The Broken Family: An Analysis of Dysfunctional Behavior in American Society in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962) and The Shining (1980)
This film analysis will define the problems related to the dysfunctional family unit in American society in Stanley’s Kubrick’s Lolita (1962) and The Shining (1980). The underlying dysfunction of Kubrick’s family unit is primarily based on violence and sexual behavior that results in loveless and obsessive relationships. Lolita (1962) defines the broken family due to the deviant and obsessive behavior of Humbert Humbert (James Mason) that takes advantage of a young girl, Dolores “Lolita” Haze” (Sue Lyon). Lolita’s mother, Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), is unable to protect her daughter from Humbert’s deviant
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More so, this type of behavior defines how Jack is unable to properly father his son, Danny, as he descends into madness. Danny must, therefore, learn to rely on his supernatural ability to “shine”, which is a form of telepathic communication he learns from Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers). Kubrick is presenting the broken family unit as part of American life, which forces young people, such as Danny and Lolita, to use their own guile to outsmart predatory parental figures. Certainly, the overarching theme of the film is related to Jack’s inability to express his own feelings and emotions, which results in the attempt to murder Wendy and Danny. In this manner, the destruction of the traditional family is defined in the Torrance family’s descent into the madness while staying at the Overlook …show more content…
The theme of the broken family is part of Kubrick’s cinematic commentary on American family life, which often involves immoral sexuality and extreme violence as part of parental dysfunction. Lolita (1962) is an example of Kubrick’s evaluation of the immorality of American family life, which includes a sexually obsessive, abusive, and deviant father figure, such as Humbert, that takes advantage of his step-daughter, Lolita. This form of child abuse defines a lack of sexual boundaries in the American family that Kubrick highlights as part of American social conditions that define the broken family. More so, jack Torrance’s angry tirades and tendency towards violence and murder is another aspect of the dysfunctional; family that is broken by alcoholism and the evil force that resides at the Overlook Hotel. Lolita and Danny, of course, are the primary victims of parental abuse and neglect, which Kubrick presents as a major problem in American society. By exposing these dysfunctional and abusive relationships, Kubrick’s films provide insight into the immoral and violent cultural aspects of the broken family unit in the relationship between mother, father, daughter, and son. In this manner, Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962) and The Shining (1980) define the overarching societal problem of the broken family
The movie “The Public Enemy (1931)” revolves around the lives of two young men who venture into crime despite having solid background and support of a solid family. In particular, the movie focuses on the family of Tom, his brother Mike and their ever loving mother. The description of the mother in the entire movie as a doting parent illustrates the type of love that defines a family. In all the scenes that the mother is involved, the movie portrays a family as a haven of love, care and concern as the woman gets to show her sons the life she wants for them.
...e black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, incorporates Kubrick’s political beliefs through the film’s distinctive style, utilization of motifs, and the suggested affiliations between war and sex. Stanley Kubrick emotionally distances the viewer from this terrifying issue by illustrating the absurdity of the war. By implying sexual frustration and suppression as a reason for war tension, Kubrick displays a worst-case scenario of the Cold War in comical fashion. Dr. Strangelove is an anti-war satire that implicitly conveys the importance of sexual expression while humorously portraying the worthlessness of war and violence that ravaged the sanity of the 1960s American public.
In The Pathos of Failure, Thomas Elsaesser explains the emergence of a new ideology within American filmmaking, which reflects a “fading confidence in being able to tell a story” (280) and the dissolution of psychologically relatable, goal-oriented characters. He elaborates that these unmotivated characters impede the “the affirmative-consequential model of narrative [which] is gradually being replaced by another, whose precise shape is yet to crystallize” (281). Christian Keathley outlined this shape in more detail in Trapped in the Affection Image, where he argued that shifting cultural attitudes resulted in skepticism of the usefulness of action (Keathley). In Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, this crisis of action is a key element of the main characters’ failure, because it stifles the execution of classical narrative and stylistic genre conventions.
Lester is not the only character who suffers from this. His wife Carolyn and daughter Jane both know what it is like to feel trapped in an unhappy life. Carolyn is imprisoned by image. She has the notion that she cannot be happy unless everything appears as perfect. And Jane, feeling the weight of her parents, wants to break off from her prison, her home life. She like most teens views her parents as weird and wants out of that life.
In the movie, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Callie Khouri directs something of a powerful story between a mother and her daughter. The movie Life as a House (Wrinkler, 2002) tells something of the same; of a father and the fight for the love of his son. The two movies both portray the fight between parents and their children. The commonality between father and son and mother and daughter is portrayed through the troublesome children and the problems that they face together. The “abuse “ that these children have received has formed them into the people they are today. What these characters had become is something that they do not want to be. As we age, we begin to discover the importance of family as depicted through Life as a House and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
The noir style is showcased in Sunset Boulevard with its use of visually dark and uncomfortable settings and camera work, as well as its use of the traditional film noir characters. In addition, the overall tone and themes expressed in it tightly correspond to what many film noirs addressed. What made this film unique was its harsh criticism of the film industry itself, which some of Wilder’s peers saw as biting the hand that fed him. There is frequent commentary on the superficial state of Hollywood and its indifference to suffering, which is still a topic avoided by many in the film business today. However, Sunset Blvd. set a precedent for future film noirs, and is an inspiration for those who do not quite believe what they are being shown by Hollywood.
