Bound by Love : Familial Bonding in Film and Television since 1950 [1 ed.] 9781443831086, 9781443829854

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Bound by Love

Bound by Love: Familial Bonding in Film and Television since 1950

Edited by

Laura Mattoon D’Amore

Bound by Love: Familial Bonding in Film and Television since 1950, Edited by Laura Mattoon D’Amore This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Laura Mattoon D’Amore and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2985-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2985-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Laura Mattoon D’Amore Part I: Learning Bonds of Love and Nurture Chapter One................................................................................................. 6 Learning the Norms of Love and Marriage in Cold War Educational Films Miranda Tedholm Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 19 Sisterhood is Too Powerful for Television: Adapting the Wonder Woman Family from Comic Book to Small Screen, 1941-1977 Ruth McClelland Nugent Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 33 Bonding in the Air: Flight Attendants’ Maternal Roles in Films from 1970-1992 Carney Maley Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 47 Reconceiving Conception: Changing Discourses of Teen Motherhood in Popular Culture Margaret Tally Part II: Troublesome Bonds between Mothers and Children Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 68 Glenn Close and the Monstrous Maternal: Mothers and Daughters in Damages Linda Seidel Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 85 The Ring and Ringu: Naturalizing Maternal Self-Sacrifice Sarah Arnold

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 104 Of My Flesh: Mothering Evil Children in Hollywood Thrillers Linda Levitt Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 118 The Fragile Bond between Mother and Adult Son: The Evolution of Dueling Protagonists in A Raisin in the Sun Marissa Harris Part III: Deconstructing Family Bonds for the 21st Century Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 136 Mothers Who Split: Guilt, Working Motherhood, and the Fantasy of Multiple Identity in Heroes, The Incredibles, More of Me, and Nurse Jackie Laura Mattoon D’Amore Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 154 “I’ll Take Our Family Over Normal Any Day”: Supernatural’s Commentary on the Modern American Family Nicole Freim Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 169 Resolving Flawed Fatherhood: Domestic Masculinity and Missing Mothers on Everwood Jennifer M. Fogel Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 186 Television’s Parenthood: Deconstructing Family Constructs in the 21st Century Jennifer L. Stevens and Heather Glynis Bryant Contributors............................................................................................. 204 Index........................................................................................................ 207

INTRODUCTION LAURA MATTOON D’AMORE

This book began as a series of papers prepared for the “Love, Marriage, and a Baby Carriage,” area of the 2010 Film & History conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The larger theme of the conference was Representations of Love in Film and Television, which drew a broad cross section of interdisciplinary scholarship concerned with various perspectives on love as a thematic, and dramatic, device. Several of the authors contained herein responded to an initial call for papers that asked them: What does it mean to be bound by love? Sometimes, the bonds of love supply bliss, and sometimes they demand sacrifice. Sometimes, experiencing love saves people, and sometimes it kills them. Being bound by love often engenders moral responsibility; in other cases, it enslaves and imprisons the soul. How does bonding—the dramaturgical center of most narratives—complicate our understanding of "love"? And how do film and television represent that complication? Examination of the theme of familial bonds in film and television explores how the process of forming and maintaining those bonds complicates, revises, and reproduces ideas about love. American mythologies—especially those presented in film and television —perpetuate love as the central narrative of one’s life; the search for a connection forged by love permeates every facet of human existence, from our desire to be accepted, or our longing to be needed, to our fury at being rejected. Sometimes love is the stuff of happiness, fulfilling in every regard. But there are also times when loves makes us do things we should not do, sometimes it turns us into people we do not want to become. The commonality between love that satisfies and love that destroys is the bond between people who open themselves to the vulnerability of love. Human connection engenders responsibility to another, an unspoken and unbreakable requirement to remain involved, for better or for worse, in the lives of others. The essays in this book are organized to interrogate the representations of familial bonds in film and television since 1950, engaging with a variety of social issues across multiple genres. Careful consideration of the

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relationship between text and historical context is central to each author’s perspective, and as a result this book navigates the changing terrain of American popular culture that has emerged over the past several decades. Especially salient is the way in which ideas of race, feminism, and social mores about sex and love have affected these narratives over time, and how the changing nature of these cultural issues in society has fostered how they are represented in film and television. The subject of the American family has always been a central theme in film and television, and since the 1950s it has served to reinforce the heteronormative nuclear family. The chapters in this book explore how the nature of bonds and responsibility between family members creates a popular cultural dialogue about the changing nature of the American family over the past sixty years. The book is organized into three sections of thematic similarity: Learning Bonds of Love and Marriage, Troublesome Bonds Between Mothers and Children, and Deconstructing Family Bonds for the 21st Century. Part One addresses the ways that ideas about family have historically been taught to audiences through the film and television programming that they consumed. In Chapter One, “Learning the Norms of Love and Marriage in Cold War Educational Films,” Miranda Tedholm examines the means by which love is taught in three educational films: Are You Ready for Marriage? (Coronet Instructional Films, 1950), Going Steady? (Coronet Instructional Films, 1951), and Jealousy (Affiliated Film Producers, 1954). She examines the role of love and marriage in these films to assess what students were being taught about these social norms during the 1950s. Chapter Two, “Sisterhood is Too Powerful for Television: The Disappearance of Matriarchy and the Bonds of Women in Wonder Woman, “ by Ruth McClelland-Nugent, examines the adaptation of the Wonder Woman family from comic form to television, arguing that the feminist separatism of the comic book proved difficult to successfully translate to the small screen. Chapter Three, “Bonding in the Air: Flight Attendants’ Maternal Roles in Films from 1970-1992,” by Carney Maley, examines how representations of flight attendants in popular culture positioned them as sexual objects, while also expecting them to perform maternal nurture. She argues that the airplane films of the 1970s and beyond simultaneously present flight attendants as lovers, adulterers, heroines, and damsels in distress. Finally, Margaret Tally explores the representation of young women who bear children outside of marriage in recent film and television narratives, in Chapter Four, “Reconceiving Conception: Changing Discourses of Teen Motherhood in Popular Culture,” noting that while the dominant cultural motif for young women

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in prior eras was to roundly criticize young women who conceived children “out of wedlock,” recent representations of young women in film and television suggest that this status is becoming more ambiguous. Part Two of this book interrogates the specific bonds between mothers and their children, in particular recognition of the ways that mothers are expected to love their children despite hardship. In Chapter Five, Linda Seidel argues that the portrayal of Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) in FX’s Damages as a brilliant litigator but monstrous mother reflects persistent cultural anxieties about the roles of career women in an intensely competitive society. In Chapter Six, Sarah Arnold addresses the crosscultural significance of categories of good motherhood, in “The Ring and Ringu: Naturalizing Maternal Self Sacrifice.” In these films, mothers must learn from the past, and must learn from the errors and tragedies of historical, long dead, mothers. However, the natures of the lessons learned are culturally determined, dependent upon dominant familial norms in Japan and the United States. In Chapter Seven, Linda Levitt explores the mother’s instinct to protect her child. “Of My Flesh: Mothering Evil Children in Hollywood Thrillers,” Levitt argues that when evil children appear in thrillers and horror films, a mother’s conflict between wanting to keep her child from harm and recognizing evil in that same child drives the narrative. Mothers want to believe the best about their children, and this chapter explores the mother-child bond in three Hollywood thrillers, and how that bond is manipulated, strained, and eventually shattered. And in Chapter Eight, “Navigating the Relational Minefield of Mother and Adult Son The Evolution of Dueling Protagonists in A Raisin in the Sun,” Marissa Harris considers the empowerment of Lena in later versions of A Raisin in the Sun, tracing the representation of the relationship between Lena and her son Walter to the multiple historical contexts that have driven various iterations of the screenplay. Through the evolution of these dueling protagonists, we see a poignant picture of the tense relationship that can exist between mother and adult-son. Part Three focuses on the most modern conception of the American family, interrogating the representations of twenty-first century families and family bonds in television. Chapter Nine, “Mothers Who Split: Guilt, Working Motherhood, and the Fantasy of Multiple Identity in Heroes, The Incredibles, More of Me, and Nurse Jackie,” by Laura Mattoon D’Amore, defines the contemporary supermom in film and television as a working mother who is split—sometimes literally—by the demands of her multiple roles. In Chapter Ten, “I’ll Take Our Family Over Normal Any Day: Supernatural’s Commentary on the Modern American Family,” Nicole Friem breaks the show into thematic categories of Villains, Victims, and

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Rescuers, and shows how audiences view specific family constructs in tandem with morals and messages about good and evil that are provided in each episode of the science fiction drama. In Chapter Eleven, Jennifer M. Fogel considers fathers in “Flawed Fatherhood: Domestic Masculinity and Missing Mothers on Everwood.” Fogel uses the WB’s Everwood (20022006) as a case study of the “missing mother” series, and examines the problems inherent in the domestication of men (within the family) when fathers try to negotiate and subsume the maternal experience in the domestic space. And lastly, in Chapter Twelve, “Television’s Parenthood: Deconstructing Family Constructs in the 21st Century,” authors Jennifer L. Stevens and Heather Glynis Bryant point out that while the modern family has dramatically changed since the mid-Twentieth century, popular television shows such as Parenthood find success by reaffirming traditional expectations about family values. By deconstructing the family constructs portrayed in Parenthood, the authors conclude that although there are underlying traditional family values that still permeate our society in the 21st Century, the unifying factor between all families is the inevitability of facing adversity and their ability to rise above it. The essays in this collection interact with each other in useful ways, uncovering a sense of the tension between the representation of family in film and television since 1950, and the way that traditional ideals of love and family have remained strong in American culture. Though today’s family may look quite different than it used to, and though today’s younger generation might imagine norms of love quite differently than their parents did, many of the same patterns remain in terms of how love, marriage, and family bonds continue to be presented to us in film and television. Ultimately, that persistence concerns our cultural ideas about bonding, and how those bonds regulate and protect familial love. For better or for worse, our myths tell us, we are bound to our families.

PART ONE: LEARNING BONDS OF LOVE AND NURTURE

CHAPTER ONE LEARNING THE NORMS OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN COLD WAR EDUCATIONAL FILMS MIRANDA TEDHOLM

Background and Overview Schools are complex locations in which pedagogical, cultural, historical, and technological values intersect. By examining the school, we can learn how societies present themselves and seek to replicate and improve themselves. Examination of how cultural tensions and struggles are mediated, challenged, or represented to students can provide insight into how society understands these issues. One particular aspect of the school that provides insight into the culture that creates it is the body of educational media. Educational media, as part of a standardized curriculum, unifies diverse school experiences and contributes to shared cultural memories and experiences: by the mid-twentieth century, students in many disparate locations shared experiences with educational media, as the same films and textbooks were used in many places. One salient example of this phenomenon is the body of “mental hygiene” films produced during the Cold War. Unlike the educational films that dealt with academic subjects such as science, language, literature, geography and other subjects, these films did not easily square with published educational objectives, and sought to instill values and behaviors that were more difficult to assess than in traditional subjects. Thousands of these films were made during the Cold War (Smith 1999). They were replayed for decades in classrooms until they wore out or were deemed obsolescent by school officials. Despite the fact that many of these films were destroyed, and little academic work has been done on them, they seem to share with the concept of obscenity the fact that most people know them when they see them. The mental hygiene films in

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particular have established a notable place in cultural memory due to their low production values, heavy-handed and didactic narrations, and the rhetorical structure of their arguments. In addition to being points of ironic nostalgia, filmic clichés, and free or cheap stock footage for low-budget filmmakers, the mental hygiene films as an overall filmic body point to and reflect larger cultural anxieties in unexpected and interesting ways. The mid-century mental hygiene films are infamous for their low-budget vignettes, which functioned as best or worst-case scenarios for student behavior. Often, these faults of execution seem to undercut the values the films were ostensibly promoting. In this study, I examine three films that belong to the dating and relationship subgenre of mental hygiene films. I do this by first critically reading each film text and then examining Toby Miller’s concept of the well-tempered self in order to provide a deeper accounting for how these films worked and what pedagogical strategies they seemed to be using. The films under consideration are three classroom films that were produced in the 1950s for adolescents or young adults: Going Steady? (1951, Coronet Instructional Films); Are You Ready For Marriage (1950, Coronet Instructional Films), and Jealousy (1954, Affiliated Film Producers). These films are representative of the “dating film” subgenre of films produced for classroom use after World War II: these films provided didactic do’s and don’ts related to the topic of (heterosexual) dating and romance. These three films were specifically chosen because they represent three stages of relationships. Going Steady? represents teenage dating at the point in a relationship when the participants assess whether it is exclusive, and what that may lead to. Are You Ready for Marriage? represents the process of engagement and issues related to preparing for marriage. Finally, Jealousy depicts a marriage and its maintenance. Moreover, two of the three films (Going Steady? and Are You Ready for Marriage?) exemplify the style of one of the major mental hygiene film producers, Coronet Films. Therefore, this set of films is fairly representative of films that were actually shown in schools and traces a similar kind of relationship representation through several stages. All three films seek to represent to the student viewers vignettes of young people facing dilemmas similar to the ones with which they dealt. The films feature young people discussing their relationships, how to classify them, and how to manage difficulties within the relationships. These films utilize filmic tropes such as music, flashbacks, voice-overs, and close-ups, and use these characteristics of theatrical films in order to instill specific virtues or preferred behaviors related to relationships. These characteristics are also used to make the films more interesting to the

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student audience. They harness characteristics of mass entertainment in order to educate the masses. Specifically, these films seek to educate their audiences in nonquantifiable, un-testable subjects, such as relationships. The films use audiences’ tendencies to identify with film characters in order to present certain models of relationships and hold up specific types of romantic interactions as appropriate. The films use the nearly infinite power of the motion picture medium to instill in viewers a specific and narrow perspective on how relationships will turn out. More subtle aspects of the films reinforce traditional gender roles and elide or dismiss differences within society. While a twenty-first century scholar would find the gender dynamics and values portrayed in the films to be unsurprising, the films encode their values in unexpected ways. Finally, the films correlate with Toby Miller’s concept of the welltempered self, which I discuss at the end of this essay. By presenting images and an implicit call to change oneself, the films present an educational dynamic in which students are asked to change themselves based only on images in a film. They are asked not to adjust the society that produces the images, nor are they presented with critical views of relationships or behaviors. Rather than using the filmic vignettes as launching pads for discussions of serious issues, the films work on a mimicry basis, implicitly asking the viewers to do as they see in the films: to “mimic” the cultural “tones” displayed in the films. The implicit rhetoric of the films merely asks the students to be, or not be, what they see. While the insights into the romantic values of the films are predictable, an examination of the subset of the films chosen for this study reveals unexpected things about the values put forth and recirculated by educational institutions, and provide implicit insights into mid-century thought about the work of the school and the potential work of film. For instance, Going Steady? emphasizes the woman’s role in determining the limits of physical intimacy for pre-married couples. Are You Ready for Marriage? reveals the prominence of rationalist and psychological discourse in mid-twentieth century understandings of the self and of love. Finally, Jealousy presents an unexpectedly negative view of marriage, in contrast with the other two films. It is important to note that all of these 16 mm films were produced for the educational market, and often shown in “coercive” settings. Eric Smoodin’s 2004 Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930-1960 discusses the processes by which Frank Capra’s films “became not so much the films of choice, but the

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films chosen for a variety of audiences living in various degrees of confinement” (2004, 160). While schools are not spaces of confinement like the ones Smoodin discusses, the viewing context of coercion is similar. Due to the uneven power dynamic between students and teacher, the students had to watch the films whether they wanted to or not, and this may have produced reactions in keeping with their expectations about what the teacher wanted to see. Despite the films putting forth the idea of the well-tempered self and individual adjustment, their use within the classroom may have required a performance of publicly changing oneself, of tuning oneself on two levels: one, a visible external level in which one’s behavior and response fit in with what was expected in the immediate viewing context, and another in which one tuned behaviors and beliefs in order to fit in with a larger social context. However, what I am interested in here is how these films portray the idea of love: how they mediate and describe a passionate emotion, and package this idea for a (presumably) passionless classroom setting. I seek to examine how these films portrayed and defined the ideal of love, as well as their implicit and explicit messages about love and romantic relationships, and finally, how they shaped or re-shaped the studentviewers’ perspectives on love. According to these films, what is love? How does one know when one is in love, and what should one do about it? What did the students who learned from these films learn about the responsibilities of a relationship? In an age of consensus and also of civil rights, how did religious or ideological variance fit into romance? What do these films define as a good relationship versus a bad one?

The Film Texts The first film under consideration, Going Steady?, portrays the relationship dilemmas of Jeff and Marie, two hapless teenagers who must determine whether their relationship is exclusive, and if they are ready for this exclusivity. Although Jeff and Marie profess to enjoy each other’s company, they appear surprised when others inform them that they are “going steady,” which the film uses as a signifier for “an exclusive (heterosexual) relationship.” The film opens with a title card that essentially spoils the film for the viewer, mentioning that the question (i.e., the question about whether they are going steady) is not answered for the characters, nor for the “you” addressed by the film, a move that aligns the viewers with the characters by creating a point of unity. You, the viewer, do not know and neither do these people portrayed in the film. This move also increases the credibility of the film to the viewers, ostensibly, since it

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is a moment in which the film demonstrates a self-reflexive awareness of its own limitations. The acknowledgement of the audience in this way is a move towards realizing the more complicated situations present in the audience. In Going Steady?, several people discuss their beliefs about the practice of steady dating: Marie discusses it with her mother, Jeff discusses it with his father, and finally, Marie discusses it with her friend. Each conversation shows the young people’s attitudes shifting after discussing the relationship with someone they trust. Marie’s mother asks her if Jeff has “taken liberties,” and Marie’s friend cheerfully implores Marie to set strict limits with respect to the physical liberties she allows Jeff to take. This leads to a shot in which Marie looks into a mirror and states how repulsive she finds the physicality of the relationship: “it seems crude,” she says, in response to her friend telling her that she just has to “know” when to stop petting. Compared to the rest of the film, which uses a static camera and straight angles, this shot is more visually interesting and recalls framing reminiscent of traditional Hollywood films, rather than of these low-budget educational films. The doubled image of Marie’s face, concerned and drawn, aligns the idea of “going steady” with concern, frustration, and worry. This moment also indexes social anxieties about premarital sex, as Marie, the viewer’s point of identification, aligns physical intimacy with crudeness. The shot of Marie’s face in a mirror seems to imply the necessity for self-reflection regarding physical intimacy; it functions within the film as a warning to students to think carefully and examine whether they are experiencing true love or merely the effects of hormones. The positioning of the shot implies a concern for the self over those of the couple unit. In another scene, Jeff’s parents warn him to expect basically nothing from the relationship and to avoid “drifting into marriage,” a peculiar phrasing that seems to align marriage with the idea of “drifting” into poor habits and company; a phrasing that implies a lack of agency in the practice of marriage. There is no mention of the physical aspects of the relationship, though his parents enthusiastically mention that they had each “gone steady” with a number of people prior to marriage. Jeff gives a soliloquy as he tries to figure out whether or not they are going steady, and during this speech, Marie’s image is used again to establish a type of doubling as a montage of them together is intercut with Jeff’s internal discussion. Her photograph is used as the backdrop of his memories of the “fun” they’ve had, such as walking hand in hand, roller-skating, or dancing. The frozen image of Marie, alone, is the background for Jeff’s moving image memories of their good times together. This connects to the

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previous scene in which Marie’s doubled face functioned as an index of concerns for the self over concerns for the relationship. “We sort of, well, we SEEM to get along,” Jeff states. The hesitance in this utterance is not elided from this line; in fact, it is emphasized. The inclusion of “well” and his verbal emphasis on “seem” introduces doubt and the idea that perhaps Jeff and Marie might not always get along, or that disagreements are dismissed or diminished by the newness of their relationship and the strength of their infatuation. This statement also introduces the idea that perhaps because their relationship has been so casual, no disagreements have occurred thus far. In Going Steady?, the idea of love or companionship is depicted as sharing in superficial leisure activities that are conducted in public, such as roller skating, and sharing in these activities with one person only. Love entails having “fun,” but not too much fun, as represented by the dual admonitions to Marie not to allow Jeff to take “too many” liberties. It is important to note that these admonitions about the boundaries of acceptable intimacy are not presented similarly to Jeff. Essentially, the romantic relationship is presented as the institutionally or socially approved opportunity to partake in un-chaperoned public activities with a limited amount of physical pleasure, the limits of which are to be decided by the woman. The film implies that is the woman who will pay the price and be held responsible if these lines in the sand are broken. The role of this film as one shown in schools complicates it, and the ways in which the film invites conversation are limited and fish for regurgitation disguised as discussion. The ultimate question the film poses is not “what do you think?” but “To what degree did you understand what we consider to be appropriate behavior, and can you recite these behaviors?” At its core, the film seems suspicious of high school romance and of “going steady,” though the film does not posit any more acceptable alternatives other than going out with several people. The gravest social concern seems to be avoiding physical intimacy among young people, rather than any number of other concerns, such as avoiding issues in the relationship, determining when a relationship should end, resolving conflicts, and communicating effectively. In Are You Ready for Marriage?, a young couple, who presumably have been going steady for some time, seeks the advice of a counselor to determine if they are, in fact, ready for marriage. This film is notable because it overtly depicts their love not just through what the characters say, but also through images of their physical encounters. Their love is shown through a steamy, yet relatively chaste kissing scene, which opens the film. Later, the characters profess their love through statements such as

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“I just know I’m in love with Sue! Is that bad?” (to which Sue replies, “no! It’s good!”). The film also espouses a litmus test of marriage readiness that has more to do with society approving of the relationship than any individual concern for the relationship’s longevity and potential. The question of the title is asked not from one partner to another, or as a question to oneself, but from a counselor to a couple. The youths, when asked, state that they know they’re in love because they don’t quarrel or want to date other people. The counselor, using various aids such as a poster and action figures, aligns the idea of love with maximum agreeableness and compatibility. He uses miniature people to represent the idea of “psychological distance.” Moving them along a pegged board, which acts as a graph depicting psychological distance vs. time, the counselor demonstrates that time decreases psychological distance to the point that, apparently, in one’s dotage one is nearly the same person as one’s life partner. The counselor repeatedly refers to Sue and Jeff’s inborn male and female “perspectives on life,” valorizing a biologically deterministic view of the relationship. Rationalist discourses and contemporaneous psychological approaches reinforce the idea of a heteronormative relationship, presumably with someone belonging to the same creed, an idea reinforced in the film by the counselor’s repetition of how important it is to share important values with one’s partner. This aligns the idea of love with nature, implying that love and marriage are a natural part of life, and adding credence and a non-denominational dimension to the counselor’s advice. The counselor uses many visual aids and a variety of pop psychology terms to reinforce the idea that love means being similar to another person, though not similar enough to actually be the same gender. At one point, observing the counselor’s emphasis on similarity, Sue exclaims, “But I don’t want to be with a girl like me! I want to be with a man like Jeff!” Over and over again, the film visually depicts love as nearness and agreeableness, implying that a lack of arguing is equated with genuine intimacy. The adviser in the film puts forth and supports the idea that love is created by maximum agreeableness and similarity, giving the adolescents a “Cupid’s Checklist” of things to assess before marriage. The questions on this checklist include: Do they (the couple) come from similar backgrounds? Are they “real friends”? Do they truly understand the Meaning of Marriage (it is implied this has something to do with religion)? While eventually the characters in the film are able to answer all three of these questions with “yes,” these questions seek to instill a premarital contract of similarity, banality, and agreeableness, and to discourage

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intermarriage and miscegenation. The counselor’s implicit promise is that this type of similarity and agreeableness will insulate the participants from the difficulties that can tear marriages apart, but unfortunately, the banality that pervades the film elides any mention of serious issues, such as financial disasters, illness or addiction, deaths of loved ones, or temptation and infidelity. The film seeks to change the world around it by denying these things and validating relationships in which these difficult things simply do not happen, or are, at best, not discussed. Love, in this film, is a process or channel by which similarity is replicated. The young viewers are encouraged to seek out someone similar to themselves and raise smaller versions of themselves. Difference is implicitly discouraged. Young people are encouraged to be patient by the counselor’s admonitions that psychological distance increases over time, and that those who have been together a significantly long time have hardly any “psychological distance” between them. This construct implies that young people should tough out bad relationships because it is only time that can cause people to grow together. The film reinforces the idea of marriage as a lifelong commitment. The rationalist discourses espoused by the counselor realign the idea of love with practicality and nature. Love, in Are You Ready for Marriage?, is a natural next step, but only for people within relationships of which society approves. A more honest title for the film might be Is Society Ready to Publicly Acknowledge Your Relationship? In this film love is equated with marriage or the desire to marry, and true emotional attachment is expressed as a wish to get married, specifically, to someone of a similar or identical religion or creed. Although the film nods to the reality of lust or physical passion with the opening scene of the teenagers kissing, the adviser only glosses over “the physical aspects of marriage,” and makes brief mention of the financial aspects of marriage. Unlike Going Steady, there is no discussion of the “physical aspects” of an unmarried relationship, nor are there recommendations, however vague, for managing them. The ideal of the heterosexual relationship is represented as a willingness to avoid disagreement. Love is held up as the ability to always get along, although the specifics of what that may entail are not discussed or even mentioned. Love means banality and similarity, and the film’s implications in this matter seem troubling if one considers the fact that love means a lack of arguing. The final film under consideration, Jealousy, is the most complicated of the films under review in terms of both content and style. Jealousy follows one woman as she suspects and eventually accuses her husband of adultery. In contrast to the previous films, it occurs within the marital

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home, rather than in an expert’s office or in the parental home of unmarried people. Jealousy represents the domestic heterosexual space in a dark and stifling way, with much of the film occurring in closed spaces with dark, heavy curtains. This film defies the expectations for marriage as happiness that have been set up in the previous films. While it also puts forward the idea of compromise and agreeableness, it diminishes the woman’s concerns and all but dismisses them as irrational, yet unsurprising, ramblings. This film consists of a wife’s internal monologue concerning her husband’s late arrival home, her suspicions about it, and their subsequent fight. It also depicts her eventual discovery that he was telling the truth when he told her that he was just staying late at the office to perfect a new lipstick packaging device, rather than hanging out with the local floozy. I find it remarkable that the wife’s suspicions are so easily allayed by one call from someone self-identifying as a coworker, since he so easily could be a confidante of a truly philandering husband. In this film, the woman’s internal monologue is only interrupted by male voices of reason. Much of the film consists of images of the woman fretting and worrying alone, focusing on her impatient and neurotic body language as she paces, crosses her legs, peers out the window, and so forth. Instead of portraying an amenable partnership, marriage here is dark and lonely, an echo chamber of the (anxious) mind. Marriage exists only within the home and from the woman’s perspective, which is encoded as neurotic and invalidated. Marriage is less of a partnership and more of a situation that exists only in the single-family bourgeois home, and its tensions can be alleviated only by modernity, as it is the telephone call from an outsider that allays the woman’s fears. The mere title of the film, Jealousy, puts all the concerns about the marriage onto the woman and packages them as a mortal sin that is aligned with her. Jealousy differs from the other films under examination in that it represents what could be seen as a worst-case outcome if the marriage so desired by the teenagers in the other films had come to fruition. In Jealousy, marriage is represented as an institution in which the male is correct and the woman’s incredulity, ambition, and jealousy are the cause of the problems, when the objective viewer may note from the start that if the husband had simply communicated more, many of the problems could have been avoided. The wife’s self-flagellating statements later in the film indicate that in this film, love is held up as a situation in which one person, preferably the female, alters her perception of reality in order to achieve an agreeable scenario in which she simply trusts her husband and his friend at their words. Here, love is neither patient nor kind; it is simply acceptance and re-tuning oneself to fit in with the presentation of reality performed by

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the more powerful agent within the romantic partnership. The film presents an example of the tuning of the self. In this film, the woman states the importance of “believing in” both her husband and herself, rather than believing in the relationship; the object of her jealousy is never actually discussed. She mentions, in passing, a middling acting career that she gave up for marriage; is she jealous of her husband’s prestige at designing packaging for traditionally female cosmetics? She certainly doesn’t seem jealous of the beauty parlor owner with whom she accuses her husband of sleeping. Could she be jealous of the couples in the other films, who, within the diegesis of the film, are still left with their untarnished and naïve ideals of marriage? The viewer never learns. Jealousy disturbingly implies that marital problems originate with female hysteria and can be solved only with the guiding voices of males. The film presents marriage as unequal and patently miserable. The woman is alone tending house for a man she believes capable of adultery, and on top of long days at the office, the man is hen-pecked and has to suffer accusations of adultery (or must concoct elaborate stories to continue his affair). The channels of communication depict the marital relationship as being filled with angry, accusatory noise from the female, and weak protestations from the male. There is no meeting of the hearts or minds, and very little empathy demonstrated. There is not even a nostalgic feeling toward romance, as the event of marriage itself seems to be associated with lost opportunities and a lack of personal fulfillment. Instead of depicting what could have been gained by the romantic partnership, the characters in this film fixate on the personal losses they incurred because they entered into it. In this sense, Jealousy seems forward-thinking in its depiction of people regretting having chosen marriage over careers. In contrast to Going Steady? and Are You Ready for Marriage?, a negative scenario is herein presented. Perhaps the emotional impact of this dark little film dissuaded some high schoolers from “drifting” into marriage. While critical readings of these films are long overdue on their own terms, simply due to the reach, influence and penetration that these films had, I argue that a close reading of these films will enhance our understanding not only of postwar educational norms, but of how these norms were recirculated and mediated within these coercive settings. Toby Miller writes about “well-tempered, managed cultural subjects formed and governed through institutions and discourses” (Miller 1993, ix). This description aptly captures the dynamic of classroom films in general and these dating films in particular, which sought to tame unruly, sex-crazed individuals and turn them into “well-tempered, managed” subjects who would mate and in turn produce another generation of subjects.

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The title of Miller’s work, in his own words, tropes Johann Sebastian Bach’s Das wohltempierte Klavier (The welltempered keyboard) of 1722-44, which uses all the major and minor keys of the clavichord across two dozen preludes and fugues and is regarded as an exemplary exercise in freedom and stricture—produced from technique. […] The music is essentially an exercise in mutability, always within the domain of a polite, coordinated tone that does not jar and is consistent; it is a pedagogic work. […] Bach favored small adjustments to the system [in contrast to mean toning] that would find each key equally pleasant to the ear, even if none would have the mathematically perfect tuning available to certain digits under the existing method. (Miller 1993, ix)

In his work, Miller takes as a metaphor this method of “tuning” and applies it to the postmodern subject. The phenomenon of classroom films meant to instill character values is a particularly salient example of this process, as it requires subjects to be individually, if not mathematically, “tuned” to hegemonic cultural values such as heterosexuality, abstinence from pre-marital sex, and other values espoused by these mental hygiene films (e.g., conformity, agreeableness, honesty, good personal hygiene, respecting one’s parents). The classroom films meant to produce this example through drilling and instilling in subjects a narrow set of beliefs via “small adjustments” to the larger system. Rather than mathematical tuning, such as by standardized classroom quizzes and aptitude tests, these classroom subjects are urged to engage in small self-adjustments that would make each individual equally pleasing to the system that produced him/her, and would in turn produce the intended result: a group of people who espoused the same ideals as those who educated them had espoused. This group of people would perform as they saw in the example, rather than their natural proclivities, or, presumably, as prior generations, ones who had not had the opportunity to learn via film, had behaved. The films functioned as a link between present, past, and future because they were a solution grounded in past educational and social failures, and a solution implemented in order to prevent future social issues. The result, one could argue, is the common perception of the 1950s as a banal and conformist time period. The drive to create these subjects led to the creation of documents that portray this time period as conservative, grey, and repressive. In light of the Cold War, and the prevailing fear of another postwar generation turning into a lost generation it was especially important that each subject be “tuned” to something approximating the acceptable values. As Smith writes, “[…] the mental hygiene classroom

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film [was] a uniquely American experiment in social engineering, the marriage of a philosophy – progressive education – and a technology – the instructional film” (1999, 18). Therefore, films were used in the classroom and produced to mimic the theatrical films student-subjects often saw, in the hopes of producing the desired type of citizen. Leisure practices such as filmgoing were engaged and transformed into a means of producing the desired citizenry, in an attempt that could be read as misleading. But instead of seeing engaging films or familiar stars, students were presented with these films in order to begin a process of self-adjustment. Miller writes that “determinate indeterminacy […is ] an ethical incompleteness, which cultural subjects are encouraged to find in themselves and then remedy” (1993, xii). The dating films all presented relatable vignettes of “everypeople” that the target audience would see in themselves, assuming, anyway, that they were heterosexual and/or longing for a committed marital relationship with a specific person. In these dating films, the ethical incompleteness works on several levels. It is implied that heterosexual is natural, and that students without a life partner may feel incomplete. Even if the students do not feel this way, depicting it via film would encourage them to feel an ethical incompleteness. The disparity between the student’s own relationship ideals and behaviors and the ones seen in the film also called attention to the disjuncture between the filmic examples and their everyday, lived experience. The people are intended to be relatable not just because they are young, but because they are imperfect. They are unsure about what they are doing with their relationship (Going Steady?), unsure if they are ready to make a lifelong commitment (Are You Ready for Marriage?) or unwilling and unable to communicate effectively or value each other (Jealousy). While the people in these films are often caricatures, they point to real issues and features of genuine human beings in these contexts, such as the rashness of youth infatuation, or the tendency to assume the worst. By presenting these “out of tune” examples, the dating films allowed for students to tune themselves to the values that resounded through the films, as they saw the disjuncture between themselves and the ideals described in the films. On the surface, the promotion of hegemonically valued romance and marriage practices is an important one for any society that seeks to continue for another generation. Encouraging adolescents to see their own indeterminacy and determine to correct it by creating media texts that promote these practices is an understandable, if problematic, approach to the self-preservationist thrust of society. Presenting issues related to dating and marriage in an attempt to thwart common issues for

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the viewers’ futures is another understandable, yet problematic, approach. Attempting to avoid the social issues related to premarital sex, out-ofwedlock birth, and unhappy marriages or divorce seems simplest if the strategy of prevention is used. These films were used to mediate baseline values for the youth; they presented incontrovertible images and aural tracks of people who aspired for similar things in ways similar to the intended viewers. My argument is not to condemn these films nor their viewing practices, but rather, to illuminate the nuances inherent in this cultural phenomenon and use it as a means of examining larger issues about education and how media works within schools. There are greater implications at stake if character and social education works on a simply imitative or self-correctional basis. By reducing thorny issues related to interpersonal relationships into a lesson based on modeling, recalling, and imitating, students are done a serious disservice, one that could even have harmful effects on their future. Examining the outcomes of relationships in the generational cohort who was exposed to these films is one way of evaluating their outcomes. The increased divorce rate alone seems to imply that the films were not successful in the ways that the filmmakers intended; however, it is reductive to simply dismiss these films as effective or ineffective. Their actual effects on audiences are outside the purview of this study, but more work is needed to fully examine the audience reactions to these films, the overall educational context in which they were shown, and the contemporaneous evaluations of their efficacy.

Works Cited Miller, Toby. 1993. The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, Ken. 1999. Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films 1945-1970. New York: Blast Books. Smoodin, Eric. 2004. Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, & American Film Studies, 1930-1960. Durham: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER TWO SISTERHOOD IS TOO POWERFUL FOR TELEVISION: ADAPTING THE WONDER WOMAN FAMILY FROM COMIC BOOK TO SMALL SCREEN, 1941-1977 RUTH MCCLELLAND-NUGENT

The New Original Adventures of Wonder Woman debuted in the United States during the United Nations’ International Year of the Woman in 1976. Only three years had passed since the United States Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. In that same year, Ms. magazine featured the comic book version of Wonder Woman on its debut cover, hailing her inside an irresistible role model (Edgar 1972, 52). Reading a description of the television adaptation of the comic book, one might think that it represented yet another triumph for the contemporary feminist movement. Its heroine, Princess Diana of the Amazons, is "Wonder Woman," a super-strong woman, physically and mentally superior to the men around her. She comes from a race of matriarchal superwomen; with her mother, the Amazon Queen, and her younger sister, Drusilla, Wonder Woman forms a complete family, one without need of men. Based on a comic book that was originally designed as "propaganda" for women's leadership, at first glance it might appear to extol feminist separatist culture (Daniels 2000, 22).Yet in execution, the Wonder Woman television adaptation failed to fulfill the feminist promise of its comic book source material, most notably in its portrayal of the Wonder Family. In the first season, the adaptation paid lip service to the comic’s original feminist text in its portrayal of the Wonder Family, but subverted the message via its camp sensibility, and, at times, a distinctly antifeminist delivery. In the second season, the program became more serious, but reduced its portrayals of the Amazons and Wonder Woman’s family;

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by the third season, they did not appear at all. While a decreasingly campy tone (and Lynda Carter's choice as an actor to play the character seriously) allowed for some feminist reading of the program, overall the result was a far cry from the feminist origins of the comic book Amazons. The original Wonder Woman comic was largely the brainchild of a middle-aged Harvard-educated psychologist, William Moulton Marston, assisted by artist Harry G. Peter and comic publisher M.C. Gaines. Marston, although academically trained in both psychology and law, spent much of his professional career working with popular culture, serving as a consultant for advertisers, an advisor in women's magazines, writing novels and self-help works. A keen observer of popular culture, Marston was interested in the potential for comic books to educate children; he jumped at the offer to create a super-heroine whom he hoped would change the way American readers thought about women (Daniels 2000). Marston's creation was full of his own, somewhat eccentric, feminist thought. His ideas about gender derived largely from his own psychological studies. These included experiments in lie detection, in which his data led him to conclude that women were more truthful than men, contradicting the stereotype that women were deceitful manipulators. He also theorized about learning self-discipline by learning from others, coming to the conclusion that women tended to be good leaders because they were more caring than men. Believing that societies could be improved by the improvement of individual psyches, Marston concluded that learning to value the more loving, less abusive leadership of women would lead to greater social and political progress away from war and totalitarianism (Bunn 1997). Drawing on these beliefs and his personal fascination with the myths of Greece and Rome, Marston developed his comic book Amazons, an allfemale race from ancient times who lived on a magical island under the protection of the goddess Aphrodite. There they pursued intellectual and athletic excellence under the loving, authoritative Queen Hippolyte in a land where there is “no want, no illness, no hatreds, no wars” (Marston and Peter 1941, 22). Amazon scientists create such wonders as robot planes and a healing ray that cures all ills (Marston and Peter 1942, 152). Thanks to a combination of mental and physical exercise they are exceedingly strong. They study all languages and excel in all disciplines, enjoying frequent contests, and athletic competitions, cheering their princess on her visits back to Paradise Island (Marston and Peter 1942, 9193). As champions of Aphrodite they staunchly oppose Mars, interpreted as the god of war and hate. In Marston's vision, Mars was portrayed as responsible for Nazism and other, masculinized threats to peace, while

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Aphrodite represented the feminine principles of love and peace (Marston and Peter 1942, 147-153). Motherhood plays an important role in the comic. This separatist feminist paradise included numerous mothers. The Queen sculpted Diana, her only child, from stone; Aphrodite miraculously granted the child life. This Diana would grow up to become Wonder Woman, entering the "Man's World" as both the superheroine and as her secret identity, Diana Prince. In one of Marston’s scripts, we see other Amazon children—all girls—who welcome two “Man's World” orphans with enthusiasm and invitations to play at Amazon games. One of them says of their Wonder Woman doll, “she’s the most beautiful woman in the world—except my mother!” (Marston and Peter 1944, 130). Motherhood is even key to criminal redemption in Marston’s vision. Wonder Woman's major nemesis in the comic, Baroness von Gunther, is at first portrayed as a murdering Nazi psychopath who callously tries to run down two children with her car. However, the story soon reveals that the Baroness is herself a mother; the Nazis have kidnapped her child and murdered her husband in order to make her a spy. When Wonder Woman rescues the Baroness’ daughter (and a number of other children) from a Nazi internment camp, the Baroness vows to reform, and under the careful tutelage of the Amazons her true, loving nature emerges (Marston and Peter 1943, 123-144). The most frequently pictured family unit in Marston's scripts is Wonder Woman and her mother. They are in frequent contact via a “mental radio,” a fantastic Amazon invention that allows them to see and talk to each other. Wonder Woman leaps into her mother's arms after a long separation, and values her wise counsel. (Marston and Peter 1942, 8993). And finally, when mother Hippolyte learns that her daughter may be in danger, she secretly travels to the United States, bests Diana in combat, assumes the "Wonder Woman" identity, and saves her daughter from peril (Marston and Peter 1944, 23-36). Not only is she protective of her daughter, but she is strong, capable of as equally heroic feats as her famous progeny. Marston’s death in 1947 left the comic in the hands of Robert "Bob” Kanigher, who supervised a massive re-write of the series in 1958. In the new version, the all-female family is clearly presented as incomplete, as the Amazon's home is not a refuge from male treachery, but from terrible wars that killed off all the Amazon's men (Kanigher et al 1958, 193-195). In Kanigher's version of Wonder Woman, the Queen still longs for her long-lost consort, Prince Theno, who had been lost at sea. And rather than having been born without the aid of males, as she was in Marston’s original version of the story, Prince Theno is alleged to be Wonder

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Woman's father (Kanigher at al. 1964, 293-316, 381-393). Despite its incompleteness, Kanigher's Wonder Family was generally a happy, loving one, and he introduced important new members of the family who would influence the television series. His new stories introduced Wonder Woman as a toddler ("Wonder Tot") and a teenager ("Wonder Girl"). Eventually, these characters began interacting with each other as the "Wonder Family." Although the younger incarnations of Wonder Woman did not survive a 1965 re-write, the "Wonder Girl" identity and costume was transferred to an orphan girl named Donna Troy, who was then raised as Diana's younger sister on the Amazon’s Island (Girdiano et al. 1969, 1-8). When the television series finally came to fruition, the Amazons and the Wonder Family incorporated elements from Kanigher’s stories, including Wonder Woman's younger sister, and the Amazon longing for men. But the series had at least two false starts before coming into full form. In 1967, Batman television series producer William Dozier commissioned a 5-minute pilot treatment, "Who's Afraid of Diana Prince," as a possible pitch for a Wonder Woman series. This version featured a clutzy young American woman, the bespectacled Diana Prince, who lives with a frumpy, nagging mother, and imagines herself as Wonder Woman when she looks in her mirror (Daniels 2000, 120). In the pilot clip, Diana's mother frets that Diana needs to get "a fellow." She continues: "How do you expect to get a husband flying around all the time? Isn't about time for you to decide to stand on a spot for a change? You don't know how it feels to be the mother of an unmarried daughter your age. Now the whole neighborhood's talking. Look at Lucille Maxwell, now she's 25 years old and got three kids already." When Diana protests that Lucille isn't married, her mother responds with "Details... Always details! Closely modeled on the campy humor and satire of Batman, this treatment entirely eliminated the Amazon mother and daughter of Paradise Island. It was not developed into a full-length series. The Amazons reappeared, briefly, in a 1974 television movie. In this version, a blonde Wonder Woman, played by former tennis star Cathy Lee Crosby, was "an Amazon who barges into the outside world to track down lawbreakers and killers, using martial arts and her feminine wiles. She's Ms. James Bond" (TV Time 1974). Although this character came from a mysterious island of women, she had no super-powers, instead acting as a martial arts wielding sort of spy, and the ninety minute pilot used flashbacks to the island to flesh out the character's backstory with Amazon philosophy. Crosby, at least, hoped the series would have feminist potential: "I want to make Diana sensitive, not a caricature," she said in a newspaper interview, highlighting one of the lines from Diana's mother,

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Queen Hippolyta: "the true strength of women is their sensitivity" (The Evening Independent 1974). Despite centering the Amazon's philosophy and their role in Wonder Woman's heritage, Crosby also declared this was "not a Women's Lib picture," softening this statement with: "But it's about time a woman is seen where she comes out on top" (Lewis, 1974). Whatever its feminist merits (or lack thereof), this treatment did not result in a continuing series, either. The unease about the role of feminism in the short-lived series is apparent, however, from Crosby's remarks, and this ambivalence remains clear in the 1975 pilot episode of the next incarnation of the story, The New Original Wonder Woman. Firmly grounded in the look and feel of the 1940s comic, this Wonder Woman, played by Lynda Carter, was a darkhaired super-powered Amazon in a costume that closely mirrored the comic book version. Written by Stanley Ralph Ross, who had written 27 episodes of Batman, the pilot was campy (Daniels 2000, 140). Producer Douglas Cramer acknowledged that the program was very much influenced by the success of Batman, although it became less jokey as the series progressed (Carter and Cramer 2004). In sending up the original comic, it could not help but send up the Amazon matriarchy, turning Marston's feminist separatist society into antifeminist farce. The 1975 television pilot adhered to the same basic plot Marston had used to introduce the character in 1941. An American Army Air Force pilot, Steve Trevor (played by Lyle Waggoner), is shot down over the Amazons’ Paradise Island. The Amazons heal his wounds, and determine to send him back to the world of Men beyond. An athletic contest among the Amazons determines who will do so; this champion will be known as “Wonder Woman.” In both comic and television program, the Princess Diana, who has a crush on the pilot, competes in disguise and wins the honor. Even the ultimate contest is the same: bullets and bracelets, an Amazon "game” in which one Amazon shoots the other with a gun, and the defending Amazon must deflect the bullet with her bracelets. Despite the similarities of outline, in practice the television version sent up the Amazons as ditzy, sexually frustrated women with an imperious Queen who hardly seems the wise and loving Mother of the comic. For example, in the comic book, when the plane crashes on Paradise Island, the Queen is shown respectfully consulting with the Amazon doctor, who warns Hippolyta that the princess “acts rather strangely around that man.” The Queen responds “So she is in love! I was afraid of that! You are quite right, doctor. I shall take steps immediately.” The doctor responds “That would be wise. It’s for the child’s own good” (Marston and Peter 1941, 9). When Diana protests, the Queen tells her of

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the Amazon’s history. Marston's script closely parallels the Greek myth of Amazons being tricked by Hercules, but adds on his own mythology wherein the Amazons were rescued by the goddess Aphrodite, and granted their own island retreat (Marston and Peter 1941, 10-11). By contrast, the opening of the television series paints the Amazons as naïve about the outside world, sexually frustrated, and hypocritical in their claims to sisterhood. The casting of veteran comic Chloris Leachman as the Amazon Queen certainly suggests an intent to satirize Amazon society. These Amazons do not have Marston's rich mythological backstory, but a much more vague tale of persecution, played for laughs. In the first episode of the new series, when explaining that men are not to be trusted, the Queen tells Princess Diana nothing of Hercules or Aphrodite, but simply says: “You’re too young to remember when women were slaves in Rome, and Greece.” As her eyes become dreamy and her voice singsongy, she continues: "Then we found this Island where we could live in peace, harmony... sisterhood.” At the word sisterhood, the Queen and the Doctor smile at each other, but the Queen breaks the moment with a harsh tone, and abruptly commands the Doctor, “BEGONE.” The sudden turn towards command belies the claims of sisterhood; the interaction between the doctor and queen suggests, rather, a parody of feminist claims to sisterhood. The Queen’s comic hypocrisy continues as she cuts off her daughter’s defense of men with “I named this island Paradise for a reason—there are no men on it. Therefore it is free of their war, their greed, their hostilities, their barbaric masculine behavior.” As she makes this speech, she bites her hands as she lingers over her description of men. The lust and sexual frustration that serve as the subtext to this scene are supposed to be funny; it is, however, a far cry from Marston's vision of happy matriarchy. It is perhaps closer in spirit to Kanigher's Amazons, who long for men, but the implications of hypocrisy and misandry are new. The Queen also tells her daughter that: “We are stronger wiser, more advanced than all those people in those jungles out there! Our civilization is perfection!” Yet there is little evidence of this perfection; the television pilot leaves out much of the Amazon's wisdom and science. In the comic, the queen consults with the Amazon’s "Magic Sphere,” which shows her the story behind Steve’s crash. She gets divine advice when the goddesses Athena and Aphrodite advise her that the Amazons must support America, which they call “the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women!” The Queen decrees a contest to determine the strongest and fittest Amazon who shall “go forth to fight for liberty and freedom and all womankind!” Her daughter is forbidden to participate because “the winner

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must take this man back to America and never return, and I couldn’t bear to have you leave me forever” (Marston and Peter 1941, 15.) By contrast, the television Amazons know nothing about the outside world. They have no goddesses or magic to advise them. Instead, it is the very male Steve Trevor who has to explain it to them ("The New Original Wonder Woman" 1975). They continue to be comically naïve when, in a later episode, the Queen suggests to Diana that she should just "reason with” the Nazis ("The Feminum Mystique, Part 2” 1976). Obviously, these Amazons are not guided by wise goddesses who can provide advice about the Nazi threat. Nor is the Queen the wise leader, sending her Wonder Woman to save the world; in the television version, it is Diana who realizes the Nazi threat and blatantly disobeys her mother by staying in the "Man's World" to fight against them. This puts Wonder Woman in defiance of her mother, undermining both the matriarchal familial authority and the political matriarchy of Paradise Island. Yet the pilot episode has its moments of presenting the Wonder Woman family in a positive light. After the disguised Diana wins the athletic tournament that will make her Wonder Woman, both comic and television series emphasize the mother-daughter bond between Princess and Queen. In the comic, the Queen says to her daughter: ”I knew it—I felt it! I thought perhaps—well, it’s too late now! You’ve won and I’m proud of you! In America you’ll indeed be a 'Wonder Woman,' for I have taught you well”(Marston and Peters 1941, 16). The television pilot strikes a similar note of duty and maternal pride, rather than mockery. Without knowing the identity of the disguised Amazon who has won the contest that will take her to the outside world the Queen solemnly tells her that "the task you have chosen is the most difficult sacrifice any person can make." Removing her wig and mask, Diana reveals herself, saying "I do it, because I love my people...I love my Queen...but most of all, I love my mother." After a moment of shock, the Queen descends from the platform and tells Diana, "I would have expected no less from my own daughter." "I did it for you, Mother," Diana responds as they embrace each other. It is an authentic moment from both actresses, as Leachman abandons her campy delivery, Carter continues to play Wonder Woman as completely sincere, and the music swells to a sentimental finish behind them. The sincerity of Lynda Carter’s delivery is particularly important, because it is clear that she viewed the program as potentially feminist. In a 1975 interview about the program, she noted, "I think of Wonderwoman [sic] as a real champion for the feminists....I think she gives women a better self-image" (Scott 1975). Thirty years later, on the DVD commentary, Carter confirmed that her acting choices were intended to underscore the

