So Melissa at Shakesville was not impressed by the trailer for The End of a Love, a new film about “a grieving father struggling to raise his two-year-old son alone.”
It’s not that this, too, isn’t a story worth telling. (I assume.) It’s just that it’s already been told. I have been implored so many times to offer my heartstrings for the tugging on behalf of the privileged guy who can barely get laid what with all the daddying he has to do. Or all the depression he has to overcome. Or whatever.
Meanwhile, try to get a film made about a disabled mother who is raising children on her own while not making enough money at something way more mundane than trying to become a movie star, and see how that goes. BO-RING!
Over at “Feminist Critics,” Ballgame is unimpressed by Melissa’s unimpressed-ness. He praises The End of a Love for being a positive depiction of a single dad, and accuses Melissa of being a hypocrite because a post she wrote didn’t criticize sexist stereotypes in “Iron Man,” although that post was actually written by a different writer. 1
Ballgame made a more interesting point in comments:
If the existing movie focuses on a relatively under-served segment of the market (such as single fathers), I don’t think it’s fair to say a different movie focusing on an even more under-served part of the market should have been made.
So here’s the conflict: Melissa thinks that we’ve seen lots of movies about how hard it is for single fathers, whereas Ballgame thinks it’s an underserved market.
Some relatively recent films where a lead or major character is a single father: Les Miserables, The Pursuit of Happyness, Finding Nemo, 2 The Holiday, Definitely Maybe, Love Actually, Jersey Girl, Sleepless In Seattle, A Simple Twist of Fate, I Am Sam, The American President, Martian Child, We Bought A Zoo, Dan In Real Life, One Fine Day, Big Daddy, The Game Plan, The Pacifier, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Mall Cop, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Jack the Bear, and Four Single Fathers.
Is that a lot or not enough? Heck if I know. It does show that Melissa is right to say that The End Of A Love isn’t breaking new ground with a single dad protagonist.
That said, I want to see single male dads on screen, and I don’t care if it’s already been done. 3 There remains a cultural narrative that says that only moms can nurture, and therefore movies that push back against that narrative remain valuable.
On the other hand, what about single mothers? I want to see more of them on film, too. In the USA, there are over 5 single mother households for every single father household, yet I don’t think there are over five times as many single mom films as single dad films. And we need pushback in this area also – it feels like there are an endless supply of social conservatives ready to blame single moms for most of society’s problems.
In movies overall, women and girls are slighted. According to media scholar Stacey Smith:
Examining over 5,000 characters, a recent study of 122 G, PG, and PG-13 films theatrically released between 2006 and 2009 showed that less than 30% of all speaking characters are girls or women. Put differently, the ratio of males to females on the silver screen is 2.42 to 1. While on screen portrayals are skewed, the percentage of females working behind-the-scenes is even more abysmal. Across 1,565 behind-the-scenes employees from the same 122 films, only 7% of directors, 13% of writers and 20% of producers were female. This translates into a ratio of 4.88 males to every 1 female.
I think this is the heart of Melissa’s complaint: It remains a lot easier to get a movie financed and made if it’s about a man, especially a white man. There’s nothing wrong with Mark Webber, the white male writer, director and star of The End of a Love, making a film starring himself. There is something wrong, however, in the fact that it’s a lot more likely that we’ll see such a film from Mark Webber than from Mary Webber.
As Melissa said, that doesn’t mean that The End of a Love isn’t a terrific movie. 4 It’s not about this one film; it’s about how women and girl characters, single mothers included, aren’t given equal treatment in films in general.
P.S. Full disclosure: Like Melissa and Ballgame, I haven’t actually seen The End of a Love yet.
Hat tip to Fannie’s Room, who also criticizes Ballgame’s post.
- Even if Melissa had written both posts, Ballgame’s comparison would be more point-scoring “gotcha!” than intelligent criticism. Sometimes I feel like writing a careful analysis of a piece of media, and sometimes I just wanna say “the film was fun but the seats were awful.” That doesn’t make me a hypocrite. ↩
- In comments, Ballgame – who has never seen Finding Nemo – bizarrely dismissed it by saying “an animated movie like that wouldn’t merit too many points.” What the aitch ee double hockey sticks? ↩
- George: I’ve nothing to say Dot: You have many things George: Well, nothing that’s not been said Dot: Said by you, though? –Stephen Sondheim lyrics from Sunday In The Park With George. ↩
- The main character’s son is played by Mark Webber’s real-life adorable toddler, who was just reacting naturally to his dad. That sounds really neat to me, and a review I read claimed the very naturalistic parenting footage is the film’s strongest point. ↩
Categories: Fatherhood
THIS. Which is why I really like the site Women and Hollywood, because it keeps me up to date on films being made and/or released by and/or about women. (for the most part, I find independent films offer more complex female characters; I really credit the rise of Netflix to the fact that theatres don’t take chances on these films by releasing them to wider audiences)
they forgot kramer v. kramer on the list. perhaps just as well. and what about mrs. doubtfire? im not a moviegoer at all and i can think of plenty more films that ive seen about heroic single dads and villianous ex wives than vice versa. unfortunately dont remember all there names. there is a cultural narrative that dads are less nurturing? maybe. there is also a strong cultural narrative about the selfish x wife running off and taking poor.dads kids away
It’s completely ridiculous to off-handedly remark about the “endless supply of social conservatives ready to blame single moms for most of society’s problems.”
