Do ‘bad dads’ get a free pass in films?
In Hollywood, troubled moms seem to get a worse rap than their male counterparts
Is it cool to be a quirky mom yet?
Bad Moms( written and directed by The Hangover’s Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) raced Star Trek Beyond for No. 2 at the box office, opening just behind the sci-fi spectacle with $23.8 million (U.S.).
In the comedy, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn break with the idea of being perfect helicopter parents. They stop making breakfast. They curse in PTA meetings. They’re late to pick up their kids.
“That’s why this movie was so awesome,” Hahn says. “It felt like a cathartic roar to just defy that insane expectation that’s put on mothers.”
While Hollywood is no stranger to troubled matriarchs in movies, lacklustre mothers get a worse rap than their male counterparts.
“Traditionally, bad moms have been portrayed as mentally unbalanced, selfish, criminal and even evil, whereas bad dads have been portrayed as perhaps incompetent but benign and often comical,” says Martha Lauzen, a professor of TV, film and new media at San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.
In Captain Fantastic (in theatres now), Viggo Mortensen plays a nononsense liberal raising his six children far from capitalism in the rigours of the Pacific Northwest wild. But he’s not a bad dad. He’s principled. And sincere.
There’s an art to the bad dad in film — so much so that a new book, Bad Dads: Art Inspired By the Films of Wes Anderson, arrives Aug. 9. It’s a collection of roughly 400 artworks based on Anderson’s films. Ken Harman, who authored Bad Dads, says the concept was inspired by the “unforgettable fathers” in Anderson’s films, “this figure who is a bit of a rascal but still somehow finds a way to be endearing.”
Such stereotypes weren’t created in a black hole.
“We can trace Hollywood’s obsession with bad moms to the 1940s, when women moved into the workforce in large numbers,” Lauzen says. “Many films made a point of punishing mothers who were thought to be too independent,” she says, citing Joan Crawford’s Mildred Pierce.
But let’s not get too hasty celebrating Bad Moms as a harbinger of change, film historian Leonard Maltin cautions.
“I can think of lots of lousy and thoughtless fathers” in film, says Maltin, throwing out Robert Duvall in The Great Santini.
“It’s not that we’re more forgiving. We’re just more aware of fathers who take no responsibility — in real life, let alone movies,” Maltin says. “So it’s less shocking or incongruous.”
Still, it’s becoming trendier to reverse gender roles, says IMDb.com senior film editor Keith Simanton, citing Christina Applegate’s partying mom and her staid husband (Ed Helms) in last year’s Vacation reboot.
“Which is the exact opposite of the original Vacation,” he says.
In the past year at the multiplex, a multitude of mothers have emerged. Rose Byrne was equally unfit as Seth Rogen in Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising, while Kate Beckinsale proved a deliciously awful parent in Love & Friendship and Jennifer Saunders is an uproariously selfish mom in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.
So even if Bad Moms isn’t a marked shift, it’s a breath of fresh air, fuelled by an 82-per-cent female audience. “That’s a big opening for a femaleempowered film, which there haven’t been a lot of this summer,” says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.
“This is a movie about these women who (say), ‘I can’t be perfect anymore,’ ” says Bad Moms co-star Applegate. “I’m doing the best I can and that’s all I can do.”
“Many films made a point of punishing mothers who were thought to be too independent.” MARTHA LAUZEN PROFESSOR OF TV, FILM AND NEW MEDIA AT SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY