men got closer to the people he loved. He had done the most important thing in his life: he had created this new son, born of the heart. And for this father, it was the greatest of joys and hopes. _Babe_ has many scenes that evoke this sense of wonder at being a father. In its opening sequence, Joe is a new father who is overwhelmed by his baby's wondrousness. In the scene at the barbershop where he shows off the newborn, Joe is the center of attention. As the camera glides over the men, their heads turning in unison to see the baby, they are awed and touched. Joe's love for his son is apparent to all. In many respects, this kind of wonderment and joy have been lacking from the screen since Walt Disney's time. For him, the characters' feelings of awe were part of the story. The films he made were created out of an imagination that sought to make the world more beautiful and more wonderful. In _The Shaggy Dog_ , the moment that reveals the depth of his feelings for the boy is the moment that Shaggy is afraid to lose his son. He cries when he thinks of the son as if he is actually losing him. "You can't take a baby away from his mother!" he says. When Shaggy gets out of his car and approaches the boy with his arms outstretched, his expression is full of wonder, tenderness, and joy. Shaggy has given the boy all the love a baby can receive. It is interesting to compare this scene with the movie's opening sequence, when a baby turns his head toward the camera and looks straight at it. The child is looking at the viewer and making direct eye contact with him. If the child knows it is being looked at by an audience, he responds by making eye contact and then by making an effort to see the viewer. The character of Shaggy here makes an effort to be in touch with his son, and the boy responds with an outstretched arm and a tearful face. He wants to be connected to his father. In addition to showing his own father, the hero is always shown to be in touch with, or even part of, the father–son relationship. In _The Iron Giant_ , the hero is part of the father–son relationship of Bruce Banner and his son. In a sense, the Iron Man suit symbolizes the role that Bruce has always wanted to play as a father, but has never had a chance to. He has wanted to be a superhero like this since he was a child, and it has led to his son being frightened by him and his inability to connect to his own son. But in time, he manages to change himself and the suit starts to work for him instead of against him. In fact, at the end of the film, he goes to the edge of the cliff and looks out over the ocean and says, "I'm not going to fly again." As he flies off to Hawaii with his son, the Iron Giant has become a symbol for what Bruce hoped to accomplish as a father. In _The Iron Giant_ , Bruce Banner changes and becomes a superhero because of a boy's need to know that his father loves him. Likewise, in _My Boyfriend's Back_ , Andy has a close relationship with his own father, and for him, the arrival of his mother's new boyfriend threatens the emotional well-being of his whole family. In these films, the boy has no trouble connecting to the father, but there is a big problem with the girl. The mother seems to be an antagonist or an obstacle to the boy's developing relationship with the father. In both films, there is a son who seeks to break up a couple. #### **The Love Between Two Men** _My Boyfriend's Back_ opens with a sequence that takes place in a bar in San Francisco. A friend of Andy's, Danny, has just met his father for the first time. Andy enters the bar on the right, walking across a bridge. Andy is dressed in his usual black, and his boyfriend is with him in this scene. On the left of the frame is a crowd of people outside, and behind them is a man with long gray hair who is also walking across the bridge. His gaze and posture are reminiscent of Andy's father. This is Danny's father, and he has come to San Francisco to meet his son's boyfriend. The scene opens in the middle of this emotional reunion, and before Danny can even speak, his father says, "There he is." His father's first words are addressed to his son, and it is as if he has seen only the hero and not the heroine in this love story. But in fact, he sees the film's main character because he is the other half of his son's "other man." Danny's father and Andy's mother are involved in a love triangle, and they will end up as adversaries. Andy's father is a strong presence in _My Boyfriend's Back_ , especially in the film's last sequence. The hero is introduced before he has a chance to meet the parents. In fact, he gets stuck in the airport, and he must take a bus from the airport to get to his friends. He is given his luggage and is taken to the ticket counter. The luggage is placed on the luggage carousel, where it is in the midst of the other people and luggage being shipped by air. When he realizes that it's not his bag, he stands by it and watches the luggage. One by one, he identifies all the luggage on the carousel. As a result, he has to take three buses to get to his friends. During this time, we see the boy, who is being transported by this luggage and lost in thought, in a subway in Manhattan. In other words, the hero is the central character of the movie and has not yet met the father. The last scene has Danny on the Staten Island Ferry and the hero and heroine together. Because the two men have a connection, they recognize each other even if they have never met. When they finally have a chance to talk, they find out that Danny has known about Andy since he was a child. They begin to wonder why Danny and Andy never met. Their friendship is complicated because of the love triangle that Andy's parents are in. The film does not mention their names, but the implication is clear. During the conversation with Andy's father, Danny's father has come to terms with being a father whose son has fallen in love with another man's boyfriend. The father who meets the hero is the kind of father whose relationship with his son has caused him pain. That is why Danny's father is a presence in the film. His connection with his son is threatened, so Andy's father has to get in line with his family. The two men's relationship and the love story are so powerful that they break down an unbridgeable gulf in this brief encounter, a kind of emotional and physical distance that the hero has maintained. The two men are able to talk, and both of them have realized that the other is who he is and has always been. The father who meets the hero can see him as an embodiment of himself. Once again, _My Boyfriend's Back_ is a film about father–son relationships, a film about families. At one point, Danny's mother says, "You're my son, and I can't do anything about that," just as Andy's mother says, "You're my daughter, and I can't do anything about that." These films show a kind of despair in families when the mother and father find it impossible to relate to each other. The mother cannot do anything about a relationship that is not loving; the father cannot do anything about the love that exists between his son and another man. Both of these films feature father–son relationships in which the son ends up a victim, especially if the parents can't tolerate the father–son relationship. They are unwilling to acknowledge that the relationship is there in the first place. #### **Family Troubles** Family troupes are the most dramatic kinds of films that feature the struggle between fathers and sons. In these kinds of films, there are no outsiders. The father is the villain and the hero is the one trying to defeat him. The conflicts are between people who are willing to fight to the death. Both of these films have male heroes who are threatened by the father and who are torn between their love for their father and their love for a woman, who represents a chance for their happiness. In some ways, both of these films have more to do with the struggle between fathers and sons than the ones discussed earlier in the book. In _My Boyfriend's Back_ , it is Andy's father who becomes a threat to Andy's life, but in the films _I Wanna Hold Your Hand_ and _Shaggy Dog_ , both fathers have the chance to destroy their sons. Both of these films involve an outside woman who stands between father and son. _I Wanna Hold Your Hand_ begins with a love triangle, and not a new one but an old one. Bruce is still struggling with his relationship with Jerry. He is trying to accept him as his son, and in this film, he even starts dating his mother. But while he is out on a date with a woman, his son dies in a car accident. This sequence provides the emotional core for the film. Just after the accident, in a scene in a hospital, the father is sitting in a chair with his back