ipl-logo

Meet The Fockers Family Analysis

775 Words4 Pages

Family Roles and Family Rules in the Movie Meet the Fockers
Paulette Erwin
University of Pacific

ABSTRACT
This paper describes the family roles and family rules of the Focker Family and the Byrnes Family in the movie Meet the Fockers. It provides examples of family members roles identified in the movie. It also gives examples of each family’s spoken and unspoken family rules.

Family Roles and Family Rules in the Movie Meet the Fockers
The movie Meet the Fockers demonstrates two families that are experiencing a change to their family systems. As the families prepare for the marriage of Greg Focker to Pam Byrnes they each react to the change in various ways. Their responses to the marriage is later compounded …show more content…

But Greg and Pam discover that their parents rules no longer completely apply to them and explain to their families that they will have there own set of family rules. The Byrnes family has several unspoken rules that define the family’s approach to relationships. Some of their spoken rules include “Muskrat” which in the Byrnes family means don’t tell. The Byrnes family system is structured and they hold family conferences to discuss issues. Each family member is expected to respond in a certain way to the father but this rule changes for Pam as she prepares to get married. They do not openly express affection and are guarded about discussing family business. In comparison to the Focker family that have several spoken rules that include having open communication about all areas in life. The Focker family members are expected to show affection towards one another. During the movie Greg shares with his mother that Pam is pregnant but asks her to keep it a secret from his dad. Later in the movie when Greg finds out his mother has told his dad about the pregnancy he does not react to his secret being told because the Focker family has an unspoken rule to not keep secrets. Putting the two families together reveals how opposite each family system operates but by the end of the movie they have created a new rule to except each other’s

Show More
Related
2065 Words | 9 Pages

Depending on how the family was arranged in the room, I may want to rearrange them in order to strengthen some bonds or weaken others. I would want the mother and father together, the little brother in the middle between his parents and his sister, since he seems to be forcing himself away from the family by instigating arguments. This would be a way to try and reconnect them. I would want to assess the parental hierarchy to see if their way of parenting is effective, insufficient, or excessive. Based on the arguments and relationships observed in the film I would say that their parrenting style is insufficient.

Read More
1208 Words | 5 Pages

The show depicted the everyday experiences of a Jewish immigrant family in the Bronx and their navigation of American society. At the beginning of each episode, Molly Goldberg, the sympathetic protagonist and mother figure, directly addresses the audience, introducing the moral themes of the episode along with advertisements. By breaking the fourth wall of communication in television with her direct address, Molly mediates between the story world and reality, which eases the transition and makes her relatable to the viewer. For the first televised sitcom, it is remarkable how the show vocalized the female perspective, and centralized an immigrant group thought to be unassimilable in society

Read More
256 Words | 2 Pages

They maintain the utmost integrity and virtue when it comes to family life and this is reflected in Mr. and Mrs. Clutter’s kind, giving, and somewhat perfect children. From this quote we can conclude that Capote wrote this novel to show how our culture of our childhood can affect our way to live,think ,and act. Which is the case of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. More than that, this quote contributes to the overall theme of The Dynamics of Family

Read More
566 Words | 3 Pages

Although Capote describes the Clutters as a symbolic representation of a perfect family, his importance is to show the difference of lifestyles from Perry coming from broken homes to the Clutters home therefore; he contends family life is a key determinant that can affect a person, later in life. Capote uses an anecdote to help his readers formulate where Perry came from and how he became abnormal. After Perry made an “admission he hated to make” of himself and Dick having to be crazy, after killing a perfect family, Capote says: “His mother an alcoholic, had strangled to death on her own vomit. Of her children two sons and two daughters, only the young girl, Barbara, had entered ordinary life, married, begun raising a family. Fern the other daughter, jumped out the window of a San Francisco hotel.

Read More
1794 Words | 8 Pages

Main Analysis The varieties in family structure are exposed in the television series Parenthood. The small families within the Braverman family give relevant examples of the change. Each of the children in the show has their own unique support system. All families prove relevance to prior research conducted on the topic.

