Comparative American Studies (2005) - Absent fathers and "moms," delinquent daughters and mummy's boys: Envisioning the postwar American family in Hitchcock's Notorious

Details

• article: Absent fathers and "moms," delinquent daughters and mummy's boys: Envisioning the postwar American family in Hitchcock's Notorious
• author(s): M. Chopra-Gant
• journal: Comparative American Studies (2005)
• issue: volume 3, issue 3, pages 361-375
• DOI: 10.1177/1477570005056914
• journal ISSN: 1477-5700
• publisher: Maney Publishing
• keywords: Absent fathers, Discourse, Discourse, Film Noir, Film, Genre, Genres, Alfred Hitchcock, History, Momism, Notorious (1946), Philip Wylie

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Abstract

This article analyzes Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946), paying particular attention to the film's deployment of the figures of the "absent father" and the "mom." The article examines the intertextual relationships that connect these representational figures in the film to a range of other sites within the contemporary culture where anxieties concerning these figures were articulated. The article thus presents a contextualized reading of the film that connects the film to some of the key discourses of its moment and, through this reading, argues for the necessity for film scholars to consider the impact of extrinsic historical influences in shaping the narrative concerns of Hollywood films, and for a shift away from the traditional taxonomic conception of genre toward a more fluid conception that allows genres of discourse to be traced through unlikely groupings of films and other contemporary cultural artifacts.