I think it was six years ago, coming home from a screening of Zathura, that I started seriously wrestling with the problem of what I’ve come to call the Broken Family Film.
On the one hand, marriage and an intact household with father and mother raising children together is and will always be the ideal, the standard, the norm. Divorce has become “normal” in the sense that it is a matter of common experience, but we don’t want it to be normalized in the sense of being accepted as something that just happens and is just an inevitable part of life, something that is nobody’s fault or is all for the best.
On the other hand, given the reality of ever larger numbers of children with parents who aren’t married and don’t live together, we can’t expect every family in the movies and TV—even in children’s entertainment—to look like the ideal. Stories can’t ignore real life, or they become irrelevant. We need stories to explore how life ought to be, but also to explore how life actually is. Children growing up in broken homes need stories that resonate with their experiences.
The thing is, the term Broken Family Films is ambiguous. It can mean family films about broken families, made by and for a culture of broken families. But it can also mean family films that are broken in one way or another. But how? There is brokenness and brokenness—sometimes wholesome, sometimes not.
For example, a Broken Family Film can be brokenhearted about about the breakup of the family—like Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which is rife with unresolved grief and anger at the unseen absentee father who has bolted to Mexico with his mistress Sally, also unseen.
On the other hand, Broken Family Films may also be readier to make peace with the broken home as the way things are—to prod characters unready or unwilling to embrace the post-divorce state of affairs along their developmental arcs toward acceptance and moving on. Take The Santa Clause and Night at the Museum, in which (respectively) Tim Allen and Ben Stiller play ditched ex-husbands struggling for dignity and self-respect as their sons watch Mom move on with her new Mr. Right. To the extent that such fantasies paper over the trauma of divorce, they might be considered “broken” family films in a sense less welcome than the emotional brokenness of E.T.
Broken family films are not always about post-divorce families. The plots of Will Ferrell’s Elf and Pixar’s Ratatouille each turn on a major character of illegitimate parentage (with a father who never knew of his offspring’s existence, and a blood test to confirm paternity). Orphanhood remains a common condition in family films—often without “broken family” angst, though not always, Lilo & Stitch being a poignant example of an angsty Broken Family Film about orphaned sisters. Divorce, though, remains the main factor in Broken Family Films from Disney’s Enchanted to Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.
Reflecting on these and other Broken Family Films, I was struck by how often the term “broken home” seems to be more than a mere metaphor—how often the trauma of a broken household is poetically reflected in physical threats or damage to the actual house.
For example, in Lilo & Stitch, Lilo and Nani’s house is literally blown apart and burned to the ground by battling aliens. In Zathura, the movie that started me thinking about these questions, the brothers’ house is magically uprooted and thrown into outer space, where it is systematically demolished by threats ranging from meteor showers to alien attacks.
In the granddaddy of all Broken Family Films, E.T. Elliot’s home is broken into and invaded by terrifying, faceless men in spacesuits. (Compare that frightening domestic invasion scene to the sequence in Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which Teri Garr’s character is terrorized in her home by a flying saucer at the same time that her husband’s increasingly aberrant behavior threatens their marriage. The catch is that in both Spielberg scenes the seemingly menacing assailants turn out to be friendly. By contrast, the Spielberg-produced Poltergeist seems to reflect similar anxieties on the level of imagery, though Tobe Hooper’s film, with its intact family, lacks the marital angst of Spielberg’s films.)
Among all these, four movies stand out to me as outstanding in their use of house-household symbolism to convey the trauma of a broken home through trauma inflicted on a physical house:
- Zathura,
- The Spiderwick Chronicles,
- Monster House and
- Up.
For those interested in exploring in depth how house/household symbolism plays out in these family film stories of divorce and death, I’ve written an essay exploring these four films for Image Journal: “A House Divided: Broken Homes, Flying Houses, Divorce, and Death in Family Fantasy Films.”
What do you think? What depictions of broken families in family films strike you as valuable or problematic? Any Broken Family Films about physically threatened or traumatized houses I haven’t mentioned?
Please also let me know what you think of “A House Divided.” It’s the fruit of long reflection, on a topic that looms large for me, having grown up in a household very much under attack in the ways reflected in these films.