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character's humanity, sincerity, and feminism. As she puts it, Wonder Woman is “not too impressed with herself; after all, she has an island full of sisters who can do pretty much the same thing” (Carter and Cramer 2004). Yet despite Carter's interpretation, the scripts often changed or altered key elements in Marston's conception that deflected or parodied the original emphasis on nurturing femininity and female leadership. For example, in the second episode, Wonder Woman tangles with Baroness von Gunther, one of her major antagonists from the comic. But whereas in the comic, von Gunther had been redeemed through her motherhood, this Baroness is pure villain; no backstory about being a wife and mother emerges, and the character is not reformed or redeemed ("Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther” 1975). Indeed, the comic books' emphasis on reforming female criminals never appears in the television scripts. However, the series picked up on Kanigher's vision of the "Wonder Family" sharing adventures, albeit in an altered form. Three episodes featured Diana's younger sister, named Drusilla. Although there had never been a character named Drusilla in the comic books, her costume suggested the Donna Troy character, and her mischievous teenaged exploits recalled Kanigher's Wonder Girl scripts. In episode 4, “The Feminum Mystique” the Queen (now played by Carolyn Jones rather than Chloris Leachman) decides that it is time for Diana to return because she had not intended for her to become such a celebrity as Wonder Woman. Diana’s younger sister, Drusilla, (it is never clear if she is adopted, or the Queen’s natural child), is tasked with bringing her elder sister home. When she flies to America in order to meet her sister, the two have a joyous reunion. Diana enlists her sister's aid to help convince their mother that she must remain in America to help defeat the Nazis. This departure from the comic book narrative of the Queen's wise leadership pits the girls against her, both as a leader and as their mother (“The Feminum Mystique, Part 1" 1976). Drusilla, played by Debra Winger, is a wide-eyed teenager who enjoys ice cream, hot dogs, and men. Her naïveté leads her to fall for a Nazi double agent; smitten by him, she breaks “one of the very first commandments: Never tell anyone about Paradise Island.” She continues to explain to him that the Island is disguised by something to do with refraction, giggling and adding “I didn’t pay too much attention in my science class.” She refuses to tell him its exact location, but she is charmed into telling him about the stars on paradise Island, allowing the Nazis to pinpoint its location. Although her betrayal is unintentional, the young Amazon nevertheless cannot keep the secrets of her sisters—and her

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family—from a man. She is not good at science, and a poor judge of character. Far from a feminist role model, Drusilla is written as a ditzy teenager (“The Feminum Mystique, Part 1”1976). The Nazi discovery of Paradise Island, however, gives the viewer another chance to see Amazon society, and a provided an opportunity for the program to cast Drusilla and the other Amazons in a more favorable light. The Nazis invade Paradise Island in order to get the indestructible metal, "feminum" from its mines. They overcome the Amazons with poison gas, who are then forced to work for their Nazi captors. At this moment, the program's tone becomes serious. The Queen stops being played for laughs, and in a fairly dramatic scene, she tells her daughter to do what she must to free the Amazons, even if it means the Queen’s own life. They work out a ruse to fool the Nazis, mother and daughters working together to foil their captors. “I'm terribly proud of both of you!” the Queen tells her daughters when they succeed in overpowering their captors. Wonder Woman responds: “And we’re proud to be your daughters! Even in the face of death you’re the best possible example we could have.” In a display of both maternal affection and wisdom, the Queen blames herself for sending someone as inexperienced as Drusilla into the world “to do a woman's job. You made mistakes, but you returned to rid out island of those dreadful Nazis.” As for Diana, the Queen tells her: "Not only did you make our island safe again, you made me very happy with your concern over my personal safety” (“The Feminum Mystique, Part 2" 1976). As in the pilot episode, it is a swing from camp levity to seriousness that first sends up the Amazons, and then lets the Wonder Family save the day with courage, cunning, and affection. We see them once more that season, in the season finale, when Drusilla returns to the "Man's World" and helps her sister foil one more Nazi plot. The script centers on Drusilla's romantic interest in a young war hero, and highlights her ignorance about men. Diana serves as a mentor to her younger sister, but her ultimate lesson about heterosexual relations is troubling. In the climactic final scene, Wonder Woman fakes an injury in order to let Drusilla's young man save the day. It is unclear whether this is in support of the American war effort (the young man is a war hero) or simply to bolster his self-confidence ("Wonder Woman in Hollywood”1977). In either case, the notion that a highly capable woman should pretend to be weaker than she is in order to bolster a man's ego or reputation seems a remarkably antifeminist lesson for the elder sister to teach Drusilla. At the end of the first season, the ABC network dropped the series, which was then picked up by CBS, and significantly re-written. Season

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Two moved the action out of the 1940s and into the contemporary 1970s, and the program, renamed The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, became significantly less campy. In the opening episode, viewers were reintroduced to the Amazons. In the episode titled "The Return of Wonder Woman, " an American plane full of top scientists is sabotaged while flying over Paradise Island. Using their powerful technology, the Amazons take over the plane, bring it down, and investigate what is happening to the scientists. In this portrayal of the Amazons, neither their ideals nor their competence are mocked, although once again, the difference between their society and that of "mortals" is highlighted. On the plane is Steve Trevor, Jr., the son of the American pilot whom Wonder Woman had rescued in the first series. He bears a striking resemblance to his father (the two characters were, in fact, played by the same actor, Lyle Waggoner). Diana at first thinks it is the World War II-era Steve, and cannot understand how Steve could still be young. Her mother, the Queen (played by Beatrice Straight) has to explain that ordinary humans marry and breed: "ordinary humans have a sort of immortality, at that." The series never addresses how Amazons reproduce, but it is apparently not in the mortal way. Diana's sister Drusilla is not present in this episode, nor in any others; she disappears entirely from the series. A cousin, Evadne, is introduced briefly in this episode, but does not reappear in subsequent episodes. In this new, more serious treatment of the Amazons, the Queen is both wise and democratic. She has an Amazon council with whom she consults about the Americans and the terrorists they are fighting. The council concludes that Diana should once again enter the outside world as Wonder Woman. "In the spirit of sisterly competition and in keeping with the traditions of Paradise Island," Evadne challenges Diana to a duel of bullets and bracelets, a contest Diana easily wins. As in the first pilot, the tension between the Queen's role as monarch and her role as mother is evident. When Diana wins the bullets and bracelets contest, and once again prepares to depart, she says to her mother, "The Queen is bound by tradition. But you're my mother and even now, if you tell me to stay... I'll stay." Her mother responds, "I love you and I'm proud of you. And I'm also worried about you. You're my daughter, but I am the Queen, and you must go" ("The Return of Wonder Woman" 1977). In this second season, Diana takes up her Wonder Woman uniform and powers once again, but with a new piece of technology: a special Amazon mirror that Diana uses to contact her mother by touching the ruby in her tiara. This method of contact, seemingly an analogue to Marston's mental radio, appeared only once in the series. In episode 4, "The Bermuda Triangle Dilemma," Diana contacts her mother via the ruby. The Queen

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appears in the mirror, which functions as a two-way visual and audio link. Concerned about a conflict of interest between her loyalty to the Amazons and to the American agency she works for, Diana asks her mother for advice, adding "No one is wiser than you, Mother." The Queen responds enigmatically, "Alas, my wisdom does not extend to worldly dilemmas. In times of trouble I can only turn to Amazonian philosophy. 'When you see the heart of darkness you will begin to perceive the light'." As with the Amazons in the first episode of Season Two, this scene is played straight with the implication that the Queen really is wise; there is none of the original pilot's campiness in this exchange between mother and daughter, ruler and subject. It hearkens back to the Marston and Kanigher portrayals of Diana as a young woman who trusts the advice of her intelligent, intensely ethical Queen and mother. Yet this episode was also the last one in which the Queen, or any Amazon, would appear to aid Wonder Woman. Her family, her Amazon sisters, and their entire culture disappeared from the series, just as their portrayal became more serious. Why the disappearance? Producer Douglas C. Cramer notes the great expense of the Amazon sequences on his DVD commentary, so cost may well have been a consideration. It took time to make the Amazons up, money to design their fantastic costumes, and more money to hire enough extras to make it look as if there were an island filled with Amazons (Carter and Cramer, 2004). Financial limitations are particularly obvious in the first season's episode "The Feminum Mystique." When the Nazis invade Paradise Island, Wonder Woman tells her mother that she is only taking a few Amazons to fight them, saying “I don’t want to alarm everyone." One might think it would be better to have a large force to fight off that threat, but an Amazon army of extras would have been rather expensive to costume and pay. Yet budgetary restrictions cannot entirely explain the disappearance of all Amazons. The inexpensive "special effect" mirror that allowed Diana to talk with her mother, for example, was used only once. Whatever the reason for the disappearance of the Amazon family, it serves as a perfect example of the media hostility towards feminism in the 1970s. As Susan Faludi notes in Backlash, "by 1971, the press was already declaring this latest 'fad' a 'bore' or 'dead'" (1992, 88-90). In the mid-1970s, media portrayals of feminism tended to focus on the supposed total success of the movement, suggesting that women no longer faced any sexism. While the comic book version of Wonder Woman had been given a superficially feminist makeover beginning in 1972, (even featuring a "Women's Lib Issue," whose cliffhanger story was never resolved), the television series, by contrast, tended to ignore the movement entirely (Delaney and Giarodino 1972).

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In fact, the series' original concept as Batman-style camp almost guaranteed it would not be anti-feminist. Batman had successfully parodied the earnest tone of the 1940s comic book heroes, but the Batman character had never been written as social critique. By contrast, in sending up its Golden Age heroine, the Wonder Woman television series took on a character with a serious message about gender equality at her core. Mocking Amazon society as man-hating, portraying the wise Amazons as frivolous, and foolish, and portraying the Wonder Family as comically inept were all in keeping with parody, but it was parody that could be reasonably understood by viewers as taking an anti-feminist stand. Presenting Wonder Woman's matriarchal background in a serious and positive light, on the other hand, might have been understood to validate the potential role of women’s leadership in a new feminist world. Wonder Woman's matriarchal family and separatist Amazon society could have been a strong challenge to patriarchal society, but the television series consistently undermined both maternal authority and sisterly relations, via parody in the first season, and then disappearing those elements entirely in the second season. This, too, fit comfortably with the antifeminist media trends of the era, which celebrated "first woman" breakthroughs, valorizing extraordinary women while also downplaying how womanhood had shaped their lives, or failing to acknowledge the influence of women's broader movements and alliances. Meanwhile those television dramas that did treat feminist characters seriously tended to locate them in the workplace, where a "surrogate family" stood in for other relatives. As Ruth Rosen noted, "Work-families also reinforced the association of feminism with an identity based on something outside of home and hearth" (Rosen 2000, 303-305, 322). In disappearing Wonder Woman's Amazon family, and instead focusing on her relationships with male coworkers, the Wonder Woman series replicated this pattern almost exactly, severely weakening the matriarchal-feminist roots of the comic book character. While Lynda Carter may have interpreted Wonder Woman as someone with an island of sisters who could all do the same fantastic feats, the series' erasure of her family muted her feminist acting choices. The pilot episode had declared that "Sisterhood is the most powerful thing in the world," but such sisterhood was perhaps a little too powerful for a television series launched amidst antifeminist backlash in the media during the 1970s.

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Works Cited Bunn, Geoffrey C. 1997. “The Lie Detector, Wonder Woman and Liberty: The Life and Works of William Moulton Marston." History of the Human Sciences 10: 91–119. Carter, Lynda, and Douglas S. Cramer. 2004. Commentary. Disc 1. "The New Original Wonder Woman." Wonder Woman: The Complete First Series. DVD. Burbank, VCA: Warner Video. Daniel, Les. 2000. Wonder Woman: The Complete History. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. The Evening Independent. 1974. “Wonder Woman to be Serious Series.” March 9. Edgar, Joanne. 1972. "Wonder Woman Revisited.” Ms. July, 52. Delaney, Samuel (w), and Dick Giordano (a). 1972. "The Grandee Caper!" Wonder Woman (v. 1) #203. November-December. Faludi, Susan. 1992. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Anchor. Giordiano, Dick (p), Marv Wolfman (s), Gil Kane (p), Nick Cardy (i). 1969. "The Origin of Wonder Girl." Teen Titans (vol. 1) #22. JulyAugust. Lewis, Dan. 1974. “She Played Wonder Woman.” Lakeland Ledger, March 17 Kanigher, Robert (w), Ross Andru (p) and Mike Esposito (i). [1958-59] 2007. Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman, vol. 1.Ed. Peter Hambrousi. NY: DC Comics. —. [1960-63] 2008. Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman, vol. 2.Ed. Peter Hambrousi and Sean Mackiewicz. NY: DC Comics. —. [1963-65] 2009. Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman, vol. 1.Ed. Bob Harris. NY: DC Comics. Marston, William Moulton (w), and Harry G. Peter (a). [1941-42] 1998. Wonder Woman Archives, vol. 1. Ed. Bob Kahan. NY: DC Comics. —. [1942-43] 2000. Wonder Woman Archives, vol. 2. Ed. Dale Crain. NY: DC Comics. —. [1944] 2003. Wonder Woman Archives, vol. 4. Ed. Dale Crain. NY: DC Comics —. [1944-45] 2007. Wonder Woman Archives, vol. 5. Ed. Scott Nybakken. NY: DC Comics. Rosen, Ruth. 2000. The World Split Open: How the Women's Movement Changed America. New York: Penguin Books. Scott, Vernon. 1975. “Wonderwoman [sic] is liberated.” The Nashua Telegraph, October 15.

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The New Adventures of Wonder Woman. 2005 [originally aired September 16, 1977]. "The Return of Wonder Woman." Wonder Woman: The Complete Second Series. DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Video. The New Adventures of Wonder Woman. 2005 [originally aired October 7, 1977]. "The Bermuda Triangle Crisis." Wonder Woman: The Complete Second Series. DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Video. The New Original Wonder Woman. 2004 [originally aired November 7, 1975]. "The new original Wonder Woman." Wonder Woman: The Complete First Series. DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Video. The New Original Wonder Woman. 2004 [originally aired April 21, 1976]. "Wonder Woman meets Baroness Von Gunther. " Wonder Woman: The Complete First Series. DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Video. The New Original Wonder Woman. 2004 [originally aired November 6, 1976]. "The Feminum mystique, part 1." Wonder Woman: The Complete First Series. DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Video. The New Original Wonder Woman. 2004 [originally aired November 8, 1976]. "The Feminum mystique, part 2." Wonder Woman: The Complete First Series. DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Video. The New Original Wonder Woman. 2004 [originally aired February 16, 1977]. "Wonder Woman in Hollywood." Wonder Woman: The Complete First Series. DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Video. “TV Time.” St. Joseph News-Press. 1974. Mar 12. YouTube. "Original Wonder Woman pilot." 1967. Accessed January 8, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKZJVhn7M4&feature=player_emb edded

CHAPTER THREE BONDING IN THE AIR: FLIGHT ATTENDANTS’ MATERNAL ROLES IN FILMS FROM 1970-1992 CARNEY MALEY

The stereotype of the promiscuous flight attendant was patently evident in the bestselling memoir, Coffee, Tea or Me? published in 1967 by the ghostwriter Donald Bain. Subsequently, the “I’m Cheryl, Fly Me” and “We Really Move our Tails for You” ad campaigns (among others) in the early 1970s further supported this stereotype. Disaster movies, airline comedies, and sexploitation films finally cemented this stereotypical view of flight attendants in popular culture. Since 1970, representations of female flight attendants in airplane films have perpetuated the stereotype that they are “mythological whores… [and also] mythological virgins,” forcing them into highly sexualized roles while also maintaining the belief that, despite the fact that they work, the traditional nuclear family is their ultimate destiny (Ireland 1996, 43). To a certain extent, this view accurately reflected the airlines of the 1960s, or at least, accurately reflected the marketing intent of the airline industry. Patricia Ireland, a flight attendant during the 1960s-70s, who eventually became the president of the National Organization for Women, characterized the initial flight attendant employment interview as having “a decidedly pimpish quality” (Ireland 1996, 34). Women had to endure the humiliation of being blatantly looked up and down during an interview and screened for straight teeth, clear complexion, and facial regularity. If they survived the interview, then they were off to hospitality training. Since most passengers were business travelers during the early 1970s, and most business travelers were men, flight attendants had to practice techniques for dealing with male passengers. Ireland remembered: “Throughout training we were constantly told that the job offered wonderful preparation for fulfillment of marital duties, too: learning how

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to make your husband comfortable, how to serve him scotch on the rocks, how to diplomatically handle dinner conversation with his new boss. It was understood that working on an airplane (especially in first class) was a dandy way to meet a man” (Ireland 1996, 36). Flight attendants were, therefore, trained to play a traditional domestic role, taking care of passengers. Ireland recounts, “…Our supervisors wanted us to be friendly and flirtatious with male passengers, but they certainly didn’t want their flight attendants looking like hookers…” (Ireland 1996, 43). Flight attendants had to walk a fine line – they needed to appear sexy but restrained, nurturing but not too motherly. One can see these conflicting stereotypes of sex object and maternal figure in airline films starting in the 1970s. Part of the reason for this stagnation in representation has to do with the status of women in film in the 1970s. According to Marsha McCreadie, Of the many discontents of women that became vocalized and focused in the 1970s, their treatment by Hollywood in and out of the movies was high on the list. Roles given to women early in the decade, according to some feminist film critics, were worse than reactionary; women were more likely to be raped than adored as in earlier films. (McCreadie 1990, 146)

Women rarely directed or produced films, and female roles tended to reinforce ideals of traditional femininity. Much of the social turmoil of the 1960s was not evident in film until the end of the 1970s. In fact, most films of the 1970s ignored the feminist movement entirely. According to media scholar Susan J. Douglas, “Hollywood’s solution was simple: Hey let’s just pretend women don’t exist for a few years while all this blows over. Good parts for women in films became scarcer than circle pins. Instead, we got road movies, buddy pictures, or some combination of both: Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Midnight Cowboy….” (Douglas 1994, 201). From a feminist perspective, portrayals of flight attendants in films of this period cannot be considered “good” parts. Even sexploitation films like Naughty Stewardesses and Blazing Stewardesses, whose titles imply female stars, focus on their sexual exploits and allow the male characters to “save the day.” Film scholar Elaine Bapis argues that popular culture was a site for important discussions of political and social rights (2008), but these issues are barely recognizable in the films that portray flight attendants during this period. Furthermore, while Marsha McCreadie finds that, in general, films of the late 1970s started to depict more progressive women characters, and began to push women’s issues to the forefront, films representing flight attendants remained stuck in the early 1970s, ignoring the women’s movement even at its peak. It is

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not surprising that these films seem caught in a feminist-free zone given the industry that they portray. The airline industry itself was attempting to maintain antiquated ideas about women both in the air and on the ground. While film portrayals of flight attendants are consistent with other forms of popular culture of the period in perpetuating the stereotype of the ditzy, promiscuous “stewardess,” they fail to reflect the reality of the Second Wave of the feminist movement and the active role that real flight attendants were taking to achieve equity in their industry. These popular cultural images emerged at the same time that flight attendants were initiating numerous lawsuits against early retirement at 35, no marriage or pregnancy rules, and weight requirements. Airline films starting in the 1970s confirm traditional notions of femininity and represent a pervasive resistance to women’s liberation during this period. Both the disaster films and the airplane comedies support the idea of a distinct airline culture with a clear hierarchy and division of labor; men are pilots and women are flight attendants. These portrayals ignore changes on the ground like men becoming flight attendants and women becoming pilots, which happened starting in 1973. (We do not see a woman depicted as a pilot or a male flight attendant as a developed character until 2003.) Flight attendants in both genres are sexually liberated to the point where they are often portrayed as adulterers, or the equivalent of playboy bunnies. When pilots and flight attendants are not actually sleeping together, they are using sexual innuendo to keep the idea alive. At the same time, flight attendants in disaster films and airplane comedies also take on the roles of traditional maternal figures who create and sustain unique bonds with pilots and passengers. The airplane was a symbolic “home:” pilots acted as patriarchal husbands, flight attendants were the nurturing wives and mothers, and passengers were the children entrusted in their care. In these films, flight attendants’ common goal seems to be to construct a “real” family by the end of the movie.

Airport (1970) The original Airport establishes the airplane “home” trope from the beginning of the film. Gwen the flight attendant shares a romantic bond with the pilot in charge, but so far she has not be able to get him to commit. Movies such as this one occasionally allude to more serious issues that flight attendants might have faced in the 1970s. Gwen is having an affair with one of the married pilots. Their witty banter turns dark when she tells him that she is pregnant. Before the passengers board the plane, Gwen tells him, “I know you’ve got a wife. I know you can’t marry me. I

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knew it in the beginning. I won’t make things difficult for you. I’ll work it out myself.” Pilot: I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure you don’t go to some butcher… I hear Sweden’s a good place. Good doctors, good hospitals.” Gwen: “Very quick. Very simple. One minute you have it, the next minute you don’t…There are no physical complications. I’m not sure there are no moral ones. Pilot: You have religious scruples?” Gwen: No…I’ve known other girls in the same situation who tossed it off with a bad joke like, “I’ve got a bun in the oven” and “I’ve got an extra passenger.” I knew I’d react the same way. Very modern. Very sophisticated. But I certainly didn’t. I was suddenly filled with a sense of wonder and awe. I don’t want it to sound mystical or anything, but I am carrying someone who’s part of us. I’m not so sure I want to lose it. Pilot: And if you had the baby, then what?” Gwen: Well, I suppose adoption would be the answer. They’re very careful nowadays…. Pilot: …The arrangements are made beforehand. And the records are kept a secret you know, and you’ll never see the baby. Gwen: I suppose in time I’ll be sensible, but I’ve got to have time to think. Pause. Bud, thank you for coming. Most men would have said so long girl. Tough luck. Pilot: Not this one. Gwen: You know. I think you really do love me a little. It makes it harder to decide but easier to bear.

The rest of the flight attendants come on board, ending their discussion. What starts out as a light-hearted romp becomes serious when adoption and illegal abortion become part of the pre-flight conversation. Suddenly the film reveals some of the potential problems that real flight attendants might have faced. What happens if these affairs between pilots and stews (so common in films at least) result in pregnancy? If Gwen decides to give her child up for adoption, she will be fired for being pregnant. If she decides to get an abortion, then she needs to go to Europe to have it done safely and might need the pilot to pay for the procedure. Even the most “romantic” scenario is problematic: if the pilot divorces his wife and marries Gwen, with or without the baby, Gwen will have to leave her job at the airline. Flight attendants were not allowed to marry until 1971 after their first successful law suit, Sprogis v. United Air Lines. Disaster movies all have plenty of melodrama (this one alone involves an old lady stowaway, a disgruntled business man/bomber and a blizzard), but Airport also betrays how airline policies of the time limited flight attendants’ personal and professional choices. The message was clear: flight

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attendants should be maternal enough to care for their passengers but not maternal enough to have their own children. When Gwen is hurt by the bomber’s blast, the pilot has to tell the doctor that she is pregnant. The pilot kisses her and squeezes her hand, telling her, “We’re going to be okay.” As she leaves the plane on a stretcher, the captain glances at his wife waiting in the crowded terminal and tells the doctor that he is going to the hospital, suggesting that he is choosing Gwen over his wife. Typically, the flight attendant is the victim saved by her knight in shining armor. True love seems to win out over traditional marriage. The situation is complicated, but presumably Gwen will have her traditional family with her pilot and baby.

Skyjacked (1972) In the 1972 disaster film Skyjacked based on the novel by David Harper, Angela, the head flight attendant, finds herself in a similar situation, no longer dating but still infatuated with the captain of the plane. It soon becomes clear that she is dating a lower ranking pilot, and the captain is still married with children. Angela discovers a death threat written in lipstick on the airplane’s bathroom mirror. When the captain announces to the crew that there’s a hijacker on the plane, the flight attendants have to pretend that everything is fine. The captain instructs them, “Keep it normal. Keep it light. Keep your heads.” The father figure—the captain of the plane—treats the passengers like children who would not be able to handle the news. The flight attendants are able to keep the secret until they see the second threat: “Change course to Anchorage or Die!” Angie’s pilot beau comes over to calm her down. Pilot: Honey, don’t worry. It’s only a bomb. Angie: I know I just wi – I wish it was just a damn bomb. Pilot: Look, don’t worry it makes lines in your face. Anyway, we never made out in Anchorage. Did we?

Angie does not answer. Instead, we see a flashback or daydream of she and the captain on a warm summer day. Angie is sitting on a swing, and the captain is pushing her. Angie: Do you know how much I love you? Captain: No, I don’t. Tell me.” Angie: Lots.

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When Angie finally realizes that the hijacker is a passenger, apparently a Vietnam veteran, she tries to take his gun away, and he hits her in the head with it. Still bleeding, she leads the vet to the cockpit to talk to the three pilots. Angie’s pilot starts to lunge for the vet when he sees her, but the captain stops him. The plane lands, and a passenger, Mrs. Lovejoy, is in labor. With her contractions only a minute and a half apart, Angie and the other flight attendants help the rest of the passengers escape down the chute in the pouring rain. Despite her head wound, Angie refuses to leave the plane until all the passengers have made it out. The vet returns and catches the passengers escaping. The Captain insists that he call an ambulance for Mrs. Stevens, but the vet says that she will have to go down the chute with everyone else or stay on the plane headed for Russia. The captain grabs Angie’s arm and shouts, “Angela, go!” but the vet closes the door to the plane. Angie leans her head against the captain’s shoulder and looks up at him. The plane takes off again, and it becomes clear that Angie and another woman passenger will be forced to deliver Mrs. Stevens’ baby during the flight. Angie is the first to hold the baby and looks as sweaty, exhausted, and elated as the mother who has just given birth. Angie then goes to tell her pilot boyfriend. Angie: Did you hear? It’s a boy. Pilot: Yeah I heard… He gives her a hug. Pilot: I love you very much. Angie: I know you do. Pilot: Do you know? Angie: Yes.

For the first time, Angie seems to accept the affection that the pilot has been trying to give her all along. She also severs the bond that has been holding she and the captain together. When they arrive in Moscow Angie announces, “Captain O’Hara, we’re ready to de-plane.” Captain: Fine Angie. Get ‘em all off and thanks for all you … Angie interrupts him crying, No, don’t. It’s been a lot of miles. I’ve wasted too much time already. Goodbye Hank. Captain: God bless Angie. Having said goodbye to the captain, Angie is ready to begin her new life on the ground. Pilot: Ready Angie?” He hands her the baby. Angie: I’m ready.

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Angie carries the baby down the steps of the plane, ready for her own traditional family. The nuclear family that she envisioned with the captain in the air is idealistic, but she has found another pilot who wants to make it a reality. Unlike the sexploitation films featuring flight attendants, the disaster flick stews, want more than affairs - they want husbands and babies. Skyjacked still perpetuates the stereotype of flight attendants using their jobs to “catch a man,” but these women are more maternal figures than sex objects.

Airport ‘75 Airport ’75 features another flight attendant waiting for a pilot to commit except that this one does not have a family already. The movie opens with Nancy, played by Karen Black, waiting in the airport for Allen Murdoch, the pilot played by Charlton Heston. They kiss. Nancy: Wait and fly with me. Murdoch: What’s the rush? Nancy: I’ve been on this particular kick for six years now. Maybe I’m tired of one night stands. Murdoch: But baby, I’ve only got a half-hour exit. Can’t we talk it out when we get to L.A? Nancy: I wouldn’t want you to miss that flight Murdoch. You wouldn’t want to keep that boss of yours waiting. Nancy walks away. We next see her on the plane when he calls her at the flight attendant station. Murdoch: I’m not getting in trouble am I? Cause that’s what I’ve been trying to do for years but you’re too smart for me. Nancy: Allen, what is it? Murdoch: Well, I just didn’t like the way we said goodbye that’s all. Nancy: I don’t remember anyone saying goodbye. Murdoch: Come on, damn it, you know what I mean. Nancy: Then why don’t you tell me what you mean, Allen. Murdoch: He sighs. I guess I haven’t been too good at that have I? Nancy: You’ve had your moments. Murdoch: Yeah…look that talk you mentioned, we’ll have that as soon as you get here. I promise. Nancy: Okay. Murdoch: Have a good flight. Nancy: Thanks. Murdoch: Hey, I love you.

But Nancy has already hung up and does not hear him. Nancy plays the nurturing flight attendant giving aspirin to a passenger with a headache,

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bringing a guitar to the young girl on her way to get a kidney transplant, and serving coffee to the pilots. A hijacker does not cause the disaster in this film; instead, the head pilot has a heart attack and flies directly into another plane. Nancy rushes to the cockpit to find one pilot missing, one dead, and a third bleeding. She talks to the air traffic controller and gets the plane on automatic pilot while the other stews take care of the bleeding pilot and move the dead one. Once again a pilot and a flight attendant will try to protect the “children,” the passengers, the best that they can. Murdoch gets on the radio to give Nancy directions on how to fly the plane. Once the other flight attendants are gone, she says, “Al, I’m scared. Allen, I can’t do this.” Murdoch: Nancy you can. God damn it- answer! Nancy: Okay, I’m going to try it.

Murdoch instructs her how to fly over the mountains, calling her “honey” the entire time. The two of them are the parent-like team that will save the passengers from utter destruction. However, Murdoch does not think that Nancy can land the plane herself so he and the crew on the ground devise a plane-to-plane transfer by lowering a pilot through the hole in the cockpit. The pilot from the Air Force never makes it into the plane despite Nancy’s efforts to tear out parts of the plane to make room for him. Murdoch tries next and makes it safely to the pilot’s seat. The passengers cheer for the disheveled Nancy when she emerges from the cockpit. Murdoch is in control of the plane, and Nancy returns to her nurturing role caring for the passengers. Murdoch says, “Tell the passengers to fasten their seat belts and tell the girls to hang on. Go do your thing honey.” He smiles, and Nancy smiles back. When they are about to land, Murdoch says, “Nancy, I love you.” He lands the plane safely, and they embrace and walk out of the plane together. Although there has been no mention of marriage, the ending suggests that Murdoch’s commitment phobia has ended, and he and Nancy will be together on the ground.

Airport ‘77 Airport ’77 highlights yet another flight attendant’s relationship with a pilot. This time it is the pilot who wants to get married and have children, and Eve, the flight attendant, wants to keep things as they because she has already been divorced. They have this disagreement on the ground. Then when Eve brings the pilots coffee on the plane she says, “By the way, I’ve been thinking about what you said. Well, can we arrange to meet on the

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beach tonight? The pilot replies, “Oh yeah, I think that could be arranged” (Jameson 1977). Eve then returns to the passengers who are all being transported to a museum opening in Palm Beach. Unfortunately, there are thieves on the plane plotting to steal the art on board and divert the plane to some undisclosed location. They fill the cabin with gas until all of the crew and passengers pass out. The thief who takes over flying the plane loses control, hits a tower, and crashes into the water landing the plane on the ocean floor. Eventually Eve and the pilot wake up, and it is time to save the passengers. Again, the pilot takes control of the situation and enlists Eve’s help. Pilot: Look Eve. We crashed. There’s people down below who are injured and we’ve got to help them. Eve: Help them? But I’m too frightened!

The pilot takes her face in his hands and screams, ”Frightened? Well who the hell isn’t frightened, but we can’t show it or we’re going to have a panic on our hands. Now you listen to me – those people down below need your help. And so do I.” Eve takes a deep breath and replies, “I’ll try.” “You’ll do it, “ he says and kisses the top of her head. He helps her up and says, “You’ll be alright.” Her boyfriend’s screaming seems to have calmed Eve as she gets to work helping a mother and her little girl injured in the crash. In the next scene, Eve is holding a flashlight so the pilots can fix some electrical work. The pilot decides that the only way to signal for help is for him to take a life raft with a radio to the surface of the water. He and the flight attendant will separate, but they are both doing what they can to ultimately save the passengers. “Now look, we have a date tonight in Palm Beach so you take care of yourself,” Eve says as the pilot puts on his life preserver. “Promise,” he says and then kisses her passionately. Eve is left in charge of the plane. The pilot makes it to the surface but a male passenger does not, and Eve is left to deal with the widow who has just seen her husband’s body float by. Mrs. Wallace heads toward the door of the plane to follow her husband, and Eve immediately goes over to stop her. Eve tries to restrain her, but they end up in a tussle with Eve yelling, “Take your hand off that door! Mrs. Wallace listen to me!” Mrs. Wallace starts hitting her, so Eve takes control of the situation by punching her in the face. With the Coast Guard and Navy’s help, the pilot is able to pull the plane out of the water long enough to let most of the passengers escape. Eve hands out the life jackets and helps all the injured passengers onto the

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lifeboats followed by the women and children. Similar to the other films though, the flight attendant is the hero’s sidekick, and once the passengers are safe she herself has to be saved by the pilot. The plane shifts, Eve falls back into the plane and hits her head. The pilot has to go save her as the water rushes into the plane. The pilot gets her out just before the plane sinks again, and a helicopter comes to the rescue. Huddled together in the helicopter the pilot asks, “Cold?” Eve replies, “I’m better. I’m warming up.” Pilot: You’d better. You’ve got a date tonight. Eve: I love you. He kisses her head. I love you.

They kiss. Despite the gender switch, this film ends in the same way the previous two did except that this time it is the flight attendant who had to come around and agree to try traditional family life again.

Airplane! (1980) Another genre that depicts flight attendants as the Coffee girls, the airline comedy, at least does so with a sense of humor. Airplane! from 1980 makes fun of all things airline. Film critic Vincent Canby points out that “ Because effective parody is even more rare in films than in literature, we shouldn’t underestimate the achievements of Mr. Abrahams and the Brothers Zucker….”(Canby 1974). Airplane! adopts the plot from the 1957 film Zero Hour and is skilled at making fun of disaster movies like the four Airport films of the 1970s. Airplane! manages to poke fun at the portrayal of flight attendants in these earlier movies. For instance, in addition to having no commercial airline pilot on the plane (the pilot has come down with food poisoning from the fish served), “Randy,” the aptly named stewardess, starts to cry, saying, “I’m 26 and I’m not married.” A female passenger tells her, “To be honest, I’ve never been so scared, but at least I have a husband.” Randy cries even harder. Apparently, the husband hunting that was supposedly a job perk for marriage hungry flight attendants had not worked out for Randy yet. Randy is also the one who makes fun of flight attendants’ friendly, nurturing side by shaking a passenger and yelling, “ Calm down and a get a hold of yourself!” The passengers then line up and take turns slapping the woman across the face. Airplane! takes the singing nun, played by Helen Reddy in Airport ’75, and has a flight attendant borrow her guitar. Randy sings for a sick girl awaiting an organ transplant (also in Airport ’75), but unlike the nun, she

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unknowingly and ineptly knocks out the girl’s iv. The girl struggles to breathe as the oblivious passengers clap along with Randy’s song.

Conclusion These representations not only ignore many of the struggles that flight attendants faced, but they also erase flight attendants’ role in changing both the policies and the culture of the airline industry. Their activism in the feminist movement is never alluded to in any of these films. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, flight attendants immediately began filing complaints with the newly created Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). When the complaints failed to remedy the problems, since the EEOC had no official power to enact policy changes, flight attendants began to file lawsuits. First came the early retirement age, no marriage and no pregnancy policies and then weight restrictions. The first suits were filed by individual women. Later some groups filed class actions suits or sued the unions themselves for not responding to their demands. They also collaborated with members of the National Organization for Women founded in 1966, staged protests, and established their own association Stewardesses for Women’s Rights. These images of sex objects and motherly figures in popular films, starting in the 1970s and continuing today, contradict what was happening on the ground as flight attendants fought for better working conditions at the height of the mainstream feminist movement. These historical representations of flight attendants – and their key role in a wider cultural conflict over the depiction of women – form a crucial chapter in modern women’s history.

Aftermath: Passenger 57 (1992) By the time we get to Passenger 57 in 1992, Hollywood has started to break the familial mold a bit. The pilot is an expert that is supposedly more skilled than an ordinary pilot. Now it is the expert and the flight attendant who form their bond in the air by saving the passengers and each other. However, the pair does not seem to have the complications of previous marriages, children, or extra-marital affairs, and the men are not stereotypical commitment-phobes. While the action plots become slightly more complex, the relationships are very simple and straightforward. The flight attendants still look like sex objects, but they continue to act more like maternal figures. The 90s movies still end with the promise of a serious relationship, but these couples have only recently met, despite the

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bonding that has occurred, so marriage and children are no longer mentioned. Passenger 57 is unique in that it features its first African American star in this genre. In this film, Wesley Snipes is even more accomplished than a pilot – he is John Cutter, a security specialist for the airlines, who is a passenger flying to a job interview in L.A. (Many of the characters from the 70s would have benefited from his expertise on hijackers a decade or so earlier.) Cutter is a more sensitive 90s guy who is nervous flying and lost his wife in an armed robbery. His soon to be flight attendant sidekick Marti, still plays the nurturing role, providing him with aspirin and peanuts, but she also keeps pace with his witty banter and prevents his ego from taking over in every situation. Passenger 57 not only has a more evolved hero, it also has a flight attendant as one of the “bad guys.” Elizabeth Hurley plays Sabrina who is dressed like a flight attendant but is working for the convicted murderer in FBI custody on the plane. “And how do you like your sirloin sir?” she asks removing the silver dinner cover to reveal a gun. Her boss Rane replies, “Bloody,” and she quickly grabs the gun and shoots the FBI agent before he knows what’s happening (Hooks 1992). Her boss Rane jumps up, and they take over the plane, but Cutter and Marti are able to escape down the elevator to the lower galley. Cutter uses his martial arts skills to take care of the guy who follows them. Once again it is up to the duo to save the passengers who have been taken hostage. Cutter decides that the only way to bring the plane down is to empty the fuel, forcing Rane and his team to make an emergency landing. Like the pilots in the previous films, Cutter has the expertise needed to save the day. Of course, their plan is foiled when one of the hijackers finds them and attacks Marti as the plane is making its emergency landing. In the struggle, Cutter falls off the plane, and Marti is captured. Cutter ends up stranded in a small Louisiana airport desperately trying to get back on the plane to save Marti and the passengers. Instead of the sexual innuendo and light witticisms among the pilots and flight attendants of the 70s films, Rane’s comments to Marti are lewd and dark. He rubs his gun along her body until she slaps him across the face, and says, “You’re repulsive.” Rane responds by grabbing her and throwing her back against the wall. The threat of sexual violence implied here is not present in the earlier films. Cutter sneaks back on the plane into the cockpit and instructs the pilots to turn around. When Sabrina comes in to see why the plane is changing direction, Cutter knocks her unconscious. He only pauses to say, “What a waste. If she moves, throw her out the window.” Cutter makes his way into the rest of the plane, killing a few of

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Rane’s men on his way. When he finally makes it to Marti, Rane is after him and another struggle ensues. The door to the plane whips open, and Marti hangs on for dear life, about to get sucked out of the plane. Suddenly, Cutter kicks Rane out the door and saves his damsel in distress. In the aftermath of the chaos, a voice from the radio tower asks, “What’s your status?” Cutter responds, “Single at the moment, but I’m working on it” as Marti wipes the cuts on his face. Cutter and Marti exit the cockpit holding hands as the passengers cheer. Once the couple makes it outside the plane, Cutter gives his jacket to Marti and tells his boss that he’s taking a vacation. Then he turns to Marti and says, ”Are you ready to get out of here?” “Where do you want to go?” she asks. “Any place but here,” Cutter says. They walk away, arm in arm, with fireworks from a Louisiana fair in the background. Cutter is the hero who saved the flight attendant, Marti and Cutter together saved the passengers from the hijackers, and the cliché ending marks the beginning of their romance. By 1992, men in airline films had grown stronger: Cutter is even smarter, even craftier, and even tougher than the pilots from the films between 1960-1970. But representations of flight attendants show little change. Though the film opens with talk of marriage, showing that some things have changed for women working in the airline industry (they can marry and still keep their jobs), the films ends with the daring rescue of the sidekick flight attendant. Airline films continue to circumscribe the expectations initiated by the Coffee, Tea, or Me? era, and remain a clichéd, stereotyped, and sometimes blatantly counter-feminist film genre.

Works Cited Airplane! 1980. Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker. Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures, 1980. Airport. 1979. Directed by George Seaton and Jack Smight. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures. Airport ’75. 1974. Directed by Jack Smight. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures. Airport ’77. 1977. Directed by Jerry Jameson. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures. Bapis, Elaine M. 2008. Camera and Action: American Films as Agents of Social Change, 1965-1975. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Canby, Vincent. 1974. “Screen: ‘Airport 1975’ Is a Silly Sequel With a 747.” New York Times, Oct. 19.

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The Concorde…Airport ’79. 1979. Directed by David Lowell Rich. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures. Douglas, Susan J. 1994. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Three Rivers Press. Executive Decision. 1996. Directed by Stuart Baird. Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Pictures. Gardner v. National Airlines. 1977. MDL No.218, No. 75-1968-Civ-NCR, No. 75-719- Civ-NCR. US District Ct. for the Southern District of Florida. 17 May. Ireland, Patricia. 1996. What Women Want. New York: Dutton Books. Lev, Peter. 2000. American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions. Austin: University of Texas Press. McCreadie, Marsha. 1990. The Casting Couch and Other Front Row Seats: Women in Films of the 1970s and 1980s. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. Passenger 57. 1992. Directed by Kevin Hooks. Warner Bros. Pictures. Skyjacked. 1972. Directed by John Guillerman. Los Angeles: MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. Sprogis v. United Air Lines. 1971. No. 18481. US Ct. of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 16 June.

CHAPTER FOUR RECONCEIVING CONCEPTION: CHANGING DISCOURSES OF TEEN MOTHERHOOD IN POPULAR CULTURE MARGARET TALLY

Introduction: Charting the Cultural Conversation on the “Post-Nuclear Family” Images of the family in the media have been shifting for several decades (Taylor 1989). In film and television, in particular, the changing discourse about the family reflects a growing sense that there has been some kind of crisis that has occurred for the American family (Dow 1996). The media, which serve as primary places where these cultural discourses are produced and reproduced, have become sites for what media scholar Horace Newcomb has referred to as a “cultural conversation,” about what constitutes a family (Newcomb 2000). As part of this conversation, furthermore, the media play a role not simply of trying to reflect social reality, but of serving as a kind of teacher as to what the family should look like, and what roles men and women should play in the family (Kellner 2003, 9). In this reading of popular culture, media becomes the space where the dominant values and social developments of the period are articulated. This articulation is oftentimes politically charged, with either liberal or conservative slants, though they can also often become “ideologically ambiguous,” touching upon a variety of contradictory attitudes towards the family. In this way, popular culture can serve as a kind of “contested terrain,” to use Douglas Kellner’s phrase, mirroring the struggles over these meanings in the larger culture (Kellner 2003, 10).

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Young, Pregnant and Female: Teen Pregnancy in its Social Context Given that the media have a role to play in navigating the cultural terrain of changing discourses on the family, it is instructive to note that there is a pervasive theme running through many of these recent dialogues that the family has somehow become “post-nuclear” (Probyn 1990; Projansky 2001; Stacey 1990). In film and television, there have been increasing representations of families that do not look like the conventional nuclear family of the 1950s but, as scholars such as Kristin Hoerl point out, nevertheless maintain a “neo-traditional” model of motherhood (Hoerl 2010). Some of the sociological causes that are attributed to creating the “post-modern” family include shifts in the economy and rising unemployment for the male breadwinner, the influence of the Women’s Movement, as well as the rise in more service-level jobs occupied by women and minorities. As Hoerl notes: The post-nuclear family is thus the culmination of these trends, manifest in changing definitions of what counts as family and in movements for democratic kinship relations. Judith Stacey writes that as a consequence of such trends, the contemporary family is decidedly postmodern, reflecting the “contested, ambivalent and undecided character of contemporary family culture.” (5)

As part of this shift in the organization of family life, the role of women, and in particular young women, is also being renegotiated. Whereas in earlier eras, for example, the idea that one would become a young mother outside of marriage was viewed as neither a desirable nor practical outcome, recent representations of young women in popular culture seem to contradict this view. Viewing the decision to have a baby outside of marriage as a “choice,” and a post-feminist one at that, marriage in a heterosexual context becomes something that is considered and often rejected. This represents a direct contrast to earlier eras, where a young woman who bore a child “out of wedlock,” was roundly criticized. Though the ideal is still for young women to wait until they are adult and married before they bear children, there has been a recent countertrend that suggests that this norm is being opened up and questioned. The cultural representation of young women bearing children outside of marriage arises as well within the social context of an increasing pregnancy rate among young women in the larger society. Not only has the family been redefined in recent times, but the social fact is that young women are increasingly becoming pregnant and carrying their babies to

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term, outside of marriage. For example, the Guttmacher Institute found that the pregnancy rate among females ages 15 to 19 years old increased by 3 percent in 2006 from the year before. In addition, the teenage abortion rate also rose during this same time period by one percent for the first time in more than a decade. This occurred after more than a decade of declining teenage pregnancy rates. Some of the reasons attributed to this uptick included those who saw a link between the rise in teenage pregnancy and abortion rates and the Bush Administration’s reliance on abstinence-only sex education programs that ban teaching about contraception. Other experts believed that the reversal could be caused by other factors, including increasing poverty as well as “complacency” about the possibility of contracting AIDS, causing less use of condoms (Stein 2010). This trend of female teenagers having children outside of marriage also corresponds to a larger trend among other age groups of women. For example, in terms of the percentage of younger women versus women who are 25 to 29, teenagers account for only 23 percent of births outside of marriage. The majority of women who have babies out of wedlock, in other words, are 25 to 29 years old. This statistic correlates to a larger trend in the culture, of the decoupling of birth from marriage. For example, only about 5 percent of births in 1960 were outside of marriage. By 2008, that figure was at a record-high of almost 40 percent (Yoffe 2008). Stephanie Coontz, in her recent work, Marriage, a History, (2005) has also described this historical trend and hypothesizes that it is due to the fact that economically, many women do not see the fathers as viable prospects to support them, and instead may see themselves as having to support the fathers, in addition to the children. This, in turn, is tied to an economy where jobs for low-income men have disappeared and the stress and economic dislocation resulting from this has caused young women to put marriage on hold. For the question of teen motherhood, we can summarize that this host of factors, including abstinence-only programs, a troubled economy, and correspondingly rising poverty rates have resulted in the United States having a teen pregnancy rate that is two to four times higher than the rate in other developed countries. Overall, the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the fully industrialized world (Bates 2010).

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Media Portrayals of Unplanned Pregnancy: From Jamie Lynn Spears to “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” At the same time, and perhaps in response to these statistics, the media has also begun to raise the issue of teen pregnancy. Heather Boonstra, a senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, believes that the media may have even had a role to play in making the idea of teen pregnancy seem somehow more acceptable. She believes that the media, by glorifying having babies, combined with the lack of access to and information about birth control, contributed to a “perfect storm,” where teen pregnancy was viewed as a viable option (Goodwin 2010). In fact, media representations of young women who become mothers outside of marriage has become an important avenue for understanding how a cultural shift has been unfolding concerning what the proper forms of family life and sexuality should be, especially for young people. Through this medium, various groups and ideologies come into play, serving as the site or “contested terrain” over how to negotiate changing gender roles within the family. Describing these shifts in the representation of women who become mothers outside of marriage in recent film and television more generally, Hoerl finds that: In this regard, representations of white, single pregnant women and parenthood refigure discourses of post-feminism to incorporate changing family structures. This family model departs sharply from previous media depictions that retreat into nostalgia for the traditional family or call for women to choose between work and family.” (Hoerl 2010, 4)

While the traditional family model was being challenged in the media, the rise of the “Teen Mom” became a symbol both of concern about this new family formation as well as signaling a growing cultural acceptance of it. More generally, these representations of “Teen Moms” helped to shed light on how the cultural dialogue over single motherhood was being negotiated in popular culture. The portrayal of teen motherhood symbolized a kind of compromise between the Right and the Left over the question of access to birth control and abortions and abstinence only education programs. Liberals saw this as the unwelcome outcome of this kind of birth control prevention strategy and yet, at the same time, did not want to condemn single mothers. For the Right, the compromise was to support young women who became pregnant outside of marriage, because these young women did not have abortions, and instead made the decision to

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carry the baby to term. As Stephanie Coontz notes, “social conservatives are backing off on the condemnation of single mothers. Social liberals are backing off on the idea that it’s possible to have an abortion and not be ruined by it” (Goodman 2008). Whether these representations of Teen Moms meant that the culture had decided to “split the difference” or not on the question of single young parenthood, what is clear is that in the past decade images of teen mothers who decided to keep their babies flourished, even if they were not married. Both teens that were “real-life” mothers, and those who were fictional characters became a more ubiquitous part of the cultural landscape. One young celebrity in particular, Jamie Lynn Spears, who is the sister of pop musician Britney Spears and who became pregnant at 16, received extensive media coverage over her decision to have the baby rather than have an abortion. In 2007, Spears, who played the virginal teenage girl on “Zoey 101” on Nickelodeon, announced that she was pregnant. By contrast, the character she played on television and who young female Nickelodeon viewers admired, was portrayed as being perfect, doing well in school, and not dealing with boys. Commenting on her discovery that she was pregnant in real life, Spears offered that, “I was in complete and total shock and so was he” (Goodman 2008). At the same time, the media reported that Spears’s own mother was similarly clueless, believing her daughter was being careful since she always met her curfew (Pollitt 2008). As part of the media storm over this pregnancy, The New York Times ran a front-page story which discussed how difficult it was for the young girls who watched “Zoey 101” to see the star of the show get pregnant at such an early age. At the other end of the political spectrum, Mike Huckabee, who at the time was a Republican presidential candidate, also discussed the pregnancy. While he referred to Spears’s pregnancy as a “tragedy,” he was also supportive that she was carrying the baby to term, rather than having an abortion. As he commented, “[a]pparently, she’s going to have the child, and I think that is the right decision, a good decision, and I respect and appreciate it” (Pollitt 2008). Another “real life” young woman who became pregnant during this period was Bristol Palin, the daughter of Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Though Bristol went on national television, on the “Oprah” show, with her mother to discuss the importance of abstinence, much of the media focused instead on how her unwed motherhood contradicted her mother’s conservative stance on the family. More provocatively, perhaps, was the sense that by becoming a mother outside of marriage, she had been able to become a media celebrity, or as one commentator noted: Bristol Palin is the poster child for what has been called “teen motherhood

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Chapter Four as Cinderella fantasy…Now, Bristol Palin is going to be on Dancing With the Stars to become a true prime-time star wearing gorgeous ball gowns and sashaying across a stage to the sound of wild applause. For what? Getting knocked up. (Doyle 2010)

In addition to young women such as Jamie Spears and Bristol Palin, the theme of teen pregnancy and having a child outside of marriage also became more prevalent in both film and television fictional narratives. This introduction of an unplanned pregnancy as the main focal point of the story was itself part of a larger trend in films during this time. For example, in both “Waitress” (2007) and “Knocked Up,” (2007) the main female protagonists get pregnant and decide to keep their babies, despite the fact that they are not married. In these “pregnancy comedies,” though the women are not married, they are not teenagers either, but for our purposes, what is instructive is that these films begin to signal a growing cultural acceptance of women bearing children outside of marriage, at all age levels. This idea of the possible growing acceptance in the larger culture of unwed mothers can also be seen directly in the film “Juno” (2007). In the film, the main character is a 16-year-old girl named Juno who finds herself confronted with an unplanned pregnancy. This film, directed by Jason Reitman, was nominated for an Oscar for best picture in 2008. While some critics disapproved of the messages the film was sending out about the acceptability of teen pregnancy, other critics noted that the message from this film was more disturbing because it did not offer a realistic portrayal of what happens when a teen gets pregnant. The girl in the film, Juno, is very thoughtful and self-possessed and at the same time, her family is portrayed as both accepting and supportive of her decision to bring the baby to term. In addition to the concern that Juno was not a representative example of the range of young girls who get pregnant in real life, there was another concern that young women could come away with the message that most girls decide to put their babies up for adoption, as Juno is portrayed as doing. In reality, less than 2 percent of young women take the adoption route and the majority will keep them (Jayson 2008). More generally, the portrayal of a young woman who does not terminate her pregnancy has raised larger questions in the culture wars about whether these kinds of representations are pro-life or pro-feminist. This is because the film portrayed the young women as considering the option to have an abortion, and coming out decidedly against it. In this way, these “pregnancy comedies” uphold the pro-life position that all pregnancies, whether inside or outside of marriage, should come to term.

