The American Dream of Family in Film: From Decline to a Comeback

Abstract

The family and family-related values have always been a component of dominant culture and the American Way of Life. This article deals with the portrayal of the family in the New American Cinema, from the late 1960s to the present. It shows that film (and media) images are not necessarily up-todate: a culture lag may prevail between society’s material conditions (marital statuses, divorce rates, size of families, patriarchal or matriarchal structures) and its cultural representations (symbols, values and myths about the family). More specifically, it discerns six film cycles, each of which presented different images of the American family. They are in chronological order: the decline of the nuclear family; an attempt to substitute the nuclear family with alternative family structures (communes and professional groups); a cycle of films devoted to white suburban families; a cycle depicting troubled and tormented families; a cycle of youth-oriented films; and the most current trend, a return to traditional family values and structures. Over the last twenty years, the American family has seen many fluctuations in its cinematic treatment, going from severe decline in the late 1960s to a major comeback in the late 1980s. The study analyzes variations and consistencies in the narrative ideological and cinematic conventions of family films, and their interplay with the social and political contexts in which they are made and viewed.