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The first film that comes to mind is “Over the Hedge,” which I saw in the theater and thought was rather funny—except for the rag-tag bunch of animals led by the really annoying neurotic turtle. It included a father and daughter team of hedgehogs and a bunch of single animals, and the stupid turtle kept calling it a “family.” It took the whole “anyone can be a family” thing to absurdity. They were different species of animals! Hedgehogs and turtles and skunks, etc., do NOT look out for each other. This is not to say that such a thing can’t work—my family loved and still loves “Madegascar” (which I know you don’t like) and it is all about a bunch of different animals looking out for each other. But IMHO that was done well—they are obviously friends who take the place of a non-existent family. They don’t claim to BE a family. But in “Over the Hedge” it was obnoxious beyond belief, very self-righteous in the whole “we can construct our own reality and it’s actually better than the real thing” kind of vibe that Hollywood pushes.
The plot of this movie is that a fox tries to trick the “family” of peaceful herbivores into collecting food from the housing development that sprung up while they were hibernating so that some predator animal doesn’t kill him. Of course by the end he realizes that he is selfish and lonely and joins the “family” and they defeat the big bad whatever it was. There are great movies about lonely people forming substitute families, but such families are indeed always SUBSTITUTES for families. This one has the actual family of hedgehogs (or maybe they were possums) subsumed into the “ad hoc” family as if being related to other people isn’t important or necessarily desirable, it’s just an option. It presented a broken an ad hoc family as the normal state of affairs. Oh, and when we tried to watch it again on video none of us could stand it. Definitely a one-time-only movie!
Compare that with a fabulous movie such as “Wall-E,” in which there are no families. The children seem to be raised in groups by friendly robots, while the adults are so busy with their computers and games that they don’t pay much attention to each other. But in the end, the movie seems to say that men and women falling in love and welcoming children is the natural state of affairs and that, awakened from their endless playland, people will go right back to it—and to a hard life of challenge and labor—with joy and wonder because that’s what they are made for. In that movie the whole world is a broken family, and only when people return to it does the world heal.
im reading asimov right now…. wall-e reminds me of spacer worlds, with one worls (solaria) full of people allergic to each other to point that the kids bring pain - and are brought up by robots… another book, “aurora” is a place where sex is nothing… still birthed by mom, but no kids are mentioned - each puts up with husband/wife long enough to have a kid, but the kids are - well, brought up by robots…
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both times the kids arent in home anymore, brought up by robots… in aurora, they can even have sex with parents/sibs/grandparents… kids who are not perfect are got rid of…
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what are we doing???
I agree. Sometimes I yearn for good movies that show two parents who love and care for each other and their children, but those lately seem to be overtly Christian (no problem with that at all, though). I even struggle with the very cute, 90s-era “Parent Trap,” although it presents divorce less glamorized than the 1960s version (imagine, divorce being glamorized) and the parents do eventually wind up back together.
The problem with “Parent Trap” - both of them - is that in order to make the re-union plausible, both adults are selfless enough and wise enough that they would never have gotten divorced in the first place. But it’s a rom-com, which are always contrived anyway.
Mr. Greydanus—your work is invaluable. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping to foster a Catholic culture, in which engagement with the prevailing culture is a necessity for survival and reliable guides to navigating our encounters are few and far between. Your essays discussing cinematic themes are must-reads for any serious Christian who loves film, and your reviews are must-reads for my children when they want to know if they can ask me to watch a particular movie or not. Thank you.
Wow. I just read your complete essay. I can’t wait to share and discuss with my son, who enjoys your reviews, has seen several of the films you contrast, and adores Up particularly. Thanks again!!
“Mrs. Doubtfire”, anyone? More examples of how NOT to do things, even creatively!
Oh yeah, “Mrs. Doubtfire” has to be the worst “broken family” movie. It is a funny comedy, but a awful family film, glamourizing divorce, homosexuality and “diversity” all at the same time.
On the other hand, Up is one of the best and more emotionally realistic movies about the subject in modern times. Beautiful movie, I never get tired of watching it!
Yea, regarding Mrs. Doubtfire definitely glamorizes divorce. When the character of Robin Williams offers to go to therapy with Miranda to save the marriage, she replies, “It’s too late for that.” It’s never too late! Miranda also talks about how she’s a better person without her ex and she’s sure that he’s a better person without her. What is especially awful is the end scene where it talks about how basically families come in all shapes. I mean sure that’s a painful reality, but it isn’t a good thing. Just because other people don’t live the ideal family, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try for it.
The Princess Diaries and What a Girl Wants are problematic family films as well.
I can think of some positive unconventional family films. Meet the Robinsons is an example. Amongst its themes is that a married couple can find fulfillment in adopting a child. I see it as a beautiful film promoting adoption. There’s also The Blindside, where a white family takes in an African American teenager and his life is so much better because of it, as opposed to how his life was in what appeared to be in households which were abusing the fostercare system. His biological mother, though clearly incapable of taking care of him is affirmed as well. Maybe Groo from Despicable Me will eventually get married so his three little girls can have a mom.
