National Identity, Gender Identity, and the Rescue Fantasy in Born on the Fourth of July
National Identity, Gender Identity, and the Rescue Fantasy in Born on the Fourth of July
This chapter studies the film Born on the Fourth of July as a complicated variant of what Susan Jeffords calls “the remasculinization of America.” The film links the symbolism of nationalism to the iconography of gender in an explicit way, which evaluates the failure of masculinist national ideals in the Vietnam period, offering an alternative image of nation based on metaphor of a maternal, social body America. However, it restores the privileged place of the male hero by appealing to another cultural paradigm that Freud calls “the rescue fantasy,” in which the male hero gains authority by “rescuing” the nation, presented as a woman, from its own weakness.
Keywords: Born on the Fourth of July, remasculinization of America, nationalism, masculinist national ideals, Vietnam War, America, rescue fantasy
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