A Cultural Interpretation Of The American Family Ethics Film In 1980s

The family, as a basic unit of society, has a fundamental influence on the whole tone of the society culture. In this sense, the norms of family ethics not only regulate the relationship between family members, but also, to a great extent, reflect the overall society norms. The coming and going of an era is bound to leave some kinds of society imprints which belong to that time exclusively. The ethics film in the 1980s, as a vivid and visual way to express culture, undoubtedly presents the unique culture and humanistic feelings of that era. The thesis, based on films such as On Golden Pond, Ordinary People and Kramer vs. Kramer, aims to research the cultural implications of American family ethics films which are deeply influenced by the socio-economic-cultural conditions in the 1980s.This paper is divided into seven parts. The first part is an introduction concerning the subject, methods and significance of this research. Other related research results are briefly examined here. The first chapter briefly reviews the history of changes of family ethics film, providing a historical background for the emergence of the United States family ethics film in the 1980s. The second chapter describes the United States’ culture in the 1980s as a whole, and investigates the social and cultural background of the emergence of the family ethics films. It also describes the basic characteristics of these films, trying to offer a cultural reading of these films. The third chapter analyzes the establishment of the masculinity dignity in the films in terms of "reshaping the image of father" and "new type father". With a series of social movements and thoughts, to reestablish the image of father is not simply to return to the previous father image, but to provide a new touched by conflicts and fissures. Therefore, the return of "father" is never a smooth sailing but a tortuous journey, precisely this tortuous journey just endows the family ethics films in the 1980s a narrative power. The main content of the fourth part is how the image of women which is represented by mothers convey the desire for family order and cultural reconstruction. Both alienated mother-child relationship and the recurrence of traditional mother image are present in the family ethics films in 1980s. This contradiction implies the entanglements and difficulties in the process of cultural reconstruction. In the fifth part, it describes how the family ethics films tell the family reunion stories and how contradictions among family members are dissolved and the gaps reduced. The last part ends with a comparison between the different expression of Chinese and American family subject films, stressing the types and features of culture expression in Amencan melodramas...