The Reconstruction of the American Nuclear Family in Hollywood Cinema of the 1950s

Paul Quinn

Chapter One

Introduction

For a long time now I have been fascinated by nineteen-fifties American culture. I have no idea why, but the fifties have always offered a brand of laid-back ‘coolness’ sadly lacking in the world today. Perhaps it is the mythic nature of an era that lived and died well before my time, or the ‘innocence lost’ mystique that permeates the decade. So, on a purely personal basis, I decided upon reading widely in vein hope of uncovering that ‘essence’, which so appeals to me. And what I found became profoundly more shocking than music to my ears. These ideas of innocence and nostalgia became true myths in Barthes’ sense if the word, and what became apparent was a period of severe political control, bigotry, and abject intolerance to difference- a ‘pluralist’ corporate-liberal government that wasted no energy in emphasising the need for compromise, whilst behind closed doors this ideal found a middle-ground on its own terms. If the doctors and lawyers of the left (the corporate-liberals) promulgated the need for compromise, then they too chose the conditions under which an agreement would be met.

What developed was an Us/Them relationship. If they were willing to accept our point of view, then the gates would be opened to allow them back into the stable. Culture and refinement were to Us, as nature and disorder signified the dissenters. Nowhere did this yin/yang effect become more apparent than in the medium of film. If Klaatu in The Day The Earth Stood Still symbolised the id- the unknown- the latent beast, he also acted as a signifier for the Commies, and more importantly, for all those who refused to enter the sphere of consensus. Conversely, conservative films preferred the practical, Joe Schmoe from Apelline to the Doctors and Politicians from the big city. Yet the conservatives ultimately bowed to ‘liberalism’ in the name of consensus, and so the radicals- the naturals- the proverbial ‘Them’, lambasted both the liberals and the conservatives in the movies, thus pushing themselves further away from the cultured world. (This introduction is something of a condensed version of Peter Biskind’s analysis of the political situations that were prevalent in America during the nineteen fifties). And so I came to ask the question: If Hollywood produce of the period was constructed along predominantly political and social lines, then surely the way in which these movies present society in a postwar state (or a pre-war state with postwar undertones as in the western) must have served a particularly latent need in audiences of the newly developed (forced?) suburban climate?

Inextricably linked to the concept of certain social groups seeking to influence society is that of the nuclear family and how it was represented on screen. This includes ‘actual’ political and social attempts at controlling ‘what’ is represented on screen and also ‘how’ it is represented. The concept of the family has always been situated at the core of American society. The word ‘family’ is problematic at best, as it signifies an ever-changing concept, which can only ring true (if at all) over a very short period of time. Immediately following the second-world war, a renewed emphasis was placed on the family unit as a socially integrated structure. This harked back to the prairie days of the Old West, with suburbia the new range. Self-sufficiency was vital (with advances in home technology enhancing individualism), yet such advancements were in aid of stasis, the idea that a nation locked into a safe pattern could avoid the political and social upheaval brought by the war. And so a safe ideal of the family was born. Whether such an ideal had any truth (especially in individual cases) was of no importance as long as the concept was encouraged. Social scientists such as Sarah Harwood have come up with various definitions for this ideal, Harwood’s being simple and to the point. This ideological family type was indubiably the nuclear family: white Anglo-Saxon Protestant heterosexual parents with an average of 2.8 children' (Harwood 1997, 37) While Harwood was writing of the nuclear family in the 1980s, and the average may have changed, this is a generally apt starting point for any analysis of the family, as it is a perfectly reasonable summation of the ideal in the fifties also. According to one leading politician in the eighties: 'The Conservative family Campaign aims to put father back at the head of the family table. He should be the breadwinner. He should be responsible for his children’s actions' (Harwood, 40) In fact, that the same ideal can apply to two different periods that are three decades apart, given the extreme fluctuating nature of the concept ‘family’, perfectly encapsulates either the extreme naïveté or the extreme closed-mindedness of the ruling government and varying social groups at the time.

But how do we know that certain groups made specific attempts to control the representation of the family on screen? Sarah Harwood again phrases the answer simply: The family is 'always politically charged' (Harwood 1997, 41) During the late 1940s and 1950s the American government (as well as various other social groups) became very involved in the influencing of motion picture production. Senator Joseph McCarthy was embarking on his witch-hunts, rooting out communist infiltration in Hollywood and thus influencing filmmakers’ and producers’ representations of America with the threat of career ruination. While a film-maker may host anti-establishment feelings, these were hidden in favour of more suitable moral messages. Such pressure was applied from within the industry also. Various influential Hollywood personalities formed part of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Those members such as John Wayne, whose careers hinged on a patriotic representation of the family on land and the male hero fought viciously for appropriate representations within film texts.

