Description: What do E. T., Fatal Attraction, and Look Who's Talking have in common? Among the most popular films at the box office in recent years, all three represent families which profoundly transgressed contemporary ideological norms. The eighties were a decade in which the family occupied a pivotal position in an increasingly complex social and moral universe and in which film enjoyed a resurgence. Sarah Harwood argues that Hollywood cinema engaged in debates over the "crisis in the family" in intense and complex ways both feeding and resisting dominant social mythologies. In a fascinating analysis of such diverse films as Airplane!, and Terms of Endearment, Family Fictions sheds light on power and gender relations in contemporary cinema as well as on how the films themselves engaged their broader social contexts.

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