A Father's Physical Presence vs Emotional Engagement with his Children: Masculinity Manifested through Time in "Boyhood" (2014)

In filmmaker Richard Linklater’s 2014 coming-of-age epic, “Boyhood,” its audience witnesses a multitude of significant motifs, which span 12 years with the same actors, having reunited with Linklater for two weeks each year to film. Actors Patricia Arquette (Olivia) and Ethan Hawke (Mason Sr.) portray the biological parents of the story’s two leading brother sister characters, played by Lorelei Linklater (Samantha) and Ellar Coltrane (Mason Jr.). One prominent theme made evident in the film involves masculinity and it adapting over time.

“At the beginning of the film the children’s biological father, played superbly by Ethan Hawke, is presented as an immature and mostly absent boy-man who has left their mother with the responsibility of bringing up the kids, reappearing every now and then to take them off for ‘fun’ weekends. So far, so stereotypical” (Robb).

“Initially he’s a devil-may-care guy who smokes, drives a [Pontiac] GTO, and shares a house with a shiftless rocker pal, their coffee table full of empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays” (Rosenberg).

"As the film unfolds, we see Arquette’s character form relationships with two other men who become substitute fathers for Mason Jr. and Samantha. Rather repetitiously, both are revealed as, to varying degrees, drunks, [establishing a sense of hegemonic masculinity]. Interestingly, both men present on the surface as paragons of responsible masculinity: the first, a middle-aged college professor who is singlehandedly raising two children of his own, and the second a younger army veteran whose experience of combat is at least superficially a badge of mature masculinity. But both are revealed as damaged men and therefore unable to act as adequate father figures to Mason Jr." (Robb).

“While all of this is going on, we witness a slow transformation in Ethan Hawke’s character, Mason Sr. We see Hawke’s character evolve over time to become more ‘adult’ and responsible, but crucially without losing any of the energy and likeability of his younger self” (Robb).

“Later in the movie he remarries, trading in the GTO for a minivan and doing his best to fit in with his God-fearing, rifle-toting father-in-law” (Rosenberg).

But at the same time, he never let’s go of “a kind of expressive and playful masculinity, symbolized partly in his enduring love for rock music. The scenes between him and his growing children – scenes of disappointment, embarrassment and momentary joy – are some of the most engaging and memorable in the film” (Robb).

“Undoubtedly there are ‘crisis of masculinity’ pundits who embraced Boyhood as a magical insight into boys coming of age in a world where ‘being a man’ is treacherous. Equally, there are likely - and sadly - people who allowed themselves to be shocked by the film’s message that, hey, boys can be deep and sensitive too. While ‘maturing’ seems like too loaded a word, the change over time in Mason’s father is the film’s nugget of gold, [acknowledging] divorced fathers tussling with part-time fatherhood, desperately clutching onto coolness, losing coolness, feeling castrated, seeking solace in all the right and wrong places” (Rosewarne).

“What Mason Sr. seems to represent is, not so much the stereotypically irresponsible manhood that appeared to characterize him at the outset, as a kind of open and fluid masculinity that is able to adapt and conform to the adult world without losing its own identity” (Robb).

Cited Sources

Rosenberg, T. (2014, July 18). Boyhood is the fatherhood of the manhood. Chicago Reader. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://chicagoreader.com/film/boyhood-is-the-fatherhood-of-the-manhood/.

Rosewarne, L. (2014, September 29). Boyhood, Fatherhood and the Conduits of Culture. The Conversation. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://theconversation.com/boyhood-fatherhood-and-the-conduits-of-culture-32089.

Robb, M. (2015, March 26). 'Boyhood': first thoughts. Martin Robb. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://martinrobb.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/boyhood-first-thoughts/.