Other governmental factions, such as the Smith Act served to influence (if they could not eliminate) radical representations of society within films. The Smith Act broke fundamental laws of the American Constitution in that it banned any form of rebellion, peaceful or otherwise, against the government. (Diggins 1989, 148) This law was passed, despite the fact that it went against the very principles on which the USA was based, as it was on such rebellion that the rebel forces in the War of Independence won their freedom.

So while the family remains a highly charged social unit, it becomes logical to attempt to influence its representation in the social sphere. This is not to say that it was just political and social groups who sought to control representations. Filmmakers themselves were influenced by their studios’ socio-political stances, their own beliefs and those of their audiences. So, to rephrase my thesis question: ‘An analysis of the representation of the American nuclear family in postwar Hollywood cinema, specifically in the period 1946-1960.’

Before I begin with the bulk of my analysis I would like to make one more amendment to my question. If the ideal family unit of this period was largely a social construct, then the bulk of my analysis will follow that member of the family who is the most socially relevant- the male/father, who bridged the gap between family and society. At this stage of history the father was the social figure. During the 1950s and postwar years we see a tendency for his role to change- a crisis of the male. It is this changing representation in cinema that I would like to analyse, the mother’s significance still remaining largely biological. To rephrase for a last time: ‘An analysis of the representation of the American nuclear family in postwar Hollywood cinema, specifically in the period 1946-1960. This analysis will pay particular attention to the representation of the male/father.’

Chapter Two

Literature Review

Throughout my analysis I intend to work from the general to the particular. I have not researched widely into the specific filmic texts, on which I anchor my study. While I have done some very rudimentary reading on these films, such research is not my priority. Rather, I have read widely in the general areas of family and gender representation and have chosen specific methodologies, which I will in turn apply to the films in question. Although basic research into the history of the period, the films to be analysed, and family/gender and genre representation go without saying, I have chosen four main texts to form the fundamental structure of my dissertation. I will deal with each of these in turn, and they are as follows:

Biskind, Peter. Seeing is Believing: or how Hollywood taught us to stop worrying and love the fifties. 1983. Henry Holt and Company

Throughout my introduction I dealt with the intertwining of movies and socio-political influence during the early post-war years. As we shall see, this will become important later on when I discuss the importance of the socio-political influence in its positioning of the male as a social construct. Biskind’s book goes a long way in visualising this interdependency between social groups, who sought to influence representations, and the actual representations of family and gender within the cinematic texts. Through case study after case study, he analyses particular films and how their meaning-making potentials are influenced and directed by socio-political climates and beliefs. While the bulk of my argument will largely marginalize such analysis, it is Biskind’s method of moving from the general to the particular that I find fascinating and that I have adapted to my own research. While he spends the majority of his book analysing films along strictly political lines, he narrows his focus in the final section to investigate how such ideologies affect the representation of familial paradigms on screen. Using a similar method, as we shall see through the rest of this chapter, I will deconstruct six differing film texts along the lines of the relationship of the representation of the family unit to the broader socio-political family within the films.

Mellen, Joan. Big Bad Wolves. 1978. Random House

Mellen’s analysis travels still further toward the particular: the representation of the male as he appears on the cinema screen throughout the twentieth century. Her research becomes particularly important when applied to the myth of the male in nineteen fifties cinema, and in particular the importance of star personae in the portrayal of male characters.

Wexman, Virginia Wright. Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage and Hollywood Performance. 1993. Princeton University Press

Wexman introduces Mellen’s concepts of the male to Biskind’s work on the politics of representation, to build an intricate picture of the evolution of the representation of the screen couple through the years, as a reaction to the development of love and marital relations as they run parallel in the real world. Such a study becomes key to my research in that it builds a case for my analysis of the inextricable links between male characters and star personae, when often stars come to take on the characteristics of their protagonists and vice- versa. Such an argument is important in its implications of social groups’ (in this case the manipulation of stars and characters by studios for increased publicity and profit) attempts at the control of gender and familial representations. Her work also allows a more in-depth study into the idea of changing representations of male characters throughout the nineteen fifties (as suggested in my introduction), given her analysis of changing marriage norms during the period.

Harwood, Sarah. Family Fictions: Representations of the family in 1980s Hollywood Cinema. 1997. Palgrave

I have purposefully kept the above criticisms short and to the point, not because they have little value to my dissertation, for they do contain structures vital to the structure of my own work, but rather it is due to the enormous importance of Harwood’s writings to my own. It is her methodology I have chosen to work from as it allows me the perfect base from which to combat all areas of my own research. While Harwood focuses the majority of her analysis of the representations of family relations within cinema in the nineteen eighties, the analytical structures she uses in deconstructing differing familial syntagms are perfect for adaptation to my own needs.

