| Description |
x, 265 pages ; 23 cm |
| Contents |
Pt. 1. Society/Culture/History - Families in the Eighties. 1. Britain in the Eighties. 2. Hollywood Cinema in the Eighties. 3. Family Representations: The Family in Crisis -- Pt. 2. Film Families - Family Films. 4. Family Fortunes: Key Representational Paradigms. 5. Backlash Patriarch or New Man? The Role of the Father. 6. Absence and Loss: The Evacuation of the Mother. 7. Look Who's Talking: Challenging Children and Parental Inversions. 8. Family Dramas: The Family in E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial. 9. Conclusions and Futures - Stasis and Change -- App. 1. Family Paradigms -- App. 2. Synopses of Selected Top Box-Office Hollywood Films: 1980-90 -- App. 3. Selection of Texts |
| Summary |
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 |
| Bibliography |
Filmography: pages 248-252 |
|
Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-258) and index |
| Subject |
Families in motion pictures.
|
| LC no. |
96034347 |
| ISBN |
0312165536 (cloth) |
|
0312165544 (paperback) |
|
