Fatherhood

[poliphilo]

What's with this this father-son thing that Hollywood keeps shoving
at us?

Spielberg can't leave it alone. Catch Me If You Can was sharp and funny so long as Leo was sticking it to the Man, but then we found out that his delinquency was down to the lack of a father figure and all it needed to reform him was for Tom Hanks to offer him unquestioning love.

Yesterday I was watching Finding Nemo. Great film in its way, but Albert Brooks's fussy lttle everyman of a soccer-dad made me feel queasy. If Ellen DeGeneres hadn't happened along I might well have walked out.

It's like the nineteenth century cult of motherhood. It gives off a sickly smell. I think there's something rotten that's being covered up.

Actually, I know perfectly well what it is. A very high proportion of dads who walk out of a marriage lose contact with their kids within two or three years. And a high proportion of those who stay behind are bullies, brutes and abusers. Of course there are good dads, but there are an awful lot of absolute shites as well.

Do families need fathers?

We daren't say "no" because if we did it would hurt the feelings of men. And that would be tricky because it's men who run the world. So we tell ourselves these cute little stories to keep ourselves from thinking too much about the facts.

There was once a little fishy and his wife got eaten by a barracuda so he had to look after his baby son all by himself and he loved his little son so much that he got a weeny bit over-protective; and then one fine day...

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My friend Judy (not an LJer) comments that we've had this spate of films in recent years (Mrs Doubtfire, Three Men and A Baby) which seem to be setting out to prove that men can be better mothers than women. "Motherhood, pshaw, it's a piece of cake. Now if I really set my mind to it...." Men are just so damn competitive.

But actually, I think it's fuelled by fear of redundancy. Single mothers have to be rubbished because if they can be shown to be doing a good job it would mean that men simply aren't needed any more.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. No one ever talks about a child being damaged if tey grow up without a mother figure--in fact, "mother figure" isn't even a viable phrase the way "father figure" is. But we hear all the time about the lack of father figures and how awful that is, how terrible it is for children to be raised by women alone--look at the mother hatred in Fight Club, for example. Mothers are the root of all men's problems.

Of course, no one even considers the damage done to a daughter without a female role model. We don't have personalities to damage.

So, basically, men are better mothers and better moneymakers and better artists. Why not abolish the woman entirely? I mean, what use is she?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Anything you can do I can do better
I can do anything better than you."

Sometimes I hate Hollywood with a profound hatred. Women and women's issues are all but invisible in so much of the output. Spielberg (whom I admire enormously in other ways) is typical in being blind to women. They exist as adjuncts to men- as (bad) mothers and characterless vamps and sweethearts.

I haven't seen Fight Club. My son keeps praising it to me, but I know I'd hate it so I've kept clear.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

"We are a generation of men raised by women. I'm starting to think another woman isn't the answer."

--Fight Club

Ironically, that comes after a speech about how the character's father failed him, in which the mother isn't mentioned at all.

It's a film about male rage, and as such made a big splash among men of a certain age and persuasion. It's also a good movie. But it's intensely and vigorously misogynistic.

I love movies. I really do. I don't fall into the "I don't watch TV/movies" nose-in-air crowd. I love books, I make them for a living, but I love movies too. And it kills me that there are so few movies that portray any kind of normal female sexuality, motivation, psychology, or identity. We are on the sidelines--unless the point of the film is to say something about the wickedness of angry feminists or the wickedness of any other kind of woman who takes the spotlight from a man. And sadly, women themselves make a lot of these films. Spielberg is perhaps the most pernicious kind, because women are simply invisible to him--they are rewards or punishments, and they have no psychology. It's easy to spot the hatred in fight Club--they just come out and say it. Spielberg is harder to accuse.

But didn't you hear? The feminist fight is won. Now everything can go back to normal--what a relief!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love movies too. And TV. TV is often ahead of the movies in giving women a voice and a presence. My favourite show of recent years was Buffy (but I loved Willow best.)

Currently I'm hooked on Deadwood. OK, it's a boy's show- guns and stuff- but they've allowed the women to be other than appendages. There's Calamity Jane for starters- foul-mouthed and ballsy and utterly unglamorous- and wonderfully played by Robin Weigert.

On the whole I prefer my films to be non-Hollywood. I'm crazy about Ingmar Bergman for instance. And Bergman gives his actresses real roles. In many of his best movies- Persona, Cries and Whispers, The Silence- it's the men who are the appendages. Yay!

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Well, living out here I don't really have access to too many Hollywood films--the base theaters show one or two movies at a time and those are rarely ones I want to see. I had to spell Jane Eyre for the video store so they wouldn't think it was a basketball movie.

I can't actually decide whether I like movies or the fun of picking them apart better. It's like dessert or main course.

I haven't seen Deadwood--no TV--but I love Buffy--and Willow. Of course, I could say something about the portrayal of academic lesbians as evil, but I'll just keep that to myself...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Academic lesbians? You mean professors seducing their innocent blonde proteges?

There's a Brit show going on at present called Hex. It ain't Buffy- it's both sillier and darker. There's a very appealing, frumpy, lesbian ghost in it who seems to be turning into the central character- a kind of dead, teenage, Miss Marple if that makes any sense.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Academic women who are also lesbians--at the same time! Willow was the only one of the gang--the kids, mind you, not the grown ups--who valued book learning, and she, of course, goes down the dark path, because that's what girls who step out of the helpmeet role do. ;)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, of course. She lacked a firm guiding fatherly hand.

But good old Giles got her straightened out in the end.

I identified strongly with Willow. What with me being a geek and all.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

And there we have it. ;)

Not to mention the straight male lifelong friend who was a bloody carpenter for CHRIST'S sake talking her down with the power of his huge throbbing love.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

LOL.

Dear old Xander. How he suffered for our salvation!