Hollywood Fatherhood: Paternal Postfeminism in Contemporary Popular Cinema

Abstract

Worlds (2005), which enacted the same scenario, again from the viewpoint of a lone father, played by Tom Cruise. 2 Thus, in three high profile, star led summer releases, using stock genre scenarios and conventional narratives, fatherhood predominates as a structuring thematic, narrative hook, and privileged identity formation for each protagonist,

“No one gives you a rulebook to raise a kid”: Adoptive Motherhood in The Walking Dead Video Game Series

“…Her quest to find her son drives her, and the scenes in which players are shown an enraged Clem (as opposed to her appearing fearful or just killing zombies because she must) mostly occur when others take her son away from her or threaten him. This is common to violent paternal narratives, such as the films discussed by Hamad (2013), the quintessential vengeful father film Taken (2008), as well as the dadified games mentioned earlier. However, male characters enact violent agency for many different reasons in popular culture, whereas women's rage is often only portrayed as justified (albeit controversial) if it takes the form of either rape revenge, as in I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Thelma and Louise (1991), or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), or maternal rage, as in The Handmaid's Tale and A Quiet Place.…”

“…This seems to be particularly true in films set in violent, hostile worlds in which fathers must fight to protect their children. Indeed, in her research on paternal postfeminism in Hollywood cinema, Hannah Hamad (2013) argued that there has been a recent "cycle of paternalized narratives of social disintegration and apocalypse" that often "centralize protectorate fatherhood in narratives that place fathers and their children in extreme and exceptional circumstances" (p. 109). According to Hamad, action films like Signs (2002), Minority Report (2002), or War of the Worlds (2005) support a return to traditional notions of "masculinity centred upon uncompromising protectiveness" (p. 110).…”

Feeling rules and sexualities: Postfeminist men in Swedish television

“…Angela McRobbie (2009) argues that feminism is increasingly taken up and incorporated in cultural representations, but often in ways that undermine it or render it redundant. Such 'postfeminist' representations have often been focussed on women, but postfeminist portrayals of men are increasingly visible in popular culture (Dow, 2006;Gill, 2014;Hamad, 2013;Hansen-Miller and Gill, 2011). Sweden, often described as one of the most gender-equal countries in the world and allegedly populated by gender-equal, progressive Swedish men (Järvklo, 2008;Martinsson et al, 2016), presents an important context in which to understand the workings and effects of postfeminist discourses.…”

“…Postfeminist representations of men have been studied in both cinematic and literary representations (Dow, 2006;Gill, 2014;Hamad, 2013;Hansen-Miller and Gill, 2011;Thompson, 2013). Bonnie J. Dow argues that postfeminist men, men that are respectful, sensitive and nurturing, start appearing in the 1980s film and television.…”

“…The idea of 'get[ting] through' 'some stuff' to become '[one]self' becomes meaningful in relation to coming of age-narratives, a staple in both literature and film, including postfeminist films (Hansen-Miller and Gill, 2011). Such narratives are often surreptitiously masculine (Felski, 2003), but similar to postfeminist 'lad flicks', Boys makes masculinity itself its central object and portrays it as a 'difficult biographical project' (Hansen-Miller and Gill, 2011: 40; see also Hamad, 2013). This means that that the series 'names men as men' (Collinson and Hearn, 1994), and overtly discusses gender politics and masculinity, to some extent destabilizing the unmarkedness of the category of men.…”