RESTORING THE BIOLOGICAL FAMILY AND THE HUMAN FAMILY:
             WHITE MALE HEROISM IN THE PATRIOT, GLADIATOR, AND AMERICAN HISTORY X
             Recently Karen Schneider has argued that in the second half of the 1990s, the genre of "action-thrillers" changed. Whereas in the 1980s the white male hero of such films was pretty much a loner, now he strives to restore "the traditional-white, bourgeois, patriarchal family" (1). The violence that traditionally figures in this genre also takes on a new function: it "puts families at risk only to bring about their salvation" (2). Yet Schneider comments, too, that sometimes the hero's efforts fall short: "[a] complete family does not always result" (2). Furthermore, she notes, several of these films verge on ideological contradiction. Because they go extraordinary lengths to reaffirm the family, they wind up suggesting that it has become much harder to justify and save.
             Three recent films tend to bear out Schneider's argument about today's action-thrillers. Each features a white male protagonist trying through violence to re-establish and guide a family torn apart by violence. Moreover, each suggests that reconstructing the patriarchal family can be quite difficult. Yet the three films treat the difficulty with varying degrees of complexity. Least complex is The Patriot, this summer's hit Revolutionary War epic. Through acts of violence against the British, white colonist Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) largely succeeds in reconstituting his family after members of it have been killed in the war. Nevertheless, as Schneider might well note, the film's positive ending can't really obscure the violence that Benjamin's family has suffered as well as the homicidal tendencies he himself has displayed. Another recent historical epic, Gladiator, goes further than The Patriot in complicating the white male hero's quest. Although ...