She begins with the basic ideas of the ‘actual’ and ‘meta’ families. By ‘actual’ one means an actual family unit as is represented within a film text- her 'white Anglo-Saxon Protestant heterosexual parents with an average of 2.8 children' being a prime example. Yet in Harwood’s reckoning, familial relations do not stop here. I have already mentioned her reference to the social status of the male as opposed to the largely biological nature of the represented woman. The ‘meta’ or metaphorical family therefore becomes the larger family of society, of which the ‘actual’ family is but a component part. This refers to the representation of the social sphere in films (politics, business, legality, etc.) as a family unit of its own. Its hierarchies and internal structures metaphorically resemble those we have already observed of the nuclear family; remembering the Conservative politician’s comment on the father returning to the head of the family table- a top-down structure. This in itself resembles the top-down structure so idealised by the corporate-liberal government in the nineteen fifties (in Biskind’s analysis), in which politicians amongst other educated people sat at the head of the national table, becoming ‘father’ to the less-capable uneducated classes. (Harwood 1997, 60-61)

Such a relationship between the ‘actual’ and ‘meta’ families lies at the heart of my dissertation. I will analyse my three films (which I will now list) as to the presence, prioritisation, and the relationship between, both the ‘actual’ and ‘meta’ families, and more importantly the relationship of the male/father to this system.

I will accomplish my analysis of the ‘actual’ and ‘meat’ families by addressing the following key areas:

Of course to do the above will involve the in-depth analysis of specific film texts. I have chosen three of the main box-office attractions of the period, on which to write. It is important that these films be financial successes, so that we can be sure that these were the films that audiences wanted to see, and thus found appealing. If these films were to reassert the need for the nuclear family, then one cannot argue that the majority of the cinema-going public was totally against the idea, either.

Chapter Three

Case Study: High Noon (1952)

High Noon (USA, Zinnemann, 1952) is one of the definitive ‘super westerns’, so called because it transplants traditional western themes with themes contemporary to the film’s production. As such it represents a significant development in the heritage of the western.

The story is that of marshal Will Kane, newlywed and about to retire to run a shop with his wife Amy, Quaker-girl cum schoolteacher. Just as their wedding ceremony finishes, news comes that the outlaw Frank Miller and his gun slinging family and friends will be arriving in town on the noon train. Miller was arrested by Kane five years back and should have hung for his crimes, if it wasn’t for the bureaucrats up north. Now Miller is free and looking for revenge on Kane.

Perhaps it would be best to dive right into the three questions I have set to be answered above. This will give us a clearer picture as to the representation of the family within the text, and from there we can uncover the representation of the western male, as portrayed by Gary Cooper.

First we will address the modality of the family: Are family relations within High Noon represented within ‘actual’ or ‘metaphorical’ syntagms? The film begins with a wedding between Cooper’s Will Kane and Amy, played by Grace Kelly. Here we have cemented the foundations for an ‘actual’ family unit. With the progression of their marriage we can imagine the perfect nuclear family being born. Parallel to this runs the ‘metaphorical’ family; the society of Hadleyville in which they live, organising itself in a traditional familial structure. Present at the wedding are all of the leading townspeople, including the mayor, the entire board of selectment of the community (who are also his best friends), and the judge. After all, as marshal, Kane fulfils the social role of the male as opposed to the biological of the female. He protects the town and is one of its most prestigious citizens. In marrying Amy he is fulfilling his role to the nuclear family, while he has already formed the heart of the community in which he has made his home. Such a notion of a harmonised ‘actual’ and ‘meta’ familial system can, however, be very misleading.

When analysing the concepts of the ‘actual’ and ‘metaphorical’ families Sarah Harwood asserts that 'successful nuclear families appear to be unrepresentable within a successful socio-professional framework' (Harwood 1997, 66). By this she means that there cannot be a utopian metaphorical family if there is already a utopian actual family. Such concepts do not complement each other. While I will later show that in It’s a Wonderful Life such improbabilities are possible, within the frame of High Noon’s world such an assertion does hold true. For while the narrative begins with ‘actual’/’metaphorical’ harmony, something has got to give.

Cracks have already begun to appear even before the arrival of Frank Miller’s henchmen (his brother Ben, and fellow outlaws Pierce and Colby). During the wedding, the town’s former marshal advises Kane that it is a good idea to move away with Amy to start a family and run a store. Although he has obviously been integrated into the society of Hadleyville following his retirement, the old man’s comments are marked by the clear lack of any ‘actual’ family element to his life. He has attended the wedding alone and his remark seems to be filled with a regret of not begetting a family unit of his own.

