Elliott's father in the movie
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
As you have read in the first tour is the story of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial based on the divorce of Steven Spielberg’s parents. In the film Spielberg shows the emotions of the feeling of missing a father figure. This story of a missing father figure is something that has a longstanding tradition. For example, the old story of Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelly already shows themes of fatherhood, abandonment, and the impact of a dysfunctional or absent father figure (Strother, 2017). In more recent years there have been multiple other films with the same motive, for example, Star Wars, Hook, and the Indiana Jones films, which are also written by Spielberg (Le Gall & Taliaferro, 2008).
It is not surprising that Spielberg and other directors made films of single-parent families in the 1980s given the societal shifts of the time. Since 1960, the frequency of single-parent families has risen due to increasing divorces and births outside marriage (Ruggles, 1994). As a result, filmmakers in the 1980s, including Spielberg, reflected this reality through the portrayal of families marked by separation and absent fathers.
Spielberg continues a long tradition of storytelling that explores the emotional impact of absent fathers, particularly in the science fiction and adventure genres. However, this movie can also be used to analyse modern-day issues. E.T. is an alien, and he looks like one with his big eyes, expandable neck, and wrinkly skin. Therefore, he can be seen as the “Other,” something non-human. Modern-day problems of exclusion and discrimination can be applied to E.T. The use of E.T. as an analytical tool, therefore, goes far beyond the original intentions behind writing E.T.