Born on the Fourth of July: A Dangerous Mother

Born on the Fourth of July is an adaptation of Ron Kovic’s autobiography. Kovic begins as a patriotic high school wrestling superstar who enthusiastically enlists in the Marines. During his second tour in Vietnam, he accidentally kills a solider and later becomes permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The poor conditions of the Veterans Administration hospital and his recognition of the war’s futility lead him to become a prolific anti-war movement leader. The film’s roots in Ron Kovic’s memoirs leave little room for the subjectivity of other characters. Ron serves as the film’s orbit, and the women revolve around him as clichés.

In line with Ron’s harsh Catholic upbringing, Born on the Fourth of July egregiously mobilizes moral oppositions. In other words, it starkly draws the lines between good and evil. This moral schema extends to the key female character in the film—Ron’s mother, Mrs. Kovic. We have little sense of her motivations outside of her patriarchal and jingoistic values. Mrs. Kovic’s obsession with fighting Communism (“It’s God’s will you go!”) and strict enforcement of oppressive puritanical Catholicism lead to her son’s psychological trauma, thus positioning her as a villain.

The narrative does not construct her as an ideological victim, or in other words, a character confined by the constrictions of 1950s gender roles. Rather, she embraces the values of and her position within the 1950s American nuclear family  Ron’s mother is the one to victimize her son with certain toxic ideologies that motivate his suffering, such as individualism, male dominance, and xenophobia. Overall, the narrative excludes women by limiting their voice to clichés.

Ron’s disabled body and disillusioned spirit destroy Mrs. Kovic’s pre-Vietnam innocent and romanticized vision of him. It is in her rejection and discounting of Ron, I argue, that causes him to seek maternal comfort, approval, and a sense of love from other female figures in the narrative. Director Oliver Stone presents a highly saccharine portrait of Mrs. Kovic’s refuge (pre-Vietnam society) as the ultimate space of innocence He envisions 1950s America as an idyllic land of parades, home runs at baseball games, parental adoration, Kennedy’s rhetoric, and young, innocent love.

To match this sentimental vision, Ron’s mother first appears as an angel, shrouded in the heavenly glow of the film’s white tint. This moment contrasts with her final scene with Ron. When Ron returns home inebriated, soothing his rejection from his former prom date, we view Mrs. Kovic from his POV: a slight, high-angle shot in low-key lighting that renders her as an oppressive and frightening figure.

Ron’s tirade against the values Mrs. Kovic had instilled in him—pride in his country and belief in God—defines the scene. It becomes clear that he has developed a psychological complex about sexuality that will last throughout the remainder of the film. Ron feels Catholic guilt for wanting sexual satisfaction coupled with a frustration that he no longer has the ability to soothe these desires due to his disabled state. He fears remaining infantilized, as he had not lost his virginity before becoming paralyzed. Ron pulls out his catheter as he mourns his “dead penis” lost in the jungles of Vietnam. He cries, “The church, they say it’s a sin if you play with your penis but I sure wish I could.”

Ron’s mother screams and covers her ears because she cannot bear to hear these impure thoughts. In the culmination of their heated fight, Ron accuses his mother of forcing him to go to Vietnam, a corrupted war that made him kill women and children. After he denounces God and country, Mrs. Kovic declares Ron blasphemous and bans him from the house. Although Mrs. Kovic appears only in a few scenes, it is clear the psychological damage she inflicts her son is great.

Jacknife: Playing House

Martha works as a schoolteacher and takes care of her Vietnam veteran brother. She functions as both his housewife and mother: cooking and cleaning, waking him from drunken stupors, fretting over his late-night bar crawls and morning drinking habits. Her alcoholic and unemployed brother David is psychologically disturbed by the death of his friend and fellow solider Bobby. Megs’ arrival functions as the catalyst to remove both from their passive states. Jacknife stages the siblings’ cyclical post-Vietnam existence and within the oppressive space of the childhood home.

Jones employs claustrophobic framings to emphasize the home’s suffocating power. Kitschy trinkets and antiques fill rooms enveloped in elaborately painted wallpapers of intricate florals, mountain landscapes, or 1960s psychedelic circles. These styles harshly juxtapose other patterns found on props such as couches or blankets. David and Martha live amongst their parents’ possessions and décor while attempting to fill the roles they’ve left behind. David romanticizes the site of his prewar innocence, “I love this place. Every good memory I have.” With their mother living in Florida and father long since passed away, it is too late for the siblings to both regain the gratification of prewar familial bonds.