Later on in the film, one of the townsmen, who has promised his help in ridding the town of Miller’s gang, pulls out when he realises he will be facing the threat alone with Kane. He puts his reasons down to the fact that he has a family of his own to look after, and his death through such a silly act of bravery would put his family unit in crisis. Kane agrees with such reasoning, showing his deep understanding of the nuclear family. In being a member of his own family, the townsman realises the pettiness of the civilians of Hadleyville in turning their backs on a man (Kane) who as done so much for a community. Before Kane arrived in town it was lawless. Now it is somewhere 'a man can bring up a family'.

Such proof almost answers our next question. What is the family’s relationship to the narrative? Perhaps we should turn to Andre Bazin’s essay on the western for help:

This quotation emphasises the importance of the concept of the family to the film in terms of its plotting of good against evil. The social ‘metaphorical’ family looks out for the 'order of the future city', while Will Kane battles with his individual conscience. The film boils down to the concept of familial loyalties. Now that Kane has retired from law enforcement, the townspeople want him to leave town as quickly as possible so that they may avoid his conflict with Frank Miller. What they do not understand is that it is not simply Kane’s battle, but also theirs. After all, Miller is seeking revenge on Kane because Kane arrested him on behalf of the entire ‘Hadleyville family’. While Kane believes it is a social rather than personal fight, he only stops from running away with Amy when he realises that Miller will follow them to the ends of the earth, thus putting his own nuclear family in jeopardy.

Indeed Kane’s refusal to run also places his own ‘actual’ family in danger, as Amy’s morals will not allow her to condone her husband’s use of violence. She instead opts to leave him to fight his own battles and ironically waits to leave town by the train, on which Frank Miller is due to arrive. Indeed it may be of interest to go off the path slightly in briefly examining the role of Amy as mother and wife/woman, if only that it leads nicely to my analysis of Kane’s masculine role within the text. According to Bazin:

Amy stands as a beacon of morality and seems to function in the traditional western role as teacher and carer (indeed she is, as already mentioned, a school teacher). Yet once we address our third question (what is the family’s ability to resolve the narrative?), an interesting situation occurs. Towards the end of the film, Amy makes an eleventh hour decision (in this case twelfth hour, hence the title!) to stand by her man. She forgets all of her Quaker virtues and morals to pick up a gun and shoot one of Miller’s gang herself, thus saving her husband.

Although I will turn my attentions to the rebel male of the nineteen fifties later in my dissertation it is worth quoting one of Joan Mellen’s comments on the subject, which directly references High Noon’s representation of women.

If men looked inward, women in fifties films continue to have tabula rasa minds, waiting to be imprinted with male values (Mellen, 194):

Surely a woman in his own style would be more suitable a marriage partner than one such as Amy. But, however, in Kane’s world, love has little to do with his choice of marriage. Amy, we are led to believe, is stable and safe, unlike Jurado’s character, who is portrayed as wild and erratic. When Virginia Wexman analyses the progression of relationship patterns throughout the decades, she notices that in many western films and indeed in actual western times, a greater emphasis is placed on the functional aspect of marriage rather than love. (Wexman 1993, 10) That Amy will give him babies, who will carry on the family line, is almost enough for their marriage to succeed. Indeed this ‘habitus’ model of courtship would also prevent him from marrying exogenically. That is to say that Jurado is of a different race, and as such would be improper as a means of creating the ideal nuclear family. (Mellen 1978, 204).

The film ends with Kane’s victory over the Miller gang and hence over the petty small-minded selfishness of the townspeople. When they run out to congratulate him, Kane throws his badge in the dirt, reminiscent of the ending to Dirty Harry (USA, Siegel, 1970) and rides out of town with Amy at his side, what Wexman calls the Final Romance (Wexman 1993, 23) - Hollywood’s promise of a lasting happy marriage. The nuclear ‘actual’ family is reinforced and is successful, while the sickening greed and cowardice of the ‘metaphorical’ family is revealed in all its ugliness, as we know full well they cannot be trusted and are not destined for a future with equilibrium.

So what of Will Kane’s representation as a man? Although the film was made during a period, in which attitudes towards what it was to be a man were under question, Will Kane seems to represent that class of male made acceptable by the slew of westerns and adventure films that preceded the ‘super western’. Kane represents some sort of superman, who cannot be beaten down, and is in some way infallible. According to Joan Mellen:

This comment by Mellen seems to come up very naïve when viewed against the socio-political backdrop of the film’s production, owing to the fact that these comments were directly addressed to Cooper’s character in High Noon.

