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giandujakissAlso with mention of Supernatural and Xena. Spoilers for CoE...
The discussion in the comments to my previous post made me want to talk about this more.
As I explained previously, I felt that the two stories of fathers/grandfathers killing their own children in CoE reinforced a dominant cultural narrative that children and families are the possessions/objects of the father, and the father has the right to dispose of them as he pleases - killing them for a greater good is a choice the father has the right to make, you punish a father by attacking his children-possessions, and the father has the ultimate right to unilaterally decide what's best for his family, including killing his children to protect them.
We don't see this with women - I'll talk more about this below, but in particular, you don't attack women in stories by attacking their children. You might manipulate them through their children, but I don't believe it's as common to see women being punished through their children.
Jack's storyline in CoE showed Jack getting punished for his past sins - sacrificing others' children - by killing his own grandchild. His kid was the object of his punishment. (Pharoah's kid was also punishment for ordering the death of others' children.) Additionally, Jack's narrative echoed the story of Abraham and Isaac - a father who sacrifices his son for the greater good. But that story is itself rooted in the idea that the sacrifice would be Abraham's - not Isaac's, who is just a tool - and that Abraham has the right to make that decision in the first place.
How different the story of Abraham would be if Abraham was ordered to kill someone else's child. It would still be an awful painful thing for Abraham to do, but somehow it seems less noble, I think, because Abraham would be taking a child that isn't his. But that line of thinking implies that Abraham's child does, in fact, belong to him in the first place - which he doesn't. Abraham has no more right to kill his child to prove his devotion to God than he has the right to someone else's, but that's not how it's presented in the Bible story, and it isn't how it was presented in CoE, where killing one's own kids was seen as ultimately the right of the patriarch.
By contrast, when women kill their children (narratively), the story isn't about how she's expressing her maternal love or her right as matriarch - a woman killing her kid is rejecting her role as mother, rejecting the patriarchy, attacking it. She's Medea - using the children as objects (again) that belong to the father, and turning away from her (proper) maternal role.
Then there's Frobisher's story in CoE. In real life, there are often news stories about men and women who kill their children - and for men in particular, there are real life stories about how they kill their wives and themselves simultaneously. It is my understanding that the explanation for these crimes often one of extreme, delusional patriarchy - the father is convinced that he can't care for his family, and that his family will be better off dead than without their father-protector, and he kills them all. It's an expression of his right as patriarch and his protectiveness. So you hear about these killings after, say, the father loses his job and can no longer support the family.
(Examples here, here, and here)
CoE took that cultural image - a man goes and shoots his kids, his wife, himself - and justified it with the standard cultural story: He was protecting his family from a worse fate. And, as with Jack's story, Frobisher was being punished - he took other people's children, and the price was his own children. His children-possessions were used as objects in the story to punish him; their own identities as people were irrelevant.
In Supernatural's The Kids are All Right, we saw something similar, from the woman's side. In news stories, the cultural narrative when a woman kills her kids is the Medea story. And in the Kids are All Right, we saw a woman try to drown her daughter - an obvious reference to Susan Smith. And, wouldn't you know it, in Supernatural, the crime was justified with the standard cultural explanation - she was rejecting her child, rejecting her role as mother (because the child really wasn't, in the episode, hers).
Xena presents a fascinating variation. First of all, there was a Xena episode that retold the story of Abraham and Isaac. But in that episode, it turned out that the whole thing was a plot by Isaac's evil brother (played by Karl Urban, as most people on Xena were) to commit fratricide. And God intervened to save Isaac because it was never supposed to happen that way in the first place.
In other words, Xena rejected the notion that God would expect a father to have the right to kill his son.
Later in Xena, Gabrielle was forced to kill her daughter. In that instance, the justification was a blend of the traditional cultural narratives for men and women. On the one hand, the child was a changeling, and a threat to the world; Gabrielle was thus rejecting her. On the other, the entire storyline played out as a maternal responsibility - Gabrielle was responsible for this child, loved her, and spared her from her destiny to become evil. Thus, killing the child was an expression of maternal love - something that usually is reserved only for the male narrative. Additionally, Gabrielle tried to kill herself after killing her daughter - which is part of the pattern of male protection killings, but not female rejection ones.
And, most interestingly, Xena's arch enemy Callisto killed Xena's child as a method of wreaking revenge on Xena herself. This was, again, a male narrative - the child was used as an object to attack the parent.
(And, shortly after typing this post, I came to the episode "Firstborn" in my Star Trek: TNG marathon - an old enemy of Picard, who blames Picard for killing his son, plots to avenge his son's death by killing Picard's long lost son. Even the title of the episode intentionally suggests the story of Pharoah - and I can't think of any examples of a similar story being told about mothers.)
Okay, I just typed that out really quickly. And I ... hope it makes sense.
