Reading Analysis:
Tony Williams in his article argues with Carol Clover and Robin Wood that horror movies are not just horror movies but also have an underlying message or meaning that they try to promote through its subtext. Williams acknowledges the horrors that Clover depicts in her analysis of the “final girl” and the punishment of the female in horror films. He also recognizes the patriarchal, bourgeois, white, male gaze culture that Robin Wood recognizes often shapes the way the viewer sees the horror film, but Williams goes into detail about the horror of the family.
Williams analyzes the “bad mothers” of the horror films of the 1960s and 1970s and how these mothers were the root their child’s demented repressions that unleash themselves onto the unsuspecting group of teens or young adults. He also adds that the absence of the father in the family structure leaves room from unrequited patriarchal love to creep into the child’s life. He mentioned that the dysfunctions of the nuclear family and sexually/physically abused child victims had always been unfortunately present in American society, but the cracks in hegemony began to shatter unleash the killer offspring of the horror and slasher film into the screens of American movie theaters.
As the repressed child suffers under the patriarchal forces through their parents and the hegemonic orders of society, the child’s wants, fears, and counter-hegemonic operations. For Williams, he believes this began to blossom under the Reagan era and administration and the conformity of the purity of a patriarchal and white America, where minority groups and others weren’t tolerated or accepted into the societal structure.
Film Analysis
The overarching thematic intention of The Stepfather is the idea of the perfect nuclear family with patriarchal father at the head of the household where the female members of the family are submissive to his ruling. “Most 1980s horror films represent texts in tension illustrating contradictory features paralleling Antonio Gramsci’s insights into hegemonic and counter hegemonic operations” (Williams 194). In The Stepfather the hegemonic order would be the way of the patriarchal father and the push in the Reagan administration for the return to the nuclear family. Antagonist Jerry forces the families he plagues into the nuclear family mold with him being at the head of the household.
The audience sees Jerry puts the household and domestic life on a pedestal as he mounts a bird house with similar architectural features to his own residency. The bird house is isolated, almost existing within its own world with its own order, and the bird house also overlooks the family as they walk towards their own house. The bird house is as high as the house itself, really giving this overarching idea of the domestic household a really literal symbolism here.
However, by the end of the film after Jerry is defeated by Stephanie and Susan, Stephanie chops the bird house down represent a renewal of the matriarchal household, a stray away from the traditional nuclear family, and rebirth of this new family dynamic. The fact that Stephanie is the one to give the final hatch to the nuclear family is very impactful. “This era saw a growing revelation of cases of child abuse and dysfunctional families, giving the lie to the Reagan family dream” (Williams 199). The film portrays the dismissal of the child’s voice and opinion in the household as Susan continually tells Stephanie to obey and respect Jerry as the new patriarchal figure of the household. While Stephanie’s intuition about Jerry is correct, her thoughts are constantly rejected by Susan because of her age status. She’s a naive, immature teenager, so of course she would be dismissed by her parental figures, giving into Stephanie’s otherness due to her age; however, it is Stephanie to defeat Jerry, revealing the child’s liberation from the patriarchal figure. It is Stephanie who unveils the dysfunctionality of this family structure, so it needed to be Stephanie to destroy it once and for all.
The Stepfather also grapples with the idea of the lack of individuality under the conformity of hegemony. “Cracks within the Reaganite hegemony, Contragate, and the developing strains within the American social fabric brought these issues to public attention” (Williams 201). Ever persona that Jerry creates is existentially the same man: the ideal family. The only thing that Jerry variates is his name, his job, and his appearance. All of these men are family first to a point where the identities begin to merge, and he forgets who is playing at what point in time.
Jerry plays the part of the loving father because he thinks that is the societal standard set by a Reagan administration who was heart set on the push for the nuclear family in the American household. Jerry, who conforms to that ideal, lacks the individuality that a person needs to survive and be happy. He conforms to be safe and not be labeled as an “other,” but he lives unhappily and a shell of the man he could be if he wasn’t conditioned to thinking his sole purpose was to be the ideal family man. Jerry fabricated these families to feed into the standard of the Reagan administration’s nuclear family hope, but due to Jerry’s lack of independence and emotional instability, the facade falls and the dysfunction of the family seeps through, bring the Jerry’s destruction with it.
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