Biskind would consider High Noon to be a ‘radical’ film, neither corporate-liberal or conservative, but rather somewhere to the left or right; an anti-establishment position, in which both extremes unite in an effort against the corrupt consensus of the centre. (Biskind 1983, 44-49) To make a complicated issue very black and white, the far leftists could very generally be equated with communism, as could the most militant of the far right with fascistic tendencies. As such, Mellen’s comments seem to equate High Noon with a fascist message; perhaps the indestructible superman hero signifying the superior aspirations of the Nazi regime.

Here Mellen draws a very tenuous link, given that the film in itself is essentially a reaction against the fascist leanings of certain governmental groups in America at the time- in this case the concept of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunts. The townspeople of Hadleyville are merely a veiled metaphor for the attitudes of fear and indifference that were permeating the contemporary American society.

The point of the film is that Will Kane is not a superman. He admits fear, cries and begs for help. The director Howard Hawks famously lambasted a western hero who would lower himself to the level of beggar and coward, as such a character betrayed its western heritage. As a conservative reply to Fred Zinnemann’s film, Hawks made both Rio Bravo and El Dorado- both essentially the same plot as High Noon, but with a more respectable hero.

An even deeper level can be found to the Kane character, if one chooses to see past the constraints of the western genre itself. Andre Bazin has commented that the great thing about High Noon is that it could be made in any genre. (Bazin 1971, 152) And indeed there are a variety of genres within the text, not least of which is the film noir. Surprisingly, although Joan Mellen has gone so far off course in her analysis of High Noon, she manages to hit the nail right on the head when describing the link between films noir and McCarthy’s tyranny:

  Similarly there is more than one strain of ‘metaphorical’ family running through On the Waterfront. On the one hand you have Johnny Friendly’s union, but more specifically to our analysis, you have Friendly’s relationship to Terry. A t the film’s outset Friendly acts as a father figure to Terry. They have playful wrestling matches and seem to have a very healthy relationship. This is important because not once during the film do Terry and Charlie make reference to any ‘actual’ parental figures in their lives. They have instead become part of Friendly’s mob, organised along the lines of a ‘metaphorical’ familial hierarchy. Indeed, to show the type of fatherly influence that Friendly (such a name has strong familial connotations) has on the ex-boxer, Terry says of him:

Two other models of the ‘metaphorical’ family arise throughout the course of the film. One is the Catholic family, as represented by the priest played by Karl Malden. According to Peter Biskind:

Terry is beaten by Friendly and his mob to within an inch of his life. When he pulls himself to his feet and walks into work, he becomes martyr to the other Dockers, leading them like Christ led the Jews. In the space of one such act of courage, the Friendly family is destroyed (or if not destroyed, then at least it knows it’s on the way out). The destruction of one ‘metaphorical’ family leads to the creation of another. In leading the Dockers, Terry has found his manhood and becomes a Father figure. This social family is fused with the ‘metaphorical’ Christian family with Terry as the Christ-like figure, and also with the corporate-liberal government family- the waterfront investigators, who represent the political belief-system underlying the text. After all, consensus has been reached, and therefore the corporate-liberals form part of the newly formed ‘metaphorical’ social family.

But what of the future of the ‘actual’ family? Is this to suggest that due to the previous devastation of all of the ‘actual’ families within the text, there can be no narrative resolution for the nuclear family? No it does not, for in standing up to the mob bosses and their thugs, Terry finds and accepts his masculinity. At the film’s denouement Terry forms a potentially successful basis for an ‘actual’ family in the form of Joey Doyle’s little sister, Edie (Eva-Marie Saint). Again Biskind summarises this resolution perfectly:

So what of the representation of Terry as male within this text? We have already established that he is a conflicted character, attempting to find or create some sense of himself.

Virginia Wright Wexman, in her book Creating the Couple, has examined the changing tendencies in Hollywood performance techniques as they relate to changing gender relations off-screen and the evolution of the couple in the real world. She makes the point that the arrival of the fifties, with its new brand of gender definitions, in which the roles of male and female were not too stable any more, called for a new form of acting and performance. Freudian concepts of the learnedness of sexuality rather than its innateness were prevalent, and as such the new performance styles would take on Freudian undertones- become internalised and understated rather than the outward expression of previous eras of screen acting. Forerunner of this new form of acting was The Method. (Wexman 1993, 160- 165)

One of the foundational practices of The Method was the use of objects as a means to showing one’s inner turmoil. This is perhaps the area of this acting technique I would most like to focus on in my discussion of On the Waterfront.

