There is a moment towards the end of the first act of the 1979 Hollywood drama Kramer vs Kramer when protagonist Ted, played by Dustin Hoffman, consoles his six-year-old son Billy. After an evening of acting out, culminating in him desperately pleading for his mother, Billy asks his father: “That’s why mommy left isn’t it, because I was bad?”
“No. That's not it, Billy. Your mom loves you very much,” Ted replies, in what is one of the classic’s most memorable scenes. By this moment, the audience has been primed to believe that the now single-father must harbour much bitterness towards his ex-wife. She has not only thrown a wrench in the path of career-driven Ted’s ascent to advertising executive-dom. She has also left their only child in what at this point seems to be lasting trauma.
But Ted, instead, suddenly subverts all those expectations. Instead of lashing out, his character displays surprising empathy and introspection. “I don't know if this will make sense, but I'll try to explain it to you,” he tells young Billy. “I think the reason why Mommy left... was because for a long time... I kept trying to make her be a certain kind of person. A certain kind of wife that I thought she was supposed to be.”
“And she just wasn't like that. She was... She just wasn't like that,” he explains. “I think that she tried for so long to make me happy... and when she couldn't, she tried to talk to me about it. But I wasn't listening. I was too busy, too wrapped up... just thinking about myself. And I thought that anytime I was happy, she was happy. But I think underneath she was very sad. Mommy stayed here longer than she wanted because she loves you so much. And the reason why Mommy couldn't stay anymore... was because she couldn't stand me,” he admits before his son.
Like all movies that age with time, there are aspects of Kramer vs Kramer that would appear deeply flawed and unfair given contemporary sensitivities towards gender and parenthood. And yet, more than 40 years since it was released, it remains one of the most enduring and sensitive on-screen re-examinations of gender roles anywhere in the world.
Divorce and child custody is a topic that has periodically reappeared before us in many languages. There was ‘Marriage Story’ featuring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver most recently. At home, we had Zindagi Kitni Haseen Hay (ZKHH) featuring Sajjal Aly and Feroze Khan not too long before that. The latter traces an indirect lineage with Kramer vs Kramer, which, if you think about it, seems to have left an indelible mark on South Asian cinema.
Both Bollywood and Lollywood have taken it up as source material at least twice before. On our side of the border we had Qurbani released in 1981, just two years after the Hollywood entry. While by no means an exact adaptation, the influence is very apparent towards the movie’s second half. India can boast a somewhat more faithful adaptation in Akele Hum Akele Tum (AHAT), released almost a decade and a half later.
There is an interesting pattern that ties all three South Asian entries and in doing so, sets them apart from Kramer vs Kramer. On a more superficial level, both members of the central couple – or at least the woman – are shown to pursue a career in showbiz. For the women in all three, this is used as an indictment against their character given the kind of attitudes many in our part of the world still harbour towards a career in arts and the media.
To be fair, even Kramer vs Kramer has been repeatedly accused of portraying a narrative that tilts towards the male protagonist. In recent interviews, Meryl Streep has revealed how she fought to portray her character Joanna Kramer as more vulnerable and sympathetic than the original draft originally made her appear. And even then, critics have pointed out how the movie still paints Joanna as the closest thing to a ‘villain’ in the story given her abandonment of Billy. That in itself reveals to us how heavily our attitudes towards parenthood, even in the West, still place most parental responsibility on women, but more on that later.
For the South Asian adaptations, it is not enough that “a mother has abandoned her child and her husband” – what is especially ‘sinful’ is that she did so in pursuit of an ‘immoral artistic vanity’.
In contrast, there is an almost noble burden placed on the male protagonist. The story, when it ends, portrays his selflessness in even greater magnanimity. Qurbani and AHAT also end with familial reconciliation, although the former cuts it short in favour of more melodramatic fodder. Which is somewhat expected given how much we pat ourselves on the back for trumpeting the mantra of ‘family values’ in our shared culture.
Kramer vs Kramer tries instead to be a journey towards understanding and perhaps even domestic enlightenment. Ted and Joanna will not get back together and they do not need to. Instead it tries to make us believe in the existence of a love that surpasses the passions and ambitions of men and women. This aspect is foreshadowed in a conversation Ted shares with another single parent he finds a kindred spirit in.
“You think you’ll ever get married again?” Ted asks his neighbour Margaret, who went through her own separation. “Maybe it’s different when you don’t have children but… even if Charlie and I aren’t living together and even if we’re sleeping with other people, even if Charlie were to get married again… I don’t know, he’s still my husband,” she replies.
There is the suggestion that some bonds, wherever personal journeys may take people, remain unbroken. In Ted and Joanna’s case, that bond comes more and more to the fore as their lawyers engage in cutthroat questioning and counter-questioning in court. In a subtle but particularly sensitive moment, Ted’s lawyer corners Joanna into admitting she was a ‘failure’ in her relationship with him. As she looks upon Ted, he is seen almost trying to convince her to say no. But she murmurs yes, contradicting her own earlier stance and internalising some guilt.
Coming on to parenthood, Ted’s journey is one of re-education on the ever enduring yet counter-productive notion of the ‘battle of the sexes’. As he fails in his initial attempts to connect and care for his young son, he comes to learn – and through him, so do we – that parenthood is a full-time job. Even when he gets the hang of it, he is reminded that a moment’s lapse in attention poses the threat of irreversible injury, or worse. This learning makes Ted more sympathetic towards not just his ex-wife but motherhood in general. In parallel he strikes up a friendship with his neighbour Margaret, who too is separated from her husband and who Ted earlier accused of influencing Joanna into leaving him.
More importantly, however, Ted’s journey in Kramer vs Kramer reframes parenthood, especially for men. As Ted learns to be a better father, there is the sense that he also learns to find greater satisfaction in this newfound role. Near the climax, as custody proceedings carry on, he admits his own failing in recognising and encouraging Joanna’s ambitions and anxieties when they were married. But he points out that by the same token that acknowledges that women can be as work-driven as men, men can also be as nurturing in parental duties as women.
In the context of the United States, where many still argue that child custody is skewed in favour of mothers, this message plays a certain role. For an audience in our country, however, where issues of custody are skewed in different yet still immensely unfair ways, our takeaway should focus on another aspect. To illustrate this, let us consider the notion of stay-at-home fathers. We in Pakistan are perhaps further than others from the idea, but even in parts of the world where it is catching on, there continues to be some stigma against the notion.
There may or may not be drastic pre-determined differences between the sexes, especially in terms of what role we play in parenthood. That is a question time and more research will make clear. But studies conducted up till now do suggest that our psychological differences are not as stark as we might think and that parenthood impacts both men and women in equally profound, if not exactly the same, ways.
We also need to come back to the notion of greater understanding among men and women, and particularly of the former towards the latter. Joanna leaves Ted because his fixation on his own career and entitlement towards being praised for that suffocates her. In the course of their relationship, Ted, as evident by the quote mentioned earlier, forgets to think of his wife as a thinking feeling human being with desires and needs of her own. We acknowledge a man’s right to shape his destiny, but how many of us engage in hand-wringing when the same notion is applied to women?
Not too long ago, there was a certain public speaker in our country who argued that women should to be taught how to be ‘better wives and mothers’ in school. While he attracted much criticism online from a particular section of our society, a majority in our country doubtless thinks just that still. What we really ought to be taught, our men especially, is how to develop more empathy, particularly in our attitudes towards women. Before we raise our fingers in judgment, our reflex should be re-examine our own role. The rest, even for the so-called ‘champions of family values’, should fall into place automatically.