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At any rate, the theme of teen pregnancy also extended to television programs, both in terms of specific episodes as well as in terms of becoming the central feature or plot device for other shows. For example, during this period there was a new and very popular television show, “Glee,” in which the cheerleader Quinn (who is president of the Abstinence Club) gets pregnant and arranges an adoption with the wife of the glee club coach. (The baby doesn’t actually go to her, though; the baby ultimately goes to Rachel’s biological mother—the coach of the opposing glee team.) In addition, both “Private Practice,” and “Friday Night Lights” featured teen characters that become pregnant and have the child out of wedlock. In addition to specific episodes on television shows, there was also the well-publicized Lifetime movie “The Pregnancy Pact,” which portrayed the semi-fictional pact among Massachusetts’ high school girls to get pregnant. This Lifetime movie was the top-rated movie on cable television since 1998 among women 18 to 34, signaling its wide interest and appeal to this female demographic. These television episodes, taken together, forecasted a growing interest in portraying Teen Moms on the small screen. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that a television program that was focused exclusively on teen pregnancy and impending motherhood, would be created. In “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” ABC’s Family channel offered its own cautionary tale about the perils of teenage pregnancy with the first teen drama that was centrally concerned with a pregnant teen character. Beginning in the summer of 2008, this drama of teenage life portrayed the experience of a young girl, Amy, who discovers that she is pregnant after one encounter with a boy during band camp. The show is written by Brenda Hampton and was created in collaboration with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. In addition to the main character that becomes pregnant, the show also portrays Christian characters who take vows of abstinence (Stanley 2008). The show averaged 3.5 million viewers a week in its first season, and was able to draw a greater audience than the wildly popular “Gossip Girl,” for the same young demographic of young females (Bellafante 2008). Interestingly enough, while the show was criticized by the press for its unrealistic dialogue, it does function as a very successful soap opera for teenagers. The ostensible message of the show is that having a baby while you are still in high school can put a tremendous strain on all your relationships as well as curtailing your life in numerous ways. The soap opera aspects includes the fact that the news of the pregnancy puts her parent’s marriage under tremendous pressure but at the same time, it allows her to get closer with her younger sister. In addition, Ben, who is

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the new boyfriend in her life, wants to support Amy while Ricky, the “sperm donor,” is shown to be a cad. The “secret life” that Amy has had and which is made public, namely, the product of one sexual encounter leading to a pregnancy, is mirrored in every episode with another “secret” that the different teenagers on the show have. Thus, while the ultimate message of the series is to show how hard it is to have a baby in high school, the soap opera aspects of the show make it titillating for the young viewers and arguably undercut the “pro-abstinence” message which the creators of the program explicitly endorse.

“16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom”: Violent Fights, Custody Wars, and Heartbreak It started with a baby bump. When MTV audiences met Farrah, Maci, Amber and Catelynn last summer, the teenagers were figuring out “What next?” on 16 and Pregnant. By winter, they were navigating motherhood (and, for Catelynn, the emotions of adoption) on their addictive spinoff, “Teen Mom.” Now, with more than 3 million viewers following their stormy, satisfying lives on season 2, the girls tell Us why giving birth was just the beginning (US 2010).

Another television program that signaled a recent cultural shift in portraying young women is the MTV show “16 and Pregnant,” which was broadcast first on June 11, 2009. A casting call for the show, which ran alongside ads for Superfans! And The Stepfamily Project read: We realize that [teen pregnancy] is a sensitive subject that many young women are experiencing, so our goal is to show what pregnant women, from varying backgrounds, are experiencing in their everyday lives. From morning sickness to mood swings, and to even the day of the baby’s arrival, we would like you to let us document this exciting, life-changing event. This show will allow young women to share their story in their own voice. (Jezebel 2010)

As the show was being pitched to the vice president of series production at MTV, Liz Gately, one of the producers, Lauren Dolgen, described it as a reality series that would focus on teen parenthood, and would hopefully spur a “national conversation” about this growing problem (Bates 2010). The idea was not to preach to young audiences, but to show, through a documentary format, what it was really like to be pregnant and the difficulties that teenagers have in carrying a baby to term while trying to stay in high school and dealing with family problems, as well as conflicts

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with boyfriends who were not ready to be fathers. The executive producer, Morgan Freeman, has described the show as sending a very strong message about the difficulties of being a pregnant teen, and called it a powerful “public service” (Grose 2010, 1). “16 and Pregnant,” featured the same four young women in its first season, Farrah Abraham, Amber Portwood, Maci Bookout and Catelynn Lowell, who the viewers got to know as they followed their weekly struggles. “16 and Pregnant,” even takes the viewers up to the delivery room, and while they do not actually see the baby being delivered, it is clearly evident how hard it is to give birth. Unlike the glib and wellspoken Juno, or even the upper middle-class Amy on “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” the young women featured in “16 and Pregnant” are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of single parenting; with one exception, they all decide to keep their baby rather than put it up for adoption. When faced with criticisms that the show may somehow be making the lives of these pregnant teenagers glamorous, Gately responded by saying that, “[t]his is an honest and gritty portrayal of a very, very difficult thing…To say that these shows are glorifying teen pregnancy is like saying The Biggest Loser is glorifying obesity” (Bates 2010, 2). Like “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has consulted with the show, and has created discussion guides about different issues that emerge from each of the shows, as well as making free DVDs of the program available to nonprofit groups and educators. In addition, there is a website for the shows, with links to other websites that promote abstinence, such as StayTeen.org as well as sites that promote safe sex, such as It’sYourSexLife.com (Klein 2010). MTV looked for young women who were viewed as “middle-class” and “normal,” but who found themselves in an abnormal situation. Far from sugar-coating the pregnancy and birth, Morgan Freeman, the show’s executive producer, said the mandate was to reveal how extraordinarily difficult it was to complete school and deal frankly with the sacrifices these young women have to make. The show proved to be so popular that it was soon followed by its spinoff, “Teen Mom,” which tracked the same four young women as they confronted the challenges of parenting a baby once it is born. One of the young women on the show, Maci Bookout, an 18-year-old from Chattanooga, Tennessee, offered this assessment of the value of the show in relation to what else is portrayed in the media: This show really hits people hard. In “Juno” or “The Secret Life of an American Teenager,” things kind of glossed over and they don’t really

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Chapter Four show the hardships…On “Teen Mom” there are girls from different parts of the country with different backgrounds. On every other MTV show, like “The Hills,” and “The City,” and “The Real World,” it’s just for entertainment. Our show is really educational and good for audiences who want to get a different mindset on teen pregnancy. (Show Tracker 2010) .

Criticisms of “Teen Mom”: Glorifying Pregnancy, Celebrity Culture, and What About Abortion? In trying to assess the cultural impact of these images of teen mothers in “real life” as well as on reality television and fictional film and television programs, many critics have voiced the concern, as stated earlier, that images of pregnant teens in the media may inadvertently encourage unwed pregnancies by making it look glamorous. As one critic noted: Altogether, it seemed like a laudable, ultimately positive show and that MTV’s demographic could do a lot worse than to watch it. Lately, though, things have changed. The “teen moms” are no longer just teen moms. Perhaps inevitably, they are celebrities, with a seeming lock on the covers of tabloids. And however daunting an example these teen mothers might provide, to a young person, celebrity conquers a lot. And overshadows a lot. (Jezebel 2010)

In another example, Newsweek posed the question to their readers (after Jamie Lynn Spears was featured on the cover of OK! Magazine in a story about her pregnancy) of whether such depictions glamorize teen pregnancy. The magazine received over 2,000 responses to the question: “Did OK! help teen mothers by destigmatizing the issue? Or did it recklessly spread the message that being a pregnant teen is, well, OK” (Kliff 2010). A slight majority of readers believed that it did not portray the true realities of teen pregnancy, and instead made it look too fun and easy. Interestingly enough, OK! Magazine allegedly paid Spears $1 million dollars for the announcement of her pregnancy, which may have also contributed to the sense that this kind of announcement was newsworthy and created a kind of buzz around the teen pregnancy itself (Goodman 2008). Other writers have also noted the ways in which the plots for many of the fictional narratives make it look like it is both exciting and consequence-free. Thinking about “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” for example, one writer, Emily Nussbaum, noted that there was very little “downside,” to getting pregnant (Nussbaum 2010). As for the

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shows, “16 and Pregnant,” and “Teen Mom,” a number of critics have weighed in on whether it makes being a Teen Mom look glamorous or not. For example, the production values of the programs mirror those of other highly stylized teen television programs, including other successful reality shows such as “Jersey Shore,” and “Real World,” and thus there is the problem that MTV ends up making the content of the show inherently more dramatic and gripping. In fact, “Teen Mom” is produced by the same person who created the mega-hit, “Laguna Beach.” As Liz Goodwin, a cultural critic, points out: “Like “Laguna Beach,” “Teen Mom” is highly stylized-there’s a soundtrack, girly animation that flashes up when the show switches from one teen mom to the next, voiceovers, and uplifting narrative arcs punctuated by moments of emotional clarity from the show’s stars” (Goodwin 2010). Another issue relates to the ways in which the Teen Moms who are portrayed become, themselves, a part of a celebrity culture and elevates their status for other young women who see them on the cover of tabloid magazines week after week. For example, “Ok,” “US Weekly,” and “People,” featured the four lead teenagers almost every week during the fall of 2010. The stories ranged from the positive, portraying Maci as starting a “fresh new life” after breaking up with the father of her child, to the maudlin, chronicling Catelyn’s “tearful baby reunion” after giving her baby up for adoption. At the other end of the spectrum is Amber, the “worst mother on TV” who is portrayed week after week in a physically abusive relationship with her fiancé, Gary. In one story, she is described as, “such a disgraceful parent, the local police and child services in her hometown of Anderson, Ind., have launched investigations to determine whether she is fit to raise her kid” (Life and Style Weekly, 2010). Even if the stories are negative about the teen mother, or offer cautionary tales about being “tortured by her hostile ex,” they still are attention-grabbing and thus contribute to making the teenagers celebrities. In fact, as the shows become more popular, the attention that the Teen Moms have received has lifted them into the realm of high-profile celebrities. This attention was as unexpected by the producers of the show as it was to the young Moms themselves. Morgan Freeman, for example, has commented on the ways in which this steady diet of tabloids and paparazzi has transformed the program from one which was supposed to provide educational value into a different style altogether, which makes it hard to keep the focus on show’s original intent. As he notes: We stumbled into this current success of Teen Mom that is driven by a completely different industry. It’s driven by a tabloid industry – the modern cultural-Twitter-online-viral monster that is outside of our

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Chapter Four control…I’m a little bit speechless that this show has kind of hit that pop phenom. Frankly, it’s a challenge to stay focused on the real issues, stay focused on the real challenges in all of our girls’ lives with this sort of larger cloud of the tabloids, the media circus, the glamorizing and glorifying aspects of it.” (USA Today 2010)

Finally, these programs rarely discuss how to prevent teen pregnancies or how to terminate unwanted pregnancies through abortions. Abortion is still a taboo topic on American television. The shows deal with pregnancy as an accomplished fact, and play out the pregnancy without discussing even the possibility of terminating it. As a beginning response to the silence that surrounds these young Teens about whether to have an abortion, MTV aired an abortion special, titled “No Easy Decision,” on December 28, 2010. The show featured one of the young women from an earlier “16 and Pregnant” as she tries to decide whether to have an abortion when she finds herself pregnant for a second time. MTV acknowledged that they needed to portray another side of the story, and also be more up front in focusing on prevention and the use of contraception (Fisher 2010). While MTV has begun to deal with this gap in the narrative of “16 and Pregnant,” and “Teen Mom,” the shows themselves rarely bring up the question of abortion.

Positive Readings of Teen Mothers in Popular Culture In terms of the positive reception of these shows, there is an argument to be made that they humanize the young women who choose to carry their babies to term. A number of readers, for example, from the Newsweek poll, felt that it was good to run the story on Jamie Lynn Spears because it offered a positive image of teen moms, which might make teens in turn more likely to open up about their condition to their parents. Some young women who had themselves become pregnant at an early age felt validated by having a national magazine portray a pregnant teen in a positive light. Interestingly enough, there were many readers who were ambivalent about the need to, on the one hand, convey the difficulties involved in trying to parent when you are so young while at the same time not stigmatize the 400,000 young women who have given birth every year for the past three decades. As Andrea O’Reilly, founder and director of the Association for Research on Mothering at York University in Toronto, acknowledged: Part of me thinks it’s better to normalize [teen pregnancy] because it makes it easier for those moms to be more accepted, …but then at the same time

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you worry you might be romanticizing teen pregnancy, setting up a girl for something she’s not ready for. It’s a fine line we can’t get rid of. (Kliff 2008)

As a counterpoint to the concern about whether these shows glamorize teen pregnancy by featuring it so prominently, there are others who feel that any attention may be good attention precisely because it puts the problem front and center in the popular cultural discourse. For these observers, such as Bill Albert, the chief program officer at The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, the group that partnered with “Teen Mom,” there is the sense that bringing media attention to this issue is a good thing. By getting teens to talk about teen pregnancy, in his view, it may help them to deal with the reality of it. Viewers have also weighed in on whether they think it is good or bad to deal with teen pregnancy and its portrayal on “Teen Mom.” In a review of responses to blogs on several mothering sites as well as the websites for “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom,” there was the sense that it was really helpful to have this kind of dialogue in a format that is watched by so many young people. The standard fare of MTV, in other words, shows very few consequences to engaging in casual sex among young people. For these young women who watch “Teen Mom,” however, there is finally a portrayal of unwanted pregnancy. As one blog contributor wrote: I hope MTV, which heaven knows spends most of its time on foolishness, keeps on with this show. For teen parents, real life isn’t like the Bristol Palin cover photos. When people are unprepared to have children, have no financial resources, and often no brains, the ripple effect on all their relationships is often profoundly negative. This show helps to show that the difficulties don’t go away; in fact, they often multiply. (Clark-Flory 2010)

Conclusion Laurie Ouellette and James Hay have written about the ways in which reality television conceptualizes the viewer as a “citizen” whose “most pressing obligation to society is to empower her or himself privately” (Ouellette and Hay 2008). In this view, reality television is a way for individuals to obtain “self-help” by watching how other individuals, as “case studies,” get the kind of help and support they need to make changes in their lives. This reading of reality television as serving as a means for individuals to view themselves as “citizens” who can “self-govern” is tied for Ouelette

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and Hay to the larger idea that we are now living in a time of advanced liberalism where public services are increasingly being replaced by the notion that it is up to the individual to take care of themselves. While individuals are thought of in this schema as responsible for their own fate, rather than relying on a welfare state to support their needs, there is also the idea that there are various ways that the civil society can step in to help provide the individual with “techniques” to help them manage their lives and become responsible citizens. Reality television can become one such mechanism for helping individuals to learn how to manage their own lives and behaviors. It is within this context that we may begin to understand how television programs like “16 and Pregnant,” and “Teen Mom” function in popular cultural discourse. These programs have an explicit mandate to offer “teachable moments,” and to serve as a kind of cultural site where young women in particular can learn about how difficult it is to rear a child on their own. Some scholars have referred to this kind of function of reality shows as offering “edutainment,” and having a manifest agenda, in this case, to offer ways for individuals to cope with events in their lives that have arguably public meanings and consequences. In other words, in keeping with Ouelette’s and Hay’s concept that these reality shows serve as advanced liberalism’s response to the retreat from public supports, shows like “Teen Mom” refer back to the individual teen Moms and their nuclear families to deal with the effects of teen pregnancy. There are very few, if any, conversations about the ways in which these young women might be supported by larger social, governmental structures. Instead, each week the shows leave it to the individual girls to fend for themselves, sometimes with, and sometimes without the support of their oftentimes fractured nuclear families. In this way, the educational value of the shows are meant to simply warn young women about how hard it is to have a baby out of wedlock, rather than to help them work constructively with larger social supports which are in fact nowhere to be found. As it turns out, for the young women on these programs, the higher their income level, the more they can rely on their nuclear families to support them. The young woman who is having the hardest time, by contrast, Amber, is the one who comes from the lowest economic rung of the four women. For the other young woman who is also lower-middle class, Catelynn, the best option for her, given her limited economic circumstances, is to give up her child for adoption lest she fall into the same trap as her own mother did, by becoming pregnant at an early age (and keeping her baby). The contrast in options for the young women speak to the ways in which social class can mitigate the effects of an

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unwanted pregnancy if you have the resources to cope with it. Alternatively, if you are without economic resources, you are left to fall on a very fragile nuclear family and little or no societal support. And in fact, Amber is portrayed as the “bad Mother” on the show in part due to her very limited resources to deal with the stresses and strains of an unwanted pregnancy (Klein 2010). The larger point is that these programs assume that there will be few, if any, supports in the larger society for young, pregnant teens, and thus the only source they can rely on is their own middle-class nuclear family. The programs thus provide not only a warning about the difficulties of being a Teen Mother, but serve as a huge cautionary tale to working-class girls in that they are shown as having precious few supports, either within or outside of their nuclear family. At the same time, this emphasis on teaching young women in particular about the dangers of unwanted pregnancies, seems to leave out another central aspect of the problem of teen pregnancy, the question of the fathers of these babies. The show has a primarily female audience, and the males are usually portrayed in the programs as “Deadbeat Dads,” unwilling to take responsibility for the life they helped create. This lapse in fathering takes on different forms for the different Teen Moms. For one of the young women, Farrah, the father of her child died before the daughter Sophia was born. In Amber’s case, the Teen Mom who has been characterized as a “monster,” her fiancé Gary is portrayed as obese and incompetent and even masochistic, in the face of Amber’s literal beatings. For Maci, the most seemingly mature of the young women, her boyfriend Ryan is portrayed as lazy and immature, and when she picks up their son, Bentley, from a visit, it is clear that he has not been parenting the child but has been leaving it to his new girlfriend to take care of the baby. The only father who is shown as responsible is Tyler, who is the boyfriend of Catelynn. Tyler and Catelynn are the only couple who decide to give up their baby for adoption, as a response, in part, to Tyler’s own “deadbeat” father, Butch (Jay 2010). The more general point is that in the case of the fathers as well as the State, the young women are shown to not have these kinds of resources available to them to help raise their new babies. Rather, they are left for the most part to try and raise the children themselves, unless they are lucky enough to come from a middle-class family who has the resources to help the mother and her new baby survive. In reality, the young women who are middle and upper-middle class are less likely to carry a baby to term if they get pregnant. As one young woman who is a student at Cornell University put it:

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Chapter Four You don’t often see undergraduate Cornellians walking from Olin to Statler with a baby bump. Maybe we are just in a world where having a baby at our young age is seen as a huge impediment to our bright futures (because it is.)…Perhaps for myself, and anyone else at Cornell guilty of feeding into the media’s obsession with teen pregnancy, we just want a glimpse into a life path the majority of us never chose or would have wanted to choose. (Sprunk 2010)

The comment by the Cornell student reveals the ways in which popular culture functions more generally. While reality shows such as these try to offer a form of instruction or “edutainment,” for the general audience, the young women who are most likely to be affected by an unwanted pregnancy are precisely the ones who are most vulnerable in the first place, due to their economic circumstances. For the rest of the audience, these warnings have, to some extent, already been heard and attended to in countless ways, and they are therefore the least likely to have a baby at such a young age. The class issues that underlie these programs thus demonstrate the ways in which the culture has by and large abandoned the plight of young, poor women who find themselves pregnant but with few resources to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. In these ways, then, what shows like “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” truly reveal are how the cultural conversation has shifted for young, lower-income women. Whereas these young women were once stigmatized for having children out of wedlock, the conversation now turns on the ways in which, however admirable their “choice” to keep the baby, they have to realize they will be essentially on their own. With public policies that have abandoned public support for these young women, their stories reveal just how difficult it is to raise a child as a single mother with limited income. The bonds of love in these programs are thus revelatory precisely to the extent they demonstrate just how trapped these young women have become in our society, trying to survive in a “post-nuclear” family that the rest of the audience can watch safely from a distance.

Works Cited: Bates, Karen Grigsby. 2010. “MTV’s “Teen Mom” Makes for Teaching Moments.” NPR. August. http://www.npr.org/templates/story.php?storyld =128626258 Bellafante, Ginia. 2008. “Those Turbulent Teenage Years: It Isn’t All Great Sex and Shopping.” The New York Times. August 28. Clark-Flory, Tracy. 2010. “Mother of a “Teen Mom”: Can MTV handle

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having alleged abuse tossed into its domestic drama? Salon. January 20.http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/feature/2010/01/20/farrah_tee n_mom_assault/print.ht… Coontz, Stephanie. 2005. Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Penguin. Doyle, John. 2010. “Want to be an American Teen Star? Get Knocked Up.”TheGlobe. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/television/johndoyle/want-to-be-an-american-… Dow, Bonnie J. 1996. Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Fisher, Luchina. 2010. “MTV Airing Teen Abortion Special, “No Easy Decision.” ABC News. December 23. New York Times, Editorial. 2010. “A Troubling Uptick,” The New York Times January 30. Goodman, Ellen. 2008. “Changing the Script on Teen Pregnancy.” Boston Globe. January 4. Goodwin, Liz. 2010. “TV’s Teen Mom Explosion.” The Daily Beast. January 30. Grose, Jessica. 2010. “Does MTV’s 16 and Pregnant Keep Girls From Getting Pregnant?” Slate. February 22. http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2245338 Hoerl, Kristen and Casey Kelly. 2010. “The Post-Nuclear Family and the Depoliticization of Unplanned Pregnancy in Juno, Knocked Up, and Waitress,” (essay is forthcoming in the journal Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies). Jay, Samuel. 2010. “De-Racializing “Deadbeat Dads:” Paternal Involvement in MTV’s Teen Mom.” Flow. September 24. http://flowtv.org/2010/09/de-racializing-deadbeat-dads/#printpreview Jayson, Sharon. 2008. “Does “Juno” Show Strength or Glorify Teen Pregnancy?” USA Today. July 17. Jezebel. 2010. “MTV’s Teen Mom Comes With a Boatload of Problems.” http://jezebel.com/5656125/mtvs-teen-mom-comes-with-a-boatloadof-problems#ixzz1B2zP0wlj Kaufman, Amy. 2010. “Forget “The Hills”: Audiences embrace the harsh realities of “Teen Mom.” Los Angeles Times. February 2. Accessed on 2/8/2010: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/02/audiences-preferteen-moms-harsh-rea Kellner, Douglas. 2002. “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media

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Culture,” in Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text Reader. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez, editors. CA: Sage Publications. Klein, Amanda. 2010. “Welfare Queen Redux: Teen Mom, Class and the Bad Mother.” Flow. 12 November. http://flowtv.org/2010/11/welfare-queen-redux/#printpreview Kliff, Sarah. 2008. “A Fine Line.” Newsweek. 23 July. Accessed on 2/8/2010: http://www.newsweek.com/id/148446/output/print Life and Style Weekly. 2010. “Teen Mom’s Amber: The Worst Mother on TV.” Volume 7, Issue 43, 25 October. Newcomb, Horace. 2000. Television: The Critical View. New York: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, Emily. 2010. “What Kind of World Is It Where Only MTV Gets Teen Pregnancy Right?” New York Magazine. Accessed on 2/28/11: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/10/teen_pregnancy_tv_tee n_mom.html Ouellette, Laurie and James Hay. 2008. Better Living through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship. Britain: Blackwell Publishing. Pollitt, Katha. 2008. “Maternity Fashions, a la Junior Size; Hollywood’s Script on Adoption, Teens,” Chicago Tribune. January 9. Probyn, Elspeth. 1990. “New Traditionalism and Post-Feminism: TV Does the Home.” Screen 31, 147-159. Projansky, Sarah. 2001. Watching Rape: Film and Television in a Postfeminist Culture. New York: NYU Press. Rimer, Sara. 2007. “TV’s Perfect Girl is Pregnant; Real Families Talk.” The New York Times.December 21. Sprunk, Cara. 2010. “Pop Culture and the Teen Pregnancy.” The Cornell Daily Sun. February 3. http://cornellsun.com/print/40525 Stacey, Judith. 1996. In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Stanley, Alessandra. 2008. “A Teenage Pregnancy, Packaged as a PrimeTime Cautionary Tale.” The New York Times. July 1. Stein, Rob. 2010. “Teen Pregnancy: Abortions Up.” Washington Post. January 26. Taylor, Ella. 1989. Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thompson, Arienne. 2010. “16, Pregnant –and famous.” USA Today. November 23. US Weekly. 2010. “Inside Their Struggle: Teen Mom.” Issue 811. August 20. US Weekly. 2010. “Second Chance at Love: Still Tortured by her Hostile

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Ex, Maci Starts Fresh With a New Man.” Issue 813. September 13. US Weekly. 2010. “What We’ve Learned: Violent Fights, Custody Wars, Heartbreak. How the New Moms Survived.” Issue 818. October 18. Vognar, Chris. 2007. “Litter of Pregnancy Films Focus on Family; Comedies Find Success, Keep a Moral Center.” Chicago Times. December. Yoffe, Emily. 2008. “And Baby Makes Two.” Slate. March 20. http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2185944

PART II: TROUBLESOME BONDS BETWEEN MOTHERS AND CHILDREN

CHAPTER FIVE GLENN CLOSE AND THE MONSTROUS MATERNAL: MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS IN DAMAGES LINDA SEIDEL

Prelude: Training in Femininity Our American Studies professor passed back our hourlies, saying we had not done well. Then, again, we had not failed. Our papers were mediocre, like the work of so many docile girls. Men got A’s or F’s. Girls were too obedient to fail but also too conventional to be brilliant. Don’t worry about it, he said; brilliant girls had an edge to them that no man liked. We did not contradict him, no hard edges for us. Rather, we sat there, whipped, responding like the good girls he had already condemned us to be. The sexist remarks made by some of the male college professors at the women’s college I attended in the late ‘60’s are hard to believe. Maybe they wanted to get a rise out of us. But, maybe, they were simply training us in femininity, counteracting the activist agendas of some of the female professors who told us to believe in ourselves and not put ourselves second. I remember the man who said that women now had choices: we could still be wives and mothers, or we could dedicate ourselves with nunlike devotion to our jobs. But, surely, his (mostly married) female colleagues did not appear to be nuns. (Our college was public; no actual nuns taught there.) What could motivate such a comment? Maybe Patty Hewes, the flawed heroine of FX’s legal drama Damages (2007-2010), heard comments like these, too, when she went to college and then law school. Maybe she knew she couldn’t have it all, so she chose: the job over the man (even though she does get married), the career over motherhood (even though she does have a son). And she became one of those brilliant, hard-edged women my American Studies professor both disliked and admired: the creation of three men—writers/producers Todd

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Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman—who wanted to portray an interesting woman. That is, maybe Patty is a man’s version of what a brilliant female lawyer could be. Glenn Close, the consummate actor who brings Patty to life, sees her as an example of “how people characterize women in positions of power who are smart and manipulative and unforgiving in certain ways” (Itzkoff 2009). There is no one smarter or more manipulative than Patty, a litigator who wins every class action suit she takes on, even when her opponent resorts to killing material witnesses. Although Patty employs a virtual army of lawyers and investigators, she interacts most closely with her second-in-command, Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan), and her protégé, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), both of whom respect and resent her power. Indeed, Tom’s presence underscores the point that Patty really is the boss—since a smart man like him is willing to take orders from her. Ellen’s role is different: she may be another Patty in the making and, according to Glenn Kessler, Damages uses “the rise of Ellen Parsons” to explore “the cost of climbing the ladder of success” (“Trust No One” 2008). The opening sequence in the Damages pilot lays out a large part of that cost before we even know what we are looking at: an already blood-stained Ellen discovers the gory body of her fiancé David (Noah Bean) in the bathtub of their apartment. How did this happen? In a storytelling method that turns out to be characteristic of the series, the answer to this question is deferred as the scene shifts to happier days six months before. If Ellen is presented at the outset as a possible victim in need of protection, Patty is portrayed as a woman securely in control. After she tricks an opposition lawyer into a premature settlement, he calls her a “hard-dick bitch” and fumes, “If you were a man, I’d kick the living dogshit out of you.” Patty smiles and says, “If you were a man, I’d be worried” (Kessler, et. al. 2008, Damages pilot).1 Thus, Patty is not only more intelligent than the opposition, but she is more manly too.You might say that Patty’s character has a history, a genealogy of hard-driven women created by men. She is the descendent of Medea, who not only kills but strategizes; of the Medusa who stops men dead in their tracks; of the ageing queen who outsmarts Snow White—of all the smart wicked women feared by men (Gilbert and Gubar 1984, 34). And she is the stronger, saner sister of Alex Forrest, whose insatiable need for love in Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction (1987) makes a mockery of female aspirations for independence and achievement. 1

Subsequent references to Damages episodes will present numerals only to indicate season and episode. Thus, season 1, episode 1 will become 1.1.

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In American society even now, the traditional feminine and selfsacrificing woman who devotes her life to her children is valorized as a good mother (and sent Hallmark cards by a grateful public in mid-May). By contrast, powerful women, insofar as they put their quest for agency in the world ahead of their solicitude for their children, tend to be demonized as bad mothers (in the mass media if not always in life). The portrayal of Patty Hewes in Damages as a brilliant litigator but monstrous mother (who aborts her biological daughter and tries to kill her spiritual one) reflects persistent cultural anxieties about the roles of career women in an intensely competitive society. What gives Damages its subversive edge is the idea that the powerful woman may ultimately be better able to protect the “daughter” who survives than the more traditional mother, who is depicted as victimized by men and exploited by a patriarchal economy.

Part One: Scary Career Women Ever since Glenn Close played the psychotic home-wrecker in Fatal Attraction, the character she helped to create has been seen as the definitive (if paranoid) portrayal of the new career woman gone wrong. Isolated from normal women by her ambition, she represents a monstrous threat to the nuclear family (not to mention the pet rabbit!) that could be neutralized only by the warrior-housewife (Anne Archer) fighting to expel the career woman’s encroachment into the wife’s domestic space. As Susan Faludi (1992, 122) puts it in Backlash, “The evil Alex invades,” and “it is up to the dutiful wife to deliver the fatal shot, in the heart.” Never mind that, already in 1987, over 60% of married mothers were working outside the home “or looking for work” (Cohany and Sok 2007, 9-10), or that career women typically become mothers as well (Whitmarsh et al. 2007, 232). Twenty years later, in Damages, the on-screen portrayal has at least caught up to reality in this respect: Close stars as the high-powered attorney who is also a wife and mother. Yet Patty Hewes, like Alex Forrest, still has a larger-than-life amoral mythic quality. She is a brilliant, unscrupulous strategist who brings class action suits—against antagonists who resemble Kenneth Lay or Bernie Madoff—on behalf of clients no one else seems able to help, and she will stop at nothing, not even murder, to win her case. Although Patty cultivates a mother-daughter relationship with her young associate Ellen Parsons, she is also capable of ordering a hit against Ellen when, she believes, the younger woman threatens her continued dominance. At the same time, she suffers a horrible physical shudder of grief when she thinks she has lost Ellen forever, and she visits the

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neglected graveside of her still-born daughter Julia (also, we learn later, sacrificed to Patty’s overweening ambition) . Ellen is, of course, alive and out for blood. She tries to bring Patty down, mimicking Patty’s own methods in true daughterly fashion. Eventually, the two call a truce, and Ellen tries to keep her distance, but remains personally and professionally dependent on the monstrous “mother” who outsmarts everyone. The possible wisdom of Ellen’s continuing reliance on Patty is underscored when Ellen learns that her own mother tried to give her away as a young child because of the mother’s inability to protect her and her sister from her father’s abuse. Patty, for her part, comes to think of Ellen as her true heir, the one person who understands her better than any other single person and who can best follow her teaching. If Patty Hewes bears an uncanny resemblance to the wicked queen in the old Snow White story, Ellen is the step-daughter who decides to learn the old lady’s tricks rather than depend on any prince to set her free. At a time when pundits argue about whether United States society has reached a “post-feminist” age (Hall and Rodriguez 2003), the differences and similarities between Fatal Attraction and Damages suggest both our grudging acceptance of high-profile women and our often-stated fears that something essential may be lost when women, especially mothers, leave home for the office: “the definition of a bad mother,” says Sharon Hays (1996, 125) “ is one who drops off the kids at 6:30 A.M., picks them up at 6:00 P.M., and doesn’t think twice about them in the interim.” The existence of a Patty Hewes, who can do everything men can do but better, is now imaginable in a way that it was not twenty years ago, but she remains a frightening character, and our collective memories of Fatal Attraction, as well as our fear of maternal abandonment, sharpen those anxieties. As Ted Danson, Close’s co-star points out, actors bring “baggage” with them: “[Glenn] was in Fatal Attraction. We know that she’s scary . . . and yet she’s the heroine” (“Willful Acts” 2008). This portrayal of Patty as both scary and heroic reflects and reinforces our continuing ambivalence with respect to powerful women (think: Hillary Clinton, who was also accused of murder). Perhaps our fear is that, if women are just as hard and ruthless as men, if they refuse to be nurturant and maternal, no one will try to protect us from the corruptions endemic to a capitalist economy in which many people seem to be motivated only by greed. Thus, one way in which we demonize powerful women is to portray them as bad mothers. Hays says that many people view the persistence of traditional mothering (and, thus, I would argue, nurturant femininity in general) “as the last best defense against . . . the impoverishment of social ties, communal obligations, and unremunerated commitments” (xiii). Our

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distrust of powerful women and our distrust of the market-controlled work-place are supported by our continuing belief in the difference between the public and the private (what the Victorians called the “separate spheres”), the public sphere being the world at large where men predominate and get dirty by doing so and the private being the home where women supposedly maintain a safe haven and moral purity (Hays 18). Damages plays with this distinction between the public and the private, suggesting, on the one hand, that an inviolable, sacred space can be created by the individual who has the right values and does not succumb to the siren song of ambition; but showing, on the other, the constant, nearly unavoidable interpenetration of the two spheres. Ellen and fiancé David try to make a life apart for themselves where the obsessions of the workplace do not encroach upon their love nest. That those obsessions do encroach in an often hostile and disruptive way has become a cliché of the domestic drama, hardly an insight unique to Damages. But Damages makes the assault on the supposedly private sphere so unrelenting that the desire for such a space becomes an unrealizable fantasy. It is not just that Patty wishes to own Ellen and disrupt her private life; it is not just that Ellen’s own ambition makes this easy for Patty to do; it is not just that David and Ellen have physical evidence in their possession that puts their lives at risk, or that they are divided by the external forces that impinge upon their relationship. It is all of these elements together that suggest that a safe, impregnable home space should be seen as a fiction. Even if a person can temporarily avoid them, the systemic forces that threaten the home—the depredations of the Lays and the Madoffs in a free-market economy—make everyone feel insecure. Ironically, it is the woman who cannot keep her own home in order (whose son continually rebels against her and whose husband cheats on her) who is able to restore the material basis for other people’s home lives. As Gina Bellafante (2009, April 2) puts it, “’Damages’ is a populist revenge fantasy” in which ordinary people get justice through the machinations of a rich scary woman “primed to succeed in the nastiest battles of the class war” (“A Litigator’s Venomous Veneer”).

Part Two: Scary Mothers Medea was a rebel. She not only punished Jason but challenged patriarchal power by destroying the fruits of her own labor. Was she unnatural? Or too natural in her murderous refusal to conform? Simone de Beauvoir (2010, 567) says, “There is no such thing as an ‘unnatural

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mother,’ since maternal love has nothing natural about it.” Furthermore, “her behavior is symbolic. . . . A mother who beats her child . . . is taking vengeance on man, on the world, or on herself; but it is the child who receives the blows” (556). The Grimms told us it was the stepmother who tried to kill Snow White, but folklorist John M. Ellis (1983, 74-75) says they lied, or at least chose to revise. The story as it was told to them makes the wicked queen Snow White’s own mother who had desired a beautiful daughter and then found, as the daughter grew up, that the competition was too much for her. “This cruel aspect of motherhood has always been known,” says Beauvoir (2010, 557); “but with hypocritical prudishness, the idea of the ‘bad mother’ has been defused by inventing the cruel stepmother.” You can regard the Snow White story as a struggle over beauty or male approval if you like. But maybe it is also about power (Gilbert and Gubar 1984, 39). The existence of Snow White is a threat to the queen’s power, so they fight to the death. The queen is smarter, but Snow White is lovely and young and has male protection (Barzilai 1990, 524-525). At Snow White’s wedding reception, the queen is made to dance on hot coals until she dies, the victim, say Gilbert and Gubar, of her daring quest for autonomy in a male world that prefers its women passive (28). The Patty Hewes figure in Damages resembles the jealous queen in “Snow White” in that she is an older woman desirous of retaining her power and not ceding it to a younger one, but unlike the queen, Patty finds her chief antagonists not in other women but in men, and she challenges male power and privilege overtly. Although Patty does have a husband, she will jettison him before she will allow him to dictate her behavior. More importantly, her class action suits against greedy (mostly male) capitalists make her a force to be reckoned with, and the goal of the FBI surveillance of her in the first two seasons of Damages is not to right a wrong but to neutralize that force. As a feminist viewer, I want to admire the powerful woman who fights the bad guys. But I am kept off balance because she is monstrous too, a quality that seems to differ by gender. Monstrous men are warriors gone bad or pedophiles who corrupt the young. Monstrous women kill their babies or have too many of them, their maternity out of the control of any man (Rich 1986, 70-72). These are the women who could end the world as we know it by letting their fertility run rampant, like the monstrous queen in Aliens (1986) whose strength lies in her vast and slimy procreative power. But if fertility is perceived to be a source of excess (think: welfare queens or anchor babies), reproducing a surplus of unnecessary poor people, female refusal of fertility is even less acceptable. “’Childless’

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women,” says Adrienne Rich (1986, 252) “have been burned as witches, persecuted as lesbians, . . . [and] have been seen as embodiments of the great threat to male hegemony: the woman who is not tied to the family, who is disloyal to the law of heterosexual pairing and bearing.” Motherhood is valorized if performed by the book, but there are lots of ways to go wrong. The female monster is a mother who went wrong, or maybe just a mother, any mother, who cannot live up to the “fantasy” of maternal perfection (Chodorow and Contratto 1992). Patty, of course, exists only as a fictional character and not (primarily) my fictional character, so I am not allowed to turn her into the feminist warrior of my dreams. She is the creation of three smart guys, expressing, perhaps, the current hopes and fears about women and mothers of the contemporary liberated man. According to Gilbert and Gubar (1984, 28) the fictional “monster-woman, threatening to displace her angelic sister, embodies intransigent female autonomy and thus represents . . . the mysterious power of the character who refuses to stay in her textually ordained ‘place.’” In Damages, Kessler, Kessler, and Zelman push Patty out of that place, but then suggest that the results are horrifying, in that Patty cannot vanquish her antagonists without resorting to their methods. The world corrupts her, and she carries that infection back into the home, which can be no safe haven, but a place where the mother manipulates her son and tries to kill her pseudo-daughter. One might argue that these ghoulish plot developments have less to do with a misogynist fear of powerful maternal figures and more to do with the big knives and bloody outcomes of the typical FX series. But I think it’s significant that Patty is always scariest when portrayed as a mother gone wrong. I see this portrayal as produced by the fact that, for men and women alike, the figure of the mother remains problematic: no one gets the always-loving, infinitely protective mother he or she wants and perversely imagines is possible. Chodorow and Contratto (1992, 205) argue that “[w]e are all prone to mother-hating, for we live in a society that says that mothers can and should do all for their children.” Furthermore, the myth of “the all-powerful mother” depends largely on “infantile fantasies that are themselves the outcome of being mothered exclusively by one woman” (192, 203). Like women in general, mothers are a disappointing lot, always on the verge of looking monstrous— devouring rather than nurturing, manipulative rather than supportive— unless carefully compliant with cultural norms. In Damages, Patty Hewes is presented as a monstrous mother, not only because of her power struggles with her son (a topic I will leave to other critics) or her attempt to eliminate her ersatz daughter Ellen, but also

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because of the equation that is made of her violence against Ellen with what I would regard as her abortion of Baby Julia. Patty’s maternity is presented as monstrous, I would argue, because she insists on having it under her own control, even when the decisions she makes violate her own feelings. That is, she arrogates to herself the power of life and death as a mother. As she strategically tries to eliminate all threats, her maternity may turn deadly. But her power may also offer protection to surviving “children,” especially the figure of the “daughter.” Ironically, Ellen Parsons—in searching for her true mother—finds that it may not be the woman who gave birth to her and raised her, or the woman who fostered her at a critical point in her childhood, but the woman who tries to kill her and yet also teaches her how to survive. Or, maybe, all three of these women are her mothers because, in a patriarchal culture, a girl needs more than one.

Part Three: Mother-Daughter Noir “It’s done,” says an old man into his cell phone (1.13). It is Uncle Pete (Tom Aldredge), Patty’s fixer, the one person from whom she can expect absolute loyalty. He is speaking of the hit Patty ordered on Ellen Parsons because she ostensibly knows too much. (Elimination of those who know too much is a routine procedure in Damages, but one that is mostly resorted to by Patty’s corrupt antagonists.) Patty takes the call as she sits on the beach, the setting idyllic, her magnificent beach house nearby. When she hears the words, she shudders uncontrollably in a visceral display of guilt and grief. Patty orders the hit after Ellen asks her, “Do you regret what we did? Because I do. . . .We crossed a line”(1.12). What they did was attempt to blackmail Ray Fiske (Zeljko Ivanek), lawyer for their legal antagonist Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), a Kenneth Lay sort of figure who sold off his own stock in the company that robbed his 5000 workers of their pensions and their jobs. Patty and Ellen learn that Ray was guilty of his own insider trading, tipping off a young man with whom he was enamored about the right time to sell. When Ray kills himself in Patty’s office, she and Ellen do feel responsible, although the viewer knows that Ray has bigger problems. The young man in Ray’s past (anticipating his own elimination) has made a tape spelling out Frobisher’s and Fiske’s misdeeds, including their conspiracy with a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ray has allowed the young man to be killed—and then kills himself—because he cannot abide being outed as both criminally dishonest and gay: as a traditional Southerner invested in keeping up heteronormative appearances, he is deeply closeted, and,

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according to Zeljko Ivanek, his own conception of himself is at stake (“Willful Acts” 2008). He would rather help eliminate the man he loves than admit the role his sexuality has played in jeopardizing his client’s illegal business dealings. When Patty tries to kill Ellen, something similar is at work: Patty’s feelings for Ellen are not sexual, but they are equally intense, and the voice she seeks to neutralize is the daughter’s voice, an external representation of her own guilty conscience (Gilbert and Gubar 1984, 39). Indeed, Patty’s initial overtures to Ellen are consistently maternal. Patty finds an apartment for Ellen, teaches her to drink bourbon (“Pilot . . . Commentary” 2008), and gives her advice about men: “Ellen, most men can’t handle an ambitious woman. . . . Make sure you find one who can” (1.6). At the same time, she admits that she has not been a good mother to her son Michael and warns Ellen against having kids: “They want all of you all the time” (1.1). Even as Patty manipulates Ellen in order to get close to a potential witness Ellen can deliver in the Frobisher case, Patty, ironically, tells her, “Trust no one”—meaning “Trust no one but me” (1. 4). Of course, no one appears to be entirely trustworthy in Damages, and we know from the outset that things will end badly for some. In the first episode, elevator doors open to reveal a young woman covered in blood running away, the scene lit in garish yellow light. Then she’s in police detention, the lighting blue. Suddenly, we are shifted back to ordinary daylight “six months” earlier to see a hopeful Ellen Parsons (the same young woman), naïve new law school graduate, being wooed by a wealthy firm whose chief warns her against working for Patty Hewes: “she will own you.” Flashbacks and flashforwards are used repeatedly in Damages to create a double or, possibly, layered narrative and to pose questions that create suspense. Why, we wonder, does Ellen get arrested? How does her fiancé get killed and she get covered in blood? (And whose blood?) Scenes flash back and forward by way of filling in evidence, as if we viewers were the lawyers building a case, putting the pieces together. Certain pieces of the puzzle are presented repeatedly until we finally have enough information to see the connections between them. These repetitions insistently remind us of the violent acts that may underpin apparently legitimate business transactions—indeed, they reveal “an underworld lurking just beneath the surface of the acknowledged social order” (Dussere 2006, 18). But this method of storytelling also induces uncertainty in the viewer as we wonder what critical piece of information we may still be missing. Our understanding of the whole is endlessly deferred. Even after the illuminations provided by the season finale, we

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think, “Is that it? Have we got it all now? What are we still not seeing?” And, so far, each new season does refine our understanding of the characters and their conflicts, even as it introduces a new case to be solved and new wrongs to be righted. It may seem odd to associate the high-powered world of Patty Hewes (in a show sponsored by Cadillac) with films in the noir tradition, in which unlucky male protagonists typically move through shadowy urban landscapes only to be defeated by a corrupt, capitalist system in which they do not stand a chance (Hillis 2005, 10). Noir shows us “the dark underside of the American dream” (Spicer 2010, xlix), exploring the failures of characters who are rarely as rich or successful as Patty Hewes. Nonetheless, in its use of special lighting to increase psychological intensity, in the narrative complexity it achieves through frequent flashforwards and flashbacks, and in its revelation of “an endemic structure of political and economic corruption that extends from the bottom to the top rung of the socioeconomic ladder” (Hillis 10), Damages evokes noir’s expressionistic style and its critique of the good life as measured by material success. When Ellen finds David’s body, or when Patty shudders with grief in the belief she has eliminated Ellen, the garish yellow light in which these scenes are presented suggests an alternative reality from the one in which ordinary daylight suffuses office discussions and depositions. When Ellen is held for questioning in the murder of David, or Patty is regarded with suspicion following the death of her partner Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan), the cool blue light irradiating the police station plunges us into a world in which violent crime is the principal reality. The frequency with which these crime scenes of heightened intensity are spliced together with scenes set in the world of ordinary daylight suggests that the two “realities” are inseparable: the world of high-powered law and finance depends upon an underworld of shady deals, violent crime, and surveillance. Furthermore, these methods are used not only by greedy tycoons and their henchmen, but also by corrupt cops, FBI men, and (at times) Patty and her associates themselves. If Patty is not the chief transgressor, neither are her hands clean, the image of bloody female hands presented every time the Damages credits roll, insisting on her guilt. Still, the innocent young Ellen does trust Patty at first. Later, even after Ellen has told Patty “I’m so sick of your bullshit” (1.10), she remains in thrall to Patty’s power and intelligence. Asked by her fiancé David to choose between himself and Patty, she chooses Patty (or, at least, fails to choose him)—a move that divides the lovers and leaves each open to attack: David, by the henchmen of Frobisher, who rightly believe he has

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information they want; and Ellen, by Patty’s fixer, who believes Ellen has too much on her. Of course it is unrealistic that Frobisher’s guy kills David the same night as Patty’s guy tries to kill Ellen, but the symbolism is clear enough: all the older people are corrupt, and David is too innocent (perhaps too self-righteous, according to actor Noah Bean [“Willful Acts” 2008]) to live in the world as it is. Ellen survives by becoming a different, less trusting, more devious person. She survives by becoming more like Patty, a person who keeps her own counsel and lives by her own code. But if the double hit seems too much of a convenient plot device consolidating the noir-ish elements of the series, so, even more, does Patty’s attempt to eliminate Ellen in the first place. Ellen cannot injure Patty without injuring herself, but her judgment on their joint activities— “We went too far. We crossed a line”—cannot be tolerated by Patty. The rebellious daughter cannot be allowed to threaten the mother’s preeminence. Snow White’s stepmother doesn’t have to kill Snow White either, nor does she succeed in doing so. As Barzilai (1990, 532) argues, she doesn’t really want to kill Snow White, as we see, because “the daughter does not die.” When Patty believes that Ellen has died, her grief is swift and horrible—and we do not learn until the conclusion of Season 3 exactly what it means.

Part Four: Abortion Politics Redux When Patty believes that Ellen is dead, she drives to a cemetery several hours away to visit a tomb she has not seen for 35 years—that of Julia Hewes, still-born on May 24, 1972. A flashback shows a mournful doctor telling “Patricia” he is sorry and asking if there is a name that she would like him to put on the (birth? death?) certificate (1.13). Later, in Season 2, Patty tells Ellen about Julia, about how she imagines Julia would have turned out like Ellen, a speech Ellen summarizes to the FBI as “some bullshit about my being the daughter she never had” (2.1). It is not until Season 3 that we flash back to a hugely pregnant Patty in 1972 being told to spend the rest of her pregnancy in bed if she did not want to lose her baby. But she is just finishing law school; she is at the outset of her career. She takes a long walk. Surely it’s not an accident that the writers of Damages place this action in 1972, a few months before the Roe v. Wade decision in January 1973. Presumably, the audience is not supposed to remember that abortion became legal in New York State in 1970, something a smart girl like Patty would have known and, most likely, made use of. Instead, she induces her own miscarriage, an act that she later seems to equate, in her guilt over

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Ellen, not to the legal procedure it resembles (that is, abortion), but to murder. Further, inasmuch as this revelation in Season 3 is presented as the key to an existential emptiness deep within Patty’s character, the viewer is encouraged to make this equation of miscarriage with murder along with her. In other words, the viewer is encouraged to think that women do not really have the right to control their own fertility and that the fetus Patty aborts is not just a fetus but a daughter who would have changed Patty’s life “had she lived” (2.1). Repeatedly, Patty is told what to do and what to think about her pregnancy and her miscarriage by male doctors. Stay in bed; save the child. Name the child; treat it as a real person, even though the so-called baby Julia is an aborted fetus, not a live birth. And Patty does some of these things, at the same time apparently believing that she has the right to terminate her pregnancy. Does she, then, also (like the antiabortion rights activists) equate abortion with murder so that, she reasons, if she had the right to terminate a fetus subsequently named Julia, she also has the right to eliminate (as a matter of self-protection) a daughter-like person named Ellen? The abortion politics in Damages seem muddled. On the one hand, another character’s legal, first-term abortion is presented as no big deal. But Patty’s refusal of bed-rest during her pregnancy is equated to murder. Is it that Patty takes the law into her own hands? Or is it that the law fails Patty and thus she learns early to subvert it? In the latter case, is abortion a good thing so that mothers are less tempted to kill their children? Or is abortion of any kind meant to be seen as a sort of training in achieving a callous exterior? That Patty is not simply callous is marked by the existence of Julia’s tombstone—since burial of the still-born in the family plot is hardly a universal practice. But possibly Patty sees both Julia and Ellen as sentimental extensions of herself that must be excised if she is to do her work. Gilbert and Gubar (1984, 39) argue that the wicked queen in the Snow White story “wants to kill the Snow White in herself,” meaning “the angel” who would prevent the queen from following her own course of action. The live birth of Julia would have tied Patty to a man and to a role she did not wish to take on, and the continuing existence of an Ellen who stands in judgment of her constitutes a threat to Patty’s autonomy. That Ellen does not die and Julia remains alive in Patty’s memory suggests that Patty is not entirely successful in killing off nurturant femininity within herself. Furthermore, Patty seems to believe that Ellen, as the “daughter” who survives, can give her absolution for both of her crimes against her “daughters.” At the end of Season 1, Patty apologizes to Ellen for everything but the attempt on her life and begs Ellen to give her “another

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chance.” Perhaps she wants to keep her enemy close, but I think she wants redemption. Patty achieves something like forgiveness at the end of Season 2 when Ellen holds a gun on her and appears to force her confession. But, in reality, Ellen’s gun is superfluous. Having been attacked and stabbed by one of her many enemies on her way to Ellen’s hotel room, Patty already imagines she may be dying and is willing to set the record straight. Confessing, nearly dying, and coming back from the dead seem to give Patty a kind of absolution for her sins against Ellen (at least in her own mind), and Ellen, for her part, believes she can finally let go—of the need to punish the “mother” or gain her approval.

