‘Captain Fantastic reflects the extent to which contemporary US culture and society is divided’

 ‘Captain Fantastic reflects the extent to which contemporary US culture and society is divided’ 

The movie ‘Captain Fantastic’ follows the story of Ben and his six children as they go about life living deep in the woods of Washington state where they are isolated from society. Throughout this film, you can see the contemporary divide between Ben and the rest of the world as when they start to mix, their views and ideologies seem to clash. Ben has a different Idea to how the world should work compared to the rest of the modern world. His views focus on physically training his children in order to hunt and fight, he steers away from the modern education system, and he also thinks exposing his children to the cold hard truth is what best for them. These views and ideologies contrasts greatly with those of modern US society, and shows how contemporary US culture and society is divided depending on what your beliefs are.

The first key scene which shows how divided culture and society is in the film, is the opening sequence with the deer. We start of with a wide shot of the forest which establishes the families closeness with nature. This alone is quite rare within the modern day US society as most people would live in quite urban areas whilst this family lives in the middle of the forest. We get a close up  shot of a harmless deer which makes us question the events that are soon to come. We get a camera shot which puts us in the POV of the deer, and here we can see Bo painted with black hiding in the leaves. This type of behaviour seems to be quite caveman like, and also very controversial is the contemporary US society as it can be linked to blackface. This shows how disconnected they are from all of that and don’t keep up with the modern day social norms of America. Further on in the scene, we see Bo, quite aggressively and gruesomely, kill a deer by hand with a knife which is quite unsettling and hard to watch. The subject of killing animals is quite controversial in contemporary US culture and challenges modern American views, as there’s a divide between views of vegans/vegetarians and people who eat meat, so this scene sort of establishes from the very start that this family doesn’t really care for or align themselves with contemporary culture. And lastly in this scene, after the death of the deer, we can see the rest of the family coming out of hiding from behind the trees. This family which also includes young children, seems to be unfazed by the act of killing the deer which creates the idea that this is the norm for them, and that seeing animals being killed in that way is a frequent occurrence. This actions yet again challenge contemporary US societies beliefs as they tend to focus on shielding children from such themes instead of openly presenting it to them on a regular basis. As a whole, this opening sequence establishes the fact they this family is very much divided from contemporary US culture and society from the very start of the movie, and gives us a sense of what this families beliefs are.

Another key scene we can look at is the Dinner sequence at Harpers house. This scene really captures the divide between Bens ‘Anti-American’ ideologies and morals compared to Harpers who represent the more modern, contemporary US social ideologies; specifically due to the fact that the families are physically separated by the table and how they’re never in the same cinematic shot. At some point in the dinner scene, one of Harpers children asks “How did Aunt Leslie die?” to which Harper and her husband sugar coat the truth, and just tell him that she was sick, and sick people die sometimes. Ben and his family were clearly confused by this as Ben is the complete contrast to this as he thinks the best thing to do is not shelter your kids and tell them the cold hard truth. However Ben doesn’t seem to understand these boundaries that Harper has, and doesn’t respect them despite breaking them numerous times before hand, and decides to cross them and tell her kids the truth about how Leslie died. This scene is a reminder of how divided Ben and his family are from modern society and how they clearly don’t understand contemporary US culture and society as they have been isolated from everyone for so long, and Ben is the one at fault as he’s the one who has brought them up to live in this way. These families both illustrate the extreme of both sides of the spectrum when it comes to bringing up children in contemporary society. Ben goes too far into exposing his children to the truth, whilst Harpers explanation too brief to be understood. Continuing on, during the scene, one of his children asks for some wine in which Ben agrees. Harper is clearly disturbed by this and tell Ben to stop. This too shows how divided Ben and his family is from contemporary US society as he’s open to giving young children alcoholic beverages which is not just socially wrong but also wrong in the eyes of science. Lastly, towards the end of the scene Harper leaves the table abruptly due to her frustration with Ben to which her Husband follows her out. Instead of feeling guilty or going after her, Ben and his children pour themselves wine and even take Harpers glasses of wine for themselves. So once again this shows how far off Ben and his family are from US social norms culture.

The last key scene I will be using is the scene where Ben and his children enter the church for Leslies funeral. The first thing that establishes the divide between Ben and contemporary US culture is the way they are dressed, and how they burst into the funeral hall instead of coming in silently. Ben and his children are all dressed in brightly coloured clothes which clearly contrasts the norm of wearing all black to a funeral. This is due to the fact that Ben believes in celebrating her life rather than her death. Wearing colourful clothes to a funeral would be seen as disrespectful in modern day society and culture so by Ben wearing it, it really demonstrates the divide in culture and how Ben chooses to disrespect that of modern day contemporary culture in the US.  The brightly coloured clothes create a visual divide between the family and everyone else as they stand out from the rest of modern culture represented through the all black clothes. Furthermore Ben slams his hand against the coffin whilst giving a speech on how Leslie was actually Buddhist. This is an extremely disrespectful act and shows that Ben continuously doesn’t show any respect for contemporary US culture in modern day society throughout the movie at all. The divide in this scene is huge, to the point that we as spectators don’t really know who to align ourselves with anymore as they are both in the wrong. They are both on extreme sides of the spectrum, Jack doesn’t respect Bens liberalist culture and his daughters religion, whilst Ben doesn’t respect Jack more contemporary culture and his requests, this reflects the way there’s no room for two ideas in America without them clashing and no middle ground.

In conclusion, Captain Fantastic show the huge divide that separates contemporary US culture and society with those who choose not to abide by them by displaying the extreme of both sides of the spectrum. Ben and his family represent the idea of making your children open to the world, and allowing them to be one with nature but to the extreme, whilst on the contrast we have Harpers family and Leslies parents represent the extreme side of contemporary US society and culture.