I think one reason ” The King’s Speech ” did so well is that it went against the dismal tide of brokeness in movie families. Despite the fact the characters were royalty, audiences clearly related to a husband, wife and family who actually loved each other and stayed together.
The only Disney cartoon I’ve ever seen WITH an intact family was Pacha’s family in “The Emperor’s New Groove” (well, and “Mulan”, but since they worshiped their dead relatives I’m not sure how functional that can be considered). Barring those exceptions, there is ALWAYS at least one parent missing (where are the mothers of Jasmine, Ariel, Belle, Pocahontas, Simba, etc.?)
It seems a deliberate attempt to normalize and even romanticize broken families, and even show their desirability.—There’s a certain sort of glory kids find in being able to feel sorry for themselves. (Think of Huck Finn watching over his own funeral and crying).
The underlying teaching throughout the Disney movies seems to be that “family is whatever you define it to be, or whatever it needs to be”- (in Lilo and Stitch there’s even an explicit redefinition: ‘ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind’) -Obviously there’s a sense of family that still remains in the absence of a parent or sibling, but even then the family is not WHOLE.
Family is supposed to be father and mother and children. If it is redefined in the circumstance of aliens or death or abandonment, why not redefine it for homosexual couples and test-tube babies and polygamists and whatever else? The premise that family can be redefined has dangerous social consequences for the later decisions of the children being informed by those movies.
i.e. Supposedly, if “family” is only “loyalty” (‘no one gets left behind’)- then when someone is disloyal it is justified to break it up, and any two men or man and three wives can be considered a family as long as they are “loyal” to one another.
Thank you for your work in critiquing media targeted at children. I get so frustrated when people have the attitude that if something is for kids we don’t need to think too deeply about it, since the children supposedly won’t think deeply about it. But the elementary years are for teaching the elementary truths!
In our family the movie ‘The Incredibles’ is our ‘gold standard’. We seem to compare new films against that one. I liked the realistic mom vs dad stuff but they seemed to reconcile and the family came out stronger in the end and intact.
Fr. Isidore Bard: Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I started to reply, but it’s morphed into a blog post in itself. More tomorrow. Cheers.
Mama Toad: Thanks for your very gratifying comments.
You have to remember that having some kind of broken family is almost a prerequisite for a kid’s movie. For many stories to work the child has to be in some sort of trouble, or left without guidance, to begin with. I’ve often read that in Disney movies it’s usually the mother who is dead because that is more difficult for children, and a character living with a dad who is doing his best but not really cutting it is easier psychologically than a character living with a mother who is not able to manage things. People don’t expect the dad to manage things on his own, I guess, so he can be bumbling and funny (“Beauty and the Beast,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”)—but a mom on her own is just SAD, and a child who disobeys or leaves the mom, as kids in these movies usually do, doesn’t work as well. Many kids in movies with only the mom around tend to end up saving the mom in some way. Or, as in the “Toy Story” movies, the mom being by herself wasn’t even a plot point. I didn’t even notice there was no dad until someone pointed it out to me. In “Up,” the dad’s not being there was really beautifully handled, and the boy’s mother was portrayed as sympathetic but not in any way in danger. Anyway, establishing a child character as someone you should feel sorry for is not the same as saying, “isn’t life in a broken home just great”? THOSE are the movies that bother me.
No one has mentioned the “Spy Kids” movies. I loved that in the first one the kids thought their parents were dull and boring, but they were really international spies! I think that was brilliant. They were very family-friendly movies.
I’m not a big Disney fan, but the absence of mothers in many of their animated movies is due to the source material, as motherless children or orphans were common heroes of many fairy tales.
“The premise that family can be redefined has dangerous social consequences ...” Yes, thank God. Matt. 8:21-22 and 10:34-37, for example, are brutally clear statements of exactly that fact. (And the continuing popularity of material from John Ford to “Firefly” tells us there’s continuing demand for building families. Which is a very different thing from tearing them apart.) Mr. Greydanus is well aware of this, which is why “A House Divided” ends as it does. “Who is my brother?” is a question asked too rarely, and I’d missed the fact that ‘Up’ asks “Who is my grandson?”
Steven:
Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” should be added to your canon. Not just one family house but three get trashed as Spielberg, yet again, deal with daddy issues.
Ah! Such a nice post…and it’s timed rightly. In most of the films that I watch these days on DISH Network PPV (I can’t go out as I suffer from gout)I find either the main protagonists are single mom or dad and that makes me think aren’t these films promoting divorce or separation? I might be old-school but I still believe in those ‘Happily ever after’ movies.
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