David’s paternal relationship embodies both the irreversibility of time lost and the larger national ideals found in Vietnam representation. David learned of his father’s death immediately after arriving home on the plane from Vietnam. He had anticipated a vengeful reunion with his father. “It was my dad’s gung-ho vet shit that got me to enlist in the first place. I’d been fantasizing for months that the first thing I was gonna do when I got home was deck that son of a bitch. These veterans had experienced youthful ideas of male adulthood through the lives of their fathers; fathers invoked the ideal of manliness for their sons.” Vietnam shattered the innocent ideals of World War II patriotism instilled by his father and it was too late to confront him.

 David attempts to recover the honor, integrity, and manhood that Vietnam combat was supposed to bestow on him by performing roles of masculine superiority and that construct Martha as both virginal housewife and daughter figure.  However, he simultaneously maintains the oppositional desire to be cared for as a child by positioning Martha as his mother figure. Also, David’s desire for a stable household and the restitution of paternal authority is acted out in a scene where he visits Bobby’s parents and virtually begs them to let him do chores around their house.Whether it be his sister or the parents of his dead friend, David is looking for anyone to parent him.

 The character of Megs unexpectedly arrives to coax David into joining him on a fishing trip. Martha is intrigued by this new visitor and proposes that she join them. “You’d think you’d enjoy a woman’s company for a change,” she tells David. This line indicates Jeffords’ theory of feminine exclusion. Veterans privilege the camaraderie of other veterans and forcibly extract a woman’s presence from their daily lives. “A woman we could use; a sister we don’t need,” David replies. We read this remark as David’s failure to construct Martha as a lover figure for his sister she cannot offer him sexual gratification. Martha disparages David’s choice in women, claiming that they are too simple to hold an engaging conversation. David replies, “If I wanted a point of view, I’d listen to the news.” This statement perpetuates Susan Jeffords’ discourse on the veterans’ appropriation of women’s bodies as “entrances to a place out of war.”  David does not bother to engage with women beyond a sexual relationship because they cannot ‘understand’ the war, for ultimately it is a ‘man’s story.’

Megs offers Martha a beer but David speaks for her to say that she doesn’t drink. Martha defiantly takes the beer and asserts that she will join the fishing trip, signaling her newfound agency and future alliance with Megs. Martha’s agency violates David’s need to reconstitute a household of patriarchal order. David confronts this disruption after spotting Martha and Megs on a restaurant date. Martha returns home to a darkened room and turns on the light to reveal David sitting in the chair like an angry father waiting for his daughter who missed curfew. “Becoming quite the social butterfly, aren’t we, sis?” he says, vehemently opposing Martha’s newfound independent discovery of a world beyond the confines of their home and complex relationship.

Martha’s emerging sexual agency threatens David’s construction of her as both virginal mother figure and daughter. David continues to enact the role of protective father by lecturing that Megs is dangerous, crazy and has assault charges. David walks into Martha’s bedroom after their fight, pleading like a petulant and punished little boy, “Is it really so bad around here?” Martha indicates his failure to fulfill her sexual desires, “The things I want, you can’t give me.” David quietly asks if she is going to leave. She replies, “someday.”  Martha threatens her agency just as her mother employed hers by moving to Florida. In this exchange, Martha establishes her ultimate goal to remove herself from these infantilized performances to become an independent woman in a romantic relationship away from the childhood home. Megs has sparked a change in her to take control of her life again. Jones reinforces Martha’s objective during one of the few scenes of her outside of Megs and David’s orbit. After teaching class, she observes students in the hall during a romantic embrace. Jones focuses on Martha’s reaction shot, indicating her discomfort that teenagers have pursued a relationship while she, an adult woman, has not.

