Mrs Doubtfire Film Analysis

In the 1990s the male protagonist of Hollywood received a major face lift in many ways. The 1980s focused on hyper masculinized and violent male figures using their brawn and fighting skills to achieve their desires. Characters like Rocky Balboa and the Terminator were quite popular during that era, which made the shift to softer family-man protagonist in the 90s a rather bizarre change. In this paper, I will look through a Dramaturgical perspective at the violent male of the 80s giving way to the more family focused man of the 90s, using a rather comic but highly successful film, Mrs. Doubtfire. It was a popular movie of the time and through its cross dressing main character, it gives a much more interesting insight on the 90s male thought process and how he fit in with the changing family structure of the era. The film showed a new type of man who could achieve his goals through reflection, literal and emotional self-transformation without the use of violence. Through that as well, I will discuss the ever evolving matter of cross dressing as it applies to the film and how it is still used as a tool of storytelling and character development through both theatre and cinematic history.

Mrs. Doubtfire was a big hit when it first premiered and yet it came out after a rather strange era of cinema where the highly muscular and violent male protagonist was the norm. With Robin Williams being in his early forties at the time of the film’s release, as well as being a rather average built male, he would have been a stark contrast to the Stallone and Schwarzenegger type characters that had been popular in the years before Mrs. Doubfire premiered. In fact, in the 1980s, films were riddled with hyper masculinized men and women such as Roc...

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...ilms such as Mrs. Doubtfire to communicate that even though the main character was not a war hero or a gun wielding macho man, he was in fact a man who had plenty to fight for in his own world. Through the shifting away of the masculinized hero of the 1980s giving way to the family focused man of the 1990s, film and society molded themselves to represent what each other needed and wanted to see. Even though it is a comedy filled with insane antics of a man in a dress, Mrs. Doubtfire is able to bring forth a story that shows that there is plenty worth fighting for at home without the needs of excessive violence. It also shows us a subtle and heartwarming difference in the attitudes of the American people about what identity we wanted to promote and what type of person we wanted to believe in, the unrealistic super hero, or the father with vices with a heart of gold.