Part Five: The Search for the Mother In Season 3, Ellen has persistent dreams about a forgotten woman who took care of her in childhood. Eventually, she learns (with some disappointment, perhaps) that the woman was not her biological mother, but a surrogate she was left with for an extended period of time to protect her from the abuse her father was inflicting on her older sister, Carrie. Ellen’s mother was unable to protect her older daughter, who consequently became the screwed-up, drug-abusing member of the family. Thus, one of the few intact, traditional nuclear families portrayed in Damages is revealed to be corrupt at heart, not a safe haven at all. And the traditional, warm-hearted mother is revealed as powerless or, at least, inadequately empowered to protect her daughters. In other words, the woman who wishes to be a good mother in conventional terms is not allowed, by the patriarchal family structure, to be one. Ellen’s mother loves her but cannot show her the way—cannot serve as the model for the sort of woman Ellen might wish to become. In case the viewer fails to perceive the connection between the failure of Ellen’s mother to protect her daughters and Ellen’s continuing fascination with Patty Hewes, Ellen has a conversation with her dead fiancé David around this time that spells it out: Patty fights bullies and wins, so there is a case to made for working with Patty if that is what Ellen wants to do. “You know you’ve always been trying to re-write your family history,” he says. Ellen has been “helpless” against the bullying father figure, but “Patty’s not.” (3.11). Ellen’s meditation on David—whether it is his ghost or her hallucination hardly matters—gives her permission (she gives herself permission) to choose Patty as ally and mentor. In fact, as an employee in the DA’s office, Ellen has already decided that she trusts Patty more than she does her boss, and that Patty is more likely than he to

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achieve some semblance of justice for the victims in the (Madoff-like) Tobin case. Thus, when Ellen’s quest to find her true mother proves inconclusive, she is “split . . . between two mothers: one, usually the biological one, who represents the culture of domesticity, . . . and another . . . who represents the choice of a vigorous work life, of ‘living alone and liking it’” (Rich 1986, 247-248). Patty, for her part, may need the domesticity she seems to have rejected more than she will readily admit. Having divorced her husband and kicked her son out of the house, she depends heavily on the “family” she has created at the office for emotional sustenance. When Patty believes that Ellen has betrayed her trust on the Tobin case, she turns on the younger woman with a rage born of wounded feelings: “Have you been trying to humiliate me this whole time?. . . You used me because it’s always been about ambition with you. . . . You’re a climber and you’re ruthless” (3.11). Ironically, Patty projects all her own worst characteristics onto Ellen, perhaps showing how closely she identifies with Ellen and wants to own her. Later, after Patty understands that Ellen has not betrayed her, she fires Alex, Ellen’s replacement at the firm, assuring her, “It’s not personal” (3.11). But it is personal: Alex gets fired because she is not Ellen. Finally, at the end of Season 3, Patty has a kind of prophetic vision. She thinks of all the blood that has been shed over the course of her career and remembers the hateful words of her son: “People either leave you or they die.” And she fears for the lives of Tom and Ellen if they pursue the latest scheme they have hatched to bring down the Tobin family. “Call it off,” she tells them. When Tom secretly defies her and gets killed by Joe Tobin (Campbell Scott) as a result, a grief-stricken Patty admits, “Tom was like family to me.” After Tom’s funeral, she tells that other “family” member, Ellen, where she wants her ashes scattered when her time comes. Nonetheless, she still lies to Ellen about the conditions under which Baby Julia died, her trust in this new “daughter” incomplete. “You’ve accomplished everything you set out to do,” says Ellen. “Is it worth it?” There is a flashback to Patty weeping over Julia’s grave two years before, and she does not answer. At this point, the viewer might be tempted to see Damages as one more morality play about the evils of unfeminine ambition. Certainly, it is true that Patty Hewes is a man’s woman—that is, the creation of three smart men—and she reflects cultural anxiety about powerful women. It is also true that one way in which we demonize powerful women is to reveal them to be bad mothers. Thus, Medea kills her children; Snow White’s step-mother tries to eliminate her; Patty

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Hewes loses Baby Julia on purpose and puts out a hit on Ellen. But the obsession with monstrous maternity in Damages is not just a replay of the same old misogynistic formula. It is true that the writers of the series make failed parenthood central to Patty’s character in a way that it is not for any of the male characters. Yet, by the end of Season 3, the figure of the good mother has become no more than a nostalgic fantasy haunting Ellen’s dreams and Patty’s guilty reveries. The individual greed and corporate misdeeds for which Patty and Ellen seek redress render the world unsafe for every mother’s child, and the home never was a safe haven to begin with. Perhaps the surprising content of Damages is not that the career woman is revealed to be a bad mother, but that good mothering appears to be all but impossible for anyone in a corrupt world that values money more than people and ambition more than love. Even as mothers are supposed to give altruistically to their young, says Sharon Hays (1996, 97), the society that promotes this view also “valorizes a set of ideas that runs directly counter to it, one emphasizing impersonal relations between isolated individuals efficiently pursuing their personal profit.” As if in illustration of Hays’s vision of an irresolvable split between ambition and family values, Patty Hewes becomes the successful woman forever haunted by the choices which, she believes, enabled her success. She may at times look monstrous, and her antagonist Frobisher calls her “the kind of woman who eats her young” (3.11). Yet she cannot simply be written off as an aberration. The portrayal may be exaggerated, but Patty’s conflicts are disturbingly familiar. She chooses autonomy in a culture that does not protect the dependent. She chooses power because she cannot rely on love. In her work, she fights for the little people to show that she is big. Yet she does love, she does depend on others, and she is not so big: those are her secrets, not her crimes against Ellen or Julia. That we understand her all too well is ours.

Works Cited Barzilai, Shuli. 1990. “Reading ‘Snow White’: The Mother’s Story.” Signs 15 (3): 515-534. Beauvoir, Simone de. 2010. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malvoany-Chevalier. New York: Knopf. Chodorow, Nancy, and Susan Contraato. 1992. “The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother.” In Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, edited by Barrie Throne with Marilyn Yalom, 191-214. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

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Cohany, Sharon R., and Emy Sok. 2007. “Trends in Labor Force Participation of Married Mothers of Infants.” Monthly Labor Review 130 (2): 9-16. Dussere, Erik. 2006. “Out of the Past, Into the Supermarket: Consuming Film Noir.” Film Quarterly 60 (1): 16-27. Ellis, John M. 1983. One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and their Tales. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Faludi, Susan. 1992. Backlash. New York: Anchor. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. 1984. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hall, Elaine J., and Marnie Salupo Rodriguez. 2003. “The Myth of Postfeminism.” Gender and Society 17.6: 878-902. Hays, Sharon, 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hillis, Ken. 2005. “Film Noir and the American Dream: The Dark Side of Enlightenment.” The Velvet Light Trap, No. 55 (Spring): 3-18. Kessler, Todd A., Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman. 2008. Damages: The Complete First Season, DVD. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures. —. 2010a. Damages: The Complete Second Season, DVD. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures. —. 2010b. Damages: The Complete Third Season. Amazon Video On Demand. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures. Lyne, Adrian. 1987. Fatal Attraction. Paramount. “Pilot Cast and Crew Commentary.” 2008. In Damages: The Complete First Season, DVD. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures. Rich, Adrienne. 1986. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. 2nd ed. New York: Norton. Spicer, Andrew. 2010. Historical Dictionary of Film Noir. Historical Dictionaries of Literature And the Arts, No. 38. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press. “Trust No One: Insight from the Creators of Damages.” 2008. In Damages: The Complete First Season, Disc 2. Created by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures. Whitmarsh, Lona, Donalee Brown, Jane Cooper, Yolanda HawkinsRodgers, and Diane Keyser Wentworth. 2007. “Choices and Challenges: A Qualitative Exploration of Professional Women’s Career Patterns.” The Career Development Quarterly 55 (3): 225-236.

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“Willful Acts: The Making of Damages.” 2008. In Damages: The Complete First Season, Disc 2. Created by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures.

CHAPTER SIX THE RING AND RINGU: NATURALIZING MATERNAL SELF-SACRIFICE SARAH ARNOLD

The figure of the mother has occupied an increasingly central role in cinema of the past few decades. Much academic discussion has been devoted to examining the maternal in horror, yet this tends towards the monstrous mother figure and, in particular, the monstrous maternal body (see Creed 1992). The mother figure of the horror film, in fact, more often evokes the self-sacrificing mother of the maternal melodrama. As such, the horror film is a site in which a duality of fascination and fear are played out in relation to the maternal. This duality is not limited to Western and US horror but is also a function of other national and transnational horror genres. However, this is not to assume that the figure of the mother carries out the same function in all horror cinemas. Rather, ideologies of the family and the maternal are played out somewhat differently. Here I will compare an original Japanese maternal horror with a US remake in order to demonstrate that although patriarchal cultures share common modes of maternal representation, and although maternal themes may appear universal (since they are translated from East to West), that each culture engages with this maternal discourse in radically different ways. More specifically, the shift from maternal representations in Japanese film to that of Western film demonstrates that Western, US maternal horror films are more embedded in patriarchal discourses, and more committed to reproducing essential motherhood than Japanese films. In order to demonstrate this I will offer a close reading of the Japanese Ringu (Nakata Hideo, 1998) and US The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002) arguing that each film invokes self-sacrificing paradigms associated more with the maternal melodrama (a genre popular in both nations). However the motif of the self-sacrificing mother is utilized differently in both: in the case of the US film to idealize sacrifice and in the Japanese film to interrogate it.

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The purpose of this is to demonstrate that what Western films imagine as natural or inevitable is revealed (through the examination of its Japanese counterpart or origins) as specifically manufactured. In addition, the comparison of the films reveals that “myths of motherhood,” either Eastern, Western or universal, are anything but stable. On its own each film denies a unified, uncomplicated image of motherhood. When examined in relation to a filmic translation this becomes even more apparent. For example, the theme of devotion to the child seems universal to both films yet each film deals with it in a culturally, socially and situationally specific way. What is revealed is that motherhood is a persistent theme across both cinemas. Its association with the horrific and the terrifying suggest that it is a source of both distress and comfort. The mother is both guardian and protector from this horror but also the reason for it, the initiator. This ambivalence surrounding the role and function of the mother seems to transcend culture/nationality yet the particular means by which this ambivalence is figured is relatively specific. This perhaps partially accounts for the need of a filmic translation. While both Ring (as I will refer to the general stories) films remain thematically similar, in both film versions there are notable digressions and differences. A comparison of both films also reveals the limits of applying Western theory to non – Western texts. Feminist theory of the West (such as that of Kristeva [1982] and Creed [1992]) cannot always account for the feminist experience of the East. A model of psychoanalysis based on the Western nuclear family unit needs to be readjusted in line with Japanese family structures (although this is far beyond the scope of this project). Finally, the historic and symbolic “meaning” of motherhood differs from that of the West. This indicates the problem of reading and interpretation. Therefore, effort will be made to examine each text within its own national framework (i.e. considering the mother function within each nation). With this in mind I will follow with a discussion of both US and Japanese versions of Ring, paying particular attention to the translation of the text from Japanese to American, the function and representation of motherhood in each film and the disparities or equivalence evident in both. I will argue that, while the Japanese film represents the mother in terms of self-sacrifice and duty towards the child, there tends to be far more negotiation of the role of motherhood than is apparent in the US film. The US remake, in fact, limits any textual commentary on the social aspects of motherhood (for example, the economic and practical issues that mothers contend with) and represents motherhood in accordance with essential motherhood and, in turn, produces a binary logic of good and bad motherhood, where it had not existed (or was submerged) in the original.

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Before turning to the films I want to set up a historical and filmic context for the Japanese “maternal.” The theme of self-sacrifice forms a significant narrative role in Ringu. The self-sacrificing mother, as with Western culture, tends to be revered and valued both socially and in historical texts and literature. While this “method” of mothering is recognizable to those in the West, the manifestations and functions of self-sacrifice differ according to the social structure of Japanese society as well as the (changing) family model.1 For example, unlike Western emphasis on the triadic family model, Japanese psychoanalysis proposes a dyadic maternal model of infantile development. Where the Freudian/Kleinian tradition posits the mother-child bond as a primitive precursor to the father-child bond, the Japanese tradition, developed by Kosawa (1954) and Okonogi (1978, 1979), presents a conflict/resolution scenario in relation to the mother (and not the father). Maternal sacrifice remains a fundamental process in this theory, however the nature of it is quite different to that of the West. Where the Western model has the mother give the child up to the Symbolic/Law-of-theFather, sacrifice in the Japanese model takes the form of unconditional love.2 The mother at first resents the child because it interferes with her own desires. The child begins to resent the mother when he realizes that the mother is not as devoted as he initially thought. Finally, both learn to forgive and respect each other (Fisher 2006, 66). The concept of amae (mutual dependence), which mother and child arrive at, points to some of the differences between Western and Japanese cultural identity. Where the West emphasizes individualism, in Japan group identity is central to 1 Before the end of WWII the Japanese family was characterized by the Ie system, which was legalized from the later 1800’s. This was an extended, multigenerational family led by a patriarch (usually the oldest male). Inheritance operated through the male line. Filial piety was paramount. While this family structure existed prior to the Meiji civil Code of 1898, it was a legal structure from then until the post-War years. People were registered through the family, not as individuals and women married into the family of the husband. After WW2 this structure was abolished and emphasis was placed on the marriage of two individuals, rather than the Ie. Likewise, women were granted rights regarding children and inheritance. 2 Like the Oedipus Complex, the Ajase complex is based upon a myth. In it, a queen, fearing that her unborn child may be the reincarnation of a sage she had murdered, tries to abort her pregnancy. This fails and she later tries, and fails, to kill the child. However, she comes to love the child. In later years the queen’s son learns of his mother’s actions and, in anger, tries to kill her. Overcome with guilt he develops rancid pores that emit a foul odour. Only his mother can tolerate his condition and she nurses him back to health, during which both forgive each other.

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national identity (66-67). Thus, the early mother child-bond structures the infant’s later social relationships. At the heart of the Ajase Complex, and in contrast to the Oedipus Complex, is not only the child’s ambivalence towards the mother but also the mother’s ambivalence towards maternity. However, like the mother of Western psychoanalytic thinking, she must learn to endure (the child’s hostility and resentment). As with the West, there are often contradictions between the idealized image of self-sacrificing mothers and the lived reality of mothering. Susan Orpett Long (1996) has pointed out that the role of the nurturing mother is not necessarily a historical fact, since care-giving from the 1600s onwards in Japan was frequently undertaken by a variety of people, not just mothers. While Long is referring to women’s role in nurturing, her analysis is applicable to the mother’s child rearing capacity. Long notes that researchers have begun to demonstrate how, rather than being a “natural” role for women, nurturing was encouraged through governmental policies (like the Meiji Civil Code of the late 1800’s). The Ie family structure resembled that of the samurai family,3 however, this “government policy,” functioned, “to create an image of Victorian genteel women…, a policy intended to improve Japan’s image abroad and maintain social control during rapid industrialization and social change at home.” (Orpett Long 1996, 159) This, perhaps, accounts for the similarities in the concept of caregiving and self-sacrifice in both Japan and the US. In her analysis of the characteristics of motherhood which have emerged in the wake of the Meiji policies towards the family and the mother in Japan, Masami Ohinata, drawing from various cultural analysis and historical accounts of motherhood, suggests that “when Japanese hear the word mother they do not call to mind the real, flesh-and-blood mother of their personal experiences but, rather, see a personification of ‘devotion to children, parental affection, and self-sacrifice.’” (Ohinata 1995, 205) However, the Japanese concept of self-sacrifice and nurturing is more a product of the regimented family system than of centuries of “natural” evolution (such as in the West where the representation and image of maternal self-sacrifice can be traced back many hundreds of years). For the mother there is an “obligation” to produce a male heir for the family, thus fulfilling her role. Takie Sugiyama Lebra (1985), in her analysis of the experience of motherhood across Japanese society (again, in the wake of the Ie family structure), notes how mother’s self-identity is embedded in the child. For many mothers the child represents her Ikagai (life’s worth) above anything else (162). Likewise, the achievement of the child is 3

The samurai family was a male dominated extended family.

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usually attributed to the mother and her devotion. While both parents are encouraged to partake in childcare, the mother has become the symbol of love and devotion (Ohinata 1995, 206). While this may also be true in the West, it is useful to note the differences in the nature of relationships between married couples of the US and Japan. Kyoko Yoshizumi, in her analysis of marriage in the post war years, notes how there is less emphasis placed on the notion of “romantic love” in Japanese marriages than in the US (Yoshizumi 1995, 192). She gives the example of how it is common practice for US parents to leave a child with a babysitter while pursuing their own social activities, whereas this is frowned upon by Japanese parents (an issue which is touched upon in Ringu). Yoshizumi, drawing on cultural analyses of the Japanese family, suggests that “a Japanese wife and husband are expected to…place priority on their role as parents rather than as a couple.” (192) Even in situations where there is no longer any love between husband and wife, the parents usually remained married in order to meet their “parental obligations.” (192) Both Lebra and Yoshizumi note that mothers often reject the idea of divorce for the welfare of the child. The reasons for this are both economic and cultural. Lebra points out that, “the first priority goes to the child. Whatever suffering a woman has in her marriage…becomes surmountable if it contributes to the welfare of her child. A neglected wife or an abused daughter-in-law would thus become determined to endure silently”(Lebra 1995, 162). Likewise, Yoshizumi cites the poor opportunities available for women to re-enter the workforce after motherhood, along with poor child care facilities, as a deterrent for single-motherhood or divorce. Whereas self-sacrifice in the West may not extend to remaining in an unfulfilling marriage (as divorce is much more common in the US), in Japan the low instances of divorce suggest that this may be so. It is interesting, therefore, that the Japanese film deals with the breakdown of marriage and singlemotherhood. A theme which may appear as conventional or unexceptional in the US film version, may, in fact, be somewhat controversial in the Japanese film. As with US cinema, family relationships form a significant part of Japanese film output. The theme of maternal devotion and self sacrifice finds its place among various genres including haha-mono (“mother film,” similar to the maternal melodrama) and the “uncanny mother film” (as Ruth Goldberg terms it, which contains the “bukimi-na haha: the nightmare mother who has a special link to madness or the supernatural” (Goldberg 2004, 373). While these two genres appear as inverse versions of each other, as Goldberg suggests, they are, perhaps, more closely linked. The melodramatic films are concerned with the same issues and

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familial matters as horror even though they provoke different emotional responses (pathos or anxiety). In both the haha-mono films as well as motherhood horror dedication to the child is paramount. The mother is often subjected to great misfortune, but overcomes or tolerates this for the sake of the child (who may not even realize or appreciate the sacrifice of the mother). Referring to the haha-mono, Richie and Anderson suggest that, There is no escape for mother. She must sacrifice and suffer. It is all part of her life. If she has any happiness, it is only in the hope that her husband may reform. There is a very slight chance of this…Another possible reward for her sufferings is that they may bring success and/or happiness to her children. (Anderson & Richie 1982, 318)

This motif is similarly evident in the maternal horror and more particularly in the Ring films (it is carried from the Japanese to the US film). However, as I will go on to suggest, the melodramatic maternal self-sacrifice motif is undermined in the Japanese text and perpetuated in the US text. This perhaps indicates the degree to which maternal discourses are being interrogated in each socio-cultural climate. The following section will illustrate this thesis. Before being remade as both a Japanese and then a US film, Ringu (the story) already enjoyed success as a novel (Suzuki 2003) and a television series. While both novel and TV series remain markedly different than Ringu, both Ringu (1998) and The Ring (2002) maintain a similar storyline, making them suitable for comparison. Likewise, both films were received well at the box-office within their respective countries. Ringu has often been cited as instigating the trend of remaking Asian horror films for Western audiences (it was followed by countless other films such as Pulse [Kiyoshi, 2001], The Eye [The Pang Brothers, 2002], and Cure [Kiyoshi, 1997]). Nevertheless, such remakes illustrate the appeal of both the horror genre in general and the thematic concerns of each film to a global audience. Matt Hill, in his analysis of the global appeal of such films suggests that “rather than arguing that these films…resonate with negative western stereotypes of Japaneseness, it could be countered that there is a cultural homology operating here between Japanese and western fears of technologized society, such that cultural differences may become less significant than shared, transnational anxieties” (Hill 2006, 161-164). Here, Hills is accounting for the popularity of Japanese horror films in the US. However, if such cultural homology exists, how are we then to understand the remake particularly when these texts seem to produce different cultural discourses (like that of motherhood)? If cultural

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differences can indeed be overcome through a shared experience of fear of technology or other shared anxieties, why not distribute the Japanese original rather than remake the film with Western locations and actors? Although economic factors undoubtedly play a role, I will argue that cultural specifics of Japanese social structures, characters and interpersonal relationships are also a factor. Hill suggests that the transnational appeal of horror can be found in the universality of “symbolic situations” over normal, every day ones, and he cites this as part of the reason US audiences are drawn towards Ringu (176). Yet the concept of the remake makes this observation troublesome, particularly when there are some fundamental alterations to the narrative. Rather, while some “symbolic situations” might resonate with both cultures, the approaches to these symbolic situations may differ radically. Thus, while motherhood, particularly single motherhood, may form the backdrop of both stories, the means in which it is represented points to the way that ideologies of motherhood are produced (or even interrogated) in both US and Japanese film. The basic story of both films follows the myth of a cursed videotape that kills the viewer one week after seeing it. A single mother who works in journalism investigates the rumours after her niece dies mysteriously. She enlists the help of her ex- husband/boyfriend and together they discover the source of the tape- a young psychic girl who was killed in a well. Her ex dies from the curse, but she manages to save herself and her son by distributing copies of the tape (which lifts the curse). There are two motherhood narratives in each film: the development of the relationship between the journalist and her son and the discovery of the history of the young girl in the tape and her mother. The narrative trajectory of journalist and son remains similar in both films while the history of the girl and her mother differs significantly. I will firstly explore the role and representation of the journalist mother (Reiko in Ringu and Rachel in The Ring) by exploring key scenes from both films and then move on to the secondary narrative of the “historical” mothers of both films. This analysis will demonstrate that “mother blame” is a representation more common to US films than Japanese films. Ringu offers a critique of dominant maternal discourses by privileging the mother’s perspective. The Ring, on the other hand, represents a patriarchal vision, or nightmare, of motherhood since it privileges the perspective of the child (as well as the father, at times) and plays upon the infantile fear of maternal omnipotence. Unlike Ringu, The Ring corresponds to and perpetuates dominant cultural and psychoanalytic discourses of bad motherhood by emphasizing the suffering of the child rather than the mother. A number of scenes in

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The Ring emphasize the mother’s selfish hold over the child and her unwillingness to sacrifice herself to her maternal role (specifically in her capacity as working mother), as I will go on to discuss. The film utilizes a number of negative maternal archetypes most of which are absent from the original; for example, the “phallic mother,” the “castrating mother” and, finally, the “monstrous mother” (as outlined by Creed 1992). Ultimately, Ringu operates as a melodrama horror hybrid. The mother’s story operates at the level of melodrama and the videotape curse at the level of horror. The Ring, in contrast, structures the horror around the mother. A comparison between a number of key scenes and themes illustrates this point. As working single-mothers both Reiko and Rachel divide their time between the workplace and the domestic sphere. In addition each woman’s relationship with her young son (Yoichi in Ringu and Aidan in The Ring) appears as adult and mature rather than of that between a mother and child. It is made very clear in both films that work commitments are of equal importance to parental commitments for both mothers. For example, Reiko first appears in an interview with some schoolgirls about the mysterious videotape. She then discusses the case with a work colleague before engaging in some investigation. Afterwards she rushes home where her son sits waiting. Reiko is, in these scenes, friendly and affable. She is polite to and patient with the schoolgirls and has a good working relationship with her colleagues who seem to respect her superior position (this would be atypical of the Japanese broadcast industry [Suzuki 1995]4). Rachel’s introduction, on the other hand, is utterly dissimilar. Her son is introduced before her as he sits waiting in a classroom with his teacher. As he draws a picture the camera tracks into his face looking up in response to shouting heard down the hallway. His eyes look sullen and tired and he appears slightly frightened. He shares a concerned look with his teacher as the shouting grows louder. He looks through a frosted pane of glass at Rachel who walks down the hallway arguing with someone on the phone. She is threatening to hurt this person if they dare to interfere with her column in the newspaper. She walks into the classroom saying “shit”. Realizing she has been overheard by Aidan and the teacher, her voice softens and she simply says “hey”, offering no explanation or apology. These contrasting introductions to Reiko and Rachel create certain alternate impressions about working mothers. Reiko is established as a working mother (in that order) who seems to struggle to find a balance 4

Suzuki discusses how difficult it is for women to find any superior roles within the broadcast industry as well as the resistance to combating sexism in media portrayals.

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between the two. Rachel, however, is introduced from the point of view of her son. The first we learn about her is that she is late picking up her son and is angry about work. Since he does not appear happy (which is emphasized is his physical appearance as well as his dark surroundings), it can only be deduced that this is because of his mother (being late, not being there, being angry). Ringu constructs and maintains a maternal perspective for the duration of the film. Reiko, although more organized and efficient in the work sphere than at home, appears to have an emotionally sound relationship with her son. The Ring, on the other hand, shifts between identification with the son and the mother, thereby limiting any access to her experiences or desires. In those scenes where Aidan is present he is framed as the primary character, with the camera situated at his eye level, looking up at Rachel. Near the beginning of both films is a scene where mother and son prepare to go to the funeral of a niece. This scene establishes the nature of the mother-son bond. However, the lead up to this scene is different in both and functions to determine the character of the mother in an alternative light. In Ringu, as mentioned above, Reiko goes from her workplace to her home where Yoichi is waiting. They then proceed to get ready for the funeral. In The Ring, Rachel collects Aidan from the school. As Aidan waits in the car, Rachel has a discussion with the teacher. Here the teacher raises concerns about Aidan’s independence, quietness and reaction to his cousin’s death (he also predicted her death). Rachel is dismissive and defensive. In the drive home, Aidan sits in the back seat to the right while his mother sits in the front to the left. Rachel does not appear in the shot, only in the reflection of the car mirror. Later as she puts him to bed, Aidan refuses a bedtime story and asks about death. Rachel tries to comfort him but cannot give him any satisfactory response. He says, “goodnight, Rachel” indicating that he does not identify her as a mother but as another adult. The inclusion of this scene is of utmost significance to the viewer’s perception of Rachel, as well as her narrative journey. Before the narrative develops any further, we can deduce that Rachel’s lack of “mothering” is having a detrimental effect on her son. The two segments in which Aidan sees his mother through glass or in a mirror firstly align the spectator with Aidan’s subjective point of view and secondly, construct Rachel as distant or as “not there” for her son. Although later on both mothers will not “be there” for their sons when they become cursed by watching the videotape, it is noteworthy that Reiko’s absence tends to be physical (she is often late home) whereas Rachel’s hints at neglect (she does not acknowledge other people’s concerns about Aidan). From very early on it is apparent that Rachel is the primary source of family disintegration, echoing the “family breakdown”

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melodramas of the 1980’s where “the mother becomes…hard, strong and selfish” (Sobchack 1996, 154). Like these melodramas, the mother’s emotional or physical absence causes stress in the child (Ordinary People [Redford 1980], Kramer Vs Kramer [Benton 1979]). The additional scenes of the school and home in The Ring seem to suggest the multiple ways that Rachel has failed as a mother. Unlike Reiko, Rachel does not appear in the workplace. We only hear her make a work-related call. Also unlike Reiko, Rachel’s working relationships seem strained. Her working life does not seem to be fulfilling and she appears to be aggressive towards her work colleagues. Rachel has apparently not found the “work-motherhood balance” that women are expected to fulfill. She has also failed to notice Aidan’s emotional problems, which must be pointed out to her by his teacher. Rachel has, thus, achieved a double failure. In her efforts to be a career woman and a mother she has managed neither successfully. Both films, then, extend upon discourses of single and working mother specific to each culture. However, where Ringu points to the contention between the symbolic imago of mother and the social role of motherhood, The Ring renders such contradictions invisible. Bad mothering, according to this film, is not the consequence of testing social factors such as broken families or poor childcare facilities, rather bad mothering contributes to these very social factors. This is evident in one particular scene of both films. Here, the films converge in the domestic scene where mother and son prepare for the funeral. In both, the unorganized mother finds that her son has laid out her funeral clothing and is himself ready for departure. This establishes the son as independent as well as familiar with isolation. Whereas Reiko is delayed because of work, Rachel simply rises late. Reiko dresses in Yoichi’s room and has him zip up her dress. When she discusses Tomoko’s death she sits at his level, touching his shoulder. This suggests an adult relationship between both of them, rather than that of mother and son. Yoichi, unlike Aidan, does not seem distressed by this, but well adjusted. In fact, Yoichi’s behavior seems anything but problematic. In Japanese society “independence” in children is valued, although it should be accompanied by the mother’s rigorous guidance (Allison 1996, 135-155). In spite of Reiko’s absence from the home, Yoichi seems to be doing fine. If anything, he has had to grow up too soon. This is suggested in the way he zips up the mother’s dress and also in the décor of the house. It is dark, sterile and minimalist. In the living room there is no indication of a child’s presence such as toys. Even Yoichi’s bedroom is unusually organized for a child, especially compared to the bedroom of his cousin seen earlier. Thus, Reiko’s limits as a mother

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can be attributed to her lack of selflessness. Although she does not seem overly selfish she does not devote herself entirely to her child. He adjusts to her living arrangements rather than vice versa. Nevertheless, any problems she seems to have are socio-economic rather than psychological/emotional. Single mothers who work full-time remain the exception in Japan. In addition, the breakdown of the extended family structure, along with inadequate provisions for childcare, ensures that negotiating work/family life is difficult (Ohinata 1995, 207). Ringu seems, therefore, ambivalent if not sympathetic to the situations working single mothers find themselves in. The same scene in The Ring has Rachel not returning from work but waking late to find Aidan dressing himself in the living room. Rachel runs around the house in her underwear desperately rushing to find anything to wear. Aidan has a dress laid out for her. Here Rachel suggests a child and Aidan the parent. There is no sense of equality or mutual respect between them. Once again Aidan views his mother through a mirror rather than look directly at her. He is left to fulfill the domestic role left empty by her absence. The difference between the two films at this point indicates the contrasting anxieties about the role of working mothers. Japan, as a society relatively new to the single family unit (Yoshizumi 1995, 194), does not seem to share the same negative discourse about single mothers or career mothers. This is not to suggest that single/working mothers do not face discrimination but simply that, given that the figure is so low, there has not been much focus on the issue in the Japanese media. The US, on the other hand, has much higher instances of single and working mothers, which, over the last thirty to forty years have been given much more media attention. The issues that Rachel encounters (finding suitable day care for Aidan, not being involved in his education, neglecting his emotional wellbeing, or her career affecting his lifestyle) have all at one time or another been the focus of intensive media campaigns as well the subject of many films. Lucy Fischer notes the correspondence between certain media scandals regarding various instances of maternal neglect and the body of films, from comedies to horror, appropriating the same themes (Fischer 1996, 133-134). While these cases are too numerous to mention a common factor was that the mother’s absence led to misfortune for the child. A good number of films of the 1990’s and later shared this theme: Home Alone (Columbus 1990), The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (Hanson 1992), etc. The Ring, therefore, belongs to a movement of US films that tend to be critical of mothers who have a career or life outside the home. It also shares another characteristic-that of suppressing the maternal voice. Unlike, Ringu which establishes Reiko as the authorial voice at an early

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stage, The Ring introduces Aidan before Rachel and often frames her within mirrors or glass. Hence, by constructing Aidan as the initial subjective voice, by doubly removing her from direct view and, finally, constructing her as an aggressive and dismissive mother, spectator identification is limited from the early stages of the film. Where Ringu draws from the Japanese haha-mono tradition, which emphasize the bond between mother and son, The Ring presents the mother/son relationship more problematically. Aidan is clearly intimidated by his mother. His teacher insinuates that Rachel does not listen to him, or, that she does not encourage him to talk. In this respect, The Ring can be seen to share some elements with films such as Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) in which the intimidating and oppressive phallic/castrating mother is the source of trauma for the child. Again, like Psycho and also Marnie (Hitchcock 1964), this phallic/castrating mother is constructed through the voice, memories and eyes of the child. Although Rachel later becomes the central character of the film (in Psycho and Marnie the mother is dead or physically absent), all of her actions are determined by their effects on the son. Barbara Creed stresses the importance of differentiating these two women: phallic and castrating. She argues that while they are often reduced to the same person, they are inherently different (Creed 1992, 158). For her, the phallic mother is the mother prior to the knowledge of sexual difference. The phallic mother threatens with penetration and aggression, she is the masculine mother who either possesses the child or, alternatively, distances herself from the child. The castrating mother, on the other hand, is feared precisely because of her sexual difference. Creed argues that the Freudian emphasis on fear of castration due to the mother’s lack ignores the overwhelming evidence that supports the theory that woman is feared because she castrates. Noting that constructions of the castrating woman are “complex and multi-faceted,” Creed adds that “representations of woman as an agent of castration take various forms in the horror film: oral sadistic mother (the vampire film); femme castratrice (the woman’s revenge film); castrating mother (family horror).”(151) For her, Mrs Bates epitomizes the castrating mother since she overpowering, intimidating and tyrannical. The Ring oscillates between these two mothers. While Creed notes that they are distinct representations, I would argue that the film does not present them as such. Rachel is phallic in her masculinity, her disinterest in sacrificing herself for her son, in her seeking out her desire and in her aggressive investigation of the videotape. She overwhelms her son, evident in his “feminization” in the domestic space. Likewise, Rachel is, at

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points, the castrating mother: in her relationship with her work colleagues who she verbally assaults, and in her relationship with the father of her child who she seems to have cut out of her life and of whom she is dismissive. Ringu includes none of these elements. Reiko is presented as neither phallic nor castrating. While she occupies a predominantly masculine sphere, she does not appear to have become “masculinized” or threatening in the process. This is not to suggest that what in Western psychoanalytic theory is termed the phallic mother does not have an equivalent in Japanese horror or melodrama. We find her in the hahamono as the domineering mother-in-law and in horror as the all-engulfing mother who rules her son. However, in Ringu Reiko shows no evidence of this. This demonstrates the different concerns at the heart of both films. Where Ringu reveals the repercussions of familial breakdown on a general level, The Ring focuses on the mother as an instigator in this. Drawing upon the tradition of Japanese melodramas, male figures remain in the background of Ringu. If present they are often a source of grief or are ineffectual. In these films, mothers are typically the bind that holds the family together. All responsibility for familial cohesion falls on her shoulders. While these films perpetuate the notion of maternal suffering and sacrifice for the family they also point to lack of social and economic structures available to domestic women. Ringu expands upon this melodrama motif. At the funeral for her niece Reiko moves between the male and female spaces of the house. In one room sit the male family members. In the kitchen all the women are working and preparing food. Reiko remains separate from both spaces, indicating that she does not belong to either. During this scene Yoichi, who Reiko’s father was meant to be looking after, wanders upstairs to his cousin’s room alone. Although nothing happens—Reiko finds him in time—the mise en scène suggests that he is in danger (dark lighting and low music). In the same scene of The Ring, Rachel leaves Aidan alone at the funeral while she talks to her sister. Like Yoichi, Aidan wanders upstairs. This subtle difference shifts responsibility to the mother, not the grandfather. Other scenes are either temporally or structurally altered in the remake to suggest the mother’s failure of responsibility. In Ringu, before Reiko goes on an investigative trip, she prepares food for Yoichi to eat later that evening. A similar scene in The Ring has Aidan prepare his own food while his mother lies in bed. Therefore, while Reiko is seen as the protector and nurturer of her child, even while she splits her time between work and home, Rachel is outright neglectful. Twice she lies in bed as Aidan prepares himself for the day and on numerous occasions her absence puts him in danger. As Kaplan

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suggests, this discourse of working motherhood equating child abandonment indicates a revival of the sanctification of domestic mothers and the nuclear family (Kaplan 1992, 140-142). The alternate representations of the mother figure in both films may suggest that the “institution of motherhood” functions in slightly different but significant ways. Both mothers represent the sole parents of the families, with the fathers playing only a minor role. As mentioned before, Japanese haha-monos (mother films) tend to construct incompetent or powerless father figures. This contrasts with the US melodramas (particularly of the 1940’s- 60’s) in which the father is symbolic of order and socialization. Therefore, while socially the Japanese family is structured as father-mother-child, symbolically the mother-child bond is sanctified. Unlike in the West, this bond continues into adulthood, especially in the case of mother and son. Anne Allison has noted the culturally specific nature of mother-son relationships in US and Japanese psychoanalytic theory: mothering is given much more recognition and value in Japan, far more so than in the United States, for example. Coupled to this is the relative absence, both physically and symbolically, of fathers. Relatively absent as well, then, is the phallus bearer so essential to the psychoanalytically inspired theories of western identity formation and male dominance, particularly in comparison to the intensiveness and extensiveness of the mother’s role in Japan. (Allison 2000, 25)

Allison goes on to suggest that western modes of psychoanalytic theory must be replaced by a Japanese counterpart when discussing the motherson relationships of Japan. The Ajase theories of Kosawa (1954), for example, make little mention of phallic authority or the law-of-the-father. Whereas the Oedipal drama emphasizes the turn from the mother towards the father (the recognition of sexual difference and of the mother’s “lack”), the Ajase complex involves the son’s overcoming of hostility towards the mother for her rejection of him and, eventually, mutual acceptance and dependence of both (amae). Amae marks the end of the Asaje complex and is an important factor in the formation of Japanese social identity (which emphasize co-dependency rather than individuality, as in the West). The relationship with the mother, therefore, acts as a template for future relationships. Thus, the mother is not defined in terms of pre-Oedipal omnipotence and post-Oedipal “castration,” since, for him, this trajectory does not take place in the Japanese boy. The centrality of the mother psychoanalysis of Japan suggests a maternal rather than paternal complex.

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This particular scenario is evident in Ringu. Reiko, while loving, provokes abandonment fears through her absence from the domestic space. The motif of guilt is apparent when Reiko fails to prevent Yoichi from viewing the videotape. Ultimately she must prevent both of their deaths through circulating the tape and accepting her maternal role. Therefore, Ringu can be seen to act out fantasies of unity and sacrifice. This may also account for the notable absence of masculine “authority” in the film. If the Ajase complex prioritizes the dyadic union of mother-son above the triadic union of the Oedipal complex, then the father does not function as the pivotal element of identity formation. Hence, Ryuji/the father’s minimal role in the film. When Reiko seeks his help she finds him dismissive, arrogant and disinterested in Yoichi’s life. Although he helps her with the investigation, he ultimately falls victim to the curse. Ryuji, in his separation and independence from the family, rejects amae. This may account for why the mother in Ringu is more free from “blame” than the mother of The Ring. Ringu repeats existing social and symbolic structures of the family in which the mother acts as primary caretaker and authority of the child. The Ring constructs a family that is “broken,” where the “normal” operations of subject formation (according to Western psychoanalytic theory and socio-historic ideology) are fractured. In The Ring, Rachel acts as the destructive presence which threatens the nuclear family structure. Not only does she undermine the son, but also the father. Unlike the “phallic mother” of male fantasy, in which the woman’s “lack” is denied through “fetishistic disavowal,” Rachel is the pre-Oedipal mother who “denies” her lack and who will not take up her proper place within the Symbolic. The Ring, then, plays out the nightmare of the corrupt power of woman. Along with terrifying her son, Rachel belittles the father of her son. Upset that he is in another relationship she accuses him of being childish and leaves abruptly. He admits to Aidan that he stands outside school waiting to see him. While Aidan implies that he does not need a father, he draws a picture of his “desired” family with the father at their side. The purpose of this scene seems to be to lament the death of the idealized nuclear family. As Aidan draws, the father sits looking on and mother comes to the son’s side recreating the lost family of the drawing. Aidan says to his mother that the father asked him to draw a picture. Aidan responds positively to the authority of the father, undertaking successfully the task asked of him. This contrasts with the life he has with mother, who demands nothing of him, provides no guidance and must be parented herself. Aidan has, therefore, no way to turn away from the mother and take up his “proper” place in the Symbolic. As a

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result, he becomes overwhelmed by the archaic mother (another theme in the film), as well as his haunting by the ghosts of his cousin and Samara. The films, then, both fulfill the psycho-social project of patriarchy, albeit according to their distinct cultural gender ideologies. In Ringu, Reiko’s journey corresponds to the melodramatic tradition of mother-son relationships. The mother re-enacts her devotion through an act of sacrifice and by engaging in amae (mutual dependence). In the finale, Reiko asks her father to take a copy of the tape which would free Yoichi from the curse (inviting some kind of masculine agency back into the text). While the film addresses the social and practical issues that face single mothers in contemporary Japan, it does so firmly within a tradition of “mother love.” The Ring demonstrates the horrifying fantasy of autonomous motherhood, in which both mother and child will be caught up in the nightmare imaginary. The social and psychoanalytic mother is one and the same. This mother of the “nightmare unconscious” situates The Ring within the traditions of the “monstrous feminine,” which speaks to masculine anxieties rather than maternal ones. The fascination with maternal lineage in both Ring films suggests that they are concerned with how the historical concept of motherhood informs contemporary issues of motherhood. In both, a traumatic event in the past, invariably linked to the mother, breaches the present and contextualizes the contemporary mother narrative. Mothers, the films seem to say, must learn from the past, and must learn from the errors and tragedies of historical, long dead, mothers. However, the natures of the lessons learned, I would argue, are clearly culturally determined. The Japanese film proposes that an understanding of the historical function of motherhood is necessary in order to depart from previous maternal discourses. Present mothers must come to understand why mothers functioned in a particular way, what motivated mothers to behave the way they did (whether it was right or wrong) and use this knowledge to determine their own role as mothers. In both of these films motherhood is shaped by the social circumstances in which the mothers operate. However, the US film proposes the opposite. Here, motherhood is a-historical, the sins of the mother will be visited upon the child, and the sins of past mothers will be repeated by current mothers. In the US film, the social circumstances which determine how a mother can function are dismissed or obscured. Instead motherhood is figured as a pathological state, evident in the mother’s character, her incorrect and negative behavior. Nevertheless, both the Japanese and US films represent motherhood in terms of essential motherhood, in terms of how it functions within the corresponding patriarchal societies. While various theoretical approaches

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have been utilized to account for the meaning and ideological project of maternal self-sacrifice the very fact that such sacrifice is valorized in women indicates a strong resemblance in subject formation and socialization across both cultures. In both, the mother must defer her own desire for the sake of the child (with “career” being the signifier of autonomous desire in the films discussed). The US and Japanese films begin to diverge in their representation of motherhood when accounting for why the maternal appears as such. The Japanese film places far more emphasis on the external socio-economic factors contributing to such representations. Ringu acknowledges the quagmire that mothers have historically found and contemporaneously find themselves in. The Japanese film exposes the contradictions between the symbolic image of the motherhood ideal and the social reality of poverty, stress, lone parenthood and unrealistic expectations. The US film ignores any such contradictions and persist in propagating the good/bad mother of the patriarchal, social unconscious. The “social” and “psychical” mothers are one and the same. Such representations are complicit with the dominant ideology that rewards and sanctifies self-sacrifice and punishes unconventional, uncontained motherhood. The translation of such maternal horrors reveals the extent to which representations of motherhood in the West are informed by patriarchal discourses of motherhood. The Ring, in contrast to its Japanese counterpart, offers few moments of resistance or subversion. In fact, it erases such moments of subversion evident in the original Japanese text.

Works Cited Allison, Anne. 1996. “Producing Mothers,” in Re-Imagining Japanese Women, ed Anne E. Imamura. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. —. 2000. Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan, California: University of California Press. Anderson, Joseph and Richie, Donald. 1982. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Creed, Barbara. 1992. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, London & New York: Routledge. Fischer, Lucy. 1996. Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Fisher Sorgenfrei, Carol. 2006. “Poison Women and National Identity in Postwar Japanese Performance Or “Oedipus, Schmoedipus-What’s It Matter, So Long As He Loves His Mother?””, in Modern Japanese

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Theatre and Performance, ed David Jortner, Keiko McDonald, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr, Oxford: Lexington Books. Goldberg, Ruth. 2004. “Demons in the Family: Tracking the Japanese “Uncanny Mother Film” from A Page of Madness to Ringu,” Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, ed Barry Keith Grant, Oxford: Scarecrow Press. Hill, Matt. 2006. “Ringing the Changes: Cult Distinctions and Cultural Differences in US Fan’s Readings of Japanese Horror Cinema,” in Japanese Horror Cinema, ed Jay McRoy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kaplan, E. Ann. 1992. Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama, Routledge, London and New York. Kosawa, Heisaku. 1954. “Two kinds of guilt feelings: the Ajase complex,” Japanese Journal of Psychoanalysis, 11. (Original work published 1931). Kristeva, Julia. 1982. The Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Lebra, Takei Sugiyama. 1985. Japanese Women: Constraint and Fulfillment. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ohinata, Masami. 1995. “The Mystique of Motherhood: A Key to Understanding Social Change and Family Problems in Japan,” in Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, ed. Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda, New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Okonogi, Keigo. 1978. “The Ajase Complex of the Japanese (1),” in Japan Echo 5, no. 4. —. 1979. “The Ajase Complex of the Japanese (2),” in Japan Echo 6, no. 1. Orpett Long, Susan. 1996. “Nurturing and Femininity: The Ideal of Caregiving in Postwar Japan”, in Re-Imagining Japanese Women, ed Anne E. Imamura. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Sobchack, Vivian. 1996. “Bringing it All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange”, in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed Barry Keith Grant, Austin & Texas: University of Texas Press. Suzuki, Koji. 2003. Ring, trans R.B. Rohmer & Glynne Walley, New York: Vertical Press. Suzuki, Midori Fukunishi. 1995. “Women and Television: Portrayal of Women in the Mass Media,” in Japanese Women: New Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future, ed Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and

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Atsuko Kameda, New York: Feminist Press at The City University of New York. Yoshizumi, Kyoko. 1995. “Marriage and Family: Past and Present,” in Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, ed. Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda, New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York.

Filmography Cure. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997. Japan: Cowboy Pictures/Daiei Company. The Eye. Directed by Oxide & Danny Pang, 2002. Hing Kong/Singapore: Mediacorp Raintree Pictures. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Directed by Curtis Hanson, 1992. Los Angeles: Hollywood Pictures. Home Alone. Directed by Chris Columbus, 1990. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox. Kramer Vs Kramer. Directed by Robert Benton, 1979. Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures. Marnie. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1964. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures. Psycho. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1960. Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures. Pulse. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001. Japan: Toho Company Ltd. The Ring. Directed by Gore Verbinski, 2002. Los Angeles: Dreamworks SKG. Ringu. Directed by Nakata Hideo, 1998. Japan: Toho Company Ltd.

CHAPTER SEVEN OF MY FLESH: MOTHERING EVIL CHILDREN IN HOLLYWOOD THRILLERS LINDA LEVITT

Trauma leaves its victims troubled and vulnerable, and the death of one’s child is a devastating experience of trauma. Three films, The Good Son (1993), Orphan (2009) and Joshua (2007), focus on women who have experienced such loss and are subsequently tormented by their own evil children. Distracted by their pain and their need to heal physical and emotional wounds, these women are particularly vulnerable to the manipulations of children who further disrupt and threaten their lives. A mother’s instinct is to protect her child, and when evil children appear in thrillers and horror films, the mother’s conflict between wanting to keep the child from harm and recognizing evil in that same child drives the narrative. Patterns of deviant behavior are difficult for mothers to identify when distracted by their recent traumas and their drive for perfection. But more significantly, mothers want to believe the best about their children and struggle to accept that they could be agents of harm. In each of these films, mothers have faced overwhelming difficulty as parents, and each film begins with the introduction of a new child into the family home: in Joshua, Abby Cairn brings home her newborn daughter with some unease, recalling the postpartum depression she suffered after the birth of her son. Orphan opens with the birth of Kate and John Coleman’s stillborn child; soon after, the couple decides to adopt a nineyear-old Estonian girl from an orphanage. The Good Son is the story of the Evans family. Susan Evans’ youngest son Richard has drowned in the bathtub, leaving her wracked with guilt for her negligence that led to his death. Each of these women seeks to reaffirm her identity and her familial role by being an exemplary mother and wife. This essay explores the mother-child bond in thrillers, and how that bond is manipulated, strained, and eventually shattered. The films being

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analyzed raise questions about the contemporary family, parenting, and expectations for mothering that women place upon themselves. Some may categorize the films in which evil children persecute their mothers as horror films, and an argument could be made for such a categorization. Yet genre tends to be more fluid than fixed, and there is overlap between depictions of “horror” and “thriller.” Film scholar Martin Rubin characterizes the thriller as falling “somewhere between a genre proper and a descriptive quality that is attached to other, more clearly defined genres—such as spy thriller, detective thriller, horror thriller. […] The thriller can be conceptualized as a ‘metagenre’ that gathers several other genres under its umbrella” (Rubin 1999, 4). If thriller is a metagenre, then these films might be horror thrillers, but with emphasis on thrillers, as there are particular qualities of horror films that are absent from these three movies. In his essay “Horrality: The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films,” Philip Brophy claims that the “gratification of the contemporary Horror film is based upon tension, fear, anxiety, sadism and masochism— a disposition that is overall both tasteless and morbid” (Brophy 1986, 5). For fans of the genre, this is a conventional pleasure of horror. While each of the films under discussion are rooted in Brophy’s “tension, fear, and anxiety,” these films are neither tasteless nor morbid. Media scholar Rick Worland further argues that a horror film is “a movie that aims foremost to scare us,” which other genres do as well; for Worland, the difference is that “a horror film evokes deeper, more personal psychological fears in the starkest terms” (Worland 2007, 7). Worland sees the protagonists of horror films as condemned to either death or damnation, and the mothers of these films face no such certain fate. Each film does, however, draw on a significant legacy of horror: the depiction of family in horror films from the 1970s onward, where evil comes from within the family rather than from outside (Williams 1996). The family does not come together to fight an external evil but must battle malevolence of its own making. In Halloween, for example, Michael Myers’ first victim is his older sister, and he returns to conduct a massacre in his old neighborhood. In the psychological thriller, the murderer from within the family plays to dramatic effect. Victims are often unsuspecting, as it is difficult to fathom that one’s loved one could be full of hidden malice. It is perhaps even more difficult to imagine that your child could be a killer.

