice……………………………………………………………….. 130 3.5: Identity sacrifice……………………………………………………..... 132 3.6: Political sacrifice……………………………………………………… 137 3.7: Sexual sacrifice………………………………………………………... 141 3.8: Conclusion: “None of the old rules apply”……………………………. 150 4. Chapter 3: “Kill the child and you kill the future”: Child death and the end of fatherhood………………………………………………….. 153 4.1: “The sacred horror”: Confronting the unnatural…………………….... 160 4.2: Erasing the future: Child death and shattered fatherhood…………….. 163 4.3: Survival through another child………………………………………... 167 4.4: Reproductive futurism and parental bereavement…………………….. 179 4.5: The end of fatherhood as an apocalyptic scenario……………………..185 4.6: The future of reproduction and the importance of biology…………… 188 4.7: A thing of the past: Child death and nostalgia………………………… 194 4.8: Conclusion: Conquering the death of the son…………………………. 200 5. Chapter 4: “The king has returned”: The survival of the father beyond death……………………………………………………………….. 203 5.1: Like father, like son: The myth of the “new régime”………..………... 206 5.2: Resurrecting the father: Immortality through the child in The Lion King……………………………………………………………… 213 5.3: The returning father: Field of Dreams and Jack Frost………………... 224 5.4: Reproductive futurism as the father’s ultimate legacy………………... 237 5.5: Apocalypse averted……………………………………………………. 242 5.6: Conclusion: Negating death through paternity………………………... 246 6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….249 7. Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..265 8. Filmography……………………………………………………………………..290 INTRODUCTION This thesis examines the construction of fatherhood as a saving mechanism for men in Hollywood during the 1990s. During this pre-millennial period Hollywood invests in a popular, if contentious, concept within contemporary American culture, that of the crisis of masculinity. In doing so, it channels the anxieties embedded in such a crisis towards a resolution in which fatherhood becomes the foundation on which masculine survival can be built. In the final decade of the 20th century, a century often envisaged as “the American century”, there is a concerted focus in the United States on not only imagining, but achieving, the future.1 What follows is an examination of the ways in which the paternal role is used as a way of projecting men into this future, circumventing both the pitfalls of traditional, dominant masculinity and the inevitability of human mortality.