While the film focuses mainly on the theme of media responsibility and covers US’s politics in the early 1950s, it also encircles around other crucial themes such as sexism. This essay discusses about how this film is used as a tool for objectivity, agenda setting, stereotyping within gender, and how these has impacted the characters in the movie and viewers.
Slowly losing his sanity, the father enters a conversation with the ghost of a previous caretaker in the bathroom; they discuss his interest in joining the party, when the apparition asks why his son, Danny, “brought an outside party into [the Hotel]” (302). Referencing an African-American man Danny sent to save himself and his mother, Wendy, from his murderous father, Jack realizes that he must “shed his enlightened liberal schoolteacher/writer personality and adopt the racist views.. [of] wealthy, white, pre-Depression and pre-World War II American [males]” by killing the savior (302). He later succeeds, murdering the man en route to hunting down his son and wife. Furthermore, in the same conversation, Jack shows his narrow views as he references Wendy by calling her “the old sperm bank” (Metz 55).
Early in the film , a psychologist is called in to treat the troubled child :and she calmed the mother with a statement to the effect that, “ These things come and go but they are unexplainable”. This juncture of the film is a starting point for one of the central themes of the film which is : how a fragile family unit is besieged by unusual forces both natural and supernatural which breaks and possesses and unites with the morally challenged father while the mother and the child through their innocence, love, and honesty triumph over these forces.
Perhaps an even stronger testament to the deepness of cinema is Darren Aronofsky’s stark, somber Requiem for a Dream. Centering on the drug-induced debasement of four individuals searching for the abstract concept known as happiness, Requiem for a Dream brims with verisimilitude and intensity. The picture’s harrowing depiction of the characters’ precipitous fall into the abyss has, in turn, fascinated and appalled, yet its frank, uncompromising approach leaves an indelible imprint in the minds of young and old alike.
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) explores the intermingling of public and private realms, puncturing the illusion of the former and unveiling the grim and often disturbing reality of the latter. By delving into the personal delusions of its characters and showing the devastation caused by disrupting those fantasies, the film provides not only a commentary on the industry of which it is a product but also a shared anxiety about the corrupting influence of external perception. Narrated by a dead man, centering on a recluse tortured by her own former stardom, and concerning a once-promising director who refuses to believe his greatest star could ever be forgotten, the work dissects a multitude of illusory folds to reveal an ultimately undesirable truth. Its fundamental conflict lies in the compartmentalization that allows the downtrodden to hope and carry on. Sunset Boulevard carefully considers the intricate honeycombs of dishonesty and deception that constitute a human life, then dissolves the barriers and watches the emotions, lies, and self-contradictions slurry together and react in often volatile and destructive ways.
The Notebook (Cassavetes, 2004) is a love story about a young couple named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, who fall deeply in love with each other. The Hamilton’s are financially stable, and expect for their daughter Allie to marry someone with the same wealth. Noah on the other hand works as a laborer, and comes from an underprivileged family. Throughout the film there were several negative behaviors, and interpersonal communications within the context of their relationship, which relates to chapter nine. This chapter explores relationships, emphasizing on affection and understanding, attraction, and the power of a relationship. The focus of this paper is the interpersonal conflict with Noah, Allie and her mother, Anne Hamilton.
The story of Lolita was written in the United States during the 1950’s. Authors in the fifties were considered the Beat Generation and the movements were sexual liberation and disregard for traditional values in writing. Narratives seemed more liberated and open like Lolita because it is far from conservative and
In the days of black-and-white television and homemade apple pie, there existed a hallmark of perfection: the “all-American family”. This was composed of a mother who was always perfectly pressed and had dinner ready on time, a father with a good job who wore a suit to work every day, and two children who brought home perfect grades and were star athletes. This was the dream given to many Americans; a perfect family in the public eye, like the Cleaver family in the show “Leave It to Beaver”. This family had no marital disputes, no broken lamps, and no bills left unpaid, or so it seemed. Like these picture-perfect families, Allegra Goodman’s Sandy Glass wished to portray the perfect person, family, and lab, even when it was all collapsing in on itself.
In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the overruling drive of the narrator, Humbert Humbert, is his want to attest himself master of all, whether man or woman, his prime cravings, all-powerful destiny, or even something as broad as language. Through the novel the reader begins to see Humbert’s most extreme engagements and feelings, from his marriage to his imprisonment, not as a consequence of his sensual, raw desires but rather his mental want to triumph, to own, and to control. To Humbert, human interaction becomes, or is, very unassuming for him: his reality is that females are to be possessed, and men ought to contest for the ownership of them. They, the women, become the very definition of superiority and dominance. But it isn’t so barbaric of Humbert, for he designates his sexuality as of exceptionally polished taste, a penchant loftier than the typical man’s. His relationship with Valerie and Charlotte; his infatuation with Lolita; and his murdering of Quilty are all definite examples of his yearning for power. It is so that throughout the novel, and especially by its conclusion, the reader sees that Humbert’s desire for superiority subjugates the odd particularities of his wants and is the actual reason of his anguish.