There are many instances throughout the film, where Terry Malloy uses an object or objects in a manner that uncovers his latent wants and desires. Take, for example, the white glove that Edie drops while walking through the playground with Terry. He picks it up, and delicately fits it on his own hand; playfully pulling at the fingers, one by one. Here he shows his feminine side, willing, perhaps to impress Edie, to forsake all of the masculine tropes he has been clinging to all of his life. The glove brings out in him a tenderness that would have been considered effeminate and girly in previous decades, but now seems more masculine and emotionally honest under the new definition of masculinity.

I move on from this example in order to concentrate on an object, which is at once the most important and overlooked aspect of any analysis of Terry’s character. That is to say his own body. Throughout the earlier decades of the twentieth century, American screens were covered in matinee idols, who represented what it was to be the ultimate male; indestructible and unyielding. We have already discussed such a sign system in terms of Gary Cooper’s Will Kane in High Noon. Stars such as John Wayne, Douglas Fairbanks, Clarke Gable and Errol Flynn all signified this swashbuckler of patriarchy and hegemony. Probably the defining characteristic of this mythic male was not that he was the superman, but rather that he was at ease about his identity within his own self. He did not feel the need for bulging biceps and endless hours in the gym. He was naturally a hulking presence and commanded the screen.

The ‘rebel heroes’, however, were not so comfortable with their own existence, and made all sorts of attempts at reconfirming their masculinity. In general, the defining male stars of this era were not big men, but built themselves and their muscles in order to reinforce their power on the screen. In A Streetcar Named Desire (USA, Kazan, 1951), Brando walks around mostly in a vest; his muscles tensed and sweat pouring from his virile masculine limbs. In On the Waterfront he is an ex-boxer, as is Montgomery Clift in From Here To Eternity (USA, Zinnemann, 1953), while James Dean in films such as Rebel Without a Cause (USA, Ray, 1956) and Giant (USA, Stevens, 1955), wears little but a vest, in a vein attempt at showing his chiselled masculinity, much as a peacock would show off its bright feathers.

In On the Waterfront Terry Malloy’s body betrays his boxing roots; his face battered and beaten from those years in the ring. His body becomes a signifier for this maleness, as if in showing his scars and his pumped-up torso, he is reconfirming his traditional views of masculinity to the world. Yet Terry lives in a world so big that it dwarfs and makes petty all of his attempts to command a hegemonic presence. Boris Kaufmann’s cinematography overwhelms Terry so much that he becomes a mere pawn to the enormity of the ships and freighters around him. In other words he attempts physical prowess in a world where physical prowess was no longer valued. America was coming to accept a new form of masculinity. (Wexman 1993, 174).

I made reference earlier to the lack of an ‘actual’ father figure for Terry and Charlie in On the Waterfront. I would now like to analyse this phenomenon with regard to the use of objects. There is a pivotal scene in which Terry tends to his pigeons on the roof as Edie comes to see him. The tenderness and love with which he nurtures and mothers the birds betrays his latent feminine side, with which he has struggles to come to terms. He tells Edie that he admires the pigeons, as they choose a partner and stick by that one partner for life. This comment is further accentuated by the fact that one of the pigeons, to which he refers as 'he', subsequently lays an egg, alluding to a hermaphrodite nature shared by Terry. (Mellen 1978, 208) Terry cares and wants to be cared for. He is at once masculine and feminine, suffering from deep internal conflict.

His respect for the pigeons’ monogamy is vital in understanding the concept of the rebel youth. When Brando is asked in The Wild One (USA, Benedek, 1951) what it is he is rebelling against, he answers:

Such a reaction epitomises the rebel character to the extent that it would seem he is rebelling against all society, and in particular the most social of units- the nuclear family. Yet Terry Malloy openly expresses an interest in fathering a family of his own, and thus it would seem, according to Mellen, that his own internal torment has grown from his lack of an ‘actual’ father figure in his own life. Mellen’s observations are further supported by the family situation in Rebel Without a Cause. According to Mellen, when writing of James Dean:

When disillusioned by his ineffectual father’s attempts at leading his family, Jim Stark (Dean) rebels from within, going so far as to establish his own ‘metaphorical’ family amongst his friends, played by Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood. Stark sets himself up as the father figure, draping his own jacket over Mineo’s dead body, as if to offer that love, which his own nuclear family failed to provide. (Mellen 1978, 214) Stark’s rebellion is born out of the frustration that his family cannot understand him; his father unable to act as a positive role model, trapped underneath the mother’s tyranny. The film ends with the death of Mineo and thus the failure of this ‘meta’ family. But the extremity of the ‘meta’ family serves to create resolution in the ‘actual’, as Stark’s father realises the disservice he has done his son. He stands up to the mother, thus re-establishing himself as the head of the American nuclear family.

