The Vicissitudes Of The Maternal Melodrama In Hollywood

The movie Parenthood (1989) revolves around the psychological stresses that are faced by families. From the name of the movie, the main theme is coined, involving the issues that are faced by parents while raising up their children. The movie is centered in the family of Gil and Karen, and their extended family. Set in a middle-class white society, the anxieties and pains of raising children are presented in the movie. Gil Buckman is a parent and businessman. His wife, Karen, comes out as a nearly perfect parent, and always stays at home. Gil and Karen have three children. The oldest child is Kevin, a nine-year old boy with emotional problems. The emotional problems that are experienced by Kevin form a very significant aspect of the movie,

In Junot Diaz’s short story “Wildwood,” many may argue that Lola’s mother Belicia deserved admiration for her subconscious overprotection and love for Lola that she portrays in an uncaring, despicable manner and especially because of her strong, independent fight against breast cancer. However, I think that Lola’s mother was unadmirable due to her lack of support, her weak role as a mother, and primarily because of her constant verbal and physical abuse that she bestowed upon her children.

The Parenthood film depicts average family that are changing life course which is the building block of many families. We have the father and mother with marital disfigurations of attachments, and lack of attachment between themselves and the relationships involving their four adult children and grandchildren. Furthermore, in this paper a description of accepting the shift generational roles and Structural Theory is analyzed and discussed in an article moreover, the Buckman’s family members accept financial responsibility for self and their families. Lastly, the subsystem chosen for the analysis, speculation is Larry.

Mothers are typically seen as kind, loving, and nurturing, at least in a perfect world, that’s how they are. Rather, in the real world many of us wish that is how all mothers are. Various situations can lead to a woman to be too mothering. It is a factor that transcends real life. This conflict causing dynamic is very prevalent in numerous stories, films, and plays. Two plays where it is shown in significance are Machinal and The Glass Menagerie. In both cases, the actions taken by the mother roles in the shows, resulted in some of the character’s roles ending in unfortunate events of some sort.

     The plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun, deal with the love, honor, and respect of family. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, the caring but overbearing and over protective mother, wants to be taken care of, but in A Raisin in the Sun, Mama, as she is known, is the overseer of the family. The prospective of the plays identify that we have family members, like Amanda, as overprotective, or like Mama, as overseers. I am going to give a contrast of the mothers in the plays.

This story was written in the late 1800’s, which emphasizes women and their place in society. The narrator’s story is quite accurate given the treating of her illness and the overall treatment toward the narrator herself at the time of publication. The deterioration of the narrator’s emotional state began when her career was at a halt when the responsibilities of motherhood overwhelmed her. This is when the narrator begins to fall into a depression that her husband, a therapist that was well respected, treated by a form of rehabilitation called the ‘rest cure’. This cure consisted of rest and destruction of all thoughts or actions toward a career. When this method proved to be unsuccessful, the narrator begins to understand her roles of wife and mother as the source of her depression. This leads the narrator to leave her husband, as well as her own child, in pursuit of leaving behind the chain that brought her career to a halt.

“should my son wake up, i have prepared my fabrication. on day he will grow too old to be told that a wandering man is a mirage and that naked flesh is a dream” (p88). the juxtaposition between the mother's lover for her son and the fact that she has to resort to prostitution evokes a feeling of empathy for

The character of the mother executes the tell-tale signs of counterfeit happiness when she tells the murderous story of the narrator’s father’s brother. “‘Oh honey,’ she said, ‘there’s a lot that you don’t know. But you are going to find out’” (36).

In psychology personalities are developed through several theorist, but from these personalities can become skewed, causing a psychological disorder on a person's personality. These personality disorders can commonly be seen in about 31 million Americans, which densely equals out to 15% of our population population (Davis, n.d.). Psychological disorders are seen as behavior patterns or mental processes that creates a difficulty for oneself or a hinder on an individual's strength to endure certain situations that take place in life everyday. Disorders are primarily discovered through psychological testing, however, it is possible to identify them through watching psychological films or thrillers. In this case, the character Joan Crawford will be analyzed for her dominant personality disorders in the movie Mommie Dearest. While watching the movie Mommie Dearest the audience can easily recognize obsessive cleaning rituals, a fantasy over one’s own success, and dramatic changes of moods that swing up and down. The main character, Joan Crawford, displays dominant characteristics of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and a narcissistic personality disorder. As an audience we see that these disorders become very upsetting to those that are close to her, affecting her relationships with everyone and everything, specifically with her daughter Christina.

