Father-son dynamics

I'm going to mostly copy a post I just put into a thread in "Greenberg" (a more recent Baumbach film) because the thread there led me to thinking about the autobiographical aspects of The Squid and the Whale and what this film might tell us about choices Baumbach makes in films he directs in general - and what some key themes are for him ... notably the eternal struggle of sons (especially when growing up under dogmatic and/or jerkish and/or judgmental fathers) to find love or respect or self-definition or self-determination in the face of a father/male role model who is inordinately prescriptive ...

To see the context of the thread (in Greenberg) that I responded to, and what triggered my own thoughts about Squid and the Whale, go here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234654/board/nest/187422506?p=1

Here's a barely edited version of what i said there:

The Squid and the Whale is claimed to be autobiographical for Noah Baumbach ... and to that extent, we can glean why Baumbach would be interested in having made Greenberg subsequently and why he would conceivably be drawn to exemplifying a character like Roger (Ben Stiller's character in Greenberg). His father, as depicted in The Squid and the Whale, would seem to have had a lot of "Roger-like" qualities -- offputting judgmentalism, very black-and-white view of the world, elitist pomposity, authoritarianism and -- under it -- a sense that his father clung to his facile judgments of art, life, and people as a cover for his own cluelessness about how to relate.

It has long struck me that the reason there are so many father-son dramas in film is because, most film directors being male, even still in the 21st c., and for most of them, filmmaking itself being a rather rebellious life choice (Digressing for a moment here to filmmakers in general*: how many parents encourage their children to grow up to be in the film industry or even artists at all - it's the classic father-son struggle where fathers and also mothers drive their children and especially sons, especially first-born sons, even in the US, not just in places like Japan, to be successes in the "established professions" - e.g., doctor, lawyer - and forever espouse that anything artistic is too unstable or insecure a life path ... So male directors wind up more often than not having deep connections, "resolved" or unresolved, with father-son struggles for authenticity and self-determination - and we wind up seeing them played out fictionally or almost factually on screen. This can even be a raison-d'etre for some directors (and of course the screenwriters, producers, and actors who also converge on a given project) such that the focus on the underlying psychology of the fathers they grew up rebelling against, or struggling to love, or feel loved by, penetrates other works which are not explicitly father-son dramas but where the male protagonist is a stand-in of sorts for themselves or their father in ways that seek to come to terms with their own (the director's) self-understanding.

*Granted that Baumbach's parents were themselves writers and thus 'artists' and so his struggle for self-definition was probably not so much in terms of "what to be when he grew up" (the stereotype i've just sketched out) but rather, in his case, "who" -- what kind of human being -- to be when he grew up ... how much of his father's judgmentalism and pretentiousness to adopt or not, for example ...

Because most of us, from this standpoint, can identify with the struggle to self-identify and self-determine in the face of - or in the wake of - the upbringings we have that often sought to mold us in ways that were about "them" (the parents) rather than us, the children (and let me say this was less true for myself than for most people, i believe - i'm not writing from personal 'vendetta' here - i was relatively lucky in these regards but I study family communication and i think those who grow up in families where children's self-determination and acceptance for who they are instead of who they "should" be are the lucky minority ... To this extent, I see filmmakers like Brumbauch being stand-ins for most people in his examination of the forces that were the PTBs (powers that be) in our young growing-up lives ...

If Brumbauch was, as it seems, the first-born son who he chose to be played by Jesse Eisenberg in The Squid and the Whale, then we also see how he started to become the spitting image of his father - a story that suggests how even the most assholish of fathers can become 'models' for their sons until and unless something 'clicks' and the sons begin to see and separate from the Assholishness as a Given (and even a Doctrine) that they have grown up under and tried to emulate - just because sons would prefer to feel loved and validated by their fathers ...

So I'm guessing that Roger is likely a further exploration of this Assholishness that Brumbauch grew up under in some form - and somehow Brumbauch is seeking to understand and come to terms with how to co-exist in this world with that inclination ... Another way of seeing how ccw's OP here makes for a thoughtful thread ... Thanks ...

p.s. to psycho86: I also 'second' your reference to Alice Miller and "Gifted Child." For those who don't know, it was her research and study of the boyhood of Adolph Hitler that helped us learn more about the horrible legacies of authoritarian parenting and about how not to re-create such monsters amongst us. For those in this thread who have trouble with the idea of "empathizing" with Roger, perhaps the value of seeking to "understand" him and the cause-effect factors that produce Assholism is a lens through which to see value in a film whose character is repugnant. Sometimes such characters become the Hitlers who wind up determining the lives of millions.