The discussion in the comments to my previous post made me want to talk about this more.
As I explained previously, I felt that the two stories of fathers/grandfathers killing their own children in CoE reinforced a dominant cultural narrative that children and families are the possessions/objects of the father, and the father has the right to dispose of them as he pleases - killing them for a greater good is a choice the father has the right to make, you punish a father by attacking his children-possessions, and the father has the ultimate right to unilaterally decide what's best for his family, including killing his children to protect them.
We don't see this with women - I'll talk more about this below, but in particular, you don't attack women in stories by attacking their children. You might manipulate them through their children, but I don't believe it's as common to see women being punished through their children.
Jack's storyline in CoE showed Jack getting punished for his past sins - sacrificing others' children - by killing his own grandchild. His kid was the object of his punishment. (Pharoah's kid was also punishment for ordering the death of others' children.) Additionally, Jack's narrative echoed the story of Abraham and Isaac - a father who sacrifices his son for the greater good. But that story is itself rooted in the idea that the sacrifice would be Abraham's - not Isaac's, who is just a tool - and that Abraham has the right to make that decision in the first place.
How different the story of Abraham would be if Abraham was ordered to kill someone else's child. It would still be an awful painful thing for Abraham to do, but somehow it seems less noble, I think, because Abraham would be taking a child that isn't his. But that line of thinking implies that Abraham's child does, in fact, belong to him in the first place - which he doesn't. Abraham has no more right to kill his child to prove his devotion to God than he has the right to someone else's, but that's not how it's presented in the Bible story, and it isn't how it was presented in CoE, where killing one's own kids was seen as ultimately the right of the patriarch.
By contrast, when women kill their children (narratively), the story isn't about how she's expressing her maternal love or her right as matriarch - a woman killing her kid is rejecting her role as mother, rejecting the patriarchy, attacking it. She's Medea - using the children as objects (again) that belong to the father, and turning away from her (proper) maternal role.
Then there's Frobisher's story in CoE. In real life, there are often news stories about men and women who kill their children - and for men in particular, there are real life stories about how they kill their wives and themselves simultaneously. It is my understanding that the explanation for these crimes often one of extreme, delusional patriarchy - the father is convinced that he can't care for his family, and that his family will be better off dead than without their father-protector, and he kills them all. It's an expression of his right as patriarch and his protectiveness. So you hear about these killings after, say, the father loses his job and can no longer support the family.
(Examples here, here, and here)
CoE took that cultural image - a man goes and shoots his kids, his wife, himself - and justified it with the standard cultural story: He was protecting his family from a worse fate. And, as with Jack's story, Frobisher was being punished - he took other people's children, and the price was his own children. His children-possessions were used as objects in the story to punish him; their own identities as people were irrelevant.
In Supernatural's The Kids are All Right, we saw something similar, from the woman's side. In news stories, the cultural narrative when a woman kills her kids is the Medea story. And in the Kids are All Right, we saw a woman try to drown her daughter - an obvious reference to Susan Smith. And, wouldn't you know it, in Supernatural, the crime was justified with the standard cultural explanation - she was rejecting her child, rejecting her role as mother (because the child really wasn't, in the episode, hers).
Xena presents a fascinating variation. First of all, there was a Xena episode that retold the story of Abraham and Isaac. But in that episode, it turned out that the whole thing was a plot by Isaac's evil brother (played by Karl Urban, as most people on Xena were) to commit fratricide. And God intervened to save Isaac because it was never supposed to happen that way in the first place.
In other words, Xena rejected the notion that God would expect a father to have the right to kill his son.
Later in Xena, Gabrielle was forced to kill her daughter. In that instance, the justification was a blend of the traditional cultural narratives for men and women. On the one hand, the child was a changeling, and a threat to the world; Gabrielle was thus rejecting her. On the other, the entire storyline played out as a maternal responsibility - Gabrielle was responsible for this child, loved her, and spared her from her destiny to become evil. Thus, killing the child was an expression of maternal love - something that usually is reserved only for the male narrative. Additionally, Gabrielle tried to kill herself after killing her daughter - which is part of the pattern of male protection killings, but not female rejection ones.
And, most interestingly, Xena's arch enemy Callisto killed Xena's child as a method of wreaking revenge on Xena herself. This was, again, a male narrative - the child was used as an object to attack the parent.
(And, shortly after typing this post, I came to the episode "Firstborn" in my Star Trek: TNG marathon - an old enemy of Picard, who blames Picard for killing his son, plots to avenge his son's death by killing Picard's long lost son. Even the title of the episode intentionally suggests the story of Pharoah - and I can't think of any examples of a similar story being told about mothers.)
Okay, I just typed that out really quickly. And I ... hope it makes sense.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-11 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-11 08:59 pm (UTC)