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Dark Fathers and Damaged Sons: The Paternal Betrayal of Jason Bourne

Toby Reynolds (University of Bristol, UK)

Gender and Action Films

ISBN: 978-1-80117-515-9, eISBN: 978-1-80117-514-2

Publication date: 24 November 2022

Abstract

The Jason Bourne series of films (2002–2016) are widely acknowledged with helping to successfully re-invent the action thriller genre in the 2000s by focusing more on motivation and plot than over-the-top spectacle. Featuring a profoundly wounded son figure in the titular character, the films are indicative of an awareness of the vulnerabilities and reactions of a fatherless masculinity within a post-Cold War political reality.

This chapter will argue that Bourne's onscreen pain and subsequent violent responses to his various narrative predicaments are a result of being repeatedly betrayed by a series of older males, in many cases, father surrogates. Bourne's experience of this paternal disruption and betrayal is the key psychological motivating factor, with the films and the story arc of the character only being resolved when both he and the audience finally discover and reconcile the role that his biological father played in shaping his destiny and his life. This ‘father hunger’ – in effect a need for a continuative masculinity – that Jason Bourne experiences, and that is arguably at the heart of the franchise, will be analysed and explored within the contexts of post-Jungian screen theory. Alongside the deliberately casting of ‘quality’ actors (such as Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn) and other formalist elements of the text, archetypal energies and symbolism are also rife throughout the film, and can be, in part, credited with the critical and commercial success of the films. Finally, the films are put in their cinematic context in terms of the influence they subsequently exerted on other action film franchises – particularly James Bond (1962 to present).

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Citation

Reynolds, T. (2022), "Dark Fathers and Damaged Sons: The Paternal Betrayal of Jason Bourne ", Gerrard, S. and Middlemost, R. (Ed.) Gender and Action Films (Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 89-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-514-220221008

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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