‘Now I Have a Machine Gun, Ho-Ho-Ho’: Masculinity, Family, and Redemptive Violence in Home Alone and Die Hard

Abstract

ABSTRACT In a 2017 article for the comedy website Cracked, Christopher Daed argues that “Die Hard and Home Alone are the EXACT same movie.” Daed was not the first to make this connection: a cursory search reveals frequent comparison on social media. Very little scholarship, however, has seriously engaged with this pairing. In this paper, I examine how both Die Hard (1988) and Home Alone (1990) use narratives of redemptive violence to define idealized American masculinity. Both films portray families ruptured by influences both foreign (the imposition of foreign culture) and domestic (maternal neglect) that are restored by their protagonists’ defense of Christmas, family, and by extent, old-fashioned American values. I situate both Die Hard and Home Alone within the canon of American Christmas films, arguing that their enduring, linked popularity is indicative of a rejection of the perceived weakness and femininity associated with many other Christmas narratives. I focus in particular on the films’ oft-overlooked treatment of religion: Christmas, after all, is a religious holiday, and its relationship to American identity cannot be separated from the ubiquity of Christianity in American life. I argue that both Kevin McCallister’s church attendance and his violent defense of his home align him with John McClane as all-American defenders of Christmas and the family.