“Man Turns His Back On His Family”: Domestic Precarity and Fragile Masculinity in The Indian Runner and “Highway Patrolman”

By Nick Sansone

Abstract

This paper examines Sean Penn's film The Indian Runner in relation to the song he adapted it from, Bruce Springsteen's "Highway Patrolman." The film’s plot closely follows the narrative of the song while greatly fleshing out the backstories of the central characters, brothers Joe and Frank Roberts, and adding in several other plot elements that help to allow the film to build to the dramatic climax that is lifted from the song’s final verse. But what these various elements also do, beyond "flesh[ing] out the narrative spine provided by Springsteen's song," as Jeff Smith puts it in Film Art, is shed light on the film’s dominant. From the film’s first scene, it is evident that the film's environment is one in which masculinity is fragile and is constantly at risk of destroying both itself and the very foundation of domesticity. While "Highway Patrolman" is an effective under-six-minute morality play about family and ethical dilemmas when it comes to loved ones, in this paper I argue that The Indian Runner's dominant is ultimately the deconstruction of the classic morality play via the inclusion of scenes and stylistic elements that consistently show both the detrimental impact of the main characters' damaged masculine identities on themselves and their families. In doing so, I examine the film's three structural levels -- stylistic, narrative, and thematic -- concluding that the film's use of defamiliarization on the first two levels allows the themes to be communicated in ways that both honor and transcend its inspiration.