Modern American Families Film Analysis

The title of of this class, Modern American Families, is an interesting one that can be discussed in various ways. The choice to watch films from several different eras was enjoyable. I elected to write a paper on the films we viewed in class and the themes they brought forth regarding “Modern American Families”. The two themes that I feel were most prevalent and important were courtship and marriage along with domesticity and gender roles. These are general topics, but I will dig deeper into more specifically how they were exemplified in the films, how they changed over time and how they relate to the material we have studied in class. The three movies we watched were Traffic of Souls (1913), It (1927), and Christmas in Connecticut (1945). These films were similar in the ways they portrayed gender roles and courtship, but since each is from a different era, the viewer witnesses progressive advancement in each film. To begin, I will discuss how the theme of courtship and dating presents itself in these films. In Traffic of Souls, there was not as much dating or courting taking place. However, one scene that stuck out was when a woman gave her fiancé a kiss. A window washer was standing next to the couple and felt compelled to look away despite it being an innocent kiss. This displays how physical …show more content…
In Traffic of Souls, the lead woman role was considered the head of the household. Men were characterized as aggressive and influential in this film while women were considered weak and submissive. Without men by their sides, the women in the film were lost and taken advantage of. According Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg in their book titled Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life, the clock had struck “sex o’clock in America” and morals were deteriorating (Mintz and Kellogg, 111). This is interpreted in the film with the prostitution and how much women were being taken advantage