Matthew
Welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics, and this episode of the Once and Future Parent — which is also now becoming the Once and Future Parent podcast. For those who are a little confused, don’t worry, I will explain, and we’ll get to superheroes and daddy issues in just a moment.
Myself, Matthew, along with two awesome co-hosts, Mandy Kaplan and Pete Wright, have been doing a podcast for the last couple of months called the Once and Future Parent, where we discuss parenting issues and my journey and both their journeys at different parts of the parenting journey. Along the way we realized it was a lot of work, we were starting to get a little repetitive, and we wanted to try something in a new direction. We realized, among other things, one of the things that first wanted us to tie together was how often parenthood is discussed in media — the way it comes up, the way that we as parents react to that, and especially how we may have reacted before becoming parents. Maybe something we watched when we were six, or maybe something we watched when our kid was six, hits a lot different when our kid is sixteen — whatever it is. So we were talking about why don’t we just make that kind of a recurring thing on Superhero Ethics, because it turns out a lot of superheroes have parents, a lot of superheroes have kids, a lot of super villains have parents and kids, and a lot of them have daddy issues or mommy issues or some family issue that has an awful lot to do with why they are superheroes, why they are super villains, or why they’re just kind of super broken. And so that’s what we’ll be talking about today.
I put it out on social media and got some great feedback from fans who threw out a lot of different examples and helped me break down some categories of different ways that parenting issues show up among superheroes and super villains. But let me start by throwing it out to the two of you. And I’m going to start with the person who is least prepared to answer this question.
Mandy
Or any question.
Matthew
Nearing the parenting journey, how often do we get crib notes for when our child asks why the cat died or whatever. But Mandy, when I say to you, from your limited experience as you’ve been learning more about superheroes, what comes to mind about them and their parents?
Mandy
I don’t have a ton of superhero knowledge, but I did just watch some Smallville. That’s a good one. The Kents are so loving, and watching the pilot — watching these two people raise this child with such love and care and then eventually have to tell him the truth — I like that. And on the opposite side of the spectrum are the Luthors, and there’s some stuff going on over there with daddy issues galore. So it’s nice to see them both in stark contrast in the same story, the same universe.
Matthew
Yeah. And it’s a good example and part of why I think I like that show so much. As well as Superman and Lois, which came much later but in many ways is a sequel to Smallville — in that one, Superman and Lois are the parents of two teenagers. Honestly, putting aside all the superhero stuff, it is some of the highest emotional intelligence in terms of relationships with family and romantic partners that I’ve ever seen.
So, in terms of showing a superhero and his parents, that’s kind of an exception. Pete, as someone who’s been looking a lot at superheroes, why do you think it is that almost never do we have a superhero who just has a decent relationship with their parents?
Pete
I think that’s because there are no lessons to be learned in decent relationships. When you think about broken parental relationships, they’re usually shorthand for three things. One: legacy pressure — who am I compared to you, Dad? Two: attachment injury — will you choose me? And three: moral formation — what rules are you giving me as your child, and will they survive my contact with the world? That is such a Smallville trope. The lesson in Smallville is: the rules you give me, will they survive when I take them to high school, when I take them to college, to the Daily Planet? And I think the genre has to externalize those three elements into capes and fights and masks and world-ending stakes because it’s really a disguise for family systems therapy with punching. It has to hide some of those things so you get the lesson through the back door — which is what I think makes them so interesting. How many times can you tell one of those three stories and make it continually compelling over years and years and property after property?
Matthew
Yeah. And I think there are a couple more stories — most specifically, my parents died due to blank, and so I must get revenge, or do them honor, or free them. That’s attachment injury and injury.
Pete
If I’ve ever heard it, right — attached.
Mandy
Yeah, you Elsa — yeah.
Matthew
But why was Anna so well adjusted? It’s a mystery.
Pete
I don’t know, maybe they’ll answer that in number four.
Mandy
Well, you let me know, Pete.
Matthew
But yeah — Smallville is fun, but for most of the Superman canon he is presented as an orphan. He is certainly raised by the Kents, but he doesn’t interact with them much. And Superman is actually kind of the exception, because then you look at people like Batman — his parents are gone, and that is a formational part of his story. You look at Spider-Man — he has Aunt May, and his uncle generally dies early in the story as a formational part of his story, and his parents are gone. There are so many heroes where it feels like either they don’t have a relationship with their parents, or their parents are the bad guys they’re working against, or their parents are gone because someone put their father in jail and they have to free them — look at Barry Allen. One of the biggest wells they go to, if it’s a superhero trope, is that the hero does not have parents, and that’s a part of why they’re a hero.
