NORMALIZING DOWNSIZING: MOTHERS AS MURDERERS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN MOVIES

Andréa STASKOWSKI (Department of Communications, SUNY-Nassau, USA)

In post World War II America, workers were led to believe that their futures would be secure by devoting themselves to their corporate employers. This relationship between corporations and their employers took on a filial quality. Employees thought of themselves as members of a corporate family headed not by a punitive father but by a nurturing mother, for example, "Ma Bell" or "Mother Met." The socio-economic changes attendant to massive corporate layoffs and plant closings of the 1980's and the early 1990's required a revision of psycho-social expectations. The representation of mothers as murderers in movies such as "Presumed Innocent" starring Harrison Ford serves to normalize downsizing, i.e. to normalize the betrayal of the maternal corporate promise of lifetime employment and secure retirement. This paper will analyze how American popular (i.e. commercial) cinema facilitates the psycho-social readjustments required by structural economic transformation.