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Trauma in the Family The death of one’s child can be overwhelming: a fissure in the natural order of things, a child’s death leaves parents struggling to comprehend how such an event could occur. Science writer Ann Finkbeiner set aside her usual subject matter of astronomy to reflect on her son’s sudden death at the age of 18. Finkbeiner notes that “children’s deaths make no sense, have no precedents, are part of no pattern; their deaths are unnatural and wrong. So parents fight their wiring, change their perspectives, and adjust to a reality that makes little sense” (Finkbeiner 1998, xiii). In a culture where people are generally uncomfortable talking about death, it is all the more difficult to find appropriate social customs for dealing with the death of a child. Parental grief is further complicated by cultural expectations that one should work through the process of mourning and finish grieving in what might be deemed an unnaturally brief time span. Those who struggle to manage their grief are considered incapable of dealing with their emotions as they should. This is particularly the case for a mourning mother, who may be surrounded by well-meaning friends and family who offer platitudes intended to encourage: the mother must be strong for her surviving children. She must hold the family together. After all, she has so much to look forward to and so many reasons to be thankful. Yet, many mothers whose children die struggle to look forward to anything at all while working through their protracted loss. Susan Evans faces such a loss in The Good Son. She and her husband Wallace agree to have their 12-year-old nephew Mark stay with them while his father travels overseas for business. Beneath the placid, lavish surface of the Evans family life are the lingering threads of grief. Time has passed since Richard, the youngest Evans child, died from drowning in the bathtub, yet Susan has not reconciled herself with his death. She conducts her role as mother warmly and efficiently, but maintains an emotional and, at times, physical distance from her family. When Mark sees Susan standing at the top of a high, rocky precipice, looking out over the water, he asks his cousin Henry, “Isn’t that your Mom?” Henry replies offhandedly, “Yeah, she’s always out there. She goes out there to think about Richard. Weird, huh?” Mark too is grieving, as the film opens with his mother’s untimely death from cancer. Wallace assures his brother Jack that spending time with other children will be beneficial for Mark, yet spending time with Henry soon becomes a dangerous endeavor. On the first day of Mark’s visit, the boys throw rocks in an abandoned building, breaking windows until they are chased away. Then they run to the cemetery, where Henry

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smokes a cigarette. He asks Mark if he saw his mother after she died. “I took a real good look at my brother Richard when he drowned in the bathtub,” Henry says. He tells Mark that he should have looked closely at his mother to see what death looks like. Mark responds with both anger and discomfort. In the following days, Henry shoots a dog and drops its corpse down the well in the cemetery, then has Mark accompany him to a highway overpass, where he throws a mannequin over the bridge into oncoming traffic. Several vehicles crash in the ensuing mayhem, which Henry finds amusing. Mark is horrified, and begins to see Henry as malicious and violent. Henry is bothered by the bond Susan and Mark develop over their shared grief, and manipulatively tries to drive a wedge between them by announcing at dinner that Mark would like to move into Richard’s room rather than bunking with Henry. Mark’s repeated denials are ignored as Susan and Wallace’s conversation grows in intensity. Wallace: You know that’s not a bad idea. Susan: Wallace, we’ve been through this before. I just… Wallace: Honey, give it some thought. We can’t keep it that way forever… Susan: I know, I’m not… Wallace: It’s turning into a museum… Susan: Well I didn’t say forever, I’ll change when I’m ready, I just…I think if Mark wants to move there’s a nice room on the third floor you could have. Mark: But Henry’s making it up. Wallace: Honey, listen to me, if Mark moves in there, it could help. It needs to be lived in. I’m not saying throw out the toys and stuff. Susan: I just don’t want to talk about it right now. Wallace: I know you don’t, but we’ve got to face it. Susan: I do face it. I face it every day. You’re the one who’s forgetting.

She leaves the table and goes to Richard’s room. Susan’s experience is not uncommon for grieving parents. The Compassionate Friends, an international support group, notes that many bereaved parents “want to know how the people around you can go about their day as if nothing has happened—don’t they understand that your life—everything that meant anything to you—has just ended? Your purpose in life is gone” (“To the newly bereaved”). Coping with the death of a child can be complicated when two parents are at different points on the path of emotional recovery. Wallace would like to move on and fill in the empty physical and emotional spaces left by Richard’s death, but Susan is not yet ready to part with the physical manifestation of her son’s life. Susan needs the space to work through the grief and guilt she feels. Wallace may not share Susan’s

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feelings of guilt, as Richard was in his mother’s care, not his father’s, when he drowned. Susan blames herself for Richard’s death, but as Mark spends more with Henry, he is increasingly convinced that it was not an accident. He tries to share his concerns with both Susan and Wallace, but neither can believe that Mark is telling the truth about Henry. Susan struggles with her own sense of loss in ways that leave her emotionally distant, distracted, and perhaps irrational, as she cannot bring herself to pack up or give away Richard’s things. Reflecting on her own behavior, Susan projects some of her fear and irrationality onto Mark, enabling her to dismiss his warnings about Henry. After an ice skating incident in which Henry pushes his younger sister Connie onto thin ice, leading to her hospitalization, Mark approaches Susan with his suspicions. He walks out the precipice and tells her that Connie did not slip on her own. “You don’t know what he is. He tried to kill Connie and he could do it again,” Mark says. Susan slaps him and shouts, “Stop it! Stop it! That’s a lie!” Then she embraces him. “Henry is my son. He’s my little boy and I love him. Don’t ever come to me with these lies again.” She walks off. Although Henry is able to manipulate his father, as well as the family’s therapist, into believing that Mark’s suspicions are the result of his emotional imbalance and grief, Susan begins to consider the possibility that Henry is not the good son he presents himself to be. After finding Richard’s pacifier among Henry’s belongings, she eventually confronts Henry: Susan: Henry, don’t lie to me. Alright? Just don’t lie to me. Now you tell me. Did you kill Richard? Henry: What if I did? Susan: We’ll get you help. Henry: What, Mom? You don’t look too good, Mom. Looks like you need the help. Susan: You have to trust me, Henry. Henry: No. No, I can’t. You just want to send me away, don’t you? Susan: No, no, I don’t.

That Henry tells Susan she looks like she needs help cues his manipulation of her. Rather than working toward the well-being of the entire family in the aftermath of Richard’s death, Henry has continually made Susan feel bad about herself. Her difficulties in coping emotionally leave her vulnerable and distracted, allowing Henry to misbehave—and literally get away with murder—while her attention is directed elsewhere. Henry runs off and Susan chases him to the precipice. Henry hides then runs at her

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and pushes her over. She grabs ahold of a branch in the rocks. He is standing over her with a boulder in his hands when Mark comes and tackles him. Susan pulls herself back up to the top, bloodied, while the boys fight and topple over the edge. She grabs them, and has a hand on each one. She pleads with them to pull themselves up. They are both slipping, and she has to let one go. She lets Henry fall and pulls Mark up. The films ends with a wide shot of Mark standing out in the desert and his voiceover: “Henry is gone, and the rest of us are safe. But sometimes late at night, I find myself thinking. Not about Henry, but about Susan and wondering, if she had it to do over, would she make the same choice? I guess I'll always wonder, but I know I’ll never ask.” Susan has had to make the ultimate choice and sacrifice her own child to save another. The bond between Susan and Henry is broken irrevocably when she realizes that he has killed his brother and tried to do harm to his sister and herself. That Susan’s faith in Henry persists is testament both to his manipulation and to her love.

Trust, Mistrust, and a Mother’s Intuition The birth of a stillborn child poses its own unique difficulties for grieving parents. In a family with children, parents may work to prepare the older siblings for the arrival of a new baby, not only setting up a space for the newborn but preparing emotionally as well. The anticipation and excitement of pregnancy is transformed into incomprehensible loss, often unexpectedly. For the mother, loss is further complicated because the stillborn baby must be delivered, often by inducing labor. Some parents may choose to have a funeral and burial for a stillborn child; in Orphan, Kate and John Coleman choose to have their baby Jessica cremated and place her ashes in the soil of a rosebush in their greenhouse. The film begins with Kate’s nightmare: she is in labor, at the hospital. She is wheeled down the hospital corridor, leaving a stream of blood in her wake. In the delivery room, the nurse calls out, “Congratulations! It’s a girl!” and hands Kate a bloody, lifeless newborn. The nightmare sets into motion Kate’s crippling loss, her difficulty coping with the death of her child, and her relationship to the therapist who lends a voice of social expectations to the film. Dr. Browning, Kate’s therapist, suggests that Kate’s dream may be a way for her body and mind to deal with the stress of what happened, a manifestation of her grief. Kate tells Dr. Browning that she and John are going to visit an orphanage for the first time, and the nightmare may be an indication that she is not yet ready to adopt a child.

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Kate and John decide to adopt Esther, an unusually articulate and creative child. However, through her interactions with John and Kate’s other children, Daniel and Max, Esther reveals her malice and her desire to hide her identity at any cost. Through what might be colloquially called “a mother’s intuition,” Kate pries into Esther’s past and discovers that she is not a pitiable orphan but rather a 33-year-old former mental institution patient who suffers from a hormone disorder that has retarded her physical growth. This intuitive sense of knowing what it right—and what might be wrong—enables Kate to protect her children from the evil Esther brings into their lives. Young Max, the couple’s deaf mute daughter, eagerly anticipated the birth of her baby sister, Jessica. Max asks Kate for a favorite bedtime story, and Kate signs it for her: “I waited all night to meet my new baby sister. But when Mommy and Daddy came home, Mommy told me that my little sister went to heaven. I’m glad that my little sister went to heaven. But, I would like to have met her first.” Max is contented with the idea of baby Jessica becoming an angel, but still hopes for a new sister. Max’s enthusiasm and John’s desire to adopt influence Kate, who yields to their ideals of a complete family. Emotional support from family and friends can make a crucial difference in helping a bereaved mother recover her sense of well-being, and Kate lacks both. Her mother-in-law Barbara is a voice of criticism, expressing her disapproval of Kate by asking if Max remembers anything about the sledding incident in which her life was endangered. A year earlier, Max and Daniel were playing outside, in Kate’s care, but Kate was drinking and not tending to her children. Only John’s arrival at the house saved Max. The accident provided the impetus for Kate’s sobriety, but rather than praising Kate for dealing with her addiction, Barbara criticizes her for losing a prestigious job teaching piano at Yale University: Barbara: It’s too bad…that was a very good job. Kate: Yeah, well, I didn’t quit because I wanted to. Barbara: No, you had to have your moment of clarity. Kate (defensive): That is an AA term. And I didn’t go to AA, I just stopped drinking. Barbara: Same difference. We all need a wake up call sometimes.

Barbara’s lack of support not only isolates Kate but likely influences John as well. As the narrative evolves, unhealed rifts in John and Kate’s marriage are revealed. His prior incidents of adultery and her alcoholism indicate a lack of trust that is readily manipulated by Esther as she insinuates herself between them.

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Kate becomes increasingly suspicious of Esther after Sister Abigail comes to visit from the orphanage. She tells John and Kate that trouble has a way of finding Esther: although there is no evidence of her intentional involvement, there are a series of violent events at which Esther is present. Overhearing Sister Abigail, Esther goes to get Max. “There’s a mean lady here,” she tells her. “She’s come to take me away. Can you help me?” Esther thus tricks Max into helping her kill the nun. She implicates both Max and Daniel, then threatens them as a means of silencing them. Esther succeeds: Kate asks her children if Esther has done anything bad or has hurt them in any way, and they both deny it. After Sister Abigail’s visit, Kate finally convinces John to take Esther to see Dr. Browning. After meeting with Esther, the therapist tells John and Kate that there is nothing wrong with Esther; rather, Kate is to be blamed for Esther’s difficulties by refusing to bond with her adoptive daughter. Kate insists that she has put forth every effort to develop a relationship with Esther. “Something is happening to cause Esther to feel this way,” Dr. Browning intones. “Perhaps it’s your guilt about drinking or what happened to Max. Maybe some of your feelings of inadequacy as a mother are manifesting themselves in your relationship with Esther.” Kate deadpans: “I don’t feel inadequate.” John provides no support or encouragement for Kate, leaving her further isolated. Their relationship continues to deteriorate as John and Dr. Browning try to stage an intervention, believing that Kate has started drinking again after Esther brings John an unopened bottle of wine that Kate purchased. John tells her that if she does not go to rehab within a week, he will leave her and take the children with him. This is Esther’s goal: to draw John away from Kate. At the climax of the film, while Kate is in the hospital, she gets a call from the Saarne Institute, where Esther had been a patient. The doctor reveals Esther’s true identity and warns Kate that she is dangerous, having previously propositioned a man who had adopted her and then sought deadly revenge when her advances were rejected. Kate rushes home and finds John’s bloodied, dead body in the living room. A battle ensues between Kate and Esther, ending in the icy water near the house. As both women struggle to pull themselves back onto the ice, Esther cries out, “Please. Don’t let me die, Mommy.” Strengthened by her resolve and determination, Kate kicks Esther back into the frigid water and replies, “I’m not your fucking Mommy.” She carries Max away as the police arrive and the film ends.

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“They didn’t have to love me” A psychological thriller typically ends with revelation, resolving the film’s suspense and enabling the audience to understand the behavior of characters and the events that occur throughout the film. As film scholar Virginia Luzon Aguado notes, the “most characteristic feature of the thriller” is “the psychological effect that unremitting relentless suspense produces on the audience through the delayed resolution of action” (Aguado 2002, 165) and Joshua exemplifies this. The film ends with the child sitting at the piano with his uncle Ned, after having manipulated his mother into an institution, his father into police custody, and causing his grandmother’s death. Ned suggests they write a song together, and Joshua’s lyrics make clear his point of view of his parents: You know they didn’t ever have to love me. No one will ever love them now. But they always wanted somehow to save me. Why, oh why? For pity’s sake, they should have saved themselves. You always said I never missed a note. And nobody ever knew me like you do. You always said it was going to be OK. I only ever really wanted to be with you. (Matthews 2007)

Ned looks at his nephew, horror stricken with the realization that the nineyear-old prodigy is not only a master of classical piano but also of profound and dangerous deception. Over the course of the film, the audience comes to understand that Joshua is incapable of love. His parents love Joshua unquestioningly, subscribing to the cultural assumption that love is foundational to family and is largely taken for granted. When Joshua asks Abby if Brad loves him, she replies, “Of course he loves you. Yes, he loves you very, very much. Yeah.” She is astonished by the question, and that Joshua would doubt his father’s love. From the beginning of the film, it is clear that Joshua has a different worldview from his parents. They see him as fundamentally unlike them: a gifted pianist, a smart and independent individual, and formal in his demeanor where they aspire to a more casual, fun-loving way of being. Cast out, Joshua sets out to destroy a world that he does not belong to and cannot understand. His conservative appearance reflects his demeanor: Joshua does not change from his school uniform when he comes home, and is still wearing a tie and button-down shirt at dinner. Brad and Abby demonstrate their difference at this dinner. While Joshua probes the idea of

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someone having died in their apartment, his parents both talk with food in their mouths, sit casually, laugh, and touch each other. Joshua has very limited physical contact with anyone else, and does not express joy. This is not merely a matter of his formality and distance but that he is seemingly incapable of experiencing happiness or love. At the end of this scene, Joshua asks what he was like as a baby. Brad and Abby make clear he was difficult but “a good kid,” but their awkward enthusiasm raises doubt for the child. Abby and Brad are leaning against the kitchen counter while they talk with Joshua. He has his arms around her, and their affection for each other is clear. They are together, and Joshua is excluded from the familial embrace. Later that night, while his parents sleep, Joshua looks through the home videos and finds one that was made shortly after his birth. On the video, Joshua is eight days old, and he cries and cries. Abby is frazzled and pacing, and tells Brad, who is recording, to leave her alone. The video then cuts to Abby filming herself in the bathroom mirror, weeping, almost chanting, “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” while we hear the baby Joshua crying in the background. Unlike many older children who respond to the birth of a new sibling with jealousy, Joshua does not react negatively to Lilly’s presence or to the family’s preoccupation with her. He does not antagonize his sister until he discovers that she is a better behaved, more manageable baby than he was. This is Joshua’s first recognition of Abby’s postpartum depression. He proceeds to terrorize the baby, who begins to cry unceasingly. Lilly’s behavior is quite different from the audience’s first visit to the Cairn family’s well-appointed apartment overlooking Central Park. Lilly is 19 days old, and Brad’s parents and Abby’s brother Ned are visiting while Brad films the day’s events with his camcorder. Abby and those surrounding her are carefully cautious about her history of depression. Abby’s mother-in-law, Hazel, suggests that Abby consider hiring a nanny to help her care for Joshua and Lilly. She cheerfully tells Hazel that she doesn’t need anyone to stay with her, neither Hazel nor a nanny. She turns to Ned and says she’s feeling fine, “no blues, no blahs. It’s nothing like last time. Nothing.” Having previously experienced postpartum depression puts women at higher risk for repeated episodes, yet Abby is hopeful that she will have an easier time with Lilly. She knows that coping with a newborn is difficult and wants to put on a brave face and think positively. According to Postpartum Support International, women who are at risk for depression are “afraid of being seen as complaining or not able to handle motherhood” and blame themselves for “not being able to handle things

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instead of realizing that it is a medical condition and not a sign of failure” (“Frequently Asked Questions). Yet Abby fears this failure on a number of different fronts. Although she tells Brad she despises the other competitive parents at Joshua’s private school, she yearns to impress them. She is thus especially distraught when Joshua plays “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” at the school music recital instead of the Beethoven sonata he has nearly perfected, then makes deliberate mistakes during his performance. Abby also wants to be a successful mother to retaliate against her holier-than-thou mother-in-law who condescendingly asserts that Lilly should be baptized, and that living in a New York City high rise is not the proper way to raise children. As an urban Jewish woman, Abby is initially dismissive of Hazel, but as her postpartum depression clouds Abby’s thinking, she feels increasingly judged and uncertain. Lilly’s incessant crying begins to undo Abby. Brad wakes to the sound of Lilly crying in the baby monitor and goes to the baby’s room. Abby takes the baby from him, and they argue. “I’m fine! I can handle this! Just go to bed,” she shouts at him. Brad peeks in to Joshua’s room to check on him, but the child is standing in the hallway, stock still and expressionless. The audience experiences a moment of uncertainty, but Joshua’s lack of concern makes clear that he is more interested in his mother’s reaction than in his sister’s wellbeing. By tormenting Lilly, Joshua undoes Abby’s ability to be a good mother. That she already doubts herself only adds to her difficulties in maintaining calm confidence. Abby continues to unravel. Ned comes to visit, and they sit in the living room where Ned drinks a glass of wine and Abby uses a breast pump. He again encourages her to get a nanny. When she indicates she is not interest in domestic help, Ned asks if she has sought emotional help. She answers angrily that she’s been seeing a therapist for seventeen years and has gained little from it. Knowing that depression runs in the family, Ned offers, “I’m just saying, you’ve got to stay on top of these things, speaking from personal experience. I mean, we’re all…worried here.” Abby does not respond to Ned’s concern but is preoccupied by her frustration with not producing an adequate supply of milk with the breast pump. Ned makes a snide remark about the pump and Abby tells him to shut up, then crumples into tears. The health benefits to both baby and mother, the bond that nursing produces, and the expectation, in her generation, that a good mother will breastfeed puts pressure on Abby. Research from La Leche League shows a link between lack of sleep and depression, both of which eventually complicate successful nursing (Kendall-Tackett 2007). As Joshua is responsible for Lilly’s continual

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crying, he is further able to disrupts Abby’s sleep and add to her postpartum depression. A few days pass, and Abby wakes in the deep of the night. It’s quiet. She goes to the kitchen and gets a glass out of the pantry. She gets the water pitcher out of the refrigerator, and when she goes to close the door, Joshua is standing there. She gasps and drops the glass. She speaks to Joshua, and he neither moves nor answers. He takes a step back, and as Abby approaches him she steps on the broken glass. She bleeds profusely and rubs the blood all over her leg. She tells Joshua, “You know I used to have a pair of red boots. They were so sexy.” Abby perhaps inappropriately recalls a younger self and a sexual identity to which Joshua should not be privy. Her sense of self has deteriorated to the point where she no longer cares how her son perceives her. Abby has stitches in her foot and is on crutches. Brad comes home and finds her in bed crying, trying to use the breast pump. She asks Brad if he’s going to take Lilly away from her. He brings her two prescriptions and says that one is for her foot and the other will help make her feel better. He then tells her she cannot breastfeed if she takes the psychotropics she has been prescribed. Only when Abby is institutionalized do Brad and Ned discover that she has not been taking the medication in order to continue trying to breastfeed. Brad takes Abby to Sunshine Hills after she plays a particularly malicious game of hide and seek with Joshua, who has positioned the game as an expression of maternal love. He tells her to close her eyes and count to 50, which she does. He stands and watches her until she counts to 12, then he runs off. Abby looks everywhere and cannot find Joshua. She goes back to Lilly’s room, and the baby is gone. Abby continues to call out for Joshua, becoming increasingly panicked. She hobbles up the building’s stairs and into the apartment above theirs that is under construction. Brad comes home and goes upstairs after her. He finds her curled up on the floor, and carries her downstairs. He carries her to Lilly’s room, where Joshua is now standing over Lilly’s crib. He looks at her coldly and says, “Didn’t you even look for me, Mommy?” Joshua further reinforces Brad’s sense that Abby has failed as a mother. She is angry not just because she was frightened and worried, but because he set her up. Abby shouts, “You! You!” at Joshua and Brad must restrain her from attacking the child, who stands smugly beside his sister’s crib. Joshua does not experience the familial bonds taken for granted by his parents. He believes his parents have no given need or responsibility to love him, nor does he need to love them. His actions destroy his family by destroying the bonds of love and trust between them.

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Conclusion Mothers have a special bond with their children, wanting to protect them, keep them from harm, and love them unconditionally. Hollywood thrillers show the fragility of family bonds, while also highlighting the strength of those bonds. In The Good Son, Susan Evans does not confront her son Henry’s malevolence until he directly threatens her life. She struggles to recognize the evil that is her own: Henry is her own flesh and blood, an articulation of her being. The child she nurtured has betrayed her and her goodness, and Henry has depended on the familial bond to protect him. Even as Susan gains clarity about Henry when he does not deny responsibility for Richard’s death, she is willing get her son the help he needs rather than abandoning him. Like Susan Evans, Abby Cairn cannot fathom that her own son is her persecutor. Abby and Brad know that Joshua has a different way of being in the world than they do, but neither realizes until it is too late, and Joshua intends to destroy their world in order to make his own. For Abby, being a good mother is mirrored in having good children: Joshua and Lilly must behave in exemplary ways to validate her. In her eyes, Joshua’s strange behavior and Lilly’s incessant crying reflect her poor parenting skills rather than their own unique personalities. Although Esther is Kate Coleman’s adopted daughter, she aspires to love the child and believe in her to affirm her marriage and family life. In deciding to adopt a child, Kate tells John, “I want to take the love I had for Jessica and give it to somebody who really needs it.” She is bound by love to her entire family and wants to love Esther in the same way. But Esther, being not as she appears, has no interest in motherly affection. Kate’s love for her children provides her with the clarity and resolve to see past Esther’s deception and save Max and Daniel from harm. Far more than merely entertaining audiences, psychological thrillers offer a glimpse into the troubled minds of those who torment their loved ones for their own means. Many thrillers leave viewers to ponder the moral and human implications of characters consumed by evil, as it is difficult to understand what motivates those who act outside of the love that binds them to family.

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Works Cited Aguado, Virginia Luzon. 2002. “Film Genre and Its Vicissitudes: The Case of the Psychothriller,” Atlantis 24, no. 2: 165. Brophy, Philip. 1986. “Horrality—The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films.” Screen 27, no. 1: 2-13. Finkbeiner, Ann K. 1998. After the Death of a Child: Living with loss through the years. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. “Frequently Asked Questions.” Postpartum Support International, February 7, 2011, http://postpartum.net/Get-the-Facts/FrequentlyAsked-Questions-about-the-Facts.aspx The Good Son. Directed by Joseph Ruben. 1993. Beverly Hills: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2004. DVD. Joshua. Directed by George Ratliff. 2007. Beverly Hills: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2008. DVD. Kendall-Tackett, Kathleen. 2007. “New Research on Postpartum Depression: The Central Role of Inflammation and How Breastfeeding and AntiInflammatory Treatments Protect Maternal Mental Health,” Leaven 43, No. 3 (July-August-September), 50-53. Matthews, David J. 2008. “The Fly.” Joshua soundtrack. CD. Performed by Dave Matthews. Orphan. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. 2009. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video., 2009. DVD. Rubin, Martin. 1999. Thrillers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “To the Newly Bereaved.” The Compassionate Friends, February 10, 2011,http://www.compassionatefriends.org/about_us/To_the_Newly_ Bereaved.aspx. Williams, Tony. 1996. Hearths of Darkness: the family in the American horror film. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Worland, Rick. 2007. The Horror Film: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

CHAPTER EIGHT THE FRAGILE BOND BETWEEN MOTHER AND ADULT SON: THE EVOLUTION OF DUELING PROTAGONISTS IN A RAISIN IN THE SUN MARISSA HARRIS

Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun is widely studied as part of the American theatre canon, and also as an extremely influential piece of African American literature. This work displays her Harlem Renaissance influence and roots, and also her forward-looking visions of the African American family and the American Dream. Since its Broadway debut in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun has been produced in countless theaters, and adapted into a screenplay, an acclaimed feature-length film (1961), and most recently a television-movie (2008). The versions that followed Hansberry’s original play attempted to remedy the inherent tension between the two dueling protagonists: Walter and Lena. With each new adaptation, the protagonists’ struggle for dominance also evolved; in each new version the power and focus were shifted definitively in favor of one of the main characters. These shifts reflect authorial, directorial, and societal expectations for the story and its characters. The newest film version of A Raisin in the Sun offers a clear and unapologetic picture of an African American matriarch who both sculpts and saves her family’s dreams. This most recent adaptation of Hansberry’s play is the most female-centered of all the versions of the story, highlighting the intricacies and difficulties of the relationship between a mother and an adult son.

From Chicago to Broadway Hansberry, originally an unknown writer from Chicago, helped usher in a revolution with the release of her acclaimed play A Raisin in the Sun. The title pointedly references Harlem Renaissance poet laureate Langston

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Hughes’s poem “Dream Deferred”. Critics, scholars, and audiences agree that this play changed African American art and American theatre. In her biographical and critical book on Hansberry, Anne Cheney describes Hansberry’s seminal work as “a well-made play…the simple eloquence of the characters elevates the play into a universal representation of all people’s hopes, fears, and dreams” (1994, 55). In fact, it was produced and published in thirty languages and won several prestigious awards, including the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award (Cheney 1994, 55). In his memoir about the play’s opening on Broadway, producer Philip Rose describes the intense emotions he, the cast, and Hansberry all felt in those beginning moments: as the curtain went up... I was not as nervous as I had been the night before, and I don’t think Lorraine was, either. I guess some of it was the realization that we had done everything we possibly could have done, against enormous odds…Everything seemed right onstage that night. The actors were brilliant…When the curtain came down at the end of the play, the theatre erupted. (2001, 12)

At the end of this premier performance, the audience screamed for the author during the curtain call, and Sidney Poitier ran into the audience and literally carried Hansberry onto the stage to take a bow for her work (Rose 2001, 12). While the critical and popular acclaim in the years to follow may pale in comparison to the thunderous applause and emotion on that opening night of March 11, 1959, the play still continues to affect viewing and listening audiences over fifty years later. Kenneth Tynan of the New Yorker largely praised the production in his 1959 review, noting that it was “not without sentimentality, particularly in its reverent treatment of Walter Lee’s mother” (Rose 2001, 120). However, it remained unclear if Lena was intended as the sole protagonist of the play. One of the issues that critics had with the original play is one the author herself explicitly expressed in a reflection article she wrote for The Village Voice in 1959. In it, she discussed very openly the “dramaturgical incompletion” of Lena and Walter serving as dual and dueling protagonists throughout the play (7). She admitted that her play was missing a central character. She attributed this “enormous dramatic fault” to her own “craft inadequacy and creative indecision”, with the result that “neither Walter Lee nor Mama Younger look large enough to monumentally command the play” (7). We can see this unresolved tension within the drama in several key sections. The opening of the play establishes mother and son as oppositional forces. Hansberry’s stage directions describe him as “lean, intense…in his

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middle thirties, inclined to quick nervous movements and erratic speech habits” and having a voice always full of “indictment” (1959, 25). Before he even speaks, he is established as a classic tortured hero and as the focus of the play because it is his wife and child—his little family unit—that first inhabits the stage and demands the audience’s attention. However, during his breakfast banter with his wife we find out that there are two forces also competing for center stage: the insurance check and Mama. It is not until almost ten pages later that Walter exits and Mama enters. This simple fact that in the beginning both Walter and Mama are introduced to the audience individually, not as a team, sets up the two as opposing or conflicting protagonists. Mama’s initial entrance is preceded by an extended author’s note that describes her as a strong, matriarchal presence: “She is a woman in her early sixties, full-bodied and strong…her face is full of strength… She is, in a word, a beautiful woman” (Hansberry 1959, 39). Mama enters directly after Walter leaves looking childish and foolish because he gave away all of his carfare money to his son Travis and must return to ask his wife Ruth for more. In contrast, Mama appears controlling and in charge throughout her first scene. She dominates the conversations and is clearly the matriarch. Later, she reprimands her young daughter Beneatha for denying the existence of God. The author’s notes say that after “powerfully” slapping Beneatha “across the face”, the daughter is chastised and “Mama is very tall before her” (Hansberry 1959, 51). Increasing the intensity of the moment, Lena continues asserting her role as head of the house by making Beneatha repeat “In my mother’s house there is still God” (Hansberry 1959, 51). She continues to exercise this strength and control over her family as the play progresses; but this is actually harmful, especially to Walter. Lena, who embodies the characteristics of the classic African American matriarch, also shows the negative potential of possessing and exercising too much familial power. As literary and cultural critic Dr. Trudier Harris of the University of North Carolina noted in her article “This Disease Called Strength: Some Observations on the Compensating Construction of Black Female Character”: Strength frequently perpetuates dysfunction in literary families, where the strong characters and actions of black women become malignant growths upon the lives of their relatives. Unaltered and uncontained, the virus of strength becomes its own reason for being for these women, and no matter how compelling the reason, the illness still dominates their lives. (1995, 110)

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Walter feels particularly emasculated when she rejects his liquor store proposal and then proceeds to buy a house with the insurance money. Consequently, their interests and emotions are dueling as the center of the drama: Mama’s desire to lead and do what is best for her family and Walter’s to rise above their hand-to-mouth existence and get closer to achieving the elusive American dream. He reacts bitterly to his mother’s news of the new house, and shows how she is keeping him from rising into his manhood when he says, “What you need me to say you done right for? You the head of this family. You run our lives like you want to. It was your money and you did what you wanted with it” (Hansberry 1959, 95). This moment illustrates, as Cheney explains, “the culmination of Lena’s authority”: when she makes this purchase “without consulting any other members of the family” (1959, 66). While Ruth and Travis are overjoyed at the news, Walter’s crushed dream of starting his own business still hangs in the air for Mama, and for the audience. So, Mama’s next big act –that of literally surrendering the money and control of the family over to Walter—is a symbolic passing of the torch from one protagonist to the other. Lena makes this choice when she realizes that “Walter Lee’s spirit is almost broken”; thus, she decides to “relinquish all power over the money to her son” (Cheney 1994, 67). However, the subtleties and subtexts in this moment, and the action that follows, illustrate that this exchange of power did not happen cleanly for these two dueling protagonists. Immediately after she leaves, Walter tells Travis, “your daddy’s gonna make a transaction…a business transaction that’s going to change our lives” (Hansberry 1959, 108). Though seeing that Mama is trying for the second time to get Walter to step up and be a man (after failing to get him to “be a man” when she tells him Ruth is thinking about getting an abortion), the audience knows that he will not invest the money wisely because he has not grown or matured enough yet. This immaturity is partially Mama’s fault for continually controlling him. For many readers and viewers, the final scene of the play seems to thwart Mama’s control and finally give Walter the redemption and power that he has sought throughout the play. From this perspective, Walter’s final act of refusing Mr. Linder’s offer firmly establishes him as head of the household and the focus of the play. Woodie King, Jr. argues that Lena’s strength serves to “balance the strong Black male, Walter Lee Younger” (2003, 123). While she possesses this strength as a character, it is not really her function in the play to stand on her own, for the play “is first and foremost a play about Walter Lee Younger” (King 2003, 123). However, the ambiguities of the final scene make this theory suspect.

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Walter does step up: he refuses to submit to the racism of the new community. This choice is motivated by family pride, and by having his son watching his every move when he could take the money and sell the house. In this, he shows a moment of greatness and the women in his life acknowledge it. However, this is not the end of the controversy related to this final scene. As Trudier Harris explains: Critics have debated for years whether or not Mama Lena actually changes at the end of A Raisin in the Sun and turns the reins of control over to her son Walter Lee. The banter in the final scene, however, shows that she is still playfully ordering her family around. What that presages for the future is unclear, and her immense physical and moral presence continues to loom large. (1995, 116)

Many question if this final action was sufficient for him to “grow-up” and truly “come into his manhood”, as Ruth and Mama put it, for good (Hansberry 1959, 151). Why, after her third try when she finally succeeds in prompting and pushing Walter to step up and be a man, would Mama still get the last word? She speaks the last line, and in the final moment stands alone on stage reflecting on their old life and on starting anew. In the end Mama appears to have the upper hand as the main protagonist, but still when looking holistically at the play, we see that power shifts back and forth between the two lead characters. Margaret Wilkerson, in her introduction to Hansberry’s un-filmed screenplay, describes the tension between the actors in the original Broadway production: This dual protagonist structure set the stage for the struggle for primacy between actors Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil in the 1959 Broadway production. This audience’s recognition of the matriarchal figure as portrayed by a powerful McNeil and the culturally conditioned fear of the volatile Walter tended to award the victory to Lena. (1994, xxxix)

Here, the audience gives the final authority to the elder, but the duel between Mama and Walter continues as the play is adapted and changed for new mediums and audiences.

The Un-filmed Original Screenplay This self-styled “fault”, as Hansberry referred to it, of the dueling protagonists is something that she attempted to remedy when she later adapted her stage play into a screenplay. According to friends and family, and as noted by Jewell Handy Gresham-Nemiroff in the foreword to the un-filmed screenplay, Hansberry jumped at the opportunity to adapt her

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stage play; she wanted to “‘open-up’ her play through the medium of film” (1994, xi). She intended, in adapting her work, to broaden the focus on the universal human struggles expressed in the play, and also to make the film more specifically and intentionally placed in Chicago’s south side. However, despite completing a powerful and touching screenplay “the film as envisioned by Hansberry in her script never emerged on screen” (Gresham-Nemiroff 1994, xiii). This un-filmed original screenplay was finally published in 1994 and included commentary from Spike Lee. Why this occurred—why the acclaimed 1961 film version starring Sidney Poitier was a shortened and altered version of Hansberry’s screenplay—is often attributed to racist motives on the part of the studio. Spike Lee, in his commentary preceding the text of the screenplay, argued just this: “It seems to me all the cuts had to deal with softening a too defiant black voice” (1994, xivi). In fact, this idea seems to be a generally accepted one. As Zachary Ingle in his article on the un-filmed screenplay noted, “(t)hat Hansberry's screenplay was bowdlerized out of racist concerns is now left unquestioned” (2009, 1). Ingle goes on to argue that it is actually unlikely that the changes to her screenplay were fueled by racism or “white fear”. Rather, they were natural changes that had to occur due to the length of the original screenplay. In fact, “the changes to Hansberry's screenplay resulted in a [work] closer to her original play” (Ingle 2009, 5). However, due to the edits and alterations made for this translation from stage to screenplay to film, the shift of power moves for the first time more definitively in favor of Walter. While this is true in both the screenplay and the film, the screenplay is much clearer than the film in establishing Walter as the main protagonist; moreover, the film still retains some of the original play’s tension between Mama and Walter. As Margaret Wilkerson explains, “without making major revisions in the play for her screenplay, Hansberry subtly tilts the balance toward Walter… emphasizing [his] role as a representation of African American men” (1994, xi). Also, some critical scenes that establish Walter as the main protagonist are found in the screenplay, but are not seen in the stage play or in the 1961 film. The first instance of power shifting to Walter is in a revision of the African warrior-dance scene that Beneatha and Walter participate in during Act II of the play. Some critics consider this scene out of character for Walter and also believe it undercuts the themes of African brotherhood that Beneatha and Asagai establish throughout the play (Wilkerson 1994, xi). Instead, in her screenplay Hansberry replaces it with a street rally scene where a man speaks about Black Pride to a crowd of mostly African

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American males. The speaker asks the men, “[w]hat is the difference, my friends—between the black man here and every other man in the world?” (Hansberry 1994, 133). This alteration emphasizes the plight of other African American men like Walter, men who are struggling with both racism and class-ism and trying to make a better life for their families and themselves. It creates a clearer context for Walter’s anguish and his motivation for investing the insurance money once Mama surrenders it to him. Because of this, viewers are more sympathetic to his choice and less inclined to see it as a mere act of selfishness. This orator’s emphasis on the plight of African American males also “helps to frame Walter’s sexist remarks about the women in his family who…generally prevent him… from taking the bold actions he believes are necessary to be successful in this country”; thus, Walter seems less negative as a character (Wilkerson 1994, xi). Another addition in the screenplay that favors Walter as protagonist is Hansberry’s explanation of his decision to reject Linder’s offer. As previously stated, this is an ambiguous and much debated moment from the original play. Questions that often come up are: Is it the overpowering presence and pressure of his mother, who insists that his son be present that shames Walter into changing his mind? Or is it something inside Walter that insists on the more prideful choice? (Wilkerson 1994, xli)

This key moment could often be swayed by the actors’ and director’s choices for its portrayal. It could be the turning point of Walter’s life and his initiation into manhood, or it could be another instance of Mama exercising control over her son and forcing him into her own idea or picture of manhood (Wilkerson 1994, xli). However, Hansberry’s notes in her screenplay clarify this moment as one of self-realization and actualization for Walter, giving clear and specific directions for the actor: Walter Younger looks down into the face of his son, who is standing grinning up at him merrily—seeing significance in none of it. Walter looks at him and starts to laugh a little bit and drops his arms lightly, informally about Travis’s shoulders. Decision is not the problem now—it is only how to tell this stranger who could understand so little as to be there in the first place. (Hansberry 1994, 201, emphasis added)

Thus, Hansberry makes it clear that this decision is something that comes to Walter because of his son, and also because he himself is struggling to become a man.

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However, previous to this moment, Hansberry has already begun to set up this change in Walter. Her notes and lead-in clearly establish Walter as already significantly changed by that last stand. The set-up begins after Walter has announced to his family that he will call Linder to take the money. He gives the speech in which he says, “I tell you, I am a man—and I think my wife should wear some pearls in this world!” (Hansberry 1994, 196). The direction she gives in the screenplay shows that the beginnings of Walter’s final decision are already brewing in his mind: “…the word “man” has set off its own reaction in his mind…The interplay of his conflict is at work now in him, no matter what he says. It is the realization that begins now that will decide his action to come” (Hansberry 1994, 196). The most important scene—one unique to the screenplay—that clearly sways the power to Walter as protagonist, is the final scene, which has been revised with slight alterations to the original lines and directions in the play version. At the end of the play, Mama returns for her plant and stands for a moment in the apartment, reflecting and saying goodbye. The changed ending in the screenplay has both Walter and Lena sharing this final moment in the apartment and it “emphasizes Walter’s new role in the family as co-leader with his mother” (Wilkerson 1994, xlii). They both remember the plant and then Walter “turns and goes to the window and gets the plant and comes back and puts it in his mother’s hands” (Hansberry 1994, 206). So, in this moment Walter is stepping into his role as man, giving his mother her symbol of the past, and helping her bring it and the rest of their family into a new future.

The 1961 Film These key scenes in the screenplay, despite their effects on the power struggle between the protagonists, are among those changed or cut from the 1961 film version. Whatever the reasons for these and other changes, the resulting adaptation remained closer to the stage version, including the retention of the principal actors from the original Broadway production. While not as powerful a shift in momentum toward Walter, the film still favors him as a protagonist, first and foremost because of the commanding performance of Sidney Poitier, one that carried all the necessary nuances of Walter’s struggle. Also, like the screenplay, this film version expands and explores the social constraints with which African American men like Walter struggled. Ed Guerrero explains this struggle in his article “The Black Man on Our Screens and the Empty Space in Representation”:

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This marginalization and struggle with society is shown in the retention of some of the outdoor Chicago scenes and in the scenes of Walter working as a chauffeur and visiting the local jazz bar, all from the original screenplay. Another pro-Walter directorial choice that was made in the movie, but not specified in the screenplay, was Walter’s reaction to the news that Lena had spent the insurance money on a down payment for a house. In the screenplay, the author notes called for an off-stage explosion, suggesting that Walter kicked a trashcan or smashed a glass (Hansberry 1994, 122). In the film he does break a glass, but he breaks it in his hands and literally cuts himself. Then, during Mama’s explanation and descriptions of the new house, Walter does not look at her but instead bandages his wound. Thus, the director creates a very literal picture of how Mama has injured Walter by destroying his dream; and the focus and attention shifts to him as the primary protagonist reacting to a road block in his journey. Another critical moment in the screenplay, but not in the film, is Mama’s reaction to Walter losing the money. In both the play and screenplay, Hansberry’s notes say that Mama reacts by looking “at her son without recognition and then, quite without thinking about it, starts to beat him senselessly in the face” (Hansberry 1994, 178). However, in the film version Mama stops herself just short of striking him and there is a shot of mother standing tall and son approaching her on his knees, crying and begging for comfort and forgiveness. He goes to her and hugs her as she cries out to God for strength. Without these physical blows, which use violence to emphasize Mama and her loss, the focus becomes Walter and the sorrow and guilt he feels at being responsible for such a great loss. Also, the director makes a visual choice regarding the exchange of power from Mama to Walter in the final scenes of the film. This follows the notes in the screenplay as well. When Mr. Linder pays his second visit, Lena takes a seat at the table and Walter enters and plays the scene standing. This makes him literally taller in the shot and reinforces this moment in the story when he actually steps up and becomes head of the household. Again, this reinforces Walter’s place as the dominant protagonist in the film and screenplay.

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Finally, the end of the film—when the Youngers are putting the last of their things into the moving van—solidifies the shift in dominance from Mama to Walter. Similar to the scene in the screenplay, without saying any words, they have a moment together in the apartment; but, the final shot shows both of their profiles facing each other as they recognize the immensity of the moment that has just occurred. The shot is set up, however, with Mama in the foreground and appearing larger than Walter, thus creating some ambiguity by visually undercutting his dominance. But, Walter is waiting for her at the door as if to lead her into their new life, so there is still an overall leaning towards him as the head or leader of the family. Thus, though the film cut and altered much of Hansberry’s screenplay, both of these adaptations do succeed in tilting the emphasis away from Mama and toward Walter.

A Raisin in the Sun for Television Audiences While this film version has become a classic, there have been several other adaptations of Hansberry’s drama in recent years. In 1989, in celebration of the thirty year anniversary of the Broadway debut of the play, PBS aired an uncut televised version of the original Broadway script. It was an ambitious endeavor, as noted by critic Sheri Parks, because it was “the first time that a professional production of the uncut script was made available to [a television] audience” (1995, 200). Despite following the original script verbatim, (it is filmed as though the actors were on stage with a camera following the action) because of the medium—public television—and because of the time period in which it was released, Lena seems to have reemerged as the matriarch. Sheri Parks, in her analysis of this adaptation, argues that this it is a feminist version and it reflects the values of the viewing audience: The Youngers are a whole family and Mama is the head of it. Despite all the current discussion of crisis in the black family, black people, particularly working-class black people, have long considered a femaleheaded home to be a family. (1995, 212)

Parks, in her article “In My Mother’s House: Lorraine Hansberry”, further discusses television as an important medium for social art. In fact, she believes it is the best forum for Hansberry’s social art because it can “communicate successfully the themes, issues, and communication strategies…into the homes of ordinary black women” (1995, 227). While this version may have more specifically targeted African American

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women than previous ones, it is the most recent adaptation—another television version of the play that aired on ABC in February of 2008— which most overtly tilts the dominance in favor of Mama over Walter. On April 26, 2004 the much anticipated revival version of the play opened on Broadway starring Sean Combs as Walter, Phylicia Rashad as Lena, Audra McDonald as Ruth, and Sanaa Lathan as Beneatha. On the whole, the play earned rave reviews, but most of them were for the females in the cast. All three of the women were nominated for Tony Awards, and Rashad and McDonald went on to win for Best Actress and Best Featured Actress, respectively. Sean Combs, despite his star power, was considered the weakest link in the production. Because of the unevenness created by his subpar performance, the power and focus naturally went to Mama and the other female characters in the play. In fact, on stage Combs as Walter “seems like a bystander rather than active participant in the action. During his scenes with Lathan, McDonald, and Rashad, he looks and sounds completely out of his element”, commented reviewer Matthew Murray of TalkinBroadway.com (2004). However, since they were following the original script, the shift of power toward Mama was mostly based on the differing levels of acting ability. More than acting contributed to the shift of power in the newest remake, a television-movie version executive-produced by Combs. In this film the power is blatantly and intentionally shifted in Lena’s direction. Here, Combs’s acting skills again come up short next to those of his co-stars, and while the camera picks up more of the subtleties of his facial expressions than could be seen in a staged version, he is described as “fine” at best. However, this casting choice and the cinematography of this television version have a substantial overall effect on Hansberry’s characters and story. The story no longer is that of mother and son as dueling protagonists; instead, it focuses on Lena Younger as protagonist, and on the women who save Walter Lee Younger. This version returns to Hansberry’s feminist roots and pays homage to her own biographical experience of growing up with strong women in her life, particularly her own mother (Cheney 1994, 60). The film opens with James Earl Jones performing a voice-over reading of Langston Hughes’s poem “Dream Deferred”. There is also a title flashing of “Chicago 1959”. Unlike the notes in the play that say “sometime between WWII and the present”, this production very intentionally places the family’s struggles in an exact year (Hansberry 1959, 22). This situates the racism that the family experiences and makes it come across as a “period piece”, according to one reviewer (Lloyd 2008). Significantly, it does not start with Ruth waking up Walter, as in previous versions. Rather,

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it follows Lena on her pre-dawn commute out of the Southside to a nice suburban house for her final day of work. The matriarch is given the opening scene; this is her story and she is the center of the film. Back in the apartment, the “morning routine” scene from previous versions remains mostly the same in sequence, but there are some notable additions. There is a much more pronounced use of close-ups on the characters’ faces, particularly Walter and Ruth during their argument about the insurance money and Walter’s business plans. The “poor negro kids” line from the screenplay—when Travis says his teacher is taking a collection to buy books about black history for her African American students—is used in this version and emphasizes the Younger family as racially persecuted. This opening sequence is also noticeably underscored by emotional music. Yet, rather than add to the drama of the scene, it is distracting and directs the audience’s reactions too much. As one critic noted, the “musical score that creeps in under key speeches and tells you what to feel about them does no service to the complexities of Hansberry's text” (Lloyd 2008). After this, the audience’s pathos is further targeted as we see two scenes showing both Mama and Walter experiencing racism while out in the city. Mama, after finishing her last day as a nanny/housekeeper for a white family, tries to buy apples at the local grocery store. This is a scene that was in the original screenplay, but cut from the 1961 film. The white storekeeper hands Lena rotten apples and then kindly gives a white woman fresh apples. So, Lena tells him off and goes elsewhere to do her shopping. This scene clearly displays the “economic exploitation of the impoverished Black neighborhoods, seemingly a permanent fixture in urban life” (Wilkerson 1994, xxxii). In contrast to Lena’s stand against racism, Walter is commanded and chastised by a white police officer. He drives Mr. Arnold into town and then runs into his friend Bobo on the street. After they talk about their liquor store plans, a white cop reprimands Bobo for illegal parking and commands Walter to get back into his car. Without arguing, both men obey the police officer. So, when looking at these parallel scenes of racism, Mama appears strong and Walter looks defeated. As the film continues, Mama’s dominance is displayed through contrasting scenes in which she and Walter try to exercise authority. First, Walter fails in his attempts at dominance in the morning breakfast scene. It is true to the original play and screenplay, ending with Walter slamming out of the house on his way to work after arguing with his wife and sister. Here too he returns for carfare after giving the last of his money to his son Travis. This is ultimately a comedic moment: the final shot of that scene is of the women, Beneatha and Ruth, laughing at Walter as he stands in the

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door looking beaten and ridiculous. Walter is the butt of the joke and he looks immature and foolish in the face of these strong women in his life. But, the next scene in the apartment in which Beneatha declares that she no longer believes in God is a stark contrast to the carfare scene, which showed Walter’s previous failed attempt at power and control. The lines and pacing of the slap scene follow the original play very closely. However, in this version the director utilizes the mirror to show Mama approaching menacingly behind Beneatha, and the camera also zooms in showing a close-up of Mama striking her. This visually reinforces her dominance over her daughter. Here, as in the play, Ruth and Beneatha acknowledge Mama as the authority figure: Ruth agrees with Mama’s punishment of Beneatha, and Beneatha repeats Lena’s mantra about God. Thus, again, Mama appears stronger and more dominant than Walter. When the check finally arrives, a climactic struggle ensues between Walter and Mama over whether or not to use the money for a liquor store. At the end of this scene it is revealed that Ruth is pregnant and is considering getting an abortion. The shots used in this scene further emphasize Mama’s dominance over Walter. When Walter returns from his business meeting and bursts in interrupting Ruth and Mama’s conversation, the shots continually favor the women. There are flashes of Walter’s face, but even when he is the one speaking, there are repeated close-up shots of Mama and Ruth’s reactions to Walter. The women are the center and focus of the scene, not him, and through this we see that the “Younger women cannot depend on Walter to keep the family intact” (Parks 1995, 210). Instead of being a moment showcasing how desperate Walter is, how his life is making him go crazy, it instead focuses on how much he is making the women in his life suffer. Significantly, this version adds two scenes in which Ruth visits an abortionist. These scenes add to the drama of the film, showing the desperation that Ruth experiences as a result of her broken relationship with Walter, while also indirectly shifting the attention and dominance toward Mama. The first is a very short scene in which Ruth visits a beauty salon called “She Beauty”. She asks to see Miss Tilly and one of the stylists with a Jamaican accent takes her to a back room behind the salon to talk. When she returns home on the day the check arrives, the audience, like Mama, knows that she did not visit her regular physician and is probably considering an abortion, adding to the drama and suspense of the story. Later, when Ruth and Walter have a huge argument, she returns to the same woman, and the viewer is privy to the back room of the salon where abortions are performed, which ironically (and eerily) is a perfectly

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decorated kitchen. Here, the director makes a symbolic statement about the quiet desperation of a housewife, and the extremes to which she may be driven during difficult times. The medical instruments are boiling in a pot on the stove, and the operating table is the kitchen table with a sheet over the top of it. Ruth is left alone to undress, but looking around at the room and at the instruments makes her lose her nerve and she shuts off the gas and runs out. The frightfulness and eminent danger of the abortion scene— with its contrast of perfect kitchen / house setting and the sinister tools— add suspense and drama to the film, and they also give Mama an authoritative and moral edge because she is so vocally pro-life (and therefore, righteous in this instance, as well). So, even though Mama is not featured in these scenes, they do add to her power as head of the household and primary protagonist in the story. The emotional climax of the film arrives with Bobo, who carries the news that Willy has run away with all of the money. In contrast to earlier versions of the story, this director moved this particular conversation out of the apartment and on to the snowy front stoop. During much of this scene Walter is sitting, falling, or rolling on the steps in anguish as the reality of the lost money sinks in. This change of setting at this crucial moment makes Walter look small and alone as he suffers on the street, and places him in context with the pain and anguish so frequently felt by people struggling on the streets of Chicago. Unlike the previous versions of this scene, he first gets the news alone outside, and then has to return like a wayward dog to grovel at the feet of his mother. And, because earlier lines featured in the play are cut, the lines where Walter explains to Travis the new opportunities the family will have when he makes a “business transaction” with the money, this film now emphasizes that he acted alone, apart from the family unit in making this decision (Hansberry 1959, 108). The original moment shared with his son gave him a different kind of motivation for investing the money: he wanted his son to go to college and have a better future. Thus, without these lines and with this change of scene, Walter’s actions seem less worthy of empathy and understanding. Critic Kristin Matthews explains this in her article “Politics of ‘Home’ in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun”: “Raisin insists that individuals must be willing to join with other voices and the larger community in order to change oppressive social systems – even if that means singing harmony instead of a solo” (2008, 558). Because Walter let his own interests trump those of the family unit, they all suffer the consequences. When Walter returns to the apartment, the diegesis gives visual preference to Mama. When he enters the camera focuses on Mama’s face.

