Father’s Day, inaugurated in the early twentieth century to compliment Mother’s Day, is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. Many countries celebrate it on the third Sunday of June but it is also celebrated widely on other days. Its first celebration was in Spokane, Washington on June 19, 1910.
In honour of Father’s Day and father’s everywhere, the Featured Book for June 2012 is Bringing up Daddy: Fatherhood and Masculinity in Post-War Hollywood by Stella Bruzzi, 2005. This book examines the cinematic representations of the father from World War II to the present using psychoanalysis, sociology and masculinity studies and contextualizes the father figure within both Hollywood and American History. Key films include: Since You Went Away, The Search, Rebel Without a Cause, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Cape Fear, Kramer vs. Kramer, Die Hard, Three Men and a Baby, Boyz n the Hood and Magnolia. In its treatment of the father this unique study discusses why the father is such a seminal character in so many narratives and what he has come to symbolize and represent.
Stella Bruzzi is Professor of Film Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the other of several books including Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies (1997) and Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis (co-edited) (2000).
Bringing up Daddy is part of the Allan Rogg Collection of Modern Cinema and can be viewed in Special Collections by asking for Special Collections Rogg Collection — PN1995.9.M46 B78 2005. It is also available for check-out in the Fine Arts Stacks.