Suburban Lifestyle and the American Dream in 'Dinner with Friends' by Norman Jewison (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7, University of Regensburg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: American Literature II: The 20th and 21st Centuries, language: English, abstract: The thesis is about the film drama "Dinner with Friends" by Norman Jewison. In that contemporary drama "Dinner with Friends", written in 2000 by the author Donald Margulies, and in the following filmic adaptation one year later by Norman Jewison, the two modern families show that reviving the ideal of the traditional postwar suburban nuclear family of the 1950s as well as falling apart can still mean the fulfillment of the American Dream as a peak target in life.

In "Dinner with Friends", the situation of going through divorce and finding a new personal orientation in life is depicted by the couple Tom and Beth. In contrast to that, the other couple Gabe and Karen depict the opposite way of living together, which is the convinced will of maintaining the traditional suburban values of loyalty, love, intensive care and honoring each other. Inspite of changing moral concepts among the society of the 21st century, in many heads the latter attributes still represent the prototypical ideal of a perfect family. Nevertheless, this does not mean that any of those two ways is better than the other one, the only secret is just that they are both differently realized.