All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues

[eruthros]

I was watching some of the making of Indiana Jones specials just yesterday. See, I finally saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the other day, so I'd be able to understand references to it. (These are the perils of teaching archaeology, guys.) And it was so incredibly awful that then I decided to go remind myself of better Indiana Joneses.

I was watching the Last Crusade special, and in the first minute of the special Steven Spielberg shares this amazing line with us:

I wanted to flesh out Indy's relationship with his father. And I said, here's a time we can really do a really good character study of who gave birth to this guy.

And I realized, omg, this explains so much about Hollywood! They don't understand the birds and the bees; they've seen so much television where people only have daddy issues that they believe in some sort of male parthenogenesis. In order to be as masculine as possible, male heroes are born of fathers who they can't live up to, never mothers who might soften their aggression. All the best cowboys do have daddy issues; they can never have mommy issues. WHO KNEW.

And this is how we get Jack on Lost, and Jeremiah writing letters to his dead father, and basically everybody on Heroes (or so I'm told), and everybody else on tv whose entire adult life revolves around their father's judgment.

Comments

[giandujakiss.livejournal.com]

Don't forget Dean Winchester. He's one big walking Daddy Issue!

[eruthros]

Oh, man, I totally forgot Dean Winchester! (To be fair, I don't watch SPN -- but even so, you'd think I'd remember from the way my flist talks about him.)

[thingswithwings.livejournal.com]

IT IS VERY TRUE

[eruthros]

I still can't believe he actually said "gave birth to." It's so beautiful!

[lysimache.livejournal.com]

WHO KNEW.

Harold Bloom knew, bless his heart. :P

[pocketmouse]

It's kind of the hero archetype, going back to popular mythology. Almost all hero figures have one parent (if any), and more often than not, it's a male parent.

[eruthros]

Certainly, but it's rare to see someone so caught up in that as to actually use the phrase "gave birth to" referring to a father. It's just such a lovely example of the daddy issues problem that I couldn't resist sharing!

[pocketmouse]

Sean Connery is Zeus!

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

And this is yet another way in which Joss is different.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Ah, a reminder of one of the reasons why I gave up Heroes, and yet another reason not to get into Lost.

I do find it breathtaking that Spielberg actually said that so explicitly, but yet it really fits, with what he's written, and what so very many Hollywood writers have written. That's just brilliant, if unintentionally so.

(I used my Pushing Daisies icon because I've been thinking about parental issues there: they give us an interesting spin because they have very obvious daddy issues, but the "mommy issues" have been there from the start and have emerged more and more insistently as the serious progresses. Can I even say "mommy issues"? Does anyone say that? But now they've killed that show. Grrr.)

[tnt6669.livejournal.com]

Aren't all these shows (and movie) written by male writers? It may be their autobiographical views being entered into the characters. Writing and creating a character is the closest thing some men have to giving birth and they possess a closeness with their creations. Maybe that perspective alone makes them father-centric as creators of those characters.

Either that or mom issues are seem as anti-woman in Hollywood.

Momma Petrelli is my fav person in heroes. I think she is just as manipulative and evil as her husband although the writing is desperately working to redeem her from the first season.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Good lord! That DOES explain a lot! And here was me thinking the mother not only gave birth to the child, but played some role in the psychological development of the child. I've been getting that wrong for years.

rotten in denmark

[xensen.livejournal.com]

Compare to Hamlet. Now, there was a guy with mother issues. Is that why he wasn't much of an action here?

oedipus

[xensen.livejournal.com]

when oedipus was a baby his parents tied his feet together and left him to die on a mountain. that sort of thing just tends to end badly.

[joie-de-livre.livejournal.com]

This is a spectacular tidbit, and it will inform my life for quite a while! Many thanks!