In another scene, Martha rushes downstairs to proudly display her newly sewn dress. She announces that Megs is taking her to chaperone the school’s prom. David replies with a cruel and mocking laugh. He exhibits virile force by slamming the freezer door shut on Martha and screaming at her, performing once again as the protective father disciplining his daughter. He insists that Martha cancel the date. Martha threatens to leave “just like mama.” Jones frames this line on David’s facial reaction to signal the power and anxieties this event holds on him. After the argument, Martha sits on her bed and glances into her triptych mirror, indicating the variety of roles she playacts: the pretty prom date she longs to be and the roles of mother, daughter and wife she performs for David.

As this analysis indicates, the lack of parental guidance in Vietnam’s wake has left them both unstable. They are two adults playing a life-size game of house, pretending to be father and daughter or mother and son. But why does Martha willingly perform these roles?  She does not want to disrupt David’s world any further for Vietnam has taken enough from him. Just as David felt bound by familial duty to enlist in the war, Martha is bound to her responsibility to take care of her brother. Jacknife reinforces Martha’s strong bond and tender feelings towards her brother. One scene depicts Martha lovingly glancing down at the sleeping David while she gently rubs her hand on his cheek. Martha later admits that she only stays for him and she worries every single night that David is out there killing himself. Jacknife therefore defines Martha’s loving devotion for her brother as the impetus for her gendered performance and static existence.

Port of Shadows: Behind the Beauty

Port of Shadows can be read as an allegory for France wavering on the edge of disaster. Much like the fog and imminent storm the barkeep’s fixed barometer represses, the threat of fascism lingered over pre-war France. Mussolini established a fascist dictatorship in Italy while both the Nazi Party and Communist groups were rising. Jean embodies the wounded spirit of pre-war France and the gangsters represent the emergent fascist powers. France longs to avoid the fearsome future of oppressive rule, just as Jean plans to escape via the ship.

However, Port of Shadows considers the nation’s failure to armor itself against incoming threats. Collective and national forces against the rising powers are viewed as fruitless. Jean (France) is ultimately shot dead by the gangsters (fascists). Panama serves as a supposed refuge from the stormy weather and communal space but ultimately offers no protection against the storm outside and the gangster’s destruction.

Port of Shadows aptly encapsulates the characteristics of French Poetic Realism. The moody, soft-focus cinematography shrouds each scene with a dismal gloom. Even the fairground scene has a lingering melancholy. Atmospheric locales define the mise-en-scene: a rundown seaside tavern surrounded by a grimy and gravelly pier, pitch-black roads surrounded by stark trees and filled with fog and narrow cobblestone streets.

Port of Shadows employs French Poetic Realism’s focus on characters from a low social milieu. Jean is a runaway war deserter with no money to speak of, and he faces off against petty crooks, gangsters, and meager drifters. The pessimistic tone of French Poetic Realism is signaled by the characters’ tortured psyche and oppressive circumstances. Jean subtly indicates that he has disturbed wartime memories and Nelly is trapped by her lecherous guardian. Characters frequently express their distaste for living. Jean indicates that life has “been pretty beastly to me so far.”

This pessimistic tone is encapsulated in the bar occupants’ exchange with a suicidal artist. He admits that he cannot paint anything beautiful without seeing the crime behind it, “I’d seen crime in a rose” and “To me a swimmer is already a drowned man.” This cynical exchange concludes that there is always something malevolent lurking underneath our daily lives. (This also functions as another allegory for the surrender to rising fascist powers) Port of Shadows fulfills the sad endings of French Poetic realism when Jean dies in Nelly’s arms. Just as the painter professed, the beauty of love is thwarted by the crime lurking underneath. Port of Shadows concludes that happiness is fleeting and corruption always wins out in the end.

Gold Diggers of 1933: Cinema’s Great Escape

The economic catastrophe of The Great Depression compelled audiences to seek solace in the darkened theatre.  The opulence of the musical genre provided such a cultural salve with their bright musical numbers, witty jokes, and bow-tie endings of romantic unions.  However, I believe Gold Diggers of 1933 critiques cinematic fantastical escapism. The film rejects the passivism of its generic trends to expose, rather than repress, Depression-era realities for its spectators. Such critiques are found within the binaries of the “We’re in the Money” sequence. Ginger Rogers, the pinnacle of American goodness, fills the screen with her shining face as the camera reveals a bevy of glittering chorines. The reassuring and spectacular images of an American musical are undercut as the police rush the stage to confiscate the theatre’s property for its unpaid debts. Their stark black uniforms harshly juxtapose the women’s sequined beauty. They bring forth the mundane reality of the Depression for both the diegetic characters and the film’s spectators.