Pete
I want to jump into — you brought up Batman, so I think we need to jump into the Marvel answer to Batman: Tony Stark. Tony Stark’s got an interesting parentage. Essentially his dad was the intellectual side of Tony Stark’s superhero origin, so we have this interesting intellectual inheritance without intimacy in their father-son relationship. He gets the company, he gets the expectations, but not any of the emotional attunement. He honestly gets to read his dad’s love of child through Steve Rogers — through another superhero — which is so brutal. Episode after episode, their relationship is broken because that relationship has transcended the bonds of father and son. It becomes de-attached from his father and turns into something where his father’s fandom supplanted his fatherhood.
Matthew
Right. And I have a question — Pete, you’ve dealt quite a lot with the comics — how much is the Freudian father-son psychodrama of the Tony Stark story a part of the comics versus an invention of the MCU specifically?
Pete
I think it’s there, I think it’s present. I think the MCU leans hard on it because they had practical narrative reasons to expand the universe across stories. The Tony-and-his-father dynamic is one of those legendary fraught relationships seated throughout the arc — particularly the arc where he goes through some things with alcoholism and has to deal with what it’s like living suitless on the streets. It’s hard to come to terms with the legacy issues. How did I get from this to this thing that is identity-free, that has to learn who he is again? What did I not get from mom and dad — particularly dad — that lands me here? That is kind of the legacy of the Tony Stark story.
Mandy
Does it tend to be more daddy issues than maternal issues?
Pete
Yeah, it does. And I think there’s another one — Matthew and I’ve been talking a lot about Thor. I’ll toss it back to you, Matthew — how would you characterize Frigga’s relationship with Thor versus Odin’s relationship with Thor?
Matthew
It’s very different. And granted, you can hear Pete and I talk quite a lot about it if you listen to the Marvel Movie Minute version of Thor 2: The Dark World — I was a little more critical, Pete was more critical still, but check that out. What is established in those movies is something pretty traditional, and I think you could say there’s some sexism and patriarchy in it, but the idea is: father is strict and stern, sometimes even cruel, because he needs you to be better — and mother is loving and forgiving.
Mandy
Not in my house. I like that too. The Tony Stark version, though — and I think this is fair to do it this way because it is what’s in Tony’s memory — this trope is often presented in a very sexist way. For Tony Stark, his mother barely exists. I think his mother loved him, took care of him, and was good to him, and he just kind of takes that for granted. Her death is incredibly meaningful and hurtful for him, but he knew he had her love. He didn’t know he had his father’s love, and he’s forever chasing that. And as Pete said, he spent most of his childhood hearing how great Steve Rogers was. Then when he’s finally an adult, when he’s finally become Iron Man, when he’s finally come into himself as a hero — and maybe even though his father is long dead, maybe his father would think well of him now — guess what? Steve Rogers is no longer a myth but a living reality, and he has to go through all of that again. So yeah, it is very significant — in ways that are problematic, but also very important for the story — that Tony’s parental issues are entirely about his father. His mother is a loving, comforting presence. He loved her, he misses her, but there’s nothing unresolved with her.
Matthew
All he ever thinks about is what’s unresolved. And in the same way that he takes the romantic people in his life or his best friends for granted, he’s always having to chase the person who doesn’t love him.
Mandy
That’s human nature, unfortunately.
Pete
I think so. And so many of these comic relationships were less complex than what we’re getting with the modern retellings of these stories. There was a natural black-and-white binary experience with each parent — so if there’s a complex and catastrophic relationship with dad, then mom better be the savior. Mom better be the one to say, “Oh, he’s just confused, son, don’t worry about it, he’ll come around.” That ends up softening the legacy pressure. It also sets up the dynamic of: I don’t want to become my parent — which is a major thematic element in so many of these properties. I don’t want to become my father: Luke and Vader, Gamora and Nebula and Thanos, Jackson Hyde and Black Manta. There is the “will I live up to the legacy of my parent” and there’s also “I hope to God I don’t live up to the legacy of my parent because it’s lousy.” Mandy, you bring up Smallville again — isn’t that the drama we get with the Luthor family? Young Lex trying to break free, episode after episode, from the legacy of the Luthor name, of his father — and who will he become?