In the 1950s, the world was recovering from world war 2 and it became important to rebuild the traditional family, such as; the men’s working role to support the family, male children were expected to follow in their furthers footsteps, woman were expected to passive, stay at home and admire teen boys. In the film OCTOBER SKY, directed by Joe Johnston in 1999, explores the 1950s view on family-structure and roles, particularly that of teen boys and that they are selfless, determined and able to make adult decisions. The film is set in a Virginian town called coal-wood where Homer Hickham ,a teen male represented as the boy next door , is expected to work in the coal mine like his father, however, in October 1957, everything changes when the

There are two different types of disorders, personality and psychological. Psychological disorders are behavior patterns or mental processes that cause serious personal suffering or interfere with a person’s ability to cope with everyday life. Personality disorders are patterns of inflexible traits that disrupt social life or work and may distress the affected individual (Rathus, 2010). One way to learn how to identify these disorders is through movie analysis. Movies can help the understanding of psychological and personality disorders because people can get a better understanding from a “show me, not tell me” aspect. It is hard for a student to understand what these disorders actually are unless, they are able to see them in a scenario.

Women throughout time have been forced to cope with the challenges of motherhood along with society’s expectations as to what a mother’s relationship should be with her child. Novelist, Agatha Christie said of the relationship between mother and child, “A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.” In Beloved, Toni Morrison examines the same idea; ultimately showing that the mother’s willingness to protect her child at all costs often endangers the mother herself. Beloved is set in the late 1800’s but Sethe’s experiences as a mother ring true with the experiences of mothers throughout time because the act of being a

In many novels and plays, one of the key components of the plot is family relationships. A family’s interactions with one another, helps the reader decipher the main conflicts and resolutions of the story. In the plays Long Days Journey into Night by Eugene O'neill and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, father-son relationships are perceived as a messy affair, full of unrealistic expectations, disappointment, resentment, and regret. These two plays portray the worst in the relationship between father and son. Both plays show how painful events can cause family members to harbor resentment and bad feeling towards one another. In both Death of a Salesman and Long Days Journey Into Night the unrealistic expectations, disappointment, and resentment

Psychoanalytic film theory, which is derived from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, appears in the discussion of cinema early in the 1970s. As the conjunction of psychoanalysis and film theory, scholars use this theory for textual analysis and different elements like the monstrous-feminine, mirror stage identification, and the Oedipus complex are concluded and developed. To reexamine the mother-child relationship, I will argue that these key elements of psychoanalytic film theory are useful to understand the psychic activities of protagonists of Black Swan and The Babadook. Additionally, they provide some evidence to explain the mode of how a mother gets along with her child. I will begin by discussing the term

The documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest has a plot that truly seems like something off of a twisted horror movie. With sudden twist and turns, keeping up with the story is intriguing as you do not know what information is next to come. The documentary is presented in a way that kept me at edge of my sit, presented so that the full story is not given right away, rather piece by piece without specific order. In the opening of the film, I was confused as to why Gypsy Rose would kill her mother and it seemed as though it was just another average murder documentary. However, things quickly became interesting and the “victim” began to be stripped of her innocence. I felt truly sorry for Gypsy and I could only imagine how life was for her, being in the blind never truly understanding the situation. When you are taught and controlled in a certain way, that is what you know and for Gypsy what she knew was a horror story life style. The way the documentary portrayed this 48-year-old savage, made me gain anger towards her. How could someone be such a despicable human? Even her parents talked in such a negative manner of her. With that being said, everyone knew the type of manipulative human being she was, therefore, someone at some point of time should have tried harder to check on Gypsy who had to deal with this woman for countless years. The conclusion of the film displayed some hope however it is sad that her happy ending had to end with 10 years in prison.