Misfits is one of those movies that jumps right
out of its frame, telling us almost everything
we need to know about the movies, about the
insecure relationship between writers and hollywood, about what happened to the West, and
maybe even about how the American Dream
had gone wrong. happy ending aside—Joyce
Carol oates in Blonde calls it a “fairy tale”—the
movie contradicts itself. Actually, it doesn’t contain a lot of good news.
The Misfits’ portrayal of double-edged free-
dom from family ties in the West couldn’t be
further removed from the tragic irony of the
Lomans’ “free and clear” home ownership that
draws the curtain in Death of a Salesman. When
asked about his home, gay gestures outside his
truck at the desert. It’s the place that he’s taking
roslyn in the hollywood happy ending of The
Misfits. She’s told him that she’s ready to start
a family. But, really, is there any reason to sus-
pect that it will last longer than gay’s previous
marriage, the children of which run into their
falling-down-drunk father at a rinky-dink ro-
deo? (or any longer than Miller’s own marriage
to Monroe, for that matter?) An Eastern family
might be a self-poisoning well or a fouled nest,
but The Misfits raises questions about what hap-
pens to American souls when they achieve the
national dream of breaking loose from all moor-
ings and drifting into a vast continent where
nobody’s home. Which is a worse fate, to have a
bad family or to have no family at all? The end-
ing of The Misfits gives us a false or movie-dream
solution to an enduring problem. It’s an answer
we want to believe in but which we know is a
temporary shelter at best, at worst a mirage—a
mirage that surely will lead to the production of
one more unhappy family.