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Then, there is a full shot of Walter dropping to his knees and groveling as he crawls to his mother. Here, she gives an emotional performance of the speech from the original play version about her husband “killing himself…and you, you give it all away in a day…” (Hansberry 1959, 129). While this scene follow the original script closely, this version, like the 1961 film, also leaves out Mama physically beating Walter. This makes the focus of the scene Mama’s despair and disappointment, rather than an initial violent act of anger toward her son. In this film Walter also says, “I’m sorry” as he makes his way on his knees to her and hugs her around the legs, crying into her dress. Because of these choices, Walter is shown as dependent on his mother; thus, it is her sorrow and despair that seems the most poignant in these moments. Finally, Mama’s dominance is solidified in the closing scene of the film. After they have refused the money from Linder and decided to move into their new house in an all-white neighborhood, Mama is not left alone in the apartment in the final moments. Instead, Walter returns with a coat for her and they both say, “Thank you” to each other. Mama walks out first, but Walter remembering, stops and grabs the plant and hands it to her. Then, after she has left, he sits for a moment in the middle of the room as a ray of sunlight brightens on him and he absorbs the moment. Finally, he gets up and follows Mama out the door. While he does get the last moment of screen time and remembers to get the plant, he still seems to be following in Mama’s footsteps, literally and figuratively. He will follow her down the stairs, and continue to follow her lead in their new home. Also, as he sits in the sunlight at the end of the film, it actually gives the audience the impression that he, like the little plant, still needs to do some growing. While many critics have read Mama’s strength in the original play as negative and crippling for Walter (Harris 1995, 116), this final scene seems to soften the effects of her dominance over Walter. Instead, the audience is left with an impression of Mama as a wise and caring matriarch. At the conclusion of the film, it is very clear that Mama indeed does know best. Robert Bianco in his review of the 2008 film for USA Today commented that “But as befits a play set within an inner-city matriarchy, the heavy lifting is done by three remarkable women: Sanaa Lathan, Audra McDonald and Phylicia Rashad” (2008). This sentiment epitomizes the underlying forces shaping this most recent female-focused version of Hansberry’s play. Many current viewers expect that this will be the family structure: that in this film about an “inner-city matriarchy” the women will lead and even dominate the men in the family. Significantly, these impressions of the latest adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun come full circle

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back to Hansberry herself; for, she was considered a black feminist whose play “bespoke a particular brand of feminism, [one] practiced by women within the family in traditional black culture” (Parks 1995, 201). So, the evolution of dueling protagonists in the adaptations of A Raisin in the Sun concludes for now with this most recent version; and, in this televised and pro-female film, Hansberry’s story is made new again for another generation of viewers. While the core values of family and perseverance are maintained throughout this and the previous adaptations, this final version swings the dominance back to Mama and away from Walter, and thus presents the most feminist, female-focused adaptation of Hansberry’s play.

Works Cited Bianco, Robert. 2008. “Landmark TV Performances Illuminate ‘A Raisin in the Sun’.” USA Today, 24 Feb. http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2008-02-24-raisin_N.htm Cheney, Anne. 1994. Lorraine Hansberry. New York: Twayne. Guerrero, Ed. 1995. “The Black Man on Our Screens and the Empty Space in Representation”. Callaloo.18.2. Spring: 395-400. Gresham-Nemiroff, Jewell Handy. 1994. Foreword. A Raisin in the Sun: The Unfilmed Original Screenplay. By Hansberry. New York: Signet. Hansberry, Lorraine. 1994. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Vintage. (orig. pub. 1959) —. 1994. A Raisin in the Sun: The Unfilmed Original Screenplay. New York: Signet. —. 1959. “Willie Loman, Walter Younger, And He Who Must Live.” The Village Voice. 12 August, late ed.: 7-8. Harris, Trudier. 1995. “This Disease Called Strength: Some Observations on the Compensating Construction of Black Female Character.” Literature and Medicine.14.1. Spring: 109-126. Ingle, Zachary. 2009. "‘White fear’ and the Studio System: A Reevaluation of Hansberry's Original Screenplay of A Raisin in the Sun."Literature-Film Quarterly. 01 July. King, Woodie. 2003. The Impact of Race: Theatre and Culture. New York: Applause. Lee, Spike. 1994. “Commentary: Thoughts on the Screenplay.” A Raisin in the Sun: The Unfilmed Original Screenplay. By Hansberry. New York: Signet: xlv-xlvii.

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Lloyd, Robert. 2008. “A ‘Raisin in the Sun’ of Many Moons Past.” Los Angeles Times, 25 Feb. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/25/entertainment/et-raisin25. Matthews, Kristin. 2008. “The Politics of ‘Home’ in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.” Modern Drama. 51.4. (Winter): 556-578. Murray, Matthew. 2004. “Talkin’ Broadway Review: A Raisin in the Sun.” TalkinBroadway.com. 26 Apr. http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/RaisinSun.html. Parks, Sheri. 1995. “In My Mother’s House: Black Feminist Aesthetics, Television, and A Raisin in the Sun.” Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. Ed. Karen Laughlin and Catherine Schuler. Cranbury: Associated University: 200-228. A Raisin in the Sun. DVD. Directed by Daniel Petrie. 1961. Los Angeles: Sony Pictures. —. DVD. Directed by Kenny Leon. 2008. Los Angeles: Sony Pictures. Rose, Philip. 2001. You Can’t Do That on Broadway! New York: Limelight. Wilkerson, Margaret. 1994. Introduction. A Raisin in the Sun: The Unfilmed Original Screenplay By Lorraine Hansberry. New York: Signet: xxix-xliv.

PART III: DECONSTRUCTING FAMILY BONDS ST FOR THE 21 CENTURY

CHAPTER NINE MOTHERS WHO SPLIT: GUILT, WORKING MOTHERHOOD, AND MULTIPLE IDENTITY IN HEROES, THE INCREDIBLES, MORE OF ME, AND NURSE JACKIE LAURA MATTOON D'AMORE

The twenty-first century has seen a popular cultural trend in fantasies of domesticity, wherein the domestic space becomes a site of choice and empowerment. Part of this shift began during the 1990s, as a generation of women who had grown up enjoying the fruits of the second wave feminist movement, particularly regarding access to education and employment, began to re-imagine what their own lives could look like. Middle class women since the 1960s have been nudged toward college and career, told to reach for the stars, and assured that their futures would not lie in homemaking. Not surprisingly, the numbers of women working outside the home have steadily increased since then, and in 2007 seventy-five percent of women ages twenty-five to fifty-four participated in the labor force (Pew Research 2). However, in popular culture, motherhood continues to be popularized as a woman’s most important role. That tension, between the reality that the majority of mothers work, and the ideology that motherhood is woman’s most important role, causes a great deal of stress and anxiety in the representations of working mothers in film and television. Actress Katie Holmes (married to actor Tom Cruise) reported to Glamour magazine, “[motherhood] has been the most amazing experience— in an instant you become strong. You have to be a little bit wiser; it's the most important job in the world” (Weller 2009). Jennifer Lopez, actress, musician, and mother of twins, reported that working motherhood gave her “total happiness…a real feeling of wholeness,” and, described motherhood

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as “romantic” (“Celebrity Baby Blog” 2010). Motherhood continues to be popularized as a woman’s most important role through the culture industry, which in the twenty-first century includes film, television, radio, news, and the internet, as well as the articles and books that reach mass audiences. Popular culture mediates what mothers want, or at least what they believe they want. Because motherhood in popular culture does not always speak for motherhood in reality, motherhood is a site of a great deal of cultural confusion. While women support equality in and outside of the workplace, they also succumb to the dominant ideology of motherhood which validates the view that motherhood is the most important job in the world (O’Reilly 2008, 205-206); a view that is reinforced in media and popular culture. Mothers blend “the feminist perspective of rights and equality with the maternalist morality of putting children and families first” (O’Reilly 2008, 211). Instead of conquering the workplace—rocking the boat, as second wave feminists did—women in the twenty-first century are dreaming of a domesticity, which, for the vast majority of American women, is guarded by cultural limitations. This may well be a direct result of media mythologizing about the sanctity and bliss of motherhood. Feminist popular culture scholar, Joanne Hollows, for example, argued that evidence such as cooking shows (and the mainstream popularity of television chefs), home decorating shows, and mommy lit—such as that which finds mothers leaving the hustle and bustle of the workplace to forge a simpler life—all indicate that the dynamic of desire is shifting.1 But the desire to work less, and mother more, does not usually equate to women actually dropping out of the workforce; rather, it creates good old fashioned guilt as mothers try to embrace ideologies of home and work. The idea of the “supermom” has actually evolved in film and television to embrace this cultural perspective. The original supermom still exists in the cultural psyche; ask around, and you are sure to find people who identify the supermom with working motherhood, balance, and having it all. On the 2008 Oscar Red Carpet, for example, popular actress Jennifer Garner (who had one child, and another on the way) was asked how she managed to be a supermom, to do it all and find “balance.” As well, in the January 2009 issue of Working Mother, the supermom is invoked as the symbol for the overwhelmed working mother (Eban 2009, 35). The editor even called the supermom a “syndrome,” recalling the “superwoman 1

In her essay “Can I Go Home Yet?,” Joanne Hollows explores Alison Pearson’s novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It, which culminates in a “modern-day fairy tale ending in which the girl gets to downshift from inner-city London to a northern rural idyll” (105).

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syndrome” that appeared in self-help advice columns in women’s magazines during the 1970s (Riss 2009, 12).2 However, the way that the supermom has changed signifies the contemporary cultural conversation about motherhood, and is fueled by the cultural confusion that stems from women’s competing desires and realities. Oftentimes, this manifestation of the twenty-first century supermom yields a mother who has split— literally—into the personas of at least two women; one who works, and one who mothers. What this suggests about contemporary mothers is that they feel guilty and insecure about how to integrate these competing roles (and do them both well), and embrace a collective fantasy that maybe they could actually become multiple people, rather than hopelessly seek balance in the body of one. Four contemporary representations of working mothers embrace this fantasy in particularly unique and provocative ways. Niki Sanders (of the now canceled television series, Heroes), Helen Parr (of the 2004 animated feature film, The Incredibles), Alice (of the 2007 made for TV movie More of Me), and Jackie Peyton (of the Showtime drama Nurse Jackie) demonstrate the complications that arise when women cannot seamlessly integrate work with home. In these cases, the overwhelming and all consuming bonds that mothers have with their children forces a literal split of personality and self, so that while one “self” can mother wholly and completely, the other is free to work. The contemporary supermom—far from the original supermom who had it all—actually demonstrates that having it all is impossible, suggesting a cultural frustration with the legacy of second wave feminism in the twenty-first century. During the 1970s, the supermom defined the mother who worked outside the home, and was a largely feminist-inspired construction, as the zeitgeist of women’s rights empowered women to seek opportunities outside the home. In the twenty-first century, however, the relationship between feminism and motherhood has changed, as women negotiate the very ideas of “motherhood” and “feminism.” Heroes’ Niki Sanders represents the confusion of contemporary motherhood, because she is literally split in two by the historical expectations associated with working mothers. She represents the deeply troubling nature of the original 2

Patricia L. Raymer’s article, “After the Liberation: The professional woman's dilemma and The Group,” focused on women who had gone out and gotten their consciousnesses raised, and now needed help coping with the aftermath. They felt guilty for their successes, and about their lack of attention to their former domestic roles. The superwoman syndrome was a psychological need to be all things to all people at all times, and it afflicted a vast number of mothers who entered the workforce during the 1970s.

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supermom, characterized as the “superwoman syndrome,” while also embodying the frustration that today’s mothers feel when trying to balance their desires with their realities. The Incredibles’ heroine, Helen Parr represents a popular cultural response to the ambivalence some contemporary women have toward feminism. Helen Parr/Elastigirl grows conflicted trying to “turn off” parts of herself at different moments in her life, ultimately recognizing that there needs to be a more integral solution—a way to be a whole person. Alice, the mother character in the 2008 made for television movie More of Me, literally splits into four selves when the pressure of her commitments as a working mother overwhelm her to a breaking point. Finally, Nurse Jackie’s Jackie Peyton chooses to be two people; one is a ruthless, mysterious, single nurse in an ER. The other is a loving wife and a mother, with a lot of secrets. Both are seemingly facilitated by a serious addiction to painkillers and antidepressants. Each of these characters splits themselves into multiple identities in order to cope with the expectation that women can balance the roles of work and motherhood. In so doing, they redefine the supermom in a fantastical way—the supermom, in these texts, is a woman capable of (practically) superhuman feats of being two (or more) people at once.

Heroes’ Supermom and Contemporary Motherhood A provocative example of this new supermom is Niki Sanders of the popular television show Heroes. The show’s premise is that there are (super)heroes among us. After a lunar eclipse, dozens of people began developing special powers: Isaac Mendez can paint the future; Clair Bennett is physically indestructible; Matt Parkman can read minds; Nathan Petrelli can fly; D.L. Hawkins can walk through solid objects; Peter Petrelli can mimic and absorb the powers of others; and young mother, Niki Sanders, has superstrength. Niki is a supermom; both a superheroine and a mother, she represents the literal translation of the term. However, the shock of developing superpowers gave her Multiple Personality Disorder. She possesses a superhero identity that is entirely subsumed by and alter ego named “Jessica.” Neither Niki (the mother) nor Jessica (the superheroine) wants to coexist, and each constantly tries to overwhelm and diminish the capacities of the alternate personality. Niki/Jessica reflects the contemporary confusion of women who have internalized the doctrines of motherhood from past generations, but feel disillusioned by their expectations. She exemplifies the frustrations of a new generation of women who are unsure that they want it all, indicated by the overwhelming majority of American mothers who reported to Pew Research that they

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wanted to work part time, or not at all. She is the manifestation of the recognition that the supermom, as the “balanced” working mother, does not work. She is a metaphor for the ideological battle between generations, particularly the daughters of the Second Wave who recognize the importance of many of the gains won by their mothers, but who want to take on a domesticity that they perceive the previous generation devalued. At the beginning of Season One: Chapter Nineteen: “.07%,” billionaire Daniel Linderman described an image of Niki Sanders—her visage split down the middle to represent her as half Niki and half Jessica—as “a mother willing to fracture her own soul to protect her child.” Mothers are, in fact, expected to be selfless; that is how the 1970s supermom emerged, when working women took on the dual expectations of work and motherhood so that neither was left neglected. Linderman’s description indicated that Niki was willing to endure anything for her child, but it also reinforced the recognition that doing so carried with it an unreasonable expectation of extraordinary capacity. In this case, the burden actually fractured the mother. The good mother, Niki, cannot co-exist with the superheroine, Jessica, because the bottom line for the two personalities is dramatically different. Niki puts Micah first, always. Jessica does what needs to be done, and is so focused on her mission that she can be cruel and abusive. The ideologies that each personality represents are incompatible; one represents the necessity of motherhood and one represents the necessity of work. One nurtures, one gets the job done. Niki, the mother, talks to Micah, reasons with him, never losing her temper. Jessica, the professional (hitwoman), grows tired of “playing house,” and insists that she will not be the “happy homemaker” forever (Season One, Ch. 15).3 Niki would do anything to protect Micah, even sacrifice herself. Jessica, entirely capable of protecting him, stood aside as Linderman kidnapped Micah. Jessica is a perpetual threat to Niki’s dream of providing a normal life for Micah. Niki repeatedly invokes “normal” as the opposite of “heroic,” urging Micah to recognize the beauty of a simple life. Niki’s fantasy of domesticity is always just out of her reach. She fights her own internal mommy war, struggling to attain her vision of normalcy for the sake of her son. The life of the superhero—as extraordinary and often vigilante—does not resonate with Niki’s ideals about motherhood. She does not want it all, rather Niki wants only to be a “good mother” (Season Two, Ch. 3). This supermom is split in two, unable to integrate her two identities, to be both 3 Jessica makes these statements in Season One, Ch. 15: “Run!,” as justification for taking on her role as Linderman’s hitwoman.

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a superheroine (which represents her work) and a mother at once. The social mores that govern what is appropriate behavior for mothers, and the job requirements of being a superheroine are in direct conflict in precisely the same way that Niki and Jessica clash. The former puts her children first, the latter eschews personal ties for the greater good. Their relationship also reflects the impossibility of the decades-long lamentation from working and single mothers, who are expected to take on so much that they wish there could be two of them.4 In this case, not even two selves is a solution to this immense and intractable problem. By the late 1970s the condition of being a supermom was sometimes called the “Superwoman Syndrome.” As its nickname reflected, taking on the burdens of two identities—work and motherhood—was likened to an ailment. It caused stress, anxiety, and guilt for not living up to (often selfimposed) expectations. Some women during the 1970s sought therapy for their conditions as superwomen (Raymer 1976, 34), and by the late 1980s the supermom was even an obstetrical concern as women who tried to take on too much presented the need for new practices in pre- and post-natal counseling (Stotland 1988, 96). In Season Two of Heroes, the director of “The Company,” Bob Bishop, tells Niki that her “condition” is her brain’s way of dealing with the trauma of developing superpowers (Season Two, Ch. 8). His explanation for Niki’s split personality was that she had a mental illness, that her superpowers, her dual roles, caused a psychotic break. Like the Superwoman Syndrome, the psychological pressures of living up to cultural expectations presented itself like a psychosis in Niki. She believed that she was sick, and so she took Micah to live with relatives and checked herself in to a treatment facility where she was promised treatment that would destroy Jessica (Season Two, Ch. 3). “I’m sick,” she told molecular biologist Mohinder Suresh when he tried to release her from her physical restraints at The Company’s holding facility, “I didn’t think anyone could understand my problems… I gave up my son to be here. These are the only people who can help me” (Season Two, Ch. 5). Niki wants to be released from the anxiety of having dual identities. Like the women during the 1970s who sought psychological counseling for their syndromes, Niki tried to rid herself of her mental illness, the supermom. Niki had just cause to be concerned about her parenting abilities, because her identity as a mother was her own weakest link. Her son, Micah, represented her weakness. In Season Two, Chapter 7, Niki was 4

In fact, in Season One, Ch. 3, D.L.’s mother affirms this connection by telling Niki: “I know what it feels like to be stretched so thin you wish there could be two of you.”

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actually neutralized by her own worst fears when a psychic villain convinced her, through forced hallucinations, that she was a bad mother. Superheroes are generically defined by their selflessness and their ability to work for the greater good (Coogan 2006, 31). One of the reasons that comic book superheroines are not usually mothers is that their attachment to worldly things would be too great, their love for their children could destroy them. Though Niki is selfless, she is so because she would do anything for her son, and she would sacrifice even the greater good to protect him. Her identity as a supermom puts her in an impossible situation, as she is simultaneously charged with saving the lives of those in her immediate vicinity, or leaving them to die while she rescues her son. To escape that dilemma, Niki injected herself with a deadly mutated virus that could reverse superpowers. Niki did it to “get the nightmare out,” literally referring to the hallucination that accused her of poor motherhood. Symbolically, however, the act of destroying her alter ego affirmed her desire to get rid of the part of herself that put Micah in danger, the superheroine who was rendered inert by the virus. The injection represented the voluntary purging of her “work” self, a sacrifice that prioritized her concerns for her son over her concerns for humanity. This act reaffirmed the dominant ideology of motherhood, that “caring mothers always put children’s needs ahead of their own” (Tucker 2008, 210). Splitting one’s identity, wearing two hats, balancing separate spheres, juggling, stretching, wearing thin; none of these describe the way that contemporary mothers want to live. Today, women have choices. They can go to college, enter professions historically dominated by men, and claw their ways to the tops of corporate ladders. Are things equal? Not by a long shot. But the women’s movement accomplished the extraordinary feat of opening these doors for its daughters. Whereas mothers relegated to the home at the time of the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) did not have the option of seeking out education and employment, some of today’s mothers feel that their desire to form intense and nurturing bonds with their children and keep house full-time are equally culturally limited. Niki symbolically wrestles with that limitation as she wishes for nothing more than a normal, domestic life, but is barred from it by her alter ego, Jessica, who represents work outside the home. Recent statistics that imply that the ideal work situation for most American mothers is part time or at-home suggests that women want to retreat, to redefine work and domestic spaces in ways that allow them to put family first (Aird & Erickson 2005, 30). Approximately two out of every three mothers with children under the age of three work, suggesting that there is a dramatic difference between how they feel about ideal situations and the

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realities of their own lives.5 That split echoes a rift between ideology and practice, and a cultural dissatisfaction about the expectations of working motherhood. Niki-the-supermom is broken, unable to integrate her personalities, her ideals (the good mother) on one side and her job (the superheroine) on the other. Mothers today are confused by their own participation in the traditional ideologies perpetuated about motherhood. They are pulled between maternal instincts and the desire to make the most of the opportunities that the women’s movement won for them. Mothers today recognize the futility in trying to have it all in the way that Niki has been forced to—by merging two complete and incompatible roles. Niki is a lot like the supermom of the 1970s, the woman who worked the second shift when it became clear that to have it all she would have to do it all, so that she could accommodate two completely distinct lives. However, she also evokes a very specific twenty-first century twist, in that half of this supermom is destroyed. Niki purged the “work” side of her persona, in effect becoming a full time mother, striving toward that normal life that she always dreamed about. It is not necessarily a perfect fix—as a single mother without a job, there are financial realities that would have affected Niki quickly in the real world—but it evokes a tendency toward a certain validation of contemporary motherhood.6 Niki represents the unsolved nature of the relationship between feminism and motherhood in the twenty-first century, one that wants to put family first, and for whom the limitations of dual roles proves too heavy to bear.

The Model of Integration: Elastigirl’s Superhero Family During the first few moments of the animated feature film, The Incredibles (2004), young, single superheroine Elastigirl tells viewers that she has no intention of settling down. “I’m at the top of my game! I’m right up there with the big dogs!” she insists, “Leave the saving the world 5

Furthermore, according to the same research study 34% of working mothers, and 44% of at-home mothers believed that the increased percentages of working mothers with young children is bad for society. 34% and 22%, respectively, believed that the increase was good for society. The rest saw no difference, good or bad. 6 At the end of Season Two, in 2008, Niki Sanders died in an explosion while rescuing her husband’s cousin. Hers was an act of real heroism, not superheroism, since having destroyed her superself, she was simply human. In killing Niki, the show wrote off her entire story line. In Season Three, her son Micah and the cousin that she died saving disappeared as well.

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to the men? Girls, come on! I don’t think so!” She is a superheroine with a raised consciousness, aware that she is a minority female in a maledominated profession, and she accepts that she is a role model for girls. Within ten minutes, however, Elastigirl settles down, marries Mr. Incredible and makes him promise that he’ll take their life together seriously. After a spate of lawsuits against superheroes, they are decommissioned by the government and set up with normal lives with secret identities (Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl become Bob and Helen Parr). By the time The Incredibles story line really gets rolling, Mr. and Mrs. Parr are living in suburbia with three children. Bob is an insurance claims manager, and Helen is a stay-at-home mom. The film reinscribes the heteronormative, traditional American family with a breadwinner father, stay-at-home mother, and a house in the suburbs. For Helen, domesticity is the trade-off for keeping her family safe. Her family is her most important asset, and her happiness is directly connected to theirs. Bob, on the other hand, languishes in suburbia. He craves the satisfaction he got when he saved the world, and as such, he regularly moonlights as a vigilante crime-fighter with an ex-superhero buddy. Helen is satisfied with putting the past in the past. Having enjoyed an exciting career as a professional superheroine already, this arrangement works for her. She had it all, one piece at a time. The message implied is that domesticity is acceptable and satisfying for women but stultifying and suffocating for men. As the model of the absentee father, Bob represents the daily grind, while Helen is left with all of the responsibilities of home and child-rearing. This version of Helen is dramatically different than the self-assured Elastigirl from the beginning of the film, who found selffulfillment through her work as a superheroine, and insisted she would not give it up to settle down. Feeling unfulfilled and craving excitement, Bob accepts secret missions with a mysterious company, just so that he can feel like a superhero again. Bob goes on these missions without telling Helen, putting his life in danger without consideration of the potential repercussions to his family if something bad should happen. Inherent in this act is the affirmation that the mother’s role is inextricably tied to her family; Helen would never embark on secret missions without consideration of the dangers it might pose to her children. Mothers do not have the socially accepted freedom to simply leave, like fathers can and do. When Helen suspects that Bob is having an affair—due to his excessive “conference” travel—she discovers that he was terminated from his insurance job two months earlier. One of feminism’s main arguments for why women needed to become financially independent was the result of this very scenario. The options for a

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housewife whose husband lost his job, or decided to leave her for another woman, were limited prior to the 1970s as most legislation denied those wives any property rights or financial entitlements. At this moment, Helen could have become the helpless, uninformed victim that so many women before her had. However, Bob’s dishonesty and potential infidelity raise her to action, and she becomes a bonafide supermom. She integrates her identities and roles, Helen Parr and Elastigirl, mother and superheroine, and embarks on a mission to save her family. This moment merges the feminist persona of the film’s opening with her contemporary maternal identity, signifying the potential for feminist mothering. Elastigirl’s characterization insists that there need to be ways to live without silencing various aspects of self at different stages of life; Elastigirl-as-supermom longs to be a whole person full-time. Supermoms, despite the fact that they straddle separate spheres, are never able to disentangle themselves completely from the lives of their children. Every move mothers make reverberates through the lives of their families, and they make every effort to keep those waves small. Even as Helen makes arrangements to borrow a jet to run off and save the day, she stops to remind her kids that there are leftovers to be reheated for dinner, and to get to bed on time. Unlike Bob, who kissed Helen and drove away without looking back, supermoms always look back. It is both an integral part of their essence and an extraordinary burden. When Helen’s children secretly follow her on her mission, she finds herself stranded at sea with two superhero children, after a missile attacks their plane. Her situation in that moment, floating in the middle of the ocean with two kids, adds double meaning to the emotional baggage that supermoms carry with them to work. Her kids are not only on her mind, but here they are on her back as she contorts her body into a boat and carries them (propelled by the super-speedy feet of her young son) safely to shore. As the moral guardian of her children, she is always concerned with upholding the law and doing what is right, and as a mother and wife her entire being is subjected to familial attachment. Her power is her maternity; it defines her actions and her reactions. Physically, she can contort her body to suit any circumstance. That is her superpower: she can be in several places at once, she can stretch to meet disaster before it strikes, she can protect her family from falling debris by shifting herself into a parachute. She embodies the literal construction of the maternal wish to do two things at once, or spread oneself thin. Her superpower enables her performance as a mother. As she safely deposits Violet and Dash in a cave so that she can look for their father, she advises them: “Your identity is your most valuable possession.” She refers, of course, to keeping their disguises on so as not

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to give away their secret identities, but her statement also reflects more profound maternal advice. Until this moment she had always warned her children not to use their superpowers, not to define themselves as superheroes, because it was not normal and acceptable. As she grows more comfortable with her own identity as a supermom, she realizes that compartmentalizing herself—having it all once piece at a time—does not make sense for her. She is Helen Parr, mother to Violet, Dash, and JackJack, but she is also Elastigirl. Both identities are always inside her, and they are always in tension. In a sense, Helen has overpowered Elastigirl in the same way that Niki Sanders overpowered Jessica; they are both dealing with multiple personalities coded by dual roles. While Niki Sanders fought to destroy that, Helen begins to recognize the benefit of embracing it. As she reflects on how important it is to accept all parts of who she is, she is able to revise her words of wisdom to her children. In this moment, when the children are faced on all sides by danger and the unknown, being a superhero is a good thing. “When the time comes you’ll know what to do,” she tells Violet as she leaves, urging her to listen to her heart and do what comes naturally. That is maternal, as well as feminist, wisdom. Like Niki Sanders, Elastigirl’s weakness is her children. After being stymied in his plan to control the world, the Incredibles’ nemesis, Syndrome, attacked the family/team where they were most vulnerable, with the helpless infant child, Jack-Jack who has been left at home with a caregiver. “You took away my future, I’m simply returning the favor!” Syndrome proclaimed, as he burst through the ceiling and flew away with Jack-Jack. Elastigirl’s future as a superheroine, a mother, and a supermom, are wrapped up in the well-being of her children, the youngest of whom is threatened in this moment. Thankfully for the continuity of this children’s movie, Jack-Jack developed his superpowers as a changeling at that very moment, and Syndrome dropped him, giving Mr. Incredible the opportunity he needed to destroy the villain, and giving Elastigirl time to catapult herself into the sky to catch her baby. All is well with this super family, but this was a gentle reminder of the pervasive contradictions within the supermom identity, that motherhood and work are constantly in tension. The original supermom portrayed in the media during the 1970s was a “wonder woman;” she was strong and capable, and she really could have it all. Elastigirl embraces this essence of having it all when she decides that part of her was lost when she was either all mother or all superheroine; she wanted to have both identities all the time. Elastigirl’s mechanism for achieving that balance is to form a superhero family, where work and

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family seamlessly combine so that one ends where the other begins. By the end of the film Elastigirl does not even need to leave her family behind to go to work, because with the formation of a superhero family she integrates them into all parts of her life. Elastigirl is the utopian supermom, in that she does not have to sacrifice anything to have everything. Twenty-first century mothers claim they ideally want the workplace to shift to accommodate their priorities on family (Tucker 2008, 211). The Incredibles fulfills that desire.

3:1: The Ratio of (Im)Perfect Motherhood In the 2008 made-for-television movie, More of Me, the working mother heroine, Alice, feels overwhelmed by her multiple roles as wife, mother, and small business owner. The early moments of the film show us that Alice has so much on her mind that she forgets her tenth anniversary, and ignores her husband, Rex, and his gentle moves toward romance. She lacks the attention span for spontaneity because every day is so crammed full of planned events, a development that clearly frustrates her when she has a moment to realize it. Looking into a three-way mirror one busy morning, her young daughter points out, “Look Mommy! There’s more of you!” to which Alice replies, sighing, “I wish there were more of me.” The film’s heroine is a twenty-first century supermom with too much to do; she wants to be everything to everybody. One fateful morning, her daily routine is interrupted by an extraordinary series of unfortunate events. She wakes up late on the morning of a scheduled, televised morning show interview about an environmental issue for which her small business is lobbying. Her husband has an unusually early court appearance scheduled, so he is unable to help with the children’s morning routine. Interrupted in her shower twice (once each by her son and daughter), she ultimately washes herself with baby wipes in front of the sink before throwing on her clothes to run out the door with her kids in tow. With the cupcakes she had forgone sleep to make during the previous night in hand, she buckles her kids into their seats, and seems poised to make it on time. Except that she left the cupcakes on the hood of the car when she rolled out of the driveway, and they smash against the windshield. As her children begin to lament the cupcake mishap, her young son throws up all over Alice. This is one of those mornings that makes moms wish they could clone themselves. As she frantically calls everyone she knows to try to find someone to sit home with her sick son, she attempts to clean herself off and find a change of clothes. As her daughter reminds her from the

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doorway to her bedroom that she is late for school, Alice finds herself on the phone talking to her business partner about the possibility that she might miss her televised interview, while also switching to call-waiting to respectfully listen to her husband’s ideas about doing something special for their tenth anniversary. Not wanting to prioritize any one thing over the other, Alice, at this moment, literally tries to do everything at one time. When her colleague and her husband both hang up on her, frustrated that neither one can get her full attention, she looks into a three-way mirror to see herself “replicated” in the reflection. And that is when she splits, and three new Alices step out of the mirror to greet her. Part of the enjoyment of More of Me is that it represents unbridled wish fulfillment for working mothers. In addition to the whole Alice, the character we began the film with, three new alter Alices can devote one hundred percent of their time to their one, single role: mother, small business owner, and wife. Working mothers might sympathize with Alice as she regards her alters with a mix of confusion and adoration. “So many people depend on me,” she acknowledges, as they spread out before her. The realization of the chaotic morning sets in, and she says with palpable regret: “My son threw up… and I was going to go [to work] instead of taking care of my son!” The mother-Alice alter nods sympathetically, and tells Alice that was one of the reasons the alters showed up. “You just had a little more to do than you could handle,” mother-Alice smiles at Alice. Telling Alice to relax and enjoy herself, mother-Alice leaves to find a bucket for her son, a ride to school for her daughter, and a load of laundry for the washing machine. Alice, herself, has become invisible. She can communicate with her alters, and observe her family, but she cannot interact with the outside world. This is an important detail to an analysis of the supermom identity, because what often happens to working mothers is that they lose track of themselves; they are, in a sense, invisible. Working mothers spend so much time caring for others that they forget to care for themselves, or put off their own luxuries and rest in favor of caregiving. Invisible and without responsibility, Alice is forced to take the time for herself, to rest in a hammock, look through memory boxes, make crafts, dance, drink wine, and read a book. At the end of the day she is grateful for what she was given, and wants herself back. Alice approaches her three alters, and tells them she can handle things from there: “I can do it all,” she blurts out. The three alter Alices look at each other, giggling with condescension. Wife-Alice responds, “Why would we want to undo such a fabulous arrangement?” For her own part, wife-Alice is thrilled to have enough time to work on her

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body, her image, and her husband. “You needed us, and we’re here, and it’s not going to be that easy to get rid of us!” she chides Alice, as the other alters nod sympathetically. Each of them is justifiably pleased with the new arrangement, giving each aspect of Alice’s personality the full attention it craves. The mother-Alice spends every waking moment in support of her children, and the business-Alice is able to exert every ounce of mental energy on her career. The “arrangement,” as wife-Alice called it, is the manifestation of three separate women making up the supermom who can literally do it all. What is missing from each alter Alice is balance. With each of the Alices fully engaged with their individual roles, the total woman is ignored. Each believes her role is most important, and as a result, each tries to overwhelm the other. When mother-Alice visits her daughter’s class to do a craft, for example, she suggests that perhaps she could volunteer at school everyday. Invisible to all except mother-Alice, Alice shakes her head in disbelief: “Are you nuts?” she asks, “I can barely make it to potluck suppers!” Alice recognizes the internal desire to be present in her children’s lives more—to maintain those meaningful connections and bonds-- but she also recognizes that there are other sides of her that need to be balanced as well. Mother-Alice does not see that, and she frowns at Alice’s reaction. In this film, doing it all—represented by the three alterAlices who are totally engrossed in their own worlds—means that balance is impossible. Alice begins to realize that it is the fight between the three competing identities, and her ultimate inability to do it all, that makes her who she is, and that help her achieve some kind of real balance. The juxtaposition between balance and having it all is a newer way of looking at working motherhood. It places the two ideas in tension with one another, rather than suggesting that through “balance” working mothers can “have it all.” Alice’s split suggests quite keenly that contemporary women cannot have it all, at least not if having it all means doing it all. Having it all, in Alice’s life, is chaotic and confusing. When the Alices begin nagging each other for what the other does not do, Alice hollers, “You’re all spinning out of control! How is this better than one of me?” The contemporary supermom has to be one woman who finds the right balance between the competing desires in her life, one who sacrifices some of everything to ensure that she has enough for everyone, including herself. Once Alice realizes this, she acknowledges that she alone is better than all three of her alters combined, and she demands that they leave. In that moment, Alice reappears to the world, audible and visible to others alongside her three separate selves, and must compete with her alters to win her own life back.

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The conflict defines Alice’s identity as a working mother and wife. The competing desires, the urge to be everything to everybody, defines the contemporary supermom. But the ideal supermom is achieved when women stop trying. “None of you can do it all!” Alice tells her alters, “I can’t do it all either! But I can try to find balance. And challenging as it is, I need to be my whole self.” She insists that she needs to stop tormenting herself into being “some sort of supermom,” and recognizes that she took on the expectations of motherhood that were handed down to her by her own mother. The pressures that she recalled her mother facing—such as the expectation that she would stay home, instead of work, and the fact that she wrote letters to the editor just so she could feel like she was being heard—shaped Alice’s own perception of what she needed to do to avoid the traps to which her mother fell victim. The ideologies of motherhood are generational, as they are passed along from mothers to daughters. But what motherhood was to Alice’s mother and what motherhood needed to be for her did not match; they were separated by decades of historical change—especially in terms of women’s rights—and were not necessarily well suited for a woman in the twenty-first century with a career. Ultimately, the very expectations of traditional motherhood have to give way for a balanced motherhood that allows women to carve their own spaces—careers, marriages, children, hobbies. “All my kids need is for me to be me,” Alice finally realizes. Her split was a rejection of herself; but when her alters leave and allow her to have her whole self back, she has accepted that limitations are an inherent part of today’s working mother.

Two-Faced Pill Popping Adulterous Liar: Fooling Ourselves About Having it All Jackie Peyton, from Showtime’s Nurse Jackie, is the perhaps the most enigmatic of the four mothers. It appears that Jackie cannot imagine a world in which she could be a successful nurse in an Emergency Room, and also have a family. So split are the two identities in her mind that Jackie fabricates an entirely false life at work, where she is an ascerbic, single nurse who is always available for overtime shifts, and who is having an affair with the hospital pharmacist. She is, in fact, so enmeshed in her work identity that when given the opportunity, in Season One, Episode 2, to bond with a mother whose son is badly injured she declines, telling the woman that she has no idea what it must feel like to have a child in pain. When she leaves work in the evening, she checks in with her boyfriend, tells him she loves him, and heads home alone. At her door she replaces her wedding rings, enters her house, and is greeted by two beautiful

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daughters and a handsome husband who has made pancakes for dinner. Her voiceover narrates, “Make me good, God. But not yet.” Jackie has consciously created two lives for herself. She is not split by external circumstance, as Niki Sanders, Elastigirl, and Alice were; rather, she split herself, based on her own beliefs about the way the two spheres of her life should look to others. The most astonishing aspect of Jackie Peyton’s decision to split her life is that it does not help her family. Whereas the other mothers who have split endured hardship for the betterment of their children, Jackie is not creating a false life at work to protect them; she creates it to protect—or perhaps amuse—herself. Her family suffers from her absence when she picks up extra shifts, works at night, and gets called back to work on a day off. Her daughters still get frustrated that their mother works, and her husband still struggles with the spaces that he has to fill in her absence. Her family is often left feeling neglected by Jackie’s choices. All of this—the façade, the behavior, the calm—is facilitated by Jackie’s drug addiction, mostly to painkillers, but also anti-depressants on occasion. A major portion of her time at work is spent in search of drugs; from her pharmacist boyfriend, from the electronic pill machine, from patients who don’t need them, from multiple drug store refills. And an equal part of her time is spent taking the drugs; finely crushing them, snorting them, slipping them in her coffee, or just dry swallowing when speed is of the essence. She loves her drugs. She protects them, she relies on them for support. Until the end of Season Two, no one knows about her drug addiction. People who know her believe she suffered a back injury, and no one knows the extent to which her drug addiction has spiraled out of control. Jackie Peyton lies—to herself, to her friends and co-workers, to her family. Based on whatever notions she has about the way things should work at work, and the way things should work at home, she lies to make them fit. At the end of the day, she is a better nurse than she is a mother or wife or even girlfriend, and the drugs could be her way of coping with that guilt. During the first episode of Season Three, it seems as though her lies have caught up with her. After having confronted Jackie about her drug addition (which she staunchly denies), her husband, Kevin, shows up at her workplace to talk to her. Meeting her intern, Zoey, at the ER window, Kevin asks for his wife. Smiling slyly, Zoey shakes her head: “Jackie’s not married,” she answers. Persistent, Kevin shows ID, and confused, Zoey goes in search of Jackie to notify her that her husband is there. Jackie thrusts her wedding ring back on and meets Kevin in the ER waiting room, where she continues to deny that she lies. “What, Zoey? It’s her first day,

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what does she know,” she argues, when Kevin exclaims that her coworkers do not even know that she is married. This, of course, is untrue: no one at the hospital knows that Jackie is married except Dr. O’Hara, her best friend (to whom she also lied: about her back injury and her excuse for needing drugs). No one at the hospital knows that Jackie has children. And at the end of the episode, when a grieving father again asks Jackie if she has any children, she remains silent.

Conclusion The supermom-as-working mother, the woman who has it all, does not work for many contemporary mothers. Mothers today want to spend more time with their families, and they do not believe that working full-time is ideal for their children. The reality for these mothers is that most of them do work outside the home, but pervasive representations of traditional mothering styles—particularly that of the stay-at-home mother—fuels guilt, anxiety, and insecurity about their roles. The disconnect between ideals and realities has created a cultural confusion about motherhood, which has seeped into popular representations of the mother fantasy. That the supermom still exists, and that it adapts ideas about feminism and motherhood to suit its context, proves that the supermom continues to influence the way that motherhood is experienced. During the 1970s, the supermom identity had optimistic potential, though many women— particularly feminists—saw that it would lead to overextension in women’s lives, and cautioned against the unrealistic expectations it fostered. A domestically-inclined supermom emerged in popular rhetoric during the twenty-first century, redefining their “all” to more clearly prioritize the family and home.

Works Cited Aird, Enola G. and Erickson, Martha Farrell. 2005. The Motherhood Study: Fresh Insights on Mothers' Attitudes and Concerns. New York: Institute for American Values, 2005. Celebrity Baby Blog. 2010. People.com. April 22. http://celebritybabies.people.com/2010/04/22/jennifer-lopez-achievestotal-happiness-as-a-working-mom/ Coogan, Peter. 2006. Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre. Austin: MonkeyBrain Books. Eban, Katherine. 2009. “Back to Life.” Working Woman. Jan.: 27-36.

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Friedan, Betty. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton (1997). Heroes, Season One. 2006-2007. NBC. Heroes, Season Two. 2007-2008. NBC. Hollows, Joanne, and Rachel Moseley (eds).2006. Feminism in Popular Culture. New York: Berg. The Incredibles. 2004. Dir. Brad Bird. Los Angeles: Walt Disney Pictures. More of Me. 2007. Dir. Daisy von Sherler Mayer. Lifetime Television. Nurse Jackie. 2009-2011. Created by Liz Brixius, Evan Dunsky, and Linda Wallem. HBO. O’Reilly, Andrea, ed. 2008. Feminist Mothering. Albany: SUNY Press. Pew Research Center. 2007. Fewer Mothers Prefer Full-time Work: From 1997 to 2007. July 12. http://pewresearch.org Raymer, Patricia. 1976. "After the Liberation: The professional woman's dilemma and The Group." Washington Post 7 Mar.: 211. Riss, Suzanne. 2009. “Mom Power.” Working Woman. Jan.: 12. Stotland, M.D., Nada Logan. 1988. Social Change and Women’s Reproductive Health Care: A Guide for Physicians and Their Patients. New York: Praeger. Tucker, Judith Stadtman. 2008. “Rocking the Boat: Feminism and the Ideological Grounding of the Twenty-First Century Mothers’ Movement,” in O’Reilly, Andrea. Feminist Mothering. Albany: SUNY Press: 205-218. Weller, Sheila. 2009. “Katie Holmes Talks!” Glamour. March 2. http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2009/03/exclusive-katie-holmestalks



CHAPTER TEN “I’LL TAKE OUR FAMILY OVER NORMAL ANY DAY”: SUPERNATURAL’S COMMENTARY ON THE MODERN AMERICAN FAMILY NICOLE FREIM

In Supernatural’s season one episode “Bugs,” Sam and Dean visit a real estate development to investigate mysterious deaths. Looking over the gathering at an open house for the prospective home owners, Dean has this to say: Dean: Growing up in a place like this would freak me out. Sam: Why? Dean: The manicured lawns, “How was your day, honey?” I’d blow my brains out. Sam: There’s nothing wrong with normal. Dean: I’d take our family over normal any day.

The story of two monster hunters is anything but normal, yet somehow the brothers manage to embody an often estimable, if occasionally absurdly single minded, approach to family. From the first season of searching for their father John to season’s five’s struggle between the two brothers as vessels for opposing angels, the theme of family appears in all aspects of this show, collectively displaying a very modern approach to family values.

The Show On the audio commentary for the pilot, creator/writer Eric Kripke talks about the process of getting Supernatural to the small screen. When he was offered a chance to pitch another television show (the first being the short lived Tarzan in 2003), he used his fascination with urban legends as

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his basis. He proposed a story about a tabloid reporter in a van crisscrossing the United States to hunt down the truth about mysterious happenings. After this was rejected, he came back with a pitch about two brothers in a muscle car hunting down and killing these same mysterious things. He describes it as a dysfunctional family show. He also calls Supernatural a modern day western and “Star Wars in truck stop America.” In any case, the show appears to be something that the creative team considers to be uniquely American. The original pitch turned out to be successful; more than five million viewers for the first few episodes (reaching 5.69 million for the pilot) prompted the network to pick up the show. Kripke had originally mapped out a three season story arc for the main characters Sam and Dean Winchester, but the show’s popularity changed this to a five season plan. Sam and Dean are currently strolling through their sixth season. They weathered a shift from Thursday to Friday nights and a shortened season in 2007-2008 due to the television writers’ strike. The show was perhaps a bit of a gamble for the network in the beginning. Supernatural has a strange mix of elements. First, there is a small, almost exclusively male regular cast. Since the Winchesters are always traveling, most characters are seen for one episode and never again. There is no home base for the family other than Dean’s car, a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, hardly a “hot” car by most people’s standards. Dean’s musical tastes stopped at the mid-eighties with, as Sam put it in the pilot episode, “the greatest hits of mullet rock.” AC/DC, Kansas, Rush, Metallica, and other groups may have loyal fans, but one wouldn’t expect those to be the young audience that is clearly the target for the show. And while actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki are indeed handsome and popular with the female audience, they are rarely in handsome situations. The boys wear old jeans, flannels, and jackets most of the time and spend their time mucking about in dark, dank places. The boys have been cleaned up (Dean in a tux) or stripped down (Sam without a shirt) only a handful of times in more than five seasons. So what does make Supernatural such a successful show? Many people who work on the show, from writers and directors to producers, have said that the show’s strength lies in the relationship between the brothers, which is the core of the show. Kripke himself claimed in an interview with TV Guide that Supernatural has “always been a show about family, much more than it is about anything else.” If this is true, we should consider both what kind of family it shows and what is it saying about the modern idea of the family. Supernatural is clearly drenched in family -- in all parts of the series. Drawing on writer Stephen R.

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Donaldson’s definition of “the basic three-sided story,” the characters on the show can be loosely grouped as villains, victims, and rescuers. Certain types of family patterns are repeated and stressed in each group. The villains frequently focus on family ties that have been twisted or manipulated in some way. The victims are often small, non-traditional families or vulnerable because of their abuse of family. And the rescuers are heroes who have a dysfunctional family but astounding sibling loyalty that is their greatest strength.

Villains Supernatural is a show about hunting monsters, the things that go bump in the night and urban legends that just happen to be true. The brothers encounter plenty of monsters who are only interested in the end result of death or who have no grand plan. A ghost of a doctor haunts the asylum where he was killed and tortures anyone who comes into the abandoned building. A demon infects nervous travelers and brings down planes just for the death toll. A tulpa (a being created by sheer belief in it) changes as the rumor about it changes but keeps its murderous intent. A cursed rabbit’s foot brings extraordinary luck -- fabulous while the owner has it and deadly once lost -- which it always is. Many of these might qualify as “the monster of the week,” similar to other episodic shows like The X-Files or the criminals chased on any of the police procedural shows. After a closer look at the villains, two themes are repeated frequently throughout the series. Some monsters prey on families, exploiting family connections as a way to reach their victims. This may be within a small family, such as a couple. The monster’s approach and motivation vary, but it never ends well for the pair. The pilot episode follows a “woman in white,” an urban legend about a ghostly woman who preys on unfaithful men. In 1.6 “Skin,” a shapeshifter takes on the guise of a husband or boyfriend and uses it to get close to a woman, kill her, and frame the man for the crime. 4.14, called “Sex and Violence,” centers on a siren who gets men to kill their wives. While it could be argued that the siren and ghost are simply following their natures, the shapeshifter merely enjoys causing destruction. Monsters also like the ties between parents and children. In episode 1.18, “Something Wicked,” the monster is a shtriga who drains the life force from children. The shtriga will get into a house and keep coming back on successive nights to go after all the children in the household. Episode 2.2, “Everybody Loves a Clown,” encounters a rakshasa who poses as a clown to get the child to let him into the house where he then

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kills the parents. He leaves the children alive, but presumably with permanent mental damage. “The Kids Are Alright,” in season three, describes changelings, monsters who abduct children, assume their forms, and feed off their mothers. If the fathers are around, they are usually killed to make the feeding easier. Exploiting one member of the family lets the monsters reach their victims more easily. An extreme version of this approach is seen in episode 3.14, “Long Distance Call.” The villain is a crocotta, a scavenger demon who lures people into the dark and devours their souls. In the past, he would lurk in the woods, imitating a loved one’s voice and calling “Come to me.” Now he can use the phone company to call or e-mail people, posing as a deceased family member like a parent or spouse, and goad the person into committing suicide by either coming out to him or killing himself to make the calls stop. This approach works because people seem to always want another chance to speak to the loved ones they’ve lost. Supernatural acknowledges this basic impulse in humans; we have trouble letting go of family. Perhaps the most dramatic use of this ploy occurs in 5.15 “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.” Bobby Singer is an older hunter who is like a surrogate father to Sam and Dean. In his hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, people begin rising from their graves. Bobby doesn’t want to tell the boys about it, since one of the dead is Bobby’ wife, Karen. Approximately twenty people return to their loved ones, rejoining the family as if nothing had happened. The family members are so grateful to have their loved ones back that the town just accepts the undead walking among them. After about five days, however, the dead begin to turn on the living. A fever sets in and they kill their families. Karen can feel the change coming and asks Bobby to shoot her before she turns on him, just as he killed her years ago when she was possessed. Bobby, Dean, Sam and the sheriff are forced to kill the rest of the zombies as they converge on Bobby’s place. The point of all this carnage is revealed to be about Bobby. He is helping Sam hold out against the devil’s plans, and Death (the Horseman of the Apocalypse) brought Karen back to life to deliver a message: that Death is watching him. Dean questions whether it was intended as a hit on Bobby’s life. Bobby replies that, “I don’t know if they wanted to take my life or my spirit.” Killing his wife the first time drove Bobby into hunting to retain his sanity; facing it again is almost more than he can handle. Although family ties can be a source of great support, they are also a source of even greater pain when those ties are broken. This gives villains an easy way to hurt the heroes.

