When I sat down to make my list of top ten dads in geekdom for Mormon Geeks, I noticed that I was having trouble coming up with ten examples of good dads. I actually had to poll my roommates and fiance for ideas just to get ten good examples. So to me this begs the question:Where are all the geek world's dads?
What I find especially weird is that in mainstream entertainment good dads are pretty much a stock character. Full House experimented with the idea of three dads living together in a pre-Prop 8 world, and even Glee has a good dad among it's millions of characters in the form of the gay kid's dad. Even Homer Simpson, who borders between geek and mainstream is a pretty good dad when he isn't strangling his son. So we know entertainment is capable of making good dads, so where are they in sci-fi and fantasy?
What we usually see is either jerks or absent fathers, weather from being dead or missing. I put Johnathon Kent on my list but in Superman's original story line Johnathon died just before Clark became Superman.
That's two dead dads for Superman. Batman only had one, the wuss. Besides Mr. Kent my list included Mufasa and Uncle Ben, both who while being good father figures ended up dead just to progress the story line and give the characters reasons to be ticked. Sometimes the only times we hear about a characters father is in a flashback, briefly introduced for a story then immediately forgotten, and usually if they were good dads they were dead but if he was a jerk dad he's still around, presumably to add tension later.
So my second question then: Why is it when they do make a good dad they like to kill him off?
I also want to note how many dads were NOT the actual fathers of the people they were being dads to. My list has a couple uncles, a professional mentor for vampire slayers, and a whatever Splinter is. So here we have dad energy given off by non- dads, which is cool, don't get me wrong, but it begs another question:
Why aren't more fathers dads?
I've been pondering this for days, and I wish I could give some intelligent answer about fiction and Oedipus and Abraham or whatever, but honestly I'm still at a loss. I can't say that tragic fatherhood stories always make good characters, because the people who got the good dad stuff from my list are some of the best characters in fiction. I can't say that it's hard to write good dads, since the mainstream has all but made it a commodity. All I can say for sure is that I don't like it. I don't see anything wrong with having some decent dads in fantasy. I don't get the obsession to give everyone a dark and troubled past, with an abusive father and a crack-head mother, or have one or both die off in some weird tragedy. What's wrong with having a super hero come from a well adjusted family life?
What are your thoughts?
-JOE
What we usually see is either jerks or absent fathers, weather from being dead or missing. I put Johnathon Kent on my list but in Superman's original story line Johnathon died just before Clark became Superman.
That's two dead dads for Superman. Batman only had one, the wuss. Besides Mr. Kent my list included Mufasa and Uncle Ben, both who while being good father figures ended up dead just to progress the story line and give the characters reasons to be ticked. Sometimes the only times we hear about a characters father is in a flashback, briefly introduced for a story then immediately forgotten, and usually if they were good dads they were dead but if he was a jerk dad he's still around, presumably to add tension later.
So my second question then: Why is it when they do make a good dad they like to kill him off?
Why aren't more fathers dads?
I've been pondering this for days, and I wish I could give some intelligent answer about fiction and Oedipus and Abraham or whatever, but honestly I'm still at a loss. I can't say that tragic fatherhood stories always make good characters, because the people who got the good dad stuff from my list are some of the best characters in fiction. I can't say that it's hard to write good dads, since the mainstream has all but made it a commodity. All I can say for sure is that I don't like it. I don't see anything wrong with having some decent dads in fantasy. I don't get the obsession to give everyone a dark and troubled past, with an abusive father and a crack-head mother, or have one or both die off in some weird tragedy. What's wrong with having a super hero come from a well adjusted family life?
What are your thoughts?
-JOE
I figure that most of the readers and writers of science fiction and fantasy are looking for an escape from reality. (Or an outlet to address reality.)
ReplyDeleteSome guys come from homes with emotionally absent fathers. They struggle to make any connection with their father and so they'll eat up stories with fathers connected to their sons, even if it's antagonist or a rivalry.