Read More
800 Words | 4 Pages

Television situational comedies have the ability to represent different values or concerns of their audience, these values often change every decade or so to reflect and highlight the changes that the audience is experiencing within society, at the time of production. Between the years of 1950 and 2010, the representation of gender roles and family structure has been addressed and featured in various sitcoms, such as “Father Knows Best” and “Modern Family”, through the use of narrative conventions, symbolic, audio and technical codes. These representations have transformed over time to reflect the changes in social, political, and historical contexts. The 1950’s sitcom “Father Knows Best” traditionally represents the values of gender roles and family structure in a 1950’society, with the father, held high as the breadwinner of the family and the mother as the sole homemaker.

Read More
671 Words | 3 Pages

Recently I have been giving the family feedback of how the contact sessions went with the ethos of improving the way they interact and support their children. Both Wayne and Kelly have shown their desire to improve the way they look after the children by carrying out given advice. Below, I summarise the observations for the Milligan family. The summary is based on the SHANARRI principles:

Read More
797 Words | 4 Pages

What are the different versions of family in McCandless’ story? Discuss both Chris's biological family and the families he creates for himself along the road. In the novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Christopher McCandless encounters many families outside his previous family living in Annandale, Virginia. In his journeys, Chris, later known as Alex, discovers that he has multiple chances to create families beyond his own.

Read More
528 Words | 3 Pages

The Simpsons Hundreds of families have been portrayed over the years through different television programs. Each television family has different roles, statuses, and personas for every member. From cartoons to sitcoms, families have been plastered in front of viewers for decades. My personal favorite show, “The Simpsons”, happens to be the longest running television show in the U.S. For more then twenty-five years “The Simpsons” has been depicted as a dysfunctional family, however each member of the family takes on roles that are more consistent of a traditional family. Aside from the wild and whacky themes that come along with the show “The Simpsons” follows the blueprint of a traditional American family of five.

Read More
1886 Words | 8 Pages

The past decade has not seen any notable family sitcoms that has surpassed such leaps of social justice as some had in the 1950’s or 1970’s. While that may be disappointing to some, this is also a great feat for all television audiences. So many issues that were once considered, “taboos,” now, can be the premise of the sitcom altogether. Even the little things like interracial couples, married partners in the same bed, and even mentioning a pregnant woman is considered normal. Yes, the family sitcom is still no direct comparison to the modern family arrangement, but it is as close as were going to get for

Read More
340 Words | 2 Pages

Tap. I closed my MacBook, thinking about the short story I just read, named “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker. The family in “Everyday Use” and my family are filled with people who are the same but, are also different like our personalities, relationships, and values. The family in “Everyday Use” has only one mother and two daughters; one named Maggie and the other named Dee.

Read More
754 Words | 4 Pages

This provides analytical approach to families with problems of low and bad structure in the family relations. Also, Structural Family Therapy is a therapy session that requests the therapist to be involved and active as well in the therapy sessions (www.psychotherapy.net ,video). Therefore, during the video of the family of three which is made up of Adrian, Judy, and Pam. Adrian and Judy are a married couple and the parents of Pam. Adrian and Judy has been through numerous therapists to comprehend their daughter’s Pam anger problem.

Read More
1217 Words | 5 Pages

Family members may or may not be biologically related, share the same household, or be legally recognized” (Raney, 2015:6). In the series Modern family, it shows the dynamics of a 21st century family and how traditions and culture has evolved over the years. As opposed to “nuclear family” “No longer does the traditional family consist of two parents and two children; instead, more diverse and shifting family structures are becoming the norm.

Read More
1100 Words | 5 Pages

“The Changing American Family” by Natalie Angier states, “Fictive families are springing up among young people, old people, disabled people, homeless people, and may well define one of the ultimate evolutions of the family concept, maximizing, as they do, the opportunities for fulfillment of specific social and economic needs outside the constraints of biological relatedness.” The ever changing social dynamics and circumstances of this life have opened the definition of family to encompass individuals who can fill those deep-seated needs

Read More
720 Words | 3 Pages

Despite the creator’s of Modern Family effort to portray a progressive view of American families, the show still accentuates outdated female stereotypes and gender roles; reinforcing gender characteristics, patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. In contrast to its title, Modern Family promotes traditional gender roles and stereotypes of women, which result in the portrayal of an inaccurate image of the female, and weakens the stance of women in today’s U.S. society. Gender stereotypes are prevalent throughout the Modern Family; the women are all portrayed as wives and mothers, promoting a continued male dominant family ideology. Claire and Gloria are throughout the show acting on our society’s “assumptions about women’s ‘appropriate’ roles” (Dow 19).

Read More

More about Meet The Fockers Family Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document