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Villains on Supernatural don’t just use the family as an entry into the household; they are also sometimes summoned by the perversion of family ties. As a show that centers on family, it is natural to explore what happens when family is not what it should be in an extreme way. One of the recurring elements in the first two seasons are the special kids, ones like Sam who have some degree of mental powers. Andy was one of these children and was introduced in 2.5, “Simon Said.” Sam and Dean suspect him of using mental control to get people to commit suicide since all the victims are connected to Andy in some way (birth mother, doctor). But as it turns out, Webber, a new friend of Andy’s, is revealed to be his twin brother, separated from him at birth. Webber is punishing the people he believes kept him and Andy apart. Andy’s response to this is as incredulous as the viewers’ might have been: “Are you really this stupid? You learn you’ve got a twin. You call him up, you go out for a drink! You don’t start killing people!” Webber’s life was unpleasant and left him open to the delusion that he could have had a great life, if only he’d been with his brother. The show most directly addresses the effects of twisted family ties in 1.14 “Nightmare.” Another of the psychic children, Max, reveals that he was regularly and severely beaten by his father and uncle. This abuse continued until just recently when his mental powers developed. He uses his new power to kill his father and uncle. He plans to kill his stepmother, for never doing anything about the abuse, but Sam and Dean intervene in time. Sam tries to talk to Max, but he is too scarred from years of abuse to cope. He ends up turning Dean’s gun on himself and committing suicide. Sam feels two ways about the situation. He feels that “both our families are cursed,” but he also acknowledges that he and Dean were lucky that they had John. “He could have gone a whole ‘nother way after Mom. A little more tequila, a little less demon hunting, and we would’ve had Max’s childhood.” While the brothers don’t seem to fully absolve Max, they seem to understand that his monstrous family drove him to this point. Supernatural often demonstrates that family should be something a person can count on rather than fear.

Victims Monsters, of course, need victims. As Sam and Dean traverse the country, they are helping different people each week. Some of the situations the brothers find themselves in encompass multiple victims (a demon virus spreading through a town) or a specific type of person (like the ghost of a serial killer who targets young blonde women). There are

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also a fair amount of individuals in strange circumstances who need help. When we do see families, the presentation seems to betray the show’s slant towards nontraditional family units. There are very few presentations of nuclear family units (parents still married with children) in Supernatural. One episode, 3.16, “No Rest for the Wicked” (cut short due to the writer’s strike) showcases a mother, father, grandfather, and daughter. Unfortunately, the daughter is possessed by the demon Lillith, who treats the possession as her “vacation.” The scene becomes a mockery of family life, with everyone going through the motions of happiness to placate her. Lillith treats every day as her birthday, with a terrified mother making her a cake and her father staying home from work to push her on the swing. She controls the family with threat of death, even killing the grandfather when he dares slip a note reading, “Help us” to a neighbor. Sam and Dean arrive to kill Lillith in order to save Dean’s life. As they creep closer to the bed where the child is curled up with her mother (exhausted after reading the same bedtime story more than twenty times), the mother urges them to do it. The mother has accepted that her child is possessed and wants the situation to be over. As the mother’s urgings get louder and wake the child, Dean realizes that Lillith is no longer in the daughter. The brothers escort the mother, father, and daughter down to the basement with instructions to secure the door and not come out whatever they hear. We don’t actually see the family again; we can assume they survived, but their mental states are probably severely damaged. The clearest example of a nuclear family, one where there is a clear resolution, is in episode 4.11. In “Family Remains,” Mom, Dad, Kate, Danny, and Uncle Ted move out to the country for a fresh start. They need this fresh start because their other son, Andy, was recently killed in a car accident. So although we have a complete family unit (including family dog Buster), one who is trying desperately to stay together, they have already suffered tragedy and the future of the family is questionable. The house this family moves into is already “occupied.” Sam and Dean think there is a ghost of a former resident who committed suicide, but everyone quickly discovers that the girl in the walls is an actual human girl. She kidnaps Danny to be her playmate and sets about trying to kill the rest of the family. She manages to get Uncle Ted, but Dean rescues Danny and the family is reunited. The father, however, has to kill the girl to save his wife. Despite all these harrowing events, the family seems to be in reasonable shape. The wife says she’s not okay, “but we’re together,” as she and her husband join hands.

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Finding only a few examples in one hundred and four episodes cannot help but seem significant. Supernatural’s families-as-victims tend to be single parent families or couples. Even single parent families, however, are not heavily represented. And the fate of most couples, as previously discussed, does not include a happy ending. Sometimes the resolution does bring a kind of peace. Episode 2.16, “Roadkill,” has Sam and Dean trying to help a ghost who does not realize she is dead. Molly believes she was just in a car accident and needs to find her husband who was also in the car. She haunts the road where she died every year on the anniversary of her death, clinging to existence because she is searching for her husband. She doesn’t realize that she has been dead for fifteen years. At the end of episode, the brothers take Molly to town and show her that her husband is alive and happily married to someone else. As she accepts her loss and her husband’s happiness, she disappears in the rising light of the sun. This may be one of the best endings possible for a couple on the series. The other type of family, the single parent household, ranges between divorced and widowed (in an echo of Sam and Dean’s situation). We see this sort of family right away, starting with episode 1.3, “Dead in the Water.” A ghost was attacking the family members of the people who drowned him. The first family was a father (Bill) and two children, both of whom were killed before the father. The second family had a complete unit, grandfather (Jake), daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild, but the sonin-law dies before the episode. Although Jake and Bill are not elderly and their children are young adults under thirty, the mothers of both families are already out of the picture. This trend continues throughout the series, although the family group is not always the focus of the episode. In 1.5, “Bloody Mary,” the first victim is a widower who leaves behind his two daughters. When Sam and Dean revisit their old house in 1.9, “Home,” the new resident is a widow with two children. 1.19 “Provenance” gives Sam a possible love interest (never returned to) in Sarah, whose mother dies unexpectedly about a year earlier. “Playthings,” in season two includes Susan, a single mother running an inn; her daughter and her elderly mother also live there. Even the tulpa that was created in 1.17’s “Hell House” was a father who killed his daughters, with no mention of a mother. The list of incidental mentions of single parents gets surprisingly long as the series continues. And two of the few recurring female characters are Ellen and Jo Harvelle, mother and daughter hunters, who knew John. Bill Harvelle, Ellen’s husband, was killed on a hunting trip with John and it is implied that it was John ‘s fault Bill died.

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In a strange twist, there are surprisingly few depictions of siblings outside of Sam and Dean. The episode with the shtriga shows Sam and Dean staying at a hotel run by a single mother and her two young sons. When the younger, Asher, becomes ill because of the shtriga, Sam and Dean convince the older boy, Michael, to help them catch the monster. Dean is able to bond with Michael over being the “big brother” and the responsibility of taking care of their younger brothers. Another is the second episode, “Wendigo.” Sam and Dean have followed coordinates from their father to Colorado where they discover hikers have been going missing. They meet Haley and Ben, siblings of Tommy, who disappeared while on a camping trip. The two are determined to go into the forest searching for Tommy since their parents are gone and the three of them are “all they have left.” Sam does not want Haley to go, but Dean backs her up, understanding that ‘Her brother’s missing, Sam. She’s not just going to sit this one out.” Tommy, Ben, and Haley all make it safely out of the woods. And that seems to be the key for Dean. When Sam asks him how he does the job, Dean replies, “Well for one, them (gestures toward Haley and brothers). I mean, our family’s so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others.” Dean recognizes the sibling bond that motivates Haley because it is the same one that he sees in himself.

Rescuers One of the opening shots of Supernatural pilot shows a four year old Dean being given the six month old Sam and told, “Take your brother outside as fast as you can - don’t look back. Now, Dean! Go!” while their father tries ineffectually to save his dying wife. This helps set the tone for the whole series. The main characters are brothers, and they are the only two characters who appear in every episode. The next time we meet them they are in the now-grown Sam’s darkened apartment where they struggle in the darkness after Dean has broken in to “[look] for a beer.” Their father has gone missing while on a hunt. Dean wants Sam’s help to find him, acknowledging that he could do it alone but he doesn’t want to. This begins the story of two brothers. Each season of Supernatural has, at its base, an overarching story that revolves around the brothers’ family connection. Season one focuses on their quest to find their father and the demon that killed their mother. Season two has Sam and Dean dealing with their father’s death and the responsibility that John placed on Dean: to kill Sam if he could not save him. The season ends with Dean selling his soul to save Sam from death. The following season naturally follows the brothers coming to terms with Dean’s impending death. Death can’t

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stop a character on a show like this, however; Dean is raised from hell at the beginning of season four and the two brothers argue about how to stop the devil from being set free. For story purposes, they fail, and season five sets up a showdown between the two: Dean as the archangel Michael’s vessel on Earth and Sam as Lucifer’s vessel -- the ultimate showdown between brothers. The bond of brotherhood had been strained because of the sons’ individual relationships with their father. Dean was the obedient son while Sam rebelled by going off to college and trying to live a normal life. As Sam was getting ready to interview for law school, the brothers had been apart for at least four years. The relationship, however, is quickly rebuilt, probably due in part to the absence of their father. Without John around, the brothers have a chance to interact as adults and discover that they do actually like each other. Variations on the line “because you’re my brother” as explanation for any number of acts abound in the show. Some critics view the Sam and Dean relationship as almost parental. Tanya Michaels writes about Dean as a “soccer mom” and sees much of his role as that of a nurturer. It is true that Dean did stand in for a parent figure through much of Sam’s childhood; he could even be viewed as maternal in his efforts to make the family get along. But as the series begins, both characters are in their twenties, past the age where an older sibling is a parent figure. By that time, the two are much more like equals, even if big brother Dean doesn’t always see it that way. We see multiple episodes about the brothers’ devotion to each other. Episode 1.12 “Faith” is just the first of many close calls with death for one of the brothers. Sam refuses to give up on Dean and finds a faith healer for his damaged heart. When Sam is kidnapped in 1.15 “The Benders,” Dean does everything he can to find him; this includes going to the police -- always a dangerous proposition for people who do things like digging up graves to burn bones. Sam and Dean cannot seem to escape their destiny to be together and to hunt. When the brothers are placed in an alternate reality by angels in 4.13 “It’s a Terrible Life,” they are not related but still find their way to each other. They believe they are workers at a company and start to investigate some strange happenings in the buildings. They were placed there without their memories to prove to them that hunting is what they do best. And it seems to underscore that they are best as a team. Sheryl Rakowski discusses this in her essay “A Powerful Need.” She believes that “The Winchester family’s need for one another is the stuff heroes are made of.” She also points out that this need becomes their weak spot.

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The idea that family ties are a weakness is one that is mentioned by various characters on multiple occasions. At first it is Sam and Dean who are John’s weakness and they believe they should work alone. Then it becomes Sam and Dean who are the vulnerable point for each other. In 3.11 “Mystery Spot,” a trickster traps Sam in a time loop and forces him to watch Dean die over and over in creative ways. When he’s explaining why he’s doing it, he claims that, “Dean’s your weakness. The bad guys know it, too. It’s gonna be the death of you.” Supposedly the trickster was trying to help Sam prepare for Dean’s imminent death, but Sam doesn't appreciate the lesson. Sam wants desperately to save Dean, falling into the pattern established by their father. If he could sacrifice himself to save Dean, he would do it. Both of the brothers have moments when they say and demonstrate that they would do almost anything for each other. One of the most revealing episodes is 2.20, “What Is and What Should Never Be.” Dean falls victim to a djinn, and finds himself in an alternate universe. In this world, his mother never died, his father did not hunt, and Sam was happy at law school with his fiancé Jessica. Dean has a steady job and a live-in girlfriend. He happily mows the lawn for his mother, enjoying the sheer normalcy of it all. The fantasy is not perfect, however. Although there are multiple pictures of the family (including one of them all in matching Christmas sweaters), John is dead and Dean doesn't remember the times that the family had together. The biggest drawback, though, is his complete lack of relationship with Sam. Without hunting as a way to bond, the two never really managed to connect. When Dean tries to say that they should spend more time together because they’re brothers, Sam says that he used the brother excuse “when you snaked my ATM card, or when you bailed on my graduation, or when you hooked up {with my prom date on prom night}.” Dean is willing to sacrifice his relationship with Sam since Sam is happy. But then he realizes that in this world, all the people he and Sam saved with their hunts were never saved. He begins to desire a return to the real world, even though it kills him to give up the possibility of Sam’s marriage or their mother’s life. When he is back in the real world, he tells Sam that “If Mom never died, we never went hunting and you and me just never . . . you know.” And Sam replies, ”Yeah, well, I’m glad we do.” The brothers are not the best at sharing what they call “chick flick moments” about their feelings, but it is clear that they are both glad of their adult relationship, perhaps happier with each other than when they were younger, or with their father.

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The introduction of the angels in season four provides even more complexity to the brotherly view of family. Angels have only one parent, and at this time, he’s missing. The angels refer to each other as brothers, making the struggle between them into more than just a disagreement between two parties. A disagreement with a sibling always has layers of unspoken history. The problems are magnified; a fight is more than just a fight. It’s a fight with one’s brother. When Castiel, the angel who helps Sam and Dean, kills another angel, he clearly feels the weight of killing a family member. The show also uses the struggle between Michael and Lucifer as a parallel for the difficulties between Sam and Dean. The final episode of season five, “Swan Song,” allows the writers and actors to voice sentiments that underscore the focus of the show. When Castiel warns Dean that all he will see on the field is Michael killing Sam, Dean’s reply is “Then I ain’t going to let him die alone.” He has always seen Sam as his responsibility, but Dean finally admits that Sam is a grown man and says, “If this is what you want, I’ll back your plan.” Sam asks Dean not try to find a way to rescue him, but to go find Lisa and “live some normal apple pie life.” This becomes the ultimate sacrifice for Dean -- letting Sam throw himself into the devil’s cage. At the big fight, Lucifer in Sam’s body is beating Dean almost to death and Dean assures him, “Sammy? It’s okay, I’m here. I’m not going to leave you.” The bond between brothers, shown through Dean’s loyalty and the memories of them together in their “home” of the Impala, helps break Lucifer’s hold on Sam, allowing him to regain control and triumph over the devil, although it seems to cost him his life. And Chuck, a character who may be a prophet or a manifestation of God, narrates the end of the episode: “So what’s it all add up to? Well, it’s hard to say. But me, I’d say it was a test. For Sam and Dean. And I think they did alright. Up against good, evil, angels, devils, destiny, and God himself . . . They made their own choice. They chose family. And isn’t that kinda the whole point?” This sums up the core of the Winchesters. Sacrifice for family and for the greater good.

Reversal Within these varied depictions of family, some of the most interesting tension comes from unexpected shifts in character. Returning to Donaldson’s theory about the three-sided story, he writes in the afterword to The Real Story that the difference between melodrama and drama is that, “Melodrama presents a Victim, a Villain, and a Rescuer. Drama offers the same characters and then studies the process by which they change roles”

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(214). In Supernatural, these groups often blur the lines between them, altering our reaction to them. The first episode detailed the story of a “woman in white” who went after men who were unfaithful. As the brothers research the woman, they discover that she killed herself in part because her husband was unfaithful. But the other part was guilt; out of anger at her husband she had killed her own children. She is both victim and villain at the same time. By returning her to her house, Sam lets the ghosts of her children (her victims) become his rescuers by vanquishing their mother’s ghost. This sort of shift is used repeatedly during the course of the show. Episode 2.13 “House of the Holy” tells a story of a priest who was shot outside his church. The ghost thinks himself to be an angel and is inciting people to murder. The victims, however, were a killer, pedophile, and rapist. Sam and Dean feel they have to put the spirit to rest even though they wonder if he is all that wrong. In 4.11 “Family Remains,” Sam discovers that the girl in the walls was shut in there by her grandfather -- who also happened to be her father. She couldn’t help but be nearly feral after a lifetime of darkness and isolation with no one but her brother (also a product of her father/grandfather) for company. Sam and Dean are forced to kill the boy and girl, but have regrets about it. Dean comments that, “I felt for those sons of bitches back there. Life long torture turns you into something like that . . .” And the torture came at the hands of a twisted family member. Revealing vengeance as the main motive of a monster can change our perspective on that person as a villain. In 4.6, “Yellow Fever,” the ghost of Luther Garland, formerly the town freak, is infecting people with fear that causes their hearts to eventually give out. He begins with only the people responsible for his death, but it soon spreads to others who use fear as a weapon. When a woman went missing, Luther was blamed for her death and her husband dragged him up and down the road until he died. Now the victims of the ghost sickness are experiencing Luther’s fear and death in slow motion. While it seems unfair that the disease is spreading to people who were not even involved, Luther’s brutal murder does make the viewer sympathetic to him. And though Dean has been infected and needs the ghost laid to rest so he will not die, it is quite uncomfortable when Sam and Bobby execute the ghost by reenacting his death Personal connection is not always necessary for the villains; sometimes just the responsibility for death is sufficient cause. Episode 1.5 takes on the famous urban myth of “Bloody Mary.” The legend goes that after saying “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a mirror, her ghost will appear and kill the speaker. In Supernatural’s version, Mary only attacks people who are hiding guilt over killing someone. The first death happens

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not to the young girl who says “Bloody Mary” but to her father, implicated in her mother’s death. The second death is a friend of the family who says “Bloody Mary” as a joke; she was involved in a hit and run that resulted in a fatality. The brothers have to solve the case to save a young girl named Charlie, distraught over her perceived role in a death. Her boyfriend said he would kill himself if she left and she did. This is apparently enough for Mary, who was killed by her lover. The boys finally stop Mary by showing her her own reflection, in which her face reflects all the people she has killed. The most telling of the villain/victim reversals, however, center on villains who are extracting revenge for the killing of a loved one. In 3.6 “Red Sky at Morning,” the sighting of a ghostly ship heralds death -- but only for those who have killed members of their own family. The death can be accidental, as in the case of Sheila who was driving when her cousin was killed in a car accident. Or it can be overt, as with the rumors that the Warren brothers killed their father to inherit his estate. The ghost is a sailor who was hung by his own brother (almost a cardinal sin in the Supernatural universe). Sam and Dean’s roles shift frequently as well. It may be as simple as Sam being possessed by a demon and thereby becoming the villain of the episode. Or Dean is accidentally electrocuted and dying as his heart gives out and must be rescued by his brother. Both the brothers becomes victims in the episode 3.11 “Mystery Spot” when Sam must live through a Groundhog Day type experience, watching Dean die every day and being unable to stop it. Both of them have died repeatedly over the course of the series. And both of them have become villains in a major sense. They allowed (or failed to stop) a horde of demons to escape hell at the end of season three. In season four, Dean’s actions in hell let Lillith start breaking seals to open Lucifer’s cage and Sam’s killing of Lillith allowed Lucifer to break free. Throughout all these shifts, though, the brothers keep coming back to the one constant: each other.

Family Supernatural has set up a complex universe over the course of its five seasons, one that shows evidence of getting more complicated in the sixth season. But according to Kripke, “The mythology is only an engine to raise issues about family. A big brother watching out for a little brother, wondering if you have to kill the person you love most, family loyalty versus the greater good, family obligation versus personal happiness.” He even goes so far as to reassure viewers wondering about the future of

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series that, “It’s always going to be a show about brothers.” Considering the success of the formula so far, the creative team would be hard pressed to find a reason to change the focus. All these layers of family issues helps to make the audience think about what they most value. We are not presented with a cliched version of a family—happy parents, two children, lovely home. Instead we are constantly bombarded with the idea that a sibling is the most important member of the family. While many young viewers who have grown up in a society of divorce and broken families would sneer at the “ideal” family, they can safely admire the idea of Supernatural’s brotherly devotion. We hear this from Demian, a fan at the Supernatural convention in 5.9 “The Real Ghostbusters.” He counters Dean’s argument that the lives of Sam and Dean are “a river of crap” by telling him that he must not get what the story is about. Demian insists that, “in real life . . . our lives suck. But Sam and Dean. To wake up every morning and save the world. To have a brother who would die for you. Well, who wouldn’t want that?” Faced with this idea, even Dean has to concede the point. Idealizing an alternative family, punishing people who hurt loved ones, struggling with the tension between the strength and vulnerability that comes from family. These are all perspectives that could be viewed as uniquely modern and even uniquely American. The repeated patterns seem to echo the current state of families in America; rarely nuclear, often fragmented, occasionally constructed by conscious choice. Some people might see a strong relationship with a sibling as a more realistic dream than a stereotype of family more common decades ago. It could also symbolize the younger generation’s view of the importance of family. While it can be a lifeline, it also hard to come by. In the audio commentary for the pilot episode, Kripke compares the show’s overall focus to that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “If Buffy is about high school, and high school is hell, then our show is about family. And family is hell.” It may be hell, but the bright spots are something to hope for in our own families. Minus the monster slaying.

Works Cited “Eric Kripke Fields Your Questions About Supernatural,” TV Guide, 15 February, 2007. http:///www.tvguide.com/news/eric-kripke-fields-35627.aspx Michaels, Tanya. 2009. “Dean Winchester: Bad-Ass . . . or Soccer Mom?” In In the Hunt: Unauthorized Essays on Supernatural. Ed. Leah Wilson. Dallas, Texas: Benbella Books, Inc. 2009.

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Rakowski, Sheryl. 2009. “A Powerful Need.” In In the Hunt: Unauthorized Essays on Supernatural. Ed. Leah Wilson. Dallas, Texas: Benbella Books, Inc. Supernatural, DVD, 2006-2010. Seasons 1-5. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2006-2010.

CHAPTER ELEVEN RESOLVING FLAWED FATHERHOOD: DOMESTIC MASCULINITY AND MISSING MOTHERS ON EVERWOOD JENNIFER FOGEL

Since the early-1990s, political and cultural figures have identified troubling statistics on fatherlessness in America–which some claim to be a leading contributor to the “decline in family values”–and made reestablishing the importance of fatherhood to the family a progressive social movement (Chambers 2001, 1).1 This “fatherhood movement” was further galvanized by a growing literature addressing fatherhood and several emerging non-profit and religious organizations and social initiatives that sought to enrich and strengthen the commitment of men to fatherhood (e.g., the National Center for Fathering, 1990; the Promise Keepers, 1990; and the National Fatherhood Initiative, 1994) (Gavanas 2004; Horn 1999). Despite the public turmoil related to the “fatherhood crisis,” television has only protractedly dealt with the inner turmoil and consequences of father absence, responsibility, and ideology until recently. Even well into the late-1980s and early-1990s, audiences still favored the idyllic, authoritarian and moderately sentimental patriarchs of 1950’s and 1960’s sitcoms (e.g., Ozzie Nelson from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Ward Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver, or Jim Anderson from Father Knows Best) as evidenced by the success of Family Ties (19821989), The Cosby Show (1984-1992), Growing Pains (1985-1992), and Family Matters (1989-1998)–all of which emphasized intact families and 1

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2002), “Children in father-absent homes are five times more likely to be poor.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that “fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse,” are twice as likely to drop out of school (1993), are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems, and more likely to be in trouble with the law (1988).

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the major role of “dad” within these families. However, recent depictions of the 21st century father have become far more committed to capturing diverse conditions of fatherhood; exploring the day-to-day challenges that today’s fathers face amidst economic and political turbulence, single parenthood, and masculine domesticity. Mediated portrayals of fatherhood are at the nexus between the construction of masculinity and the socialization of patriarchal gender roles. Profound socio-cultural factors since the post-World War II era, such as feminism, economic prosperity and hardship, and shifting political ideology, have all challenged cultural conceptions of masculinity, which, over time, has influenced the depictions of fathers on television. Fatherhood’s intrinsic connection to masculine tropes suggests that it fluctuates over time, eventually coalescing around a set of “norms that men are expected to follow when they become fathers…the attitudes and sentiments that people have toward fathers…and the routine activities of men when they are trying to act ‘fatherly’” (LaRossa 1997, 11). Early television showed fatherhood vacillating between the bumbling fathers of the ethnic, working class sitcoms (e.g., I Remember Mama, 1949-1957; The Life of Riley, 1953-1958) and the authoritative patriarchs of the suburban family comedies (e.g., Father Knows Best, 1954-1960). But as the nuclear family struggled to remain the center of the family dynamic, in both reality and on the small screen, fatherhood was challenged by female domestic independence and a drive for more egalitarian familial roles (LaRossa et al. 2001). For the past two decades, television has struggled to authentically reconstruct fatherhood for the 21st century. Lingering distress over the (oft under-analyzed) increase in fatherlessness in America is now coupled with the contentious idealism surrounding the development and valuation of the “new father” archetype, whereby fathers are more nurturing towards children and are active participants in childrearing and domestic tasks. The “new father” remains a complex by-product of hegemonic masculinity mixed with both feminine (i.e., motherly) characteristics and feminist values. Of particular note in this new discourse of complicated fatherhood has been the rise of fathers raising their children without mothers. Single parents, whether through death or divorce, these fathers struggle to merge stereotypical notions of masculinity with the more maternal traits (e.g., compassion, selflessness, emotionality, etc.) needed to adequately provide a home and care to children. Using The WB’s Everwood (2002-2006) as a case study, this chapter surveys the “missing mother” television series, examining the problems inherent in the domestication of men (within the family) when fathers try to negotiate and subsume the maternal experience

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in the domestic space–what Margaret Marsh (1988) refers to as “masculine domesticity.” In the “missing mother” series, fathers are not only being asked to re-examine their place within the family, but also to re-learn their role as the domestic entity responsible for raising children. Fathers, as portrayed on television in the past two decades, are not without faults and repeatedly fail to emulate the idealized fathers of yesteryear. “Missing mother” television series such as Full House (1987-1995), Everwood, Veronica Mars (2004-2007), Ugly Betty (2006-2010), and Lie to Me (2009-), have all featured more openly devoted fathers who are acutely aware of their inability to fully replace the absent maternal role model, but are still motivated to do so despite their probable failures. These challenging interpretations of 21st century fatherhood are equally more poignant and accessible to men and their families, demonstrating the heightened necessity for masculine sensitivity and accentuating the rewarding relationship between father and child. Through the exploration of the intimacy of paternal relationships and the underlying assumption of fatherhood’s domestic deficiency, these series position masculine domesticity as an opportunity to revitalize the significance of men to the family dynamic.

The “Culture of Fatherhood” and Masculine Domesticity Documenting the challenges and failures of today’s fathers, in any form, acknowledges a far more open-minded conceptualization of masculinity. From the early-19th century and throughout the mid-20th century, the paternal role in the home diminished with the rise of “separate spheres” gender ideology, where fatherhood became compartmentalized as the “distant breadwinner” (Pleck 1987; Lamb, 2000). With the bulk of familial subsistence now assumed by the father, “breadwinning became the most important and defining characteristic of fatherhood–the criterion by which ‘good fathers’ were appraised” (Lamb 2000, 27). But the “distant breadwinner” soon gave way to a more “involved fatherhood” at the turn of the 20th century, one that became tied to leisure, play, and companionship between father and child (Featherstone 2009; Gavanas 2004). For Ralph LaRossa, the father as pal paradigm continued to marginalize fathers, “in that it created a place for fathers that did not overlap with the place of women. Essentially, it framed fathers as children’s pals, and by doing so, also framed fathers as trivial and less important” (LaRossa 1997, 18). The Depression and World War II spurred the desire to re-establish the dominance of the family patriarch, by which breadwinning was once again the definitive mark of validation for fathers

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(Lamb 2000). Also of importance was the restoration of the father’s role in child rearing to counterbalance maternal influence; hence, masculine domesticity became elemental in re-establishing the patriarch’s place within the family (LaRossa 1997; Marsh 1988). Masculine domesticity did not require “an equal sharing of all household duties,” but it was “a model of behavior in which fathers agreed to take on increased responsibility for some of the day-to-day tasks of bringing up children” (Marsh 1988, 166). Most importantly, fathers would “take a significantly greater interest in the details of running the household and caring for the children” than previous generations of fathers (Marsh 1988, 166). Men have been encouraged to “take on a more ‘feminine’ approach in interacting with their family (revealing emotion, demonstrating their love and affection openly, and participating in embodied caring activities with young children)” (Lupton and Barclay 1997, 19). Pioneered during the late-1960s and heavily influenced by previous notions of a more involved paternal figure, the “New Father” was just as “nurturing and interested in young children” as he was “engaged in paid work” (Lupton and Barclay 1997, 14). Men had to become more than “compliant [domestic] helpers” but competent and active participants in parenting (Singleton and Maher 2004). Representations of the participative father (i.e., “Mr. Mom”) in film and television were particularly valuable in challenging conventional masculinity while, at the same time, rebuilding confidence in the patriarch as head-of-household. But men continued to find difficulty with the return to “domestic life after more than a century of fathers having moved in the opposite direction”–hence, the rise in fatherlessness since the 1960s (Popenoe 1999, 19). By the 1990s, political and religious conservatives proselytized about the disturbing link between fatherlessness, along with single motherhood, the crisis in masculinity, and declining marriage rates, with the general breakdown of “the family.” According to Deborah Chambers, “Fatherhood [was] being singled out as the crucial part of the family under threat. Its absence delegitimize[d] the family” (Chambers 2001, 4). The threatened dissolution of the family spurred a number of interest groups in support of fathers, all of which sought to redefine masculine domesticity and advocated reestablishing specific “manly” areas of parenting (Gavanas 2004). Thus, the Fatherhood Movement was simultaneously trying to masculinize domesticity and domesticate masculinity (Gavanas 2004, 6). Men sought to revitalize the strength of the paternal figure within the family, by, once again, remaking the image of paterfamilias as one more adept at and sensitive to the responsibilities of childcare.

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Since the 1990s, the “family-in-decline” discourse has sparked a growing interest in the portrayal of the family on television, giving special consideration to the examination of fatherhood and its presumed effect on familial relationships, family values, and the negotiation of masculine domesticity and stereotypical masculinity. On television the 21st century father still appears to vacillate between the inherent heternormative tropes of masculinity and a more progressive, complicated reflection of masculine identity (Gavanas 2004). But the increase in television programs centered on the “dilemmas of fatherhood and in the significance of family relationships for men suggests that fathering [has] become widely recognized as a central component in contemporary discourses of masculinity” (Tincknell 2005, 65). Through its depiction of masculine domesticity, fatherhood on television at the turn of the century artfully blends the male struggle to assert his authority within the domestic space and establish a more effeminate masculinity as beneficial to fatherhood. Hence, the rise in television series at the turn of the century that opt to excise the mother from the family (either through death or divorce) and concentrate on examining paternal behavior and the complications that arise from embracing masculine domesticity. Although these “missing mother” series still feature the humor that develops from domesticating men in unconventional domestic situations, their most significant attribute is underscoring the paternal struggle with poignant emotional hardship as men try to recuperate the imagery of fatherhood in the new millennium.

Paternal Melodrama in “Missing Mother” Television Series The “missing mother” thematic is not a new phenomenon, though it does call into question how these programs relate to the supposed “crisis in masculinity,” the rise of fatherlessness in America, and the construction of masculine domesticity. Whereas previous incarnations of the “missing mother” series like The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), My Three Sons (1960-1972), and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1969-1972) helped redefine the “traditional composition of the family” (Tincknell 2005, 58), recent versions like Full House (1987-1995), My Two Dads (1987-1990), Everwood (2002-2006), and Veronica Mars (2004-2007) each attempt to depict the ways in which fathers negotiate and subsume the maternal experience in the domestic space and forge a relationship with his children. Moreover, the paternal lack of familiarity with the physical and psychological needs of his child(ren) is frequently underscored by the patriarch’s professional (i.e., career) excellence and hyper-masculine

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persona. The missing mother television series explores the consequences of merging the stereotypical notions of masculinity with masculine domesticity–that is, constructing fathers who redeem their previous incompetent fatherhood by appropriating conventional maternal traits. By conceiving of masculine domesticity as an intricate component in constructing and stabilizing the familial unit in light of the mother’s absence, the missing mother series challenges the patriarchal imagery long expressed on television. Although early missing mother series like Bonanza (1959-1973) or My Three Sons (1960-1972) rarely explored the emotional toll of the missing maternal figure, some did portray the ways in which men had to rearrange their previous lifestyle and adapt to parenting, such as Bachelor Father (1957-1962), Family Affair (1966-1971), and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1969-1972). The narrative of these latter series typically centered on navigating single-fatherhood while also remaining open to meeting potential female companions (i.e., dating possible mother figures). None of these early missing mom series explored the boundaries and complexities of masculinity to the same extent as more recent incarnations. In many ways, contemporary missing mother series are paternal melodramas–an illustration of the sanctity of the institution of fatherhood while also acknowledging a latent paternal crisis. As with the maternal melodrama before it, the paternal melodrama–here, the missing mother series–lends itself to investigating “working ideological contradictions in the family by exploring those tensions in the family, and between the family and a patriarchal society” (Chambers 2001, 70). However, instead of merely reinforcing a gender hierarchy within the domestic space, the paternal melodrama reconciles the internal crisis of men pursuing domesticity and fatherhood. The single fathers presented in the missing mother series are resolutely the primary caregiver, and face the challenges inherent in caring for children as well as assume responsibility for household chores. But, these single dads cannot easily execute the transition into the maternal role or flawlessly handle the more sentimental aspects of parenting.

Flawed Fatherhood and Missing Mothers on Everwood Debuting in fall 2002, Everwood captured the experiences of a newly widowed father as he navigates the precarious relationship with his children and sets out to achieve “personal redemption through fatherhood” (Harwood 1997, 183). Dr. Andy Brown (Treat Williams) is a worldrenowned neurosurgeon whose professional success came at the heavy cost of familial sacrifice. So absorbed by the intricacies of his work and

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the subsequent acclaim it brought him, Andy sadly neglects his wife Julia (Brenda Strong) and children, teenaged Ephram (Gregory Smith) and nineyear-old Delia (Vivien Cardone), until his wife dies suddenly in a car accident. Reeling from his loss, Andy recalls an earlier offhanded conversation with his wife regarding what he should do if she ever died– move away from the bustle of New York City to the quiet hamlet of Everwood, Colorado. Set up in the new town, Andy is forced to confront his failures as a father and as an egotistical physician in order to fully realize his worth as man in his own eyes and in the eyes of the brooding Ephram. As Hannah Hamad argues, Everwood “showcased paternalized postfeminist masculinity” through its complicated rendering of Andy Brown as both a man and a father. What made Everwood unique, according to its creator, Greg Berlanti, was its particular focus on the father-child relationship, which he claimed had long been absent on television (Hamad 2009). He told Variety, “I just wanted to write something that was a father-son story because I felt it was underrepresented on television” (Levine 2002). The series not only eloquently depicted the turbulent times of adolescence, but also the agonizing grief of an over-achieving physician trying “to start life anew with his children” (Daniels and Littleton 2007, 290).

Exploring the Intimacy of Fatherhood Everwood examined the intimacy of fatherhood by exploring the father-child relationship, which often reveals an underlying deficiency on the part of the father to competently tackle the tasks typically reserved for the maternal figure–namely, emotionally-intuitive childrearing and domestic responsibilities. Although the patriarch tries to move into the position of replacement mother, he is, in fact, poorly equipped to take on this role, and quickly discerns that only with the assistance of surrogate parents can he fully rectify his previous history of poor performance as a father. Everwood dealt with the politicization of fatherhood and fatherlessness of the 1990s and early-2000s in an abstract manner, depicting the consequences of paternal absence and the frustrating attempts to redeem paternal respect. Thus, the series created an introspective narrative of one father’s paternal crisis and his subsequent rehabilitation through masculine domesticity. The absence of the mother creates a scenario in which the patriarch is made vulnerable and acutely aware of his inadequacies (Franklin 2003). Andy’s wife (in flashback) and son repeatedly censure his familial absence and the way he subverted the needs of his family in favor of his

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extraordinary contribution to the medical field. For every medical miracle he performed, Andy grew farther apart from his family–only to realize, too late, that he was now a virtual outsider in his own family. When Andy is finally forced to confront his relationship (or lack thereof) with Ephram, he finds that the teen holds deep resentments towards him and will consistently remark how much better off the family would be if Andy had been the one to die. Of course, this bitterness is often revealed when Andy is “feeling most vulnerable and inadequate,” leading to a rehashing of all of Andy’s egregious faults–his previous familial absence, his paternal failure, and, now, his desire to replace the idealized mother (Franklin 2003).

The Paternal Work-Life Balance The narrative of Everwood is centered on the rebirth of Dr. Andy Brown as a man and father. Although his children’s skeptical reactions deem his behavior to be new and unusual, the audience becomes acquainted with Andy as a quirky, extroverted medical genius who offers the small town of Everwood free medical care from a renovated train station. While outwardly a devoted dad and physician, it is revealed very quickly that Andy is desperately trying to reinvent himself and overcome the immeasurable grief of his wife’s death. Andy’s true self is exposed mostly through Ephram’s snide remarks and the employment of narrative flashbacks throughout the series. Thus, Andy Brown’s redemption for paternal failure is made even more complicated by his persistent need to prove himself to his kids, which usually backfires–and inconveniently in a public arena. For example, in “The Great Doctor Brown” (9/23/02), Andy’s desire for the family to spend more quality time together–in the form of family dinners–is impeded by his aspiration to distribute free healthcare to all of Everwood, even in the form of the old-fashioned house call. While off caring for a sick family, Andy leaves Ephram and Delia to fend for themselves at a restaurant with no way to get home or even a key to the house. To make matters worse, Ephram is injured trying to break into the house and Delia has a disturbing nightmare due to the movie that Andy let her watch (against Ephram’s warning). When an exhausted Andy finally returns home, he is met by a seething Ephram who lights into him about his pattern of favoring his work to his family: “You’ll always be that guy. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Dudleys on Forest Lane or some rich lady on Park Avenue, they’ll always come first. The only difference is, this time, Mom’s not here to cover for you.”

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Throughout much of Everwood’s first season, Ephram, who is bent on forcing his father to admit his failure at every turn, constantly rebukes Andy’s prototypical behavior of missing familial events for various medical crises. Ephram uses his father’s faults as a trump card for both a manipulation tactic when Andy tries to reprimand his discourteous attitude, and as a critical example of Andy’s poor excuse as a parent when he offers unwanted “fatherly” advice: “First you try to parent me, then you wanna be my buddy and you’re not very good at either” (“Dear God” 10/14/02). In order to rectify his past, Andy will often overcompensate for his previous paternal transgressions by forcing his children to spend time with him, such as hiking to a wildlife reserve (“Dear God” 10/14/02) and fly-fishing (“Turf Wars” 11/11/02) with Ephram, or a daddy-daughter camping trip with Delia (“Family Dynamics” 1/19/04)–all concluding with unplanned and humorous results. In the end, however, Andy’s recompense comes not in enacting an idealized version of himself as a father, but in earning the paternal respect of his children. Andy Brown’s flight from neurosurgery, a site in which he excelled and could ultimately control, is a narrative device that follows him throughout his paternal journey in Everwood. The control that Andy relies on for succeeding as a surgeon only seems to stifle his children’s growth and further isolate him from becoming the parent he so desperately wants to be. In “Dear God” (10/14/02), Andy admits to Ephram that his attempt to control his familial rehabilitation stems from his paternal ignorance: “That same compulsion that people nurtured in me then, is what’s making me...making me screw everything up now. For you, for Delia. These past few months I feel like, the only thing I’ve done right, is help a few strangers get better.” While professionally he is ahead of the field, personally Andy Brown is a mess. He isn’t trained for the kind of fatherhood he has been unwillingly thrust into.2 In the series’ second season finale (“The Day is Done” 5/10/04), Andy reflects on his own growth as a father and doctor, realizing that confronting, and subsequently accepting, his failure was the only way to truly open his eyes to his worth as a father.

“Replacing” the Maternal Figure In order to rectify his past paternal transgressions and rehabilitate his familial presence, Andy Brown has had to frustratingly accept the 2

Surprisingly, Everwood’s second season flips Andy’s weakness to his professional career when the town shuns him after losing a much-beloved patient.

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demands of masculine domesticity. This is demonstrated in his initial attempts to replace his late-wife, which often result in a series of embarrassing fatherly mishaps that are remedied through insight provided by the show’s surrogate mother figures–neighbor and single mother Nina (Stephanie Niznik); the brusque, brazenly honest grandmotherly Edna (Debra Mooney); and omniscient flashbacks of Andy’s wife, Julia. Although his relationship with Delia is the most visible of Andy’s endeavors to replace the maternal figure, Everwood never depicts this as a plausible achievement. While Everwood humorously showcases the results of the domestication of Andy (e.g., his inability to cook, plan a sleepover, or pack lunches), the heart of the series centers on his burgeoning emotional connection with his children–what I argue is a conscious effort to reincorporate the importance of masculine domesticity into the general familial narrative of modern-day families. It is not that Andy must rescind his professional success in order to become the rehabilitated father he aspires to be, but that he must upend his conventional notions of fatherhood (i.e., the stoic breadwinner) to give precedence to the emotional sensitivity usually provided by the maternal figure. The necessity for masculine sensitivity in contemporary fatherhood, particularly in the single-father household, outweighs the hypermasculine persona enacted through career excellence in complex and demanding fields, like medicine. As Kate Aurthur in “Virginity Lost” describes: The story of Everwood is Andy’s education as a father: He was cold, absent and barely knew his children until his wife died. Since giving up his life in New York to move to Everwood, Andy has been learning to be a parent, but it isn’t clear he’s learned to be a good one. (National Post, 29 Nov. 2004, AL8) Andy’s failure at fatherhood is not just a consequence of his earlier absence from the domestic space, but a deficient emotional connection with his family. Although Adrienne Burgess suggests that contemporary fatherhood patterns imply “that fathers can behave like mothers and still retain their gender identity,” in actuality it is only a particular style of behavior (i.e., nurturing emotionality) that is to be emulated (Burgess 1997, 23). In fact, over the course of Everwood’s four seasons, it is revealed that all of the surrogate mothers on the series are, in reality, flawed maternal figures. Ultimately, despite Andy’s vigorous attempts to transform himself as a parent, his continued dysfunction as a father is a consequence of his reliance on an idealized perspective of motherhood (and fatherhood). Even though Andy struggles through much of the first season of Everwood in the shadow of his idealized wife, her flaws–along with those

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of the other featured women on Everwood– reassert Andy’s paternal authority and accentuates the rewarding bond between father and child. Once again, maternal domestic authority is subverted and displaced in favor of re-establishing the importance of the patriarch within the domestic space. For example, Nina is depicted early on as Andy’s confidant who counsels him on parenting. Yet, despite her practicality and sage (parenting) advice to Andy and his children, her son, Sam, struggles with the absence of his father, leading him to act out socially and emotionally (“Vegetative State” 1/6/03). Another surrogate mother who bonds with Delia is Edna. Although she helps build Delia’s independence and acts as a sounding board for Andy, she too is a failed mother figure. It is revealed that Edna’s chilly relationship with her son (Dr. Abbott) is the result of prolonged absences from her young family while she pursued a life outside of Everwood as an Army nurse (“My Brother’s Keeper” 9/29/03). Perhaps the most striking example of flawed motherhood is the revelation that Andy’s wife, Julia, committed adultery. In “The Unveiling” (2/24/03), before traveling back to New York for the unveiling of his mother’s tombstone, Ephram relives a particularly difficult time in the Brown’s marriage, leading him to believe that Andy cheated on his wife. After an intense argument, Ephram divulges his suspicions to Andy, who haltingly admits the truth to Ephram–it was actually his mother who had the affair. The revelation that his mother was not the person he believed her to be ultimately changes the hostile dynamic between father and son: “You know, I’ve been angry at you. I’ve been hating you for a long time now. And I was wrong. You never deserved to be treated that way. Sorry.” In the end, Ephram seems resolved to examining his family life with a new perspective, and in the episodes that follow, begins to see how similar he is to his father. Although the dynamic between Ephram and Andy remains strained, the loss of the idealized mother solidifies the emotional bond between father and son, and the relationship becomes less about rectifying the past and more about recuperating the father’s future place in the domestic space.

Competing Fathers Finding Common Ground In light of the rising concerns of fatherlessness in America and what Greg Berlanti (creator of Everwood) perceived as the “dearth of depictions of father-child relationships onscreen,” Everwood clearly endeavors to engage with a variety of father figures (Hamad 2009). The series suggests that it is not merely about Andy Brown’s struggle to adapt to the complexities of fatherhood, but also to portray the general challenges

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inherent in fathers acclimating to re-entering the domestic space. With Andy floundering at nearly every new “parenting” experience, his uncertainty is contrasted with other father figures on the series who seem to have a handle on “fathering.” But, in actuality, like the perceived idealized mothers on the show, these men are also revealed as increasingly flawed. Yet, Andy views each of these men–the uptight and respectable Dr. Harold Abbott (Tom Amandes) and Ephram and Delia’s grandfather, the confident and beloved Dr. Jacob Hoffman (Mark Rydell)–as far superior and competent fathers with whom he must, but cannot, compete. This supposed competition, particularly between Dr. Abbott and Andy, eventually translates into a common struggle to merge stereotypical notions of masculinity with more emotive traits like compassion, selflessness, and emotionality.

The Friendly Rivalry From the start, Dr. Andy Brown and Dr. Harold Abbott were engaged in a friendly competition, stemming from Andy opening up a rival (and free) clinic across the street from Harold’s long-standing family practice. They fought over parking spaces, patient care, and strategies for parenting their romantically involved teenagers. Harold’s hoity-toity attitude spurred several attempts at comeuppance at Andy’s expense, but Andy naively assumed that the antagonism between the two men was merely a demonstration of male friendship. More importantly, Andy used Harold as a role model and sounding board when trying to deal with Ephram’s sullen adolescence and attempts to manipulate his father. In “The Kissing Bridge” (10/7/02), Harold instructs Andy on how to handle his son skipping school: Harold: Listen. I know you wanna be your son’s friend, but he doesn’t need a friend right now, he needs a parent. Andy: How do you know what he wants? Harold: He’s fifteen, he’s testing you. You are failing the test. Andy: What am I supposed to do? Harold: He cut class, you punish him. Take away his phone privileges, don’t allow him to...pierce anything for the next six months but do something. Be his father.

The relationship remains unbalanced (in Harold’s favor) for much of the first season, until Harold discovers the perfect relationship he has imagined with his children is much more fragile than he believed. Hence,

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the medical rivalry between Andy and Harold grows into a commiseration of two fathers over their parenting mishaps: Andy: Ay, you were right about Ephram. I’ve got all the parenting techniques of a fichus. Harold: I was trying to teach Bright how to ride a bike for the first time. I got so fed up with him I made him cry. Andy: Yeah, but that was just one incident. Harold: Are you kidding? Oh no. I made Bright cry all over again when I tried to teach him how to swim. And shave. Drive a car. Andy: You think there’s any limit to the number of times you can tell a kid you’re sorry before he starts to realize you’ll never get it right? (“Everwood Confidential” 2/17/03)

Surprisingly, Harold admits he had long admired Andy’s talent for medicine, so much so that it made him feel inferior and resulted in his joining his father’s small-town practice (“The Doctor is In” 10/21/02). Andy’s incompetence as a father allowed Harold to achieve some small satisfaction that his idol was human. As these two men continue to meddle in each other’s lives, their idiosyncratic friendship molds into a mutual support system, as Andy’s struggles become an opportunity for Harold to adopt a more compassionate manner in his own parenting style.

“Turf Wars” The two-part episode (“Turf Wars” 11/11/02; “Is There a Doctor in the House” 11/18/02) featuring Ephram and Delia’s maternal grandparents, encapsulates Andy Brown’s struggle with reconciling his past paternal transgressions and desperate desire to rehabilitate his position as patriarch by competing with other, more favorable, father figures. Dr. Jacob and Ruth Hoffman make a surprise visit to Everwood to “check-in” with their grandkids after Andy’s failure to keep in contact. Although the kids are extremely happy to see their grandparents, Andy can feel a battle brewing, stoked by snide comments regarding his home and parenting techniques. For example, the Hoffmans have already established themselves in the home unbeknownst to Andy because the doors were unlocked (“must be safe here”); and when Andy asks Jacob (another world-class physician) to look at patients with him, he replies “Nope, I charge”–a dig at Andy’s bizarre decision to offer free healthcare. Throughout “Turf Wars” the grandparents undermine Andy’s authority, and despite his best efforts to rise above the tension, things come to a head when Andy learns that the Hoffmans have manipulated Ephram into deciding to return to New York

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to live with them. With his resolve broken, Andy despondently tries to take back control of his family, only to be immobilized by the constant castigations made towards his failure as a father. At the heart of these two episodes is Andy’s consternation towards himself as a father and what becomes an overt competition between Andy and Jacob. As Andy notes to Edna: You don’t know my father in-law. Not only is he one of New York’s premiere transplant surgeons, he’s also the best dad who ever lived. He somehow managed to perform over 50 liver transplants a year, and never miss a single birthday party. Oh, and did I mention? My children worship him.” (“Turf Wars”)

Later, as Jacob and Ephram’s relationship is rekindled, the relationship between father and son becomes further estranged leading to a colossal public quarrel during a birthday party (“Is There a Doctor in the House”). When Ephram and Jacob announce that Ephram will be returning to New York, Andy is adamant that, as his father, he must make the final decision–much to Ephram’s chagrin. But Jacob is quick to bitterly point out Andy’s poor parenting experience: Jacob: You don't know what the hell you're doing, do you?...He has no friends. He has no life. And you’re just gonna sit back and watch ‘cause you don’t wanna force him? What the hell kind of parenting is that? Andy: Look, I didn’t ask for your criticism, Jacob, and I happen to be doing the best I can. Jacob: It’s not good enough. Andy: Well, that’s a hell of an assumption after 24 hours. Jacob: Hey, don’t play offender with me. You never took an interest with that boy and it’s finally catching up with you. Thank God, my daughter’s not alive to... Andy: [interrupting] No, she’s not alive. And it hasn’t been particularly easy in her absence. So I’d appreciate just a little bit of understanding from you. Particularly since you are a guest in my house. Jacob: You know you’re right. This hasn’t been easy on any of us. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you undo everything my daughter did for those children. (“Turf Wars”)

The fight over Ephram’s “well-being” is continued until Jacob’s final dig sends Andy reeling and unable to figure out what is truly best for his son: Jacob: He’s spent more time with me in the last 15 years than he has with you. You think a couple of months in the mountains makes up for missing most of his life? It doesn’t. You and I are surgeons, Andy, right? We know

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how it’s done. You locate the problem, you go in, you excise it. You move on. What you don’t do is ignore it and pretend that it’ll go away. (“Turf Wars”)

Andy realizes that he can’t compete with Jacob and heavily weighs how to best serve the emotional needs of his son. As he tells Nina, “I want what’s right for Ephram. And I’m beginning to think that I’m not it” (“Is There a Doctor in the House?”). As the episode progresses, it is apparent that the rivalry stems not from a fight over Ephram’s best interests, but the grief of two passionate fathers. Ephram becomes the stopgap for Julia’s absence for both men. After a crisis causes the three generations of men to work together, Jacob ultimately admits that Andy has become the rehabilitated father he desired. Consequently, Ephram heeds Andy’s desperate loving entreaty to remain in Everwood. In the end, Andy’s selflessness and emotionality are rewarded and, once again, he finds a common ground with a father figure of whom he held in high esteem.

