is it just me, or am is there a trend in movies lately? the “family” movies all seem hinged on the concept of the father daughter relationship. in the last year, every “family” movie we have attended is focused on this. off of the top of my head i can think of The Game Plan, Enchanted, Definitely, Maybe, Nim’s Island, even Juno (FSM if this movie hasn’t gotten enough free publicity from the anti choicers, even if they were dead wrong about it) all seem to fetishize the relationship b/t fathers and daughters. i am not saying it is a bad thing, but i can’t think of too many movies that aren’t “chick flicks” that focus on mothers and daughters, or mothers and sons (Because I Said So and Spiderwick come to mind) where the mother isn’t portrayed as overbearing and meddlesome or is a fantasy movie (which seems to be the genre that is the most woman/single mother friendly). i am not trying to complain about these father daughter centric films, but i am curious. why the focus?
i ask b/c i have also noticed that these seem to fall into two categories: the father who is awkward and bumbling at taking care of the daughter he either didn’t know about until twenty minutes in or didn’t have to care for until recently, and the martyr single father whom we are supposed to swoon over b/c he is just so damned sensitive and great w/ this girl. maybe it is b/c my adoptive dad is dead, or that my bio father just couldn’t be bothered to give a flying rat’s ass that it was my birthday this week or any year, or that the Kid’s father is too caught up in blaming me for his own shortcoming to try to be responsible for a relationship w/ her, but i am feeling plagued by these in your face perfect fathers that we are supposed to idealize. i am glad that hollywood is catching on and seems to be no longer glamorizing the “traditional” family and shoving in our faces what a real family is supposed to be, but where are all the mothers we are supposed to love and adore? if 90% of single parent households are headed by single mothers, where are the movies showing us the touching moments of these women and the children they are raising? why are we willing to shell out seven dollars a person for a ticket to see captain dad save the day, but not to see the working mothers? after the “Gilmore Girls“ ended, i haven’t even seen a mom and daughter positive show on television, and it was “Buffy” b/f that who had the single mother, and she was a secondary element that only mattered when Buffy was in trouble or when she became sick and died. the rest of the time it is the girls w/o mothers that we see, the ones w/ fathers that we have as pop culture references. i am remembering “Charmed“, and a few others that seem to love the single father raising daughters, or that have a “traditional” family, and the attention is focused on the father daughter aspect.
who am i supposed to relate to? where is my Lorelai?
my point, if i have one, is that the movies i have mentioned are the PG and under titles, the ones billed as the family movies, the ones i am taking my Kid to see, the ones that the Guy and i are looking for when we want to spend a family day and hit up a movie. these are the movies we have to choose from, and while they may be family movies, they don’t represent my family, or too many that i know of (as usual, i can point to BSR as the exception that proves my rule). they seem to be glamorizing the fatherly role, and perhaps i am a little jaded by fathers (even though my Kid is lucky to have the Guy as a potential step, b/c he is amazing, but even he grew up never knowing a father) being that my life is devoid of good ones. while the world is busy trying to use movies to portray their views on society and politics i am finding that these movies are not giving me anything to work w/. i am unable to relate to this generation of family movies.
thoughts?
Ouyang Dan
The Guy
I wonder if it goes back to the whole idea of something being newsworthy: “Dog bites man is not news; man bites dog is.” Newsstories and society in general make single mothers seem the more common of the two, so I wonder if perhaps the current over-representation (I do agree with you on that one) is a response to the scarcity of such movies in the past. In fact, I recently watched The Martian Child, in which a single man (John Cusack) decides to adopt a child; never once did the movie raise the question of his singlehood (and I think it would have been, had it been about a woman who had lost her husband). The Pursuit of Happyness also comes to mind.
As far as single mothers, though, didn’t Anywhere but Here feature one? I remembered Pay It Forward, but Helen Hunt has a drinking problem and… well, let’s just say it’s not exactly a “family” movie.
You might be interested in this book, though. (It came up when I Amazoned to figure out if I was missing any). I was: Freaky Friday was one, and there were others.
But I think it’s less “glamorization” of the single dad. The Gameplan seemed less about glamorization than a response. More of a “single dads can be good fathers every bit as single mothers can be, and they’re not as uncommon as you think. Guys can do it, too.”
i forgot about Martian Child, though i remember wanting to see it, and Pursuit of Happyness, also on my list of movies i have been wanting to see.
while i was only thinking of movies that have come out in the last year or two, those were all good examples. i guess i am just feeling bombarded by every “family” movie in the last two years being focused as such. the Gameplan, while i agree it was supposed to show “hey guys can do it too” did seem to glamorize that w/ enough wealth and fame anyone can parent.
there just seems to be this trend, and i have to wonder where are the recent, single mother portraying a charming single mother movies?
i might check out that book, since i am a pop culture junkie. and i like how we can now make anything a verb. “Amazoned” gave me a good chuckled this morning.
I saw Nim’s Island with my kid yesterday, so I’ve been thinking about this.
There’s a widespread belief that girls will watch movies about boys but boys won’t watch movies about girls — if you make a movie about a girl and her mother, by that logic, you won’t sell a single ticket to a male of any age. If you’re going to make a movie about a girl, you’ve got to make her dad the adult lead to balance it out.
There’s more, but I think that’s the main thing. And yeah, it sucks.
What everyone else has said, and another aspect. It’s possible that if they showed well-adjusted, happy single mothers (who had healthy relationships with their kids) that you know some women might start getting “ideas.” You know about children ‘out of wedlock’ *horrors* and ‘independent’ living. All that crazy feminazi stuff :). The mainstream media doesn’t really know how to get through it’s day with a good dose of so called ’slut-shaming’.
that would of course be : Without a good dose of…