robintrigue

Okay so. What with one thing and another, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Son’s Quest for the Father as a narrative arc, particularly in Star Wars; the main culprit for this train of thought is probably Rogue One and the (I feel) incredibly clumsy way it handled Jyn and her father. Everything whirring around my brain is terribly disorganised, so I apologise, but I’d quite like to jot some thoughts down here even if they’re not of a very high standard.

1. The Son’s Quest for the Father

Here it is, the big one. Luke Skywalker grows up not knowing his father, then learns that he is a powerful and noble Jedi, and hopes to follow in his footsteps and become the man he’s meant to be. My understanding of the Hero’s Journey is fairly superficial, but it feels like this works pretty well as a prime example, especially as a Rite of Manhood: he’s left his known world, strikes off into the unknown with only the legend and spirit of his father to guide him, to lead him to some greater truth that will save the galaxy. There’s the obvious wrench of Vader being evil, but there’s totally good in him, Luke can sense it, and Vader does sacrifice himself and Luke does become a Jedi, so it’s all clear on that front.

The Greeks do it too, don’t they? Theseus. “When you are old enough to move this boulder, you will find your father’s sword and I will reveal your heritage to you.” Telemachus too, to an extent, waiting for Odysseus’s return and helping him drive away his mother’s suitors. It’s a strong arc about saving the world and about becoming a man: the boy-hero leaves home, takes up his father’s mantle, and with that guidance accomplishes great feats. Leaving, discovering secrets of manhood and strength and morality and heroism, accomplishing the task at hand. Inigo Montoya. Simba from The Lion King. Every film about a boy’s little league team being coached by a disenchanted dad. Good, solid storytelling. Apparently it comes from Thomas Wolfe.

2.The Son’s Quest for the Mother

Now, this is where I get interested, because I never would have thought about anything past that first one, 101 heroism, if it weren’t for a line in Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions that I always come back to, about the son/father quest: “It seems to me that really truthful American novels would have the heroes and heroines alike looking for mothers instead. This needn’t be embarrassing. It’s simply true. [...] A mother is much more useful.”

One of the things Breakfast of Champions is about is not having a mother, or having a mother who isn’t very good. We’re in the realm of metaphor here – the parents involved needn’t be biological, they’re symbols; symbols of nurture and symbols of strength rather than well-rounded human beings. None of the protagonists of Breakfast of Champions go searching for a healthier mother figure. Maybe they’d be better off if they had. No one ended that book very well off.

I also think about the line in The West Wing, one of the early Christmas episodes where Mrs Landingham talks about her sons dying in Vietnam. “It’s hard when that happens so far away, you know because, with the noises and the shooting, they had to be so scared. It’s hard not to think right then they needed their mother.”

I can’t off the top of my head think of a story, of a heroic quest, where the son is seeking comfort and love of a mother. I suppose there’s strong shades of it in Harry Potter. Guardians of the Galaxy too, even if it made the romance subplot creepy as hell. Anyway, I think that’s a good take on the Son/Father thing. I agree with Vonnegut; more stories should be about heroes receiving comfort, learning the grand quest secret is kindness and being nurturing to others. It’s a good, important story to tell.

3.The Daughter’s Quest for the Mother

I really don’t know what to put here, because I can’t think of any examples of this, none that I like anyhow. Brave doesn’t really fit the bill for me, though it does come close – it’s a mother/daughter relationship, and they do have some fun fish-catching adventures, but is one searching for the other? Hmm. Not certain. SF/F tales with two women are so rare I can’t honestly think of any where mother/daughter is the central relationship, let alone where one gets a cool arc of heroic feats. If anyone else can think of any, hit me up.

I suppose the closest I can think of are those Films For Women, romcoms and such, wacky comedies about One Woman’s Journey. I feel like there’s lots of these where the protagonist is Too Busy For Love, and then her stay-at-home mother tells her it’s Okay To Have Feelings, and then she realises she did want the heterosexual romance with Ben Affleck more than she wanted a career anyway. You know the type. Anyway, I can’t think any good examples of heroic women and their heroic mothers.

4.The Daughter’s Quest for the Father

Now THIS is the one I’ve been thinking about ever since my brain put together the first two, because this is central to Rogue One and I feel pretty grumpy about what we got. My running theory is that the writers put together this great ensemble cast and this plot that really gets you thinking about morality and shades of grey and the importance of standing up to authority, and then they suddenly remembered Jyn was the main character so they made her have a romance and a dad, because though the romance was mild, the dad was central and did not work for me at all. But their relationship did fit into this terrible, ill-wielded archetype that is so common in SF/F stories and I hate it.

What we have is Jyn Erso, kicking ass and taking names, trying to put her past behind her and hoping her father is dead because otherwise he’s working on a giant murder weapon and his very existence might get her killed. Understandable distance. And then he calls her by a childhood nickname, all is forgiven, that nickname is the password for the secret plans, and a father’s love saves the day.

