RESTORING THE BIOLOGICAL FAMILY AND THE HUMAN FAMILY:

RESTORING THE BIOLOGICAL FAMILY AND THE HUMAN FAMILY: WHITE MALE HEROISM IN THE PATRIOT, GLADIATOR, AND AMERICAN HISTORY X Recently Karen Schneider has argued that in the second half of the 1990s, the genre of “action-thrillers” changed. Whereas in the 1980s the white male hero of such films was pretty much a loner, now he strives to restore “the traditional-white, bourgeois, patriarchal family” (1). The violence that traditionally figures in this genre also takes on a …

…the “miracle cure” and thus question it. In this respect, American History X concludes on a more thought-provoking note than do The Patriot and Gladiator. If Karen Schneider is right in observing that white male heroes in today’s action-thrillers are not always capable of restoring families, American History X is an extreme demonstration of her point. The film’s ending suggests that neither the biological family nor the human family can be easily fixed.