They aren’t blaming the moms.
They’re blaming the situation of fatherlessness in society.
There’s a difference. And you simply look like a shameless ideological opportunist by trying to smuggle in a portrayal of the position as attacking those poor embattled women. The social conservatives would say they are actually trying to help such women by encouraging the support of fathers in more households.
Anyway, I agree with the main point of the article. I’m tired of feminists acting like male problems don’t matter and shouldn’t be talked about simply because females have their problems too.
Once upon a time, we argued/bragged about who had a bigger sword. Now we argue/brag about who is the bigger victim.
Why not just take the human condition as we find it, and quit engaging in these zero sum games (more attention for him means less attention for ME!)?
Kramer vs. Kramer was a great film. Lots of us single fathers can identify with Dustin Hoffman’s character. (Ms. Doubtfire was a fun comedy, but not much to do with real life.) I didn’t see this new movie yet; I don’t have much time to get out to movies. But I think that movies such as this are important for overcoming the much more common stereotype of “deadbeat dads”. Movies don’t make a big deal about single mothers, because it is so common and just expected that the mother will get the kids after a divorce. I don’t believe that there is any cultural narrative about “selfish ex wives running off and take the kids away” from Dad — this is fully supported in both our culture and in the family law courts of many states.
The reality is:
75% of custody awards are to the mother, only 10% are to the father, and 15% are 50-50 joint custody. (according to a study by National Center for Health Statistics). 85% of all single-parent homes are a single mother. Americans pay about $40 billion per year in the form of child support and spousal support, and 84% of the payers are men. (See http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsus.shtml).
These rare movies that show fathers in a positive light are culturally important. So, too, is the work of Father’s rights organizations such as Fathers and Family, American Coalition for Fathers and Children, and Father4Kids. Promoting fatherhood is a very important part of the overall goal of strengthening families and marriage in America.
Ann Coulter wrote a book chapter entitled, “Victim of a Crime? Thank a Single Mother.” How is that not blaming the moms? And what of Dan Quayle, blaming a fictional single mother for contibuting to a “poverty of values” in America? These instances may be somewhat dated but I rarely see social conservatives disagree with them.
I’m also astonished that those who profess to value fathers think a single-female headed household is “fatherlessness”, as if every man who is not married to his children’s mother has abandoned them.
So Anne Coulter and Dan Quayle constitute an “endless supply?”
No, they are representative. Do you disagree with their comments?
They are not representative – they represent the extreme far right of the spectrum. Not the “bulk” of conservative commentators. Nor are they even remotely an “endless supply.”
In fact, I’m not even sure they’re being quoted correctly (I’ve learned over the years never to fully believe a quote given to me on the Internet).
But as the “quotes” stand – no – I do not agree with them.
Seth, they’re fairly representative of how single mothers are discussed on the far right, and the far right is extremely influential within the Republican party.
And I didn’t say there’s literally an endless supply – I said it “feels like” an endless supply. (Obviously, there is not a literal endless supply, given that there are a finite number of human beings in the world.) And I think it does often feel that way to many single mothers (or at least, I’ve heard and read many single mothers make similar comments to the one I made, about feeling as if they are often being blamed for society’s ills).
I think we’re looking at examples of how our perceptions are affected by where we sit in society.
To a single dad, it seems like there are very few movies about single fathers and that the movies don’t portray them in a positive light. To a single mom, it seems like movies about evil moms leaving are everywhere.
You’d have to get someone to do a real analysis where they counted movies in the past five years or TV shows to make any definitive statements on the question.
For now I’ll go with it’s good to have movies about single dads and about single moms that are sympathetic to what they do.
@Barry Deutsch – “And I think it does often feel that way to many single mothers (or at least, I’ve heard and read many single mothers make similar comments to the one I made, about feeling as if they are often being blamed for society’s ills).”
I have also heard single mothers talk about feeling this way. I think they are partly right and partly wrong. There are people who do, I think, blame them. There are also people who think that it would be good for society if single moms were censured more.
At the same time, it seems to be hard to talk about some real problems. Children being raised by only one parent are at a disadvantage. So are children being raised by two parents who are divorced or no longer live together. An increasing proportion of children in our society are being raised this way or at risk of it.
To me the question is how can we talk about the real problem without insulting single mothers?
Can we get Ann Coulter to shut up (she’s uncivil enough to deserve that, I think) and can we talk about the issues?
The only thing I’ve heard from conservative commentators (Christianity Today for example) is that single motherHOOD is a social ill responsible for a great deal of problems. For which they often have fairly good evidence.
Note the “hood” – i.e. – not the moms themselves. Most conservatives I’ve read view the mothers just as much as victims of the social order as the kids.