And. Perhaps that’s fine. Perhaps I’m overreacting or misreading things. But I have trouble believing that a nickname and an ‘I love you’ are enough for all to be forgiven and for her to be willing to die to save her father. And I couldn’t help feeling let down that amidst the deaths and sacrifices of all these characters I had grown to love, the film was trying to sell me the blueprint file name as the most significant moment in the film. I felt far more invested in Jyn learning to trust everyone on this wild mission, in Cassian climbing up that spire with a broken back, in all the sacrifices people made to get these plans out... Catch That Kid did the name-as-password trick, and did it with a thousand times more emotional impact. Actually, there is a film about a daughter going on a cool adventure and finding her mother’s love along the way: fun 2004 romp Catch That Kid!

I think my problem is that it feels like the father stealing the thunder of the daughter: Jyn survived on her own, dodged gunfire and shrapnel, ran and jumped and climbed, dedicated her life to a cause – oh, and also her father loved her, and that’s the key to this whole mystery. I don’t know. Like I said, perhaps I’m overreacting. But it feels like something we’ve seen before; I definitely had two examples when I started writing this, but now I can only think of Interstellar, which was a huge betrayal. I was promised a film about an incredible female scientist, but it turns out she’s unable to do anything until she learns to love and forgive her dad? Yes there’s plot reasons to do with black holes, but that relies on movie/speculative science. The truth of the matter is, the plot doesn’t let her advance until she accepts that her father totally does love her.

It just bothers me. It bothers me that male heroes gain strength from finding their fathers, that it’s a revelation that helps them on their journey, but that female heroes are hampered unless they let their father do the work for them, that it’s the father who finds the secret and passes it on to them instead of them learning independence and their own strength to slay the monster. I don’t know.

I can think of one SF/F film that does this dynamic well, and that is Contact. Contact is incredible. The romance subplot is borderline offensive and totally irrelevant, but the father/daughter relationship is wonderful. The father encourages her to trust herself, to pursue the sciences, and she does. She has all of her own discoveries and breakthroughs, and when she reconnects with her father she’s at the pinnacle of her success: he’s nurturing towards her, reveals to her things she does not know but that she was coming here to discover. It’s a film about her own strength which he adds to, instead of detracts from. So it is possible, writers of adventuring heroines just need to become less sexist and lazy.

5.Star Wars Reversals

One last slew of thoughts, and it’s about Star Wars again because Star Wars is wild about the Hero’s Journey, and so am I. And, while the Orig Trig is practically the ur-myth of farmboys and their heavenly fathers, Star Wars has done some pretty cool shit with child-parent quests.

Firstly: the Father’s Quest for the Son. How cool is that? A perfect and fascinating flip of New Hope going on in Force Awakens. I’m not counting Leia just yet, because she stayed at the base while Han journeyed out, but I suspect we’ll be seeing more of her in Episode Eight. But in TFA, we have Han questing to find his child and save him, and it’s a story of nurturing, loving parenthood; of Han teaching a loving masculinity rather than this violent course of masculinity Kylo’s ascribed himself to. I think that’s cool as shit.

Secondly: the Son’s Quest for the Mother. We extremely literally have this exact thing, and it’s Episode Two, where Anakin returns to Tatooine against everyone’s advice to find his mom. And then he completely flips the trope. I’m not a fan of the prequel trilogy, but man is it interesting; Lucas sent Luke on a classic hero’s journey, and then reversed that for Anakin who needed to descend into evil. Luke finds his father mutilated and tempting him towards the Dark Side, and it makes him into a better person. Anakin finds his mother injured and telling him to stay good and kind, and he immediately murders children. Not the Jedi kids, that’s next film, but literally seconds after his mother tells him “I love you,” he butchers the entire tribe of Sand People. So that’s really interesting, the reverse-journey, and how the Nurturing Archetype actually led to Horrible Murder. Wow Anakin.

Thirdly: the Daughter’s Quest for the Father. And here we’re back to The Force Awakens and hot damn is Rey a cool hero. It’s said outright that she’s searching for her family, she’s staying on Jakku to accomplish that goal. But then a Heroic Quest comes to her, thrusts her into the unknown, and sends her on a journey to find Luke Skywalker. And this is all metaphors and archetypes, so let’s not get bogged down in Who Is Rey’s Dad, but it’s pretty undeniable that her quest for a family culminates in her finding Luke. And the role he’s going to play is also pretty clear: the mentor, the teacher, the Jedi master taking an apprentice. If fiction has established that a heroine’s arc is all about accepting love from her father, while a hero’s arc is about accepting cool swords and saving the world, then Rey has been given a Cool Swords Male Arc. And I am so, so excited for it. This is excellent.

I feel kind of bad about posting this, I feel I should have a more comprehensive film history going or proper academic citations, but here we go, these are some of my thoughts. Obvious caveat that there are more than two genders and not all women are nurturing and not all men are Stronk etc, I’m just wandering through archetypes and seeing what jumps out at me in a very unprofessional manner. Also there’s lots of stories with parent/child relationships as central, I’m just looking for ones with clear hero arcs where the return of an absent parent is key to unlocking the finale. But anyway, that’s been on my mind lately.