Domestic horrors: Family values and the intruder film, 1987-1997.

Abstract

Examines the intersection of family values discourse with a cycle of thirty American domestic intruder films, released between 1987 and 1997. The intruder films' thematic focus on the invasion of sacred boundaries suggest concentric circles of meaning along the borders of nation, family and body. Chapter One, I Can Have What You Have, examines representations of race and class in the intruder film in the broader discursive context of family values discourse as inflected by issues of homelessness, housing markets, racial relations, crime laws and home security. Chapter Two, Patriarch Games, examines representations of masculinity in intruder films in the broader discursive context of family values discourse as inflected by a perceived masculinity crisis, the so-called Vietnam syndrome, Robert Bly's men's movement, the militia movement, paramilitary culture, terrorism, and the AIDS epidemic. Chapter Three, Bad Daddies, examines intruder films in the broader discursive context of family values discourse as inflected by the battered woman's movement, media representations of domestic violence, and the use of battered woman's syndrome as legal defense in cases in which battered women kill their abusive partners. Chapter Four, White Male Paranoia, examines representations of female desire in the intruder film as inflected by family values discourse in the broader discursive context of competing discourses around female reproductive rights and representations of female sexuality in popular culture. Conclusions. The rash of intruder films released in the mid-to-late 1980s to mid-1990s performed the cultural work of unpacking a range of issues embedded in family values discourse, from homelessness to AIDS to domestic violence to reproductive rights to the war on crime, to terrorism to Welfare policy. The author concludes that intruder films, through generic codes of cinematic excess, perform the cultural work of suggesting various contradictions embedded in family values rhetoric. The thirty films covered in this study include: Fatal Attraction (1987), Home Alone (1990), Pacific Heights (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), Unlawful Entry (1992), Patriot Games (1992), and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992), among others.