I have thus far relatively ignored the relationship of the star system in creating such representations of masculinity on the American screen. In the case of the ‘rebel hero’, The Method becomes heavily implicated in such representation. Lee Strasberg, head of the Actor’s Studio in New York at the time, and adaptor of Stanislavsky’s 'indigenous theatre of social protest' (Wexman 1993, 165) for the American stage and screen, encouraged actors to substitute their own feelings for those of the character, rather than merge the two as Stanislavsky had taught. As such we are seeing as much if not more of the actor on screen than the character when we watch the likes of Brando, Dean, Clift and Newman perform. In this way, throughout this period, these actors came to be associated with specific types and the same stock characteristics in their ‘real’ lives as well as their screen lives. Indeed the Brandos of On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Men, had much in common with the Dean of Giant, Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, as did he with the Clift of Red River (USA, Ford, 1948) and From Here To Eternity, and the Paul Newman of The Left Handed Gun (USA, Penn, 1958)and Somebody Up There Likes Me. (USA, Wise, 1956).

Virginia Wexman has gone so far as to describe Lee Strasberg as a 'celebrity-making machine' (Wexman 1993, 166), working closely with the Hollywood factory to convince the public that the stars they saw on screen were indeed the same stars off screen, with the same problems and the same rebellious nature. This blurring of the lines between fact and fiction went so far as blending the intertextual Freudian message that we are all in some part homosexual in nature with the newfound belief that 'a confused gender identity was no longer understood as a symbol of ineradicable moral decay, but rather elaborated as a developmental problem of a divided protagonist' (Wexman 1993, 168), to create rumours at some stage or another, that all of the above (with the exception of Newman) were closetly homosexual.

Chapter Five

Case Study: It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

The American dream has been a constant ideal in the United States since the Constitution was first signed in seventeen seventy-six, and the ideal of the nuclear family has become a fundamental unit in that dream ever since. It’s A Wonderful Life tells the story of George Bailey (James Stewart), the ideal male- gentle and caring- and champion of the little man. On the night the film begins, George is contemplating suicide from the edge of a bridge, while Joseph in heaven looks on. Hearing the prayers of George’s fellow citizens of the town of Bedford Falls, Joseph sends an angel (second class) to help George in his hour of need. Clarence (the angel) shows George how bad a state the world of Bedford Falls would be in if he had never been born, and in the process he convinces George that it truly is a wonderful life.

In keeping with our trend so far, I will first analyse IAWL (It’s A Wonderful Life) according to our three basic questions. So what of the modality of the family within the text? Both the ‘actual’ family and the ‘metaphorical’ family are represented within Frank Capra’s film, and indeed they share the most productive relationship of all of the films I have studied. At the beginning of the film George is a member of two ‘actual’ families- with his mother, uncle and brother, Harry, and also with his wife, Mary, and their three children. Outside of the nuclear family come George’s societal relations. He became head of the Bailey Building and Loan after the death of his father, and as such is the head of the community, keeping the avarice and self-centredness of Old Man Potter at bay with his commitment to small town values, low interest rates and the ideal of friendship. In fact George’s fatherly role within the ‘meta’ family is of vital importance if the film wishes its suburban message to be clear. After all, as head of the building and loan, George has almost single-handedly built Bailey Park- the ideal suburban village, in which all the townspeople seem to live.

How important is the idea of ‘family’ to the film’s narrative? The answer is simple: vital, and George is at the hub of it all. Just imagine if George were to kill himself by jumping from that bridge. It would destroy the equilibrium of both his ‘actual’ families and also that of the ‘meta’. In fact we do not need to imagine, for Clarence shows George and us what the world would be like if he was never born. Not only would his mother not have had him, but also George wouldn’t have been on hand to save his brother Harry from drowning as a child. His mother would become a spinster- a pathetic remnant of the nuclear ideal, while Mary would never have married and would live life alone. Indeed, although George never got to leave Bedford Falls, his absence would cause the death of countless soldiers during the Second World War, as Harry would not have been alive to save them. Similarly the ‘meta’ family would be destroyed, as Bailey Park’s suburban homes would give way to drinking, gambling and no sense of community built along family hierarchies and ideals.

But the true test is in examining the family’s ability at achieving narrative closure. At the end of the film, George, who contemplated suicide after a life of let-downs culminating in the misplacement (and his possible arrest) of the funds of the building and loan, changes his mind to realise that life is worth living. Upon arriving home he is met by the arresting police officer, but is saved at the last minute by the community’s coming together and donating all of what they have financially to save him. While their donations are, in the strictest sense, what keeps him out of prison, it is really George’s sense of self-worth that saves the family- their family-like reactions to his hour of need reinforcing a familial structure. The film’s resounding message seems to be that if society can live and function as a family unit, then they can overcome all odds.

