Fathers on Film: Paternity and Masculinity in 1990s Hollywood

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Description

The father is an enduring and iconic figure in Hollywood cinema and in the 1990s, narratives of redemptive fatherhood featured prominently in some of the decades most popular films like Kindergarten Cop (1990), Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lion King (1994). Interpreting such films through the lens of feminist and queer theory, along with masculinity studies and psychoanalysis, Katie Barnett offers an insightful and interdisciplinary discussion of cinematic fathers. Barnett reveals that the father figure is often portrayed as one that invests in and is part of a discourse of reproductive futurism. This plays out across a range of genres including rom-coms, fantasy, sci-fi, drama, and disaster. By exploring both blockbuster and more low-budget films of the 1990s, Barnett explores the figure of the father against the crisis of masculinity in the United States, and indeed more globally, at this time.

Author Bio

Katie Barnett is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Chester, UK. She has published work on the star persona of Robin Williams, cult television practices in Freaks and Geeks, and representations of boyhood and death in film. She has contributed to the film blogs Bitch Flicks and Screening Sex, and is a former editor of the journal 49thParallel.