Domestic Masculinity and Single Fatherhood Over the course of the four seasons of Everwood, Andy Brown battled his own fear of failed paternalism and challenged the conservative tropes of domestic masculinity. Andy transitioned from the remote breadwinner to a thoroughly involved fatherhood, but his real success came from his acceptance of his imperfections. According to Anna Dienhart (1998), the discourse of modern fatherhood suggests that flawed fatherhood is a more authentic model for contemporary fathers. Thus, Andy Brown’s repeated attempts to put forth an idealized version of fatherhood are not only met with unimpressed rankle from his children, but also mirror the flawed perpetuation of the uncomplicated domestication of men. Andy never becomes “Mr. Mom,” but he does aptly employ “tough love mixed with sensitivity” to navigate the complexities of single parenthood, resulting in a newfound perspective on paternal behavior and need (Speier 2002). Everwood puts a particular emphasis on the father-son dynamic as a metaphor for the growing disillusionment with the traditional tropes of conservative paternalism. The show questions the previous dimensions of fatherhood that did not incorporate compassion, selflessness, and emotionality–all traits traditionally regarded as maternal qualities. While Andy initially tries to replace the maternal figure, it is apparent that the strength of his paternal authority is a favorable consequence to her absence. In the realization that single parenthood has saddled Andy with

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not only the day-to-day childrearing elements of parenting, but also the emotional responsibility of preparing children for adulthood, Andy accepts a more pragmatic view of domestication. Therefore, masculine domesticity in Everwood is not Andy’s triumph of cooking an edible meal or successfully organizing a pre-teen sleepover. Instead, it is the general conversion of Andy’s previous familial absence into an affectionate and happily involved paternal entity in the (maternal) domestic space. Through the exploration of the intimacy of paternal relationships and the underlying assumption of fatherhood’s domestic deficiency, Everwood positions masculine domesticity as an opportunity to revitalize the significance of men to the family dynamic. By calling Andy’s parenting abilities into question at every turn, Everwood offers a stronger and more complex vision of fatherhood for the modern era.

Works Cited Aurthur, Kate. 2004. “Virginity lost: When it comes to sex on teen dramas, father doesn’t always know best.” National Post (Canada), November 29: AL8. Burgess, Adrienne. 1997. Fatherhood Reclaimed: The making of the modern father. London: Vermilion. Chambers, Deborah. 2001. Representing the Family. London: Sage Publications. Daniels, Susanne, and Cynthia Littleton. 2007. Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN. NY: HarperCollins. Dienhart, Anna. 1998. Reshaping fatherhood: The social construction of shared parenting. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Featherstone, Brid. 2009. Contemporary Fathering: Theory, Policy & Practice. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press. Franklin, Nancy. 2003. “Western exposure: The WB expands its family practice.” The New Yorker, January 20: 92. Gavanas, Anna. 2004. Fatherhood politics in the United States: Masculinity, sexuality, race and marriage. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Hamad, Hannah. 2009. “Dad TV–Postfeminism and the paternalization of US television drama.” FlowTV.org, November 12. http://flowtv.org/2009/11/dad-tv-–-postfeminism-and-thepaternalization-of-us-television-drama-hannah-hamad-masseyuniversity/. Harwood, Sarah. 1997. Family Fictions: Representations of the Family in the 1980s Hollywood Cinema. London: Macmillan Press.

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Horn, Wade F. 1999. “Did you say ‘movement’?” In The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action, edited by Wade F. Horn, David Blankenhorn, and Mitchell B. Pearlstein, 1-16. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Lamb, Michael E. 2000. “The history of research on father involvement: An overview.” Marriage & Family Review 29, no. 2/3: 23-42. LaRossa, Ralph. 1997. The Modernization of Fatherhood: A Social & Political History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. LaRossa, Ralph, Charles Jaret, Malati Gadgil, and G Robert Wynn. 2001. “Gender disparities in Mother’s Day and Father’s Day comic strips: A 55 year history.” Sex Roles 44, no. 11/12: 693-718. Levine, Stuart. 2002. “Everwood’s Cold Comfort.” Variety, September 16. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117872862?refCatId=1351. Lupton, Deborah, and Lesley Barclay. 1997. Constructing Fatherhood. London: Sage Publications. Marsh, Margaret. 1988. “Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915.” American Quarterly 40, no. 2:165-186 Pleck, Joseph H. 1987. “American fathering in historical perspective.” In Changing men: New direction in research on men and masculinity, edited by Michael S. Kimmel, 83-97. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Popenoe, David. 1999. “Challenging the culture of fatherlessness. In The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action, edited by Wade F. Horn, David Blankenhorn, and Mitchell B. Pearlstein, 17-24. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Singleton, Andrew, and Janemaree Maher. 2004. “The ‘New Man’ is in the house: Young men, social change, and housework.” The Journal of Men’s Studies 12, no. 3: 227-240. Speier, Michael. 2002. Everwood (Review). Daily Variety, September 11. Tincknell, Estella. 2005. Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation. London: Hodder Arnold. U.S. Census Bureau. 2003. Children’s living arrangements and characteristics: March 2002, P200-547, Table C8.Washington D.C.: GPO. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1988. National Center for Health Statistics: National Health Interview Survey. Hyattsville, MD. —. 1993. National Center for Health Statistics, Survey on Child Health, Washington, D.C., 1993.

CHAPTER TWELVE TELEVISION’S PARENTHOOD: DECONSTRUCTING FAMILY CONSTRUCTS ST IN THE 21 CENTURY JENNIFER L. STEVENS AND HEATHER GLYNIS BRYANT

Since the beginning of television programming the family narrative has been well represented on television schedules, both in the form of situation comedies and serial dramas. While many of the earliest televisual family narratives were comedies, the family drama soon emerged as a regular component of the seasonal television menu. Typically longer in format than the family sitcom, the family drama emerged as a venue for commentary on troubling social issues facing the public, while the family sitcom took on the role of telling the stories of the everyday lives of families and gave audiences the opportunity to laugh at themselves and the all consuming trials and tribulations of the daily routine. Accordingly, addressing complicated and often difficult social issues and other difficulties that defined family life was left to the family drama to tackle. Like many narrative televisual formats, audiences came to look on the family drama as not only social commentary but of commentary and critique on their own lives and troubles and used these narratives as suggestions on how to live themselves. Producers, recognizing that audiences used narrative television in this way, often sought to include inspirational and/or sympathetic messages in these kinds of series. This practice continues to this day. Despite, or perhaps because of its long television history, the family drama has changed over the sixty some years of national television programming. As a genre that is inherently tied to the social mores of its time, this is to be expected. In particular, the subject matter addressed in these narratives has changed dramatically, as have the details of the story

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lines (characters included, settings, etc.). A broader range of family types, as well as a broader range of issues addressed can seen over time. Topics that were once considered quite taboo in decades past (divorce, teen pregnancy, infidelity, to name a few) have frequently found their way into series' narratives as time has passed. However there are also some significant constants that can be seen in the genre. Families portrayed still tend to be white and middle class. The focus of these shows still strike a balance between exploring the relationship between spouses and the relationship between parents and children. And there are almost always children, though the degree to which they are the focus of the show varies. As the genre and television production has developed over time, multifocal story lines have become the norm, sometimes intertwining a great deal and sometimes not. The family members always have to deal with one another, though the ways in which they interact run a large gamut, from loving and supportive to almost entirely dysfunctional. The importance of family and its omnipresence is, and always has been, implicit in the genre. The television family drama has provided a constant reminder of, and even an instruction manual to, American family values in a sixty-year period that has seen enormous social change. While it does fit neatly into the well-recognized genre of the family drama, the new series Parenthood also breaks some ground in presenting a complex and diverse portrait of the contemporary American family and the dynamics of parenting in the early 21st century. It shares some commonalities with other new family shows such as the highly acclaimed Modern Family and The Middle, as well as longer running shows such as Two and a Half Men, all 30-minute situation comedies. But as an hourlong drama, Parenthood is able to explore contemporary topics in a more complex and in-depth manner, and address some of the very difficult and serious issues that contemporary families face. In the vein of classic hour-long dramas like Little House on the Prairie or Family, and yet different in comparison to the times, Parenthood emphasizes some of the typical nuclear family dynamics of the classic American family story, but takes on and presents atypical aspects of the contemporary American family, as compared to earlier family experiences. As a result, the continuity and the diversity of contemporary family life are juxtaposed in the series, which makes for a rich portrayal for contemporary audiences to consider in light of their own experiences. Debuting as a mid-season replacement in March 2010, Parenthood was part of NBC's much-promoted post-Olympics schedule. Like much of NBC's post-Olympics offerings (both new and returning shows), the new

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series was heavily promoted, both during the highly rated Olympic coverage and in other television and print venues. The show has run in the 10:00 p.m. slot, primarily on Tuesday nights. It premiered to an eager audience, most likely due to the heavy promotion as well as the all-star cast, and immediately met with audience approval and increasing ratings. As a mid-season replacement, the first season was an abbreviated one, though it was easily approved for a second season, which began airing in September 2010. As we are writing, Parenthood is ending its second season with a much more uncertain future. No decision about the series prospects for future seasons has been announced at this time. In the relatively short time period the series has been on air, however, the show has touched a loyal audience and set a new standard for portrayals of the contemporary family and parenthood in the early twenty-first century. Its enthusiastic fan base regularly calls for a longer life for the show on fan blogs and online bulletin boards. Parenthood, especially when considered in the company of the concurrently running sitcoms that include a variety of non-traditional family situations, makes an interesting case study to consider in terms of future development of the genre. Perhaps we are seeing a significant change in the formula, where family differences and potentially inherent dysfunctionality (at least in terms of what Americans have typically believed about family) are highlighted instead of the commonalities of family experiences and the common beliefs about, and need for, family that have typically been the emphasis of the genre. Or, perhaps we are simply seeing television catching up with the growing diversity of American family types in the United States today, and drawing a broader range of characters and plot lines into still decidedly traditional generic modes. It may be too soon to find a definitive answer to this question, but an examination of Parenthood can, at the very least, help to illuminate the question.

The Origins of Parenthood, the Series Loosely connected to the 1989 movie by the same name, Parenthood is executive produced by Ron Howard and his production partner Brian Glazer, which allows for some continuity with the original production. But as a comedy and also a product of the 1980s, Parenthood, the movie, has some significant differences from the more recent incarnation of Parenthood. The original Parenthood starred Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Tom Hulce and other popular eighties movie stars, and centered around the neurotic Gil Buckman, played by Martin, and his

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relationship to his immediate and extended family. It dealt with some serious issues, but was mostly aimed at poking fun at the difficulties of parenting in modern society while still reinforcing the joy and security that comes from family life. It throws out some difficult issues in the American family experience, but not with any depth. The movie was very popular, apparently ringing true with audiences, and achieving its goals of entertainment and celebration of the wonders of parenthood. Directly following the release and success of the movie, a television version of Parenthood was produced and broadcast in the 1990-1991 season. It failed miserably, as has often been the case when successful films have been recreated for television. The original series was very closely tied to the movie, with the original characters populating the show and carrying on the storyline that, for the most part, had been introduced by the film. But like many successful movie comedies, the characters were not fully developed enough, and the storyline not complex enough to support a weekly series. This coupled with the great success of the film and the resulting high expectations for the series signaled its quick demise. The twenty-year gap between the first Parenthood series and the second one allows for, and in fact necessitates, some significant alterations. Some of the same family situations are used, but the back-story is much more fully developed and updated to reflect an early twenty-first century American reality. The series weaves an engaging narrative that draws inspiration from the original film, while portraying new family constructs that provide insight into the reality of twenty-first century parenting.

The New Parenthood One of the most notable things about Parenthood is the seamless blending of the traditional and the alternative, the heartwarming and the heart wrenching, the very comedic and the highly dramatic. The latter two have been successfully achieved in similar fashion to this series, but in combination with the multi-faceted portrayal of family structures, Parenthood is unique. The Braverman family, the focal point of the show, in total represents many different family structures, and, as a result, many different parenting styles and circumstances. Zeke and Camille: The eldest Bravermans, Zeke and Camille, are a long-standing married couple with four grown children. Their children all live close by in Northern California's Bay Area, and the elder Bravermans host regular family dinners and are quite involved in their adult children's lives as well

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as the lives of their grandchildren. Though there is occasional strain reflected in the parent-child relations of this older generation, overall there is a sense of mutual respect and love displayed between parents and children as well as between the siblings. These characters feel real, not only as individuals (which will be detailed later), but also and especially in their relationships to one another. Their familiarity with one another is both a strength and a weakness just as is often the case in real life, and the positive and the negative aspects of the relationships are often seen simultaneously as the story unfolds on television screens. Zeke and Camille and their children seem to have lived a very traditional family life and reflect a lot of what are considered traditional family values and experiences: the kind of thing we have been seeing on TV for years. The lives and circumstance of the Braverman siblings, however, are much less traditional. Adam: Oldest child Adam has the most traditional family situation, at least on the surface. He and wife Kristina are happily married with two children, teenager Haddie and grade-schooler Max. Adam works for a small shoe manufacturer and Kristina is a stay at home mom. In the opening episodes of the series however, Adam and Kristina are faced with escalating problems with Max, both at school and at home. It is soon revealed that Max has Aspergers, a form of Autism, and this discovery immediately and irrevocably alters their family dynamic and the relationships between all of its members. It also has an impact on the larger extended family, though it is Adam and Kristina who struggle to adjust to the new reality more than anyone else, including Max. Sarah: The second Braverman sibling, Sarah, is a newly divorced mother who, as the series begins, moves home with her two teenage children to live with her parents as she is unable to financially support her family in her new circumstances. She struggles to find a job so that she can support her children (with little to no support of any kind from her rocker husband) and move out of her parent's house. Crosby: The third Braverman child, Crosby, is something of a drifter, though a lovable and relatively self-supporting one. As the series begins he encounters a woman he once had a brief relationship with who subsequently introduces him to his five-year-old son. Jasmine, his son's mother, is

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African-American, and Jabbar, their son, presents as African-American as well. Though the nature of the relationship that Crosby and Jabbar (and by extension Jasmine) will have is not immediately clear as the series begins, Crosby's innate parental instincts kick in fairly quickly and the three begin to forge a new and unconventional family relationship. Julia: The youngest of the Braverman siblings is power lawyer Julia whose stay-at-home dad husband Joel takes primary care of their gifted child, the precocious Sydney. Julia struggles to find a balance between her demanding job and her family, in particular her relationship with her daughter, who seems to much prefer her father and at times seems uncomfortable with her mom. Jealousy over the many moms that handsome Joel encounters at Sydney's school and at playdates strains their relationship from time to time, and often results in Julia behaving in rash and often inappropriate ways. As the series continues and Julia and Joel decide to try for a second child more tension develops as Joel expresses concern about the impact of being the primary stay-at home caretaker for another child on his own life and career. Brothers and Sisters: The series narrative portrays each of these individual family stories and successfully intertwines them with each other, showing how the different members of the Braverman family interact with and influence each other in each of their parenting situations, as well as other aspects of their lives. Though the majority of each episode and therefore the series overall is devoted to exploring the dynamics of the Braverman siblings and their relationships with their own families, nearly every episode includes at least one gathering of the entire clan, from grandparents to teenage grandchildren to the youngest of the Braverman grandchildren, most often in the form of a family dinner hosted by the eldest Bravermans. These wholesome and very traditional family moments are loud and chaotic, but the family seems to enjoy one another, supporting and teasing interchangeably. There is also a lot of interaction between the siblings themselves who regularly visit each other’s homes and even work places, seeking advice and solace when times get tough. Though Adam, as the oldest, is probably the most sought out advice giver, each of the siblings acts in the advising capacity, and although there are many examples of strife and tension between the various siblings (from small spats to serious arguments) in the end the family bond is able to handle the disruption.

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Complicating the Family Dynamic and Portrayal of Parenting The relationships between the siblings and their own children are far more problematic, and we regularly see the characters making poor choices and reacting in less than ideal ways, both parents and children. The diversity of family structures incorporated in the show allows for the exploration of a wide variety of family relationships, though most prevalent on the show, as the series name suggests, are about parents and children. Though the eldest Braverman's relationship is portrayed as mostly traditional, in the first season we learn that all is not necessarily as it appears. Zeke has cheated on Camille, seemingly for some time, and for a time the two separate, Zeke staying with first his oldest son and then his younger son until the kids convince him to go home and fight for his marriage. Camille reacts to the situation by nearly having an affair herself and admitting that her life has not necessarily been a happy one and that she feels unfulfilled. As the second season begins, we see Zeke and Camille attempting to repair their relationship with the support and insistence of their children, as well as the assistance of a therapist. As they struggle to rebuild their marriage they learn a great deal about each other, things they never knew despite their long relationship. Though the road is very rocky, the outcome seemingly improves the lives of all of the Bravermans. As is often the case with parents and children, each of the Braverman siblings has distinct relationships with each of their parents. Zeke's tough demeanor and insistence on self-reliance for both his family and his children has endeared him to his daughters and caused some tension with his sons, both of whom have milder personalities, seemingly as a response to their father's demeanor and the relationship that they had with him as children. Camille is softer, but speaks her mind and is not above telling it like it is and setting her children straight when necessary. The children seem more even-keeled in their relationship with their mother, but Sarah is especially close to her, likely due in part to their shared living quarters. Though there seem to be very strong bonds between the siblings themselves, the connections between their children, the Braverman grandchildren seem much less strong, and even tension filled from time to time. The kids don't appear to be particularly close to their cousins, despite their physical proximity to one another and frequent family gatherings. Jabbar's arrival on the Braverman scene prompts much interest from his similarly aged cousins at first, and as the series continues more interaction

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and affection of this type is portrayed. There are some interactions between the two teenaged girls, nearly all of it difficult. Overall, however, it is the parent-child, and sibling relationships that remain at the forefront of the show's storyline. Max's Aspergers is one of the most impactful and poignant elements of the show. Bright and kind, yet stubborn and unable to "roll with the punches" of life, Max is a handful for his parents, who are heartbroken about their son's condition while still determined to do whatever they can to provide as normal a life for him as possible. Adam’s initial approach to the situation is to keep telling Kristina, and himself, that they’re “not even sure if Max has Aspergers,” and to stay calm until they find out for sure. This is shown in the series pilot, when Max is involved in an incident at school that prompts his being tested by a behavioral therapist, who reveals that Max likely has Aspergers. Through the specialist they find an aid who helps both Max and his parents cope with his disease. What she knows, and that Adam and Kristina do not know, is that rather than teaching Max how to exist in the normal world, those in Max's world must learn how to meet Max where he is and develop a new kind of normalcy. Their initial recognition of this is somewhat long in coming and palpable in its pain, as are the many subsequent moments when this realization again rears its ugly head. Though it is gratifying to see Max grow and improve, the poignancy of the situation never loses its power and we see the pain behind the pride in both parents' eyes. At the end of the pilot episode, while the Braverman family is attending Sydney’s school pageant, Adam stays outside with Max on the playground, since Max’s fear of fire, one way that his Aspergers presents itself, prevents him from walking past the candles in the school hallway. Zeke comes out to check on Max and Adam, and declares that Adam’s allowing Max’s fear to prevent him from going inside is “ridiculous”. Adam finally admits to Zeke, and in doing so admits to himself as well, that “it’s not that simple” and that there is “something wrong” with Max. He reaches out to Zeke, saying, “I’m going to need you to help me.” Upon receiving the official news that Max does, in fact, have Aspergers syndrome, Adam reacts in his normal way of trying to fix the situation by having a plan and working through it until the problem is fixed. In a way, Adam is portrayed as the foundation of the Braverman family. Not only is he the eldest sibling, but his personality also provides a basis for his role as a leader and an anchor in the greater Braverman family unit. When a problem arises in the family, Adam always wants to make sure there is a plan in place to work through the issue at hand, and his goal is always to follow through with that plan until the problem is solved and

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his family life is back on track. Although Adam clearly tries to separate himself from Zeke in parenting situations throughout the series, it is also clear through the aforementioned scenario that Zeke has had a major influence on Adam’s approach to parenting, and life in general. In Season 1, Episode 2 (“Man Versus Possum”) Zeke asks Adam, “How’s my grandson doing? What’s the plan? You’ve gotta have a plan.” When he is informed that there is no cure for Aspergers and that, rather, it is an issue that Max will have to deal with his entire life, Adam has to make a major adjustment in his way of thinking and approach to parenting, “meeting Max where he is,” instead of forcing Max out of his comfort zone. Here is an example of the traditional versus the alternative that pervades Parenthood; Adam consciously chooses to parent in what he sees as a more progressive manner than how Zeke raised him, yet he finds himself relying on the familiar when things get tough. As Adam and Kristina deal with Max and his diagnosis they are also negotiating the teenage angst and growing pains of older daughter Haddie, who seeks independence and recognition from her parents as their focus is often on Max. Adam displays very overprotective behavior in parenting Haddie throughout the series. In season 1, episode 4 (“Whassup”) Haddie begins dating a boy named Steve. Adam is originally very opposed to the idea of his daughter dating and resorts to searching her computer to find out more information about their relationship. During an ensuing argument portrayed in season 1, episode 9 (“Perchance to Dream”) Haddie points out Adam’s double standard when she brings attention to the fact that Adam encouraged nephew Drew’s romantic pursuit of a girl (in another storyline from the same episode), but is seemingly overly restrictive in a similar situation in her own life. Adam admits to having a double standard and basically tells Haddie that she has to accept it. In season 2, episode 11 (“Damage Control”), Haddie begins dating a young man named Alex who is three years her senior and a recovering alcoholic. After meeting Alex at a family dinner, Adam and Kristina forbid Haddie from dating him because they think his life situation is too mature for her to deal with in a romantic relationship. Both of these scenarios seem to portray Adam as the stereotypical overprotective father. However, in terms of Adam’s personality, it seems only logical that he might tend to be a bit overbearing at times, due to his desire to always have everything completely under control. Adam struggles more with Haddie’s adolescence than Kristina, though both are concerned about her burgeoning sexuality, which is kicked into overdrive when she begins to date. Although Haddie is a fairly level headed and responsible teenager, we see the very common tension that

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exists between many parents and their adolescent children. In this case, as with many real life situations both parents and child make mistakes, overreact and struggle to mend the relationship. There are strong bonds between this family, though, heightened as it seems by Max and his condition. Haddie’s adjustment to Max's diagnosis is quite easy as she seems to find no difference in her relationship with her brother simply because there has now been a label applied to his circumstances. Haddie's ready acceptance of the diagnosis serves as a telling counterpart to her parents', especially her father's, struggle for acceptance, thereby further emphasizing the unique experience that is parenting. Here again we see the interesting juxtaposition of traditional versus progressive approaches to family life. Adam’s relationship to Max in particular demonstrates the oft ignored nuance of parenthood that parents need to be needed by their kids as much as kids need attention from their parents. Of course, it is also true that each needs freedom from the other as well. Through Adam, and also Kristina to a lesser degree, we are constantly reminded of this as they deal with Max's highly unusual childhood and Haddie's all too typical adolescence. Like Adam, Sarah’s personality also quite obviously influences her parenting. One aspect of Sarah’s character is her overenthusiastic determination to succeed despite the many obstacles that she faces. This is most apparent in her work environment. In the series’ second episode (“Man Versus Possum”), soon after Sarah moves back in with Zeke and Camille, she interviews for a job at a design firm, a dream job for her and one for which she shows a great deal of natural talent. Although the company ultimately denies her employment because she does not hold a college degree, Sarah remains optimistic throughout the interview process. While admirable, Sarah’s determination also results in greater disappointment when her efforts fail. This too is portrayed across both seasons, not only in her work life but also in her relationship with her kids. In the second season, when Sarah is hired as a design intern at Adam’s shoe company, she exhibits the same resilience in her work ethic to an almost obnoxious degree (Season 2, Episode 2, “No Good Deed”). This aspect of Sarah’s personality is quite apparent and clearly manifests itself in her parenting of Amber and Drew. Sarah is estranged from her rocker ex husband, who not only offers very little in the way of support for her, financially or otherwise, but also is an almost entirely absent father to their two children. This is particularly difficult for son Drew, who in the pilot episode runs away to his father after a fight with his mother. Once there, his father essentially rejects him, calling Sarah to come and get him. They reach some level of understanding,

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and Sarah fully realizes the loss Drew feels in regard to his father, and Drew seems to gain a better understanding of his mother's position as well. She seeks father figures for him, primarily from Adam, whose assistance she requests for everything from Drew's first experiences with masturbation to his attempt to improve his baseball skills. Sarah's relationship with daughter Amber is even more strained. Amber is the prototypical rebellious teenager who dabbles in pot, sex and skipping school, though never to ends that are too extreme. She consistently flirts with disaster but always manages to avoid it, though often by a very close margin. Sarah sees a lot of herself in Amber and is therefore terrified for her as she sees herself as something of a failure. Amber is bright but unmotivated, as Sarah apparently was as a teenager as well. Sarah's efforts to get Amber to consider college are met with mixed success, as Amber has already come to see herself as incapable of that kind of goal. Sarah's perseverance pays off as Amber begins to see herself differently as the series progresses, an inspirational story line for many parents who struggle with similar situations. Sarah's relationship with her children is often complicated by her own love life. During a post-coital refrigerator raid, Sarah and her lover unexpectedly encounter Drew, leading to his aforementioned flight to his father. Additionally, Sarah's burgeoning relationship with Amber's handsome English teacher, who is also the subject of Amber’s infatuation, derails Amber’s college plans and SAT prep (Season 1, Episode 7, “What’s Going on Down There?”). Later attempts to motivate Amber to embrace the possibility of higher education fail when Sarah’s tenacious drive causes Amber to reject the prospect outright (Season 1, Episode 9, “Perchance to Dream”). Balancing a personal life and personal needs with those of children is a common parental challenge, especially for young single parents. Sarah's often failing attempts to strike the proper balance in this regard is another compelling element of this series. Sarah's relationship with her kids, particularly Amber, often appears as a string of "we both screwed up here, now how do we get past it" moments. Sarah's struggle to ensure a more stable future that offers more potential than her own is palpable and real. The audience feels for her while also being disappointed in her sometimes inappropriate response to her children. In addition to these relationships, Sarah’s ex-husband and father of her children, Seth, is an alcoholic and a drug addict. Therefore, Sarah is concerned when in Season 2, Episode 10 (“Happy Thanksgiving”) she finds out that Zeke gave Drew a beer on Thanksgiving and later caught Drew and his friends drinking his beer in the garage. This prompts Sarah to reveal the truth about Seth’s addictions to Zeke, and to have a talk with

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Amber and Drew about being careful about drug and alcohol use in their future, since addiction is frequently hereditary. This storyline is an example of the kind of plot point that would have been avoided in earlier decades but has become more and more common in contemporary family dramas. The moment it evokes, however, is vintage family drama convention, yet another example of the series old versus new spirit. The other single parenting relationships portrayed in Parenthood are between Crosby and his newly discovered son, Jabbar, and between Jabbar and his mother Jasmine. Crosby's carefree bachelor lifestyle has not prepared him for the responsibilities of parenthood, but his natural instincts compel him to develop a relationship with his child. In addition, Crosby is completely blindsided when he is first introduced to a son who is already five years old. There is no opportunity for him to adjust to impending fatherhood. When he decides to accept the responsibility and the relationship he turns out to be a natural, and though his style of parenting frequently is cause for concern for many of the adults in his life, Jabbar takes to it very well. Through parenting their child, Crosby and Jasmine rekindle their relationship, eventually planning to marry and attempt to form a more conventional family unit. Jabbar seems relatively unaffected by his parents' unconventional relationship, having thoroughly bonded with his mother, and getting to know Crosby with relative ease. When his parents’ relationship begins to grow, his reactions are mixed, from joy to discomfort to indifference at varying times. Despite the unusual nature of his family situation, Jabbar seems very well adjusted. Jasmine’s family is an occasional threat to Crosby's opportunity to father Jabbar. Jasmine initially lied to her family about Jabbar's father, telling them that he had abandoned her and Jabbar, so when Crosby appears on the scene they are understandably hostile to him. Once this has been cleared up things improve, until Jasmine has to leave for a career opportunity and her mother disapproves of Jabbar staying with Crosby while his mother is away. The issue of race is rarely mentioned or even acknowledged, and yet it lies beneath the surface leaving the audience to wonder how the situation might be different without the racial difference. The inter-racial nature of Crosby’s and Jasmine’s relationship seems to heighten the unconventional nature of Crosby’s family unit, albeit subtly. Crosby’s family situation is also the only one that has featured members of the in-law family (Jasmine’s family) as characters in the series, thus far. This gives the Parenthood viewing audience a more well rounded insight into Crosby’s family unit than they get into those of the other Braverman siblings.

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Unlike Adam, Sarah, and Julia, who have already had years of parenting experience at the start of the series, Crosby’s fatherhood begins and evolves within all existing episodes of the show. Although he is not the youngest of the Braverman siblings, Crosby is often portrayed as the least mature or “adult-like” of them. With the addition of Jabbar into his life, Crosby’s major character development revolves around his maturing as a person, and as a father, simultaneously, throughout the series. Disciplining Jabbar is particularly difficult for Crosby, since he is in the midst of having to discipline himself in a sense, when he is faced with the challenge of raising a son (as portrayed, for example in Season 2, Episode 11, “Damage Control”). Nevertheless, in certain instances, Crosby tends to exhibit more wisdom in parenting, and in his relationship with Jasmine, than his siblings who have more experience in parenting and serious, longterm relationships than he does, and even his parents in some cases. This is apparent early on in the series when Julia strongly encourages Crosby to get a paternity test so that he knows his financial and legal obligations as a father, if Jabbar is indeed his biological son. This leads to an argument between Crosby and Jasmine, and Crosby ultimately decides to remedy their relationship instead of taking Julia’s advice and performing the test without Jasmine’s knowledge (Season 1, Episode 5, “The Situation”). Another example of this is the way in which Crosby views his parenting of Jabbar with Jasmine as a “partnership” instead of one parent making all the decisions, or “wearing the pants” as Zeke refers to it (Season 2, Episode 13 “Opening Night”). The atypical marital and parental relationship between Julia, her husband Joel and daughter Sydney raises a lot of questions about changing gender roles within the realm of contemporary American parenthood. While on the surface both parents seem comfortable with their situation and Sydney seems to take it in stride, it is clear that all is not as it seems. Joel struggles with a desire to return to his work as a contractor, and Julia worries about her ability to be a mother given her high pressure career. Sydney also occasionally shows the strain of the atypical relationship, though seemingly without knowledge of why the situation is tense. Julia’s personality manifests itself and affects her parenting in a way similar to the way Sarah’s does. Her somewhat uptight and overdisciplined nature is reflected in her career as a lawyer, and also in her family relationships. Julia is very determined in nearly everything she does and this is also apparent in her interactions with Sydney (and with Joel), to the point that she sometimes comes across as pushy and overbearing, which is suggestive of Zeke’s influence on her parenting style. An example of this is shown in the episode, “The Deep End of the Pool”

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(Season1, Episode 3), in which Julia forces Sydney, who is learning to swim but displays a great deal of hesitation about it, to swim without any assistance from adults, convinced that she can do it if forced to. Sydney at first seems to be drowning in the water, but she eventually works her way up to the surface so that she can breathe, proving Julia’s point that she can swim if she tries. Although Julia is proven correct in this incident, her parenting method in this situation receives a blaringly negative response from Sydney, Joel, and other parents at Sydney’s swim lesson, and temporarily traumatizes Sydney herself. Julia’s feminist beliefs also affect her parenting, particularly when Sydney wishes to dress as a beauty queen for Halloween (Season 2, Episode 6 “Orange Alert”) and portrays sex symbol Marilyn Monroe in her school play (Season 2, Episode 13 “Opening Night”). In both cases Julia’s desire that Sydney, who is a gifted and outgoing little girl, believe that she can achieve any goal she sets for herself and that she not be the victim of stereotypical gender expectations actually results in her own imposition of limitations on Sydney, the exact opposite of her intentions. These moments are very reflective of many contemporary mothers who, with the best of intentions, find themselves in the role of social activist for their daughters in an attempt to open up opportunities for them that they themselves may not have had. This is an interesting paradox of the traditional versus progressive aspect of the Parenthood story, and one that rings especially true: the pervasive nature of traditional and often out dated beliefs and behaviors despite the ever expanding opportunities and open mindedness that characterizes American culture. So, although the Braverman siblings grew up in a traditional household with a married mother and father, they nevertheless find themselves in various non-traditional parenting scenarios, such as Sarah’s single parenthood, Julia’s stay-at-home husband, and Crosby’s out-of-wedlock fatherhood. The juxtaposition of these unconventional family situations and the extremely close knit, traditional nature of the extended family relationships is one of the most compelling aspects of the series, and makes it a particularly interesting case study to consider the current incarnation of the family drama. For example, most episodes depict multiple scenarios in which the Braverman siblings arrive at each other’s homes and work places unannounced, seeking life advice from each other, as well as giving it without an invitation. The Bravermans also live close to each other in Berkeley, California and have frequent family dinners at Zeke and Camille’s house. Nearly every episode includes one of these dinner scenes, which tend to serve as a grounding point for the individual

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storylines of the episode to come together, and to show the interaction between all of the Braverman family members in one setting. Although this closeness of the Braverman family may seem somewhat abnormal or unrealistic in relation to the way many viewers experience life with their own families, Parenthood, as a series, has an arguably real quality to it that is facilitated by various stylistic means. One of the ways in which this quality is achieved is through the form of presentation of the series episodes, especially in the second season. Although each episode narratively builds upon the one preceding it, it does not pick up exactly where the previous episode left off, and there are some pieces of the story missing between episodes that the audience can piece together by listening to the characters’ dialogue. By constructing the series narrative in this way, the writers of Parenthood create the illusion, of the viewer simply observing a day in the life of a real family, instead of a traditional, obviously contrived ongoing narrative that is typical of many primetime television drama series. There are certain technical aspects of Parenthood’s production that are worthy of note as well. Since there are so many characters and sub-plots in any given episode, scenes shot of each individual family unit are usually edited into the narrative first, to introduce the different storylines. Later in the episode, these storylines will often intersect when the characters from differing family units come in contact with one another. One could argue that this is both an excellent way to tell the story of each episode without making it too complicated, as well as giving seemingly equal time to each character involved. Along these same lines, the show’s title sequence set to the music of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” features virtually all of the main actors in the series, including the children. This works to portray the underlying message of togetherness in the series, and the sense of warmth and love that permeates throughout the Braverman family, even in the face of adversity. The pairing of specific music with respective scenes throughout the show is another aspect of its editing that seems to really complement the sentimental quality of the series. Although the show’s filming, editing, and writing certainly create many of the unique qualities that contribute to the success of Parenthood, a large amount of credit is due to the casting and acting as well. The main characters of the series are believable as real-life siblings, despite sharing limited similarities to one another in terms of physical appearance. Each actor also seems to own his or her character, fully encompassing the qualities that make that character unique in their own parenting story. In addition to this, some of the previous television roles of the actors involved in the series, such as Peter Krause’s role as Nate Fisher in the HBO series Six Feet Under, and Lauren Graham’s role

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as single mother Lorelei Gilmore in the dramedy series Gilmore Girls also adds to their portrayals of Adam and Sarah in Parenthood, in addition to making them instantly recognizable to viewers, helping to facilitate a familiarity and more immediate audience connection. All of these elements, narrative, stylistic and technical, result in a unique installment of the television family drama genre.

Conclusion So, is Parenthood a radical new show that signals a significant shift in the family drama formula? With less than 40 episodes to its name, it is early to be making any sweeping judgments. But even if the series ends with its second season, there are still interesting elements of this show to consider in terms of the development of this television mainstay, the family drama. The interplay between traditional and alternative family situations, old-fashioned and progressive parenting techniques and changing notions of family and its role in society all present food for thought. Even though Parenthood uses nontraditional family constructs in its ongoing storyline, certain aspects of the characters’ situations seem to reinforce traditional family values. For instance, Crosby eventually proposes to Jasmine, less than a year after she introduces him to Jabbar (season 2, episode 6, “Orange Alert”). This reinforces the traditional family structure, as if to say that the marriage of unwed parents is the preferable response to their untraditional parenting situation. In Julia’s situation, she is the financial breadwinner of her household, which seems to portray a message of social progression, but her husband Joel, a former contractor, is haunted by the prospect of remaining a stay-at-home dad instead of a working, successful craftsman, a traditional masculine role. Sarah’s constant problems that arise while parenting two teenagers in the midst of her economic troubles result in a portrayal of her that suggests she is incapable of supporting her family without the presence of a competent man in her life – something somewhat stereotypical of a single mother. Adam, in contrast, the only one of the Braverman siblings with a traditional marriage and household structure, is portrayed as the anchor of the entire Braverman family. These interpretations all suggest a rather traditional family drama that reinforces long-standing American family values. On the other hand, the two family situations that are most traditional (at least on the surface), are as troubled and fragile as any of the others, and perhaps even more so. Zeke and Camille’s break up and the long term

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problems that caused it raises all kinds of questions about the functionality and value of the old-fashioned family lifestyle. The reality of the elder Braverman’s relationship rocks the family and leads each sibling, as well as Zeke and Camille themselves, to question what they know about themselves and their relationships. Adam’s family, portrayed as the model and perhaps even the moral center of the Braverman universe, experiences tremendous upheaval with Max’s diagnosis, a devastating turn of events to be sure, but even Haddie’s normal battle with adolescence causes significant turmoil. Perhaps this “solid” family is not as solid as it appears. Perhaps the traditional structures aren’t the defense against the ills of society that we have long believed them to be. In fact it is often Crosby’s unconventional, spontaneous and instinctual parenting that seems to be the most successful. Though he is in the most unusual family situation, Crosby, Jabbar and Jasmine “work” in a way that the other Braverman families don’t. Or perhaps Parenthood is asking us to resist the impulse to categorize families at all and focus on the larger issue of parenting and the everdeveloping relationships within families. This in and of itself would signal a significant change, not only in the family drama genre but in American culture overall. One still outstanding piece of evidence that is crucial to the consideration of Parenthood and its place within the genre is the audience response and the industry’s commitment to the show. The series has already garnered a loyal fan base, but the broader the viewership the more impact its messages will have. Though relatively successful by network standards today, Parenthood is no blockbuster, and is still being pushed to audiences by television critics as “something you have to see,” signaling that there are still a lot of people who haven’t. Network support for the show will also play a crucial role. Time will tell. By deconstructing the family constructs portrayed in Parenthood, it becomes apparent that although there are underlying traditional family values that still permeate our society in the 21st Century, a growing unifying factor between all families is the inevitability of facing adversity and the need to rise above it. Whether or not we are witnessing a watershed moment in this much loved television genre, the power of the family drama to illustrate something to us about ourselves seems to be as significant as ever.

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Works Cited Parenthood. 1989. DVD. Directed by Ron Howard. Hollywood, CA: Universal Studios. Parenthood. 2010. Season One. DVD. Directed by Jason Kattems. Hollywood, CA: Universal Studios. Parenthood. 2010-2011. Season Two. NBC. Hollywood, CA.

CONTRIBUTORS

Sarah Arnold, Ph.D. is Lecturer in Media, Culture and Production at Southampton Solent University. Her scholarship interests include feminist film theory, horror film and digital media aesthetics. She has contributed articles on motherhood in horror film, reality horror and digital media aesthetics, as well as war film and documentary aesthetics. Heather Glynis Bryant earned her bachelor’s degree in History and American Studies at Roger Williams University. In the spring of 2010, her senior thesis, entitled, “Strange New Worlds: Star Trek and America in the 1960s”, gained award recognition from the Phi Alpha Theta honor society as well as her university’s Thesis With Distinction program. Heather’s academic interests lie mainly in the realms of museum studies and contemporary American culture. She will begin graduate school at University of Massachusetts, Boston, in Fall 2011. Laura Mattoon D’Amore, Ph.D. teaches American Studies, Gender Studies, and United States History at Roger Williams University. Her areas of expertise include representations of working motherhood in American cultural history, feminist history, and superheroines in comics and popular culture. Her research blog, www.americansupermom.com, examines cultural contradictions embedded in the identity construction of the supermom in U.S. history. Dr. D’Amore’s recent publications include “The Accidental Supermom: Superheroines and Maternal Performativity, 1963-1980,” in The Journal of Popular Culture, and “Invisible Girl’s Quest for Visibility: Early Second-Wave Feminism and the Comic Book Superheroine,” in Americana. Jennifer Fogel is a Ph.D. Candidate in Mass Communications at the University of Michigan. She is currently writing her dissertation on contemporary television articulations of family life and organization since the mid-1990s, which includes the complicated depictions of parenthood on television and the significance of mega-family, celebrity family, and teen pregnancy reality TV series.

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Nicole Freim is currently finishing her doctorate in English/Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her fields of emphasis include women writers of the 20th century, folklore and magical realism, and popular culture. In fall 2011 she will be serving as a dramaturge for a production of Othello. She has been the area chair for the Comic Arts and Comics section of the National Popular Culture Association for eight years. She has an article on Superman and a book on representations of women’s anger in comics forthcoming. Marissa Harris is a high school English teacher and track coach. She has degrees in English from Messiah College (BA) and National University (MA). She currently resides in Rochester, NY with her husband and son. Linda Levitt, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in communication studies at Stephen F. Austin State University. Much of her research investigates the intersection of media and cultural memory, and she has published work on television studies, celebrity culture, and public acts of commemoration. Dr. Levitt’s recent publications include “Death on Display: Reifying Stardom through Hollywood’s Dark Tourism” in Velvet Light Trap, and “Speaking Memory, Building History: The Influence of Victims’ Families at the World Trade Center Site” in Radical History Review. Carney Maley, Ph.D. teaches in the Women’s Studies department at University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her dissertation (Boston University, 2010) titled "Flying the Unfriendly Skies: Flight Attendant Activism, 1964-1982," examined the relationship between feminism, the women’s movement, and changing practices in the airline industry. Her areas of expertise include United States History, Women’s Studies, Legal and Labor History. Ruth McClelland-Nugent, Ph.D. received her Ph.D. in History from Dalhousie University. She is an associate professor of history at Augusta State University in Augusta, GA. Linda Seidel, Ph.D. (University of Delaware, 1980), has taught English and gender studies at Truman State University since 1984. Increasingly fascinated by cultural studies explorations, she has written recently about the impact of medical advertising on an aging populace in “Dr. Jarvik and Other Baby Boomers: (Still) Performing the Able Body” in The Body in Medical Culture (ed. by Elizabeth Klaver, SUNY, 2009); about the social construction of motherhood in Doris Lessing’s A Proper Marriage (Re-

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Markings, March 2008); and about the spectacle of failed “family values” in HLN’s Nancy Grace. Her essay in this volume is part of a larger project on Bad Mothers in Literature and Culture. Jennifer L. Stevens, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of history and American Studies at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. Her research focuses primarily on the intersection of history and popular culture in the United States, though she has also begun to write on American television from a broader perspective. She is active in the Popular Culture Association where she works to promote scholarship in Popular American History. Margaret Tally, Ph.D. is a Professor at the State University of New York, Empire State College. She is currently serving as the coordinator for the Master’s Program in Social Policy. She is the author of the book, Television Culture and Women’s Lives: “thirtysomething” and the Contradictions of Gender (1995: University of Pennsylvania Press), and written numerous articles in the area of young women and film in television in such journals as “Gender and Society,” “Sexuality and Culture,” and the “Journal of Popular Culture.” Her most recent work has explored the representation of older women in romantic comedies. Miranda Tedholm is a Ph.D. student at Indiana University Bloomington, where she studies film and media in the Department of Communication and Culture. She also holds degrees in comparative literature (BA) and cinema studies (MA). Although her main research interest is Cold War educational films, other research interests include German film and new media.

INDEX  1 16 and Pregnant, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63 A A Raisin in the Sun, 118 abortion, 36, 49, 51, 52, 56, 58, 63, 75, 78, 79, 121, 130, 131 Aguado, Virginia Luzon, 117 Aird, Enola G. and Erickson, Martha Farrell, 152 airline comedies, 33 Airplane!, 42 Airport, 35 Airport ’75, 39 Airport ’77, 40 Allison, Anne, 101 Amazons, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30 American dream, 77, 121 Anderson, Joseph and Richie, Donald, 101 Andrea O’Reilly, 58 Are You Ready For Marriage, 7 Aspergers, 190, 193, 194 Aurthur, Kate, 184 B Backlash,, 70 bad mothers, 70, 71, 81 Bapis, Elaine M, 45 Barzilai, Shuli, 82 Bates, Karen Grigsby, 62 Beauvoir, Simone de, 82 Bellafante, Ginia, 62 Betty Friedan, 142 Bianco, Robert, 133 Bristol Palin, 51 Brophy, Philip, 117 Bunn, Geoffrey C., 31 Burgess, Adrienne, 184

C Canby, Vincent, 45 Career Women, 70 Carter, Lynda, 31 castrating mother, 96 Chambers, Deborah, 184 Cheney, Anne, 133 Chodorow, Nancy, and Susan Contraato, 82 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 43 Clark-Flory, Tracy, 62 Cohany, Sharon R., and Emy Sok, 83 Cold War, 2, 6, 16, 206 Coogan, Peter, 152 Coontz, Stephanie, 63 Creed, Barbara, 101 Cure, 103 D Daniel, Les, 31 Daniels, Susanne, and Cynthia Littleton, 184 Deadbeat Dads, 61, 63 death of a child, 107 depression, 114 Diana Prince, 21, 22 Dienhart, Anna, 184 Disaster movies, 33, 36 domesticity, 81, 136, 137, 140, 144, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 178, 184 Douglas Kellner, 47 Douglas S. Cramer, 31 Douglas, Susan J, 46 Dow, Bonnie J, 63 Doyle, John, 63 E Eban, Katherine, 152 Edgar, Joanne, 31 EEOC, 43

208 Elastigirl, 144 Ellis, John M, 83 Eric Kripke, 167 Eric Smoodin, 8 EVIL CHILDREN, 104 F Faludi, Susan, 31, 83 father’s love, 112 Fatherhood Movement, 172, 185 fatherlessness, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 179, 185 Featherstone, Brid, 184 feminism, 2, 23, 26, 29, 30, 50, 133, 138, 143, 144, 152, 170, 205 feminist, 2, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 34, 35, 43, 45, 48, 52, 71, 73, 74, 86, 127, 128, 133, 136, 137, 138, 145, 146, 170, 204 Film & History, 1 Finkbeiner, Ann K, 117 Fischer, Lucy, 101 Fisher Sorgenfrei, Carol, 101 Fisher, Luchina, 63 Flawed Fatherhood, 174 flight attendant, 33, 35, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 Franklin, Nancy, 184 Friedan, Betty, 153 G Gardner v. National Airlines, 46 Gavanas, Anna, 184 Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar, 83 Going Steady?, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 17 Goldberg, Ruth, 102 good mother, 70, 76, 80, 82, 114, 116, 140, 143 Goodman, Ellen, 63 Goodwin, Liz, 63 grief, 108 Grose, Jessica, 63 Guerrero, Ed, 133 Guttmacher Institute, 49

Index H Hall, Elaine J., and Marnie Salupo, 83 Hamad, Hannah, 184 Hansberry, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134 Harlem Renaissance, 118 Harris, Trudier, 133 Harwood, Sarah, 184 Hays, Sharon, 83 Heroes, 138 Hill, Matt, 102 Hillis, Ken, 83 Hoerl, Kristen and Casey Kelly, 63 HOLLYWOOD THRILLER, 104 Home Alone, 103 homemaking, 136 Horn, Wade F., 185 I Ingle, Zachary, 133 J Jamie Lynn Spears, 51 Jay, Samuel, 63 Jayson, Sharon, 63 Jealousy, 2, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 17 Jezebel, 63 Joshua, 104 K Kanigher, Robert, 31 Kaplan, E. Ann, 102 Kaufman, Amy, 63 Kendall-Tackett, Kathleen, 117 Kessler, Todd A., Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman, 83 King, Woodie, 133 Klein, Amanda, 64 Kliff, Sarah, 64 Kosawa, Heisaku, 102 Kramer Vs Kramer, 103 Kristeva, Julia, 102 L Lamb, Michael E, 185 Langston Hughes, 119 LaRossa, Ralph, 185 Lebra, Takei Sugiyama, 102

Bound by Love: Familial Bonding in Film and Television since 1950 Lev, Peter, 46 Levine, Stuart, 185 Lewis, Dan, 31 Lloyd, Robert, 134 Lupton, Deborah, and Lesley Barclay, 185 Lyne, Adrian, 83 M Marnie, 103 Marsh, Margaret, 185 Marston, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 31 Masculine Domesticity, 171 maternal abandonment, 71 Matthews, David J, 117 Matthews, Kristin, 134 McCreadie, Marsha, 46 mental hygiene, 6, 7, 16 Michaels, Tanya, 167 missing mother, 171 monstrous. See monstrous maternal Monstrous Maternal, 68 More of Me, 138 Motherhood, 2, 3, 21, 47, 74, 83, 101, 102, 136, 137, 139, 147, 152 Multiple Personality Disorder, 139 Murray, Matthew, 134 N National Organization for Women, 33, 43 new father, 170 Newcomb, Horace, 64 Niki Sanders, 138 nuclear family, 2, 33, 39, 48, 61, 70, 86, 98, 99, 159, 170, 187 Nurse Jackie, 138 nurturing wives, 35 Nussbaum, Emily, 64 O O’Reilly, Andrea, 153 Ohinata, Masami, 102 Okonogi, Keigo, 102 Orpett Long, Susan, 102 Orphan, 104 Ouellette, Laurie and James Hay, 64

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P Parenthood, 187 Parks, Sheri, 134 Passenger 57, 43 patriarchal husbands, 35 Patricia Ireland, 33 Patty Hewes, 3, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82 Pew Research, 136, 153 phallic mother, 96 Pleck, Joseph H., 185 Pollitt, Katha, 64 poor motherhood, 142 Popenoe, David, 185 post-nuclear, 48 Probyn, Elspeth, 64 Projansky, Sarah, 64 Psycho, 103 psychoanalytic theory, 97, 98, 99 psychological thriller, 112 Pulse, 103 R Rakowski, Sheryl, 168 Raymer, Patricia, 153 reality television, 56, 59 Rich, Adrienne, 83 Rimer, Sara, 64 Riss, Suzanne, 153 Rose, Philip., 134 Rosen, Ruth, 31 Rubin, Martin, 117 S Scott, Vernon, 31 second wave, 136, 137, 138 self-sacrifice, 86, 87, 88, 90, 101 separate spheres, 142 sexploitation films, 33, 34, 39 Singleton, Andrew, and Janemaree Maher, 185 Skyjacked, 37 Sobchack, Vivian, 102 Speier, Michael, 185 Spicer, Andrew, 83 Spike Lee, 123 Sprogis v. United Air Lines, 46 Sprunk, Cara, 64

210 Stacey, Judith, 64 Stanley, Alessandra, 64 Stein, Rob, 64 Stewardesses for Women’s Rights, 43 Stotland, M.D., Nada Logan, 153 supermom, 3, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 204 Supernatural, 154 superwoman syndrome, 138, 139 Suzuki, Koji, 102 Suzuki, Midori Fukunishi, 102 T Taylor, Ella, 64 Teen Mom, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64 teenage pregnancy, 49, 53 The Eye, 103 The Good Son, 104 The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, 103 The Incredibles, 138 the second shift, 143 The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 50, 53, 55, 56

Index Thompson, Arienne, 64 Tincknell, Estella, 185 Toby Miller, 7, 8, 15 Tucker, Judith Stadtman, 153 U U.S. Census Bureau, 185 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 185 unwanted pregnancy, 59, 61, 62 V Vognar, Chris, 65 W Weller, Sheila, 153 Whitmarsh, Lona, Donalee Brown, Jane Cooper, Yolanda Hawkins-, 83 Wilkerson, Margaret, 134 Williams, Tony, 117 Wonder Woman, 2, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 working mothers, 92, 95, 136, 138, 143, 148, 149 Worland, Rick, 117 Y Yoffe, Emily, 65 Yoshizumi, Kyoko, 103