And what of George Bailey’s representation as a male/ father? He certainly has more in common with the Marlon Brando representation than he does that of Gary Cooper. IAWL was made in a time before The Method had made a large impact on acting techniques in the film industry. Audiences would not have accepted such a portrayal of George, given that we are talking immediately post-war, in which James Stewart had embodied a true American hero of the classical sense (he had commanded a squadron of air force bombers to medal-winning glory). The more famous Method actors were also a great deal younger than Stewart, who at this stage was thirty-eight. As such, George is without much of the innate childishness that is characterised by its battle with impending adulthood in the ‘rebel hero’.

The main problem lies in that George was never allowed a youth, and is forced into the constraints of the ‘social’ and ‘actual’ family without ever realising his goals. In this sense he has much in common with the likes of Brando and Dean, in that while they originally wish for the physical attributes and attitudes that would make them masculine in the superman tradition, George Bailey wishes to be an adventurer and explorer in the far corners of the world, like a Douglas Fairbanks or a Clarke Gable. He struggles against being tied down by family and society. When he first kisses Mary, he shakes her with promises that he will never ever marry, reinforcing his masculinity with the force of his hands(reminiscent of Terry Malloy’s manhandling of Edie Doyle in On the Waterfront when he first kisses her). Yet in the very next scene they are married and he is happy. Robert Ray’s structural approach to the film is key in identifying the conflicts within George’s character. In a commutation test of sorts, he lines the following side-by-side for analysis:

To these polar opposites I could add:

Pursuing such a route may signify that George’s main worry could be the threat of emasculation if he ties himself to the community. Such a viewpoint could portray George as metaphor for the returning war male, contented from the freedom of travelling the world, yet pushed into conformity by social etiquette. Yet George does not seem to question what it is to be a man. He is after all quite comfortable with himself. It is perhaps his relationship to the ‘meta’ rather than the ‘actual’ that puts him in crisis.

Yet applying Biskind’s methodology of political analysis, it becomes obvious that It’s A Wonderful Life follows a conservative theme- that of the small man- Joe Soap from Apelline as I mentioned earlier. This being so, the film yields to consensus- i.e. the American nuclear family is reconfirmed in line with the pluralist politics of the day. In fact it is reconfirmed to such an extent that it becomes fairy tale- a highly improbable situation in real life. As David Mamet writes of the accession of the Conservatives to the political throne in the early eighties:

The Conservatives, during their sway, merely had the government intervene for them. And it was in those Reagan years that It’s a Wonderful Life replaced Casablanca (1942) as the unofficial favourite film of America- the fantasy of the Compassionate Conservative.

Harwood agrees, as I have stated before, that 'successful nuclear families appear to be unrepresentable within a successful socio-professional framework' (Harwood 1997, 66) Such an unquestionable harmony within It’s a Wonderful Life would suggest its difference (from the other two case studies) lies in its emphasis of fantasy of fiction. If the notion of the American nuclear family represents the socio-political ideal of family relations, then It’s a Wonderful Life represents the ideal’s ideal.

Chapter Six

Conclusion

I have chosen the above three films for analysis as case studies for a very specific reason. They each come to a very different narrative resolution than the others. While all three in some way come down on the side of the family and reinforce the need for the family as the basic unit (whether that be the ‘actual’, the ‘metaphorical’, or both), they all do so because they were made as mainstream films, which would suggest, following Joan Mellen’s assertion that 'as always, Hollywood conforms to the orthodoxy of the moment' (Mellen 1978, 188), that they all more or less agree to pluralistic consensus.

Indeed one of my greatest regrets in attempting this piece of research is that I have not afforded myself the space to broaden the range of my analysis of film texts. I had originally intended to include analysis of a selection of B movies, with the hope that their avoidance of the mainstream would invoke a far more critical view of the prevalent puritanical values regarding the family. I also wished to include analysis of The Big Heat (USA, Lang, 1955), which shows a far less optimistic outcome for the ‘actual’ and ‘meta’ families within the mainstream film; and The Searchers (USA, Ford, 1956), which introduces concepts of race into decisions regarding who is worthy of being within the social family and who is not (not necessarily on the colour of their skin, but rather on their cultural values- the Us vs. Them philosophy).

To conclude, I would like to reiterate my thesis statement: ‘An analysis of the representation of the American nuclear family in postwar Hollywood cinema, specifically in the period 1946-1960. This analysis will pay particular attention to the representation of the male/father.’ Through my analysis of the three films above, I have conclusively examined these trends, finding various pluralist patterns at work within, and identifying various ‘actual’ and ‘metaphorical’ familial structures; their similarities throughout the various films and genres; and the functioning of the male/ father within these systems, his aims and his crises, and their narrative resolutions.

References

May 2002