The following scene in the apartment exposes the Depression-era life of young actresses. The camera zooms in on a note passed through under the door, the landlady asking for the rent. The camera pans over the women sleeping side by side in the tiny beds of a ramshackle apartment. The actresses lament about their economic circumstances, complaining of scarce jobs and their perpetual hunger. We then see them consuming stale bread and stealing milk. They dream of their pre-Depression life visiting Park Avenue and going on Havana vacations. These conditions are not far removed from the lives of Depression-era spectators. These girls fantasize about inhabiting of the most luxurious and potentially prosperous professions in the world: the actress. Yet, it is a difficult one to pursue, and the Depression only exacerbated the problems of pursuing it. Acting is also an escapist profession. The women of Gold Diggers of 1933 long to pretend to be other people in order to forget about their economic standing, the same reasoning for spectators viewing this film.

The final musical sequence, “Remember My Forgotten Man,” confirms the film’s critique of escapism. The Busby Berkeley numbers preceding it enrapture the spectator with their stark Expressionistic graphics, hypnotic patterns and surreal construction of the female body. The elongated sequences play back-to-back until the abrubt disruption of this number, like a splash of cold water onto the spectator’s face. This number criticizes America’s involvement in World War I, depicting the war as tragic and senseless. The number also reveals the ramifications of Depression economics on our soldiers. “Remember my forgotten man?/You put a rifle in his hand/You sent him far away/You shouted ‘Hip hooray!/But look at him today.” Soldiers are considered a universal symbol of American pride and honor, failing them means that we have failed as a nation.

The lyrics: And once he used to love me/I was happy then/He used to take care of me/Won’t you bring him back again? / ‘Cause ever since the world began/A woman’s got to have a man/Forgetting him, you see/Means you’re forgetting me/Like my forgotten man brings forth the female perspective of this dilemma and asserts that the Great Depression has ripped the very fabric of America, the family unit. Images of wounded soldiers marching and carrying hospital gurneys through a harsh storm infuse this sequence with a meditative horror. The camera tracks down close-ups of soldiers waiting on a never-ending breadline. This image assaults the spectator with an overwhelming impression of the sheer amount of victims the Depression has claimed.  Gold Diggers of 1933 ends with this number, leaving the spectator to walk out of the theatre not with the dreamy Busby Berkeley sequences on their mind, but rather a haunting reminder of their current circumstances, thus circumventing any predisposed ideas of a backstage musical’s typical blissful ending.

The film ultimately calls into question the cinematic practices of the American public. Gold Diggers of 1933 refuses to pacify its audience by directly confronting Depression-era circumstances. Though it does not provide any explicit answers to the economic devastation, it urges Americans to question how they can resolve this, a resolution that will never come when one shelters themselves within cinema’s escapist fantasies.

No Looking Back: Edward Burns and the Boss

No Looking Back is likely one of the strongest works in Edward Burns’ canon, yet it remains grossly underseen and was a massive box office failure. (Burns later said his friends nicknamed the film Nobody Saw It. After its poor commercial reception he did not write anything for two years.) Edward Burns is strong writer and director, and I highly recommend all of his works. While I may have a bias because I am a major Bruce Springsteen fan, I am particularly intrigued with No Looking Back‘s intertextual relationship to his work. Not only does the film include three Springsteen songs, it can also be read as a modern visual representation of “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road.”

The film focuses on blue-collar characters with escapist fantasies, unfulfilled hopes, and fragile, unrequited love. Charlie (played by Edward Burns) returns to his Long Island home to reengage with his ex-girlfriend. Burns constructs a dismal, dark and flat milieu drawn out of typical Springsteenian iconography. The isolated and cloudy town is filled with garbage in the streets, decrepit buildings, gas stations, scrubby bars, old cars, and a seaside town adjacent to an aging boardwalk. Burns breathes to life Springsteen’s lyrics:

Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young

The female lead, Claudia, works at a dirty greasy spoon diner, but longs to escape the town and her low-class job. However, she feels bound to her fiancee. (Played by another famous New Jersey musican, Bon Jovi.)  Charlie, like the “Born to Run” narrator, wills Claudia to leave the town and move on with her life by romantically escaping with him.

