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- Title
Fatal Attraction: The sinister side of women's conflict about career and family.
- Authors
Bromley, Susan; Hewitt, Pamela
- Abstract
As American society has changed from the liberalism of the 1970s to the conservatism of the 1980s women's chances of successfully combining career and family have decreased due to a culturally based backlash. Various forces have contributed to the resurgence of traditional views of sex roles and family. The phenomenal popularity of the motion picture "Fatal Attraction" stands as a testament to the antifeminist backlash of the era and provides important insights into the changing social culture. This paper offers a psychosociological analysis of the film, examining its dichotomous representation of the career woman and the wife/mother roles in the context of the American return to traditionalist values. The unflinching message of Fatal Attraction is that women who opt for the career track are to be views not merely as unfeminine, but also as destructive who must be themselves destroyed. Almost uniformly, reviewers have interpreted the filmic message of Fatal Attraction to be the vilification of the single career woman and the sanctification of motherhood and the traditional family structure.
- Subjects
MOTION pictures; FATAL Attraction (Film); ADULTERY; SEXISM; MOTION picture industry; PUBLIC opinion; SINGLE women in motion pictures
- Publication
Journal of Popular Culture, 1992, Vol 26, Issue 3, p17
- ISSN
1540-5931
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.0022-3840.1992.2603_17.x