We’re gonna get to that place
Where we really wanna go
and we’ll walk in the sun

Evoking these lyrics, Charlie dreams of running to travel someplace warm, like Florida. As in Springsteen’s song, the dreams of a sun-filled paradise directly juxtaposes their dismal small-town home.

However, Burns presents a unique twist to the song- these characters are not so young anymore. Both Charlie and Claudia have reached a crossrods in their lives. Society views them as too young to indulge in “childish” escapist daydreams. Rather, they should settle down into the adult aspirations of a nuclear family. The pair reflect the various small-town characters which populate Springsteen’s landscape. To quote “Badlands,” both Charlie and Claudia “spend their life waiting for a moment that just don’t come.” Too afraid to make a move, they remain complacent and static.

The lines:

The amusement park rises bold and stark
Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist
I wanna die with you Wendy on the street tonight
In an everlasting kiss

are evoked in one of the most unabashedly romantic sequences in the film. Charlie and Claudia share a passionate kiss on the beach shores, the bright sun filling the frame and illuminating their embrace. Wendy and her lover come to life in this angelic portrait of love.

Springsteen’s music makes its first diegetic appearance during a scene at the laundromat. “One Step Up” from the Tunnel of Love album plays softly on the radio. Charlie remarks on the song, and Claudia confirms: “You know I love all his stuff.”

Springsteen’s lyrics narrate her inner turmoil as the song abandons the quiet radio to overlay Claudia contemplating her relationship with Charlie. At this point, she begins negotiating her devotion to her fiancee and the unresolved feelings for Charlie.

I’m the same old story same old act
One step up and two steps back

As in these lyrics, Claudia has been trapped in the monotony and repetition of her life. She works a the diner day in and day out and returns home to someone she is only with out of expectation rather than devotion. The step she longs to take- leaving her hometown- is forever on the horizion but one she fears to reach. Although Springsteen retains a male point-of view:

When I look at myself I don’t see
The man I wanted to be
Somewhere along the line I slipped off track
I’m caught movin’ one step up and two steps back

the lyrics are transferred onto Claudia. Now that Charlie is back in her life, she questions the view of her self and circumstances. She has always longed to be so much more than a housewive and a waitress.

The next two sequences features two Springsteen songs concurrently, “I’m on Fire” and “Valentine’s Day.” The pulsating sexuality of “I’m on Fire” subtextually conveys the lingering attraction they still share. The song plays as the two prepare for their date. They change and determine the merit of their looks in front of the mirror. This is not a simple or casual reunion of an ex-couple. “I’m on Fire” presents the seductive promise of their reunion, preluding their reconnection in the motel room.

“Valentine’s Day” plays as their date continues.

One hand’s tremblin’ over my heart
It’s pounding baby like it’s gonna bust right on through
And it ain’t gonna stop till I’m alone again with you

The lyrics continue to subtextually convey the underlaying passion of their reunion and the electric chemstiry they share.

Ironically, the lyrics:

A friend of mine became a father last night
When we spoke in his voice I could hear the light

play as the characters discuss their aborted child. Edward Burns shares that he wants to be a father again, but Claudia reveals that she can no longer have children.The pair share a dance as the song continues. The simplicity of this sweet and romantic song conveys the power of their relationship, it is the beautiful center in their claustophobic small-town life. The song closes as their dance fades into a kiss in a motel room:

So hold me close honey say you’re forever mine
And tell me you’ll be my lonely valentine

No Looking Back reverts the male agency of Springsteen’s narrators to its female character. We can imagine Charlie singing the lines in “Thunder Road,”

All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey, what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair
Well, the night’s busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven’s waiting on down the tracks

promising Claudia paradise if only she will follow him. However, in No Looking Back, the Mary character leaves on her own. The film’s closing shot focuses on Claudia as she drives the car herself, leaving her small-town alone and on her own terms. This uniquely reverts the White Knight tropes in Springsteen’s work. Edward Burns, in one of his best films, manages to both mobilize and dismantle Springsteenian themes.