Matthew
One thing I particularly love about the Smallville thing is that for Lex, that battle is not just internal. He moves to a whole new city to go out on his own and be away from his father. Eventually his father follows him, but even before that, he’s trying to say: I’m not my father, I’m going to be totally different, I’m going to use my money in a completely different way. And most of the people involved — including Mr. Kent, Clark’s father — don’t believe him. They treat him with disdain, rejection, fear, and lack of trust because he’s a Luthor. I think that also becomes a really important thing: when there are great stories about escaping the shadow of your father or mother so as not to become the terrible person they were, Smallville adds the question: what if no one lets you? What if no matter how good you are, all they’ll ever see is the legacy of your father? And is it again human nature to go, “Well, forget it — if you think I’m a villain, I might as well just be a villain, because you’re never going to believe I’m not”?
Mandy
As a person with daddy issues myself — which I don’t often talk about — we all struggle with what you just said, Matthew. There are things about our parents that we hope we have and things we hope to God we don’t. It’s such a mixed bag. When someone says, “Oh, you sound just like your father” — part of you knows they mean that as a compliment, but it’s such a loaded concept. And anyone who devotes their life to fighting evil and crime and ridding the world of evil — like these superheroes — it’s such a complex line to walk. How does Lex take his father’s creativity and savvy and all the wonderful things his father had, but not use them for evil?
Matthew
Right, not in making money the way he did — he can do good because he has money, but that money was all earned through the terrible things his father did.
Pete
Yeah. Mandy, when you think about it — because you opened the door to daddy issues — how do you find the echoes of your relationship with your dad, that you undoubtedly carry with you every day, motivating you as a parent? How does that impact the decisions you make?
Mandy
It impacted me before I was actually a parent, but as a parent too. At a very specific, granular level — my dad was very funny, but often at the expense of others. That’s how he got laughs: he would make fun of someone, everyone else would laugh, and he’d be a big winner because he made the joke. I can give people a hard time in a loving way, I think, but I don’t use other people as my fodder for entertainment. I got the brunt of it as his kid — he would just mock me and everyone would think that was hilarious. So I don’t do that to my son. In high school, a friend said, “God, you make fun of me a lot.”
Pete
And you realized you’d put on that dad glove.
Mandy
And started boxing with it — yes. So I threw out those gloves since sophomore year of high school, and I try really hard not to do it, because believe me, I see jokes everywhere. I could get that laugh if I wanted, but not at someone’s expense.
Pete
Yeah, it’s like you can see the rake on the sidewalk and someone walking toward it — do you wait just so you get the joke, or do you move the rake? And I think that’s such an interesting thing, because I deeply don’t think anyone is really out thinking, “How can I teach the world about better parenting by writing this comic storyline.”
Matthew
I’m going to say Lois and Clark is very much the exception — the exception that proves the rule. Go on.
Pete
But I do think they are calling out the relationships that are full of struggle, and being able to see yourself in the comic story mirror is the thing that lets you see those things. So you look at Bruce Wayne and Thomas Wayne — this is one of the great father-son relationships that sort of doesn’t exist, because the origin story is that Thomas Wayne is shot when Bruce is a child, and Bruce bears witness to that. That dead-parent story becomes scripture. It’s no longer really about Bruce living up to Thomas. It becomes his effort to resurrect meaning in a right relationship that never existed. When the parent becomes idealized, when the parent is put on a pedestal, the child loses permission to be ordinary. Take the cape away from Bruce Wayne — take Batman away from Bruce Wayne — would he still have been working so hard to become the billionaire industrialist, just because that’s what daddy was and that was the only choice he had?
Mandy
Well, it’s also all an effort to make dad proud. Dad can’t say “I’m proud of you.”
Pete
Right. So there is no closure for that. Everything you do is motivated by that desperate need. Poor Bruce Wayne — but he also loses the savior of his mother at the same time. So we get this other angle that a number of superheroes deal with: the mentor parent. In Bruce Wayne’s story that’s Alfred. But I’m sorry, Matthew, I’m steamrolling — go ahead.
Matthew
No, it’s fine. There are two things I want to say about Bruce. One is that, like with Tony Stark, it’s almost always about Thomas Wayne’s legacy. If you went and looked at all the times Martha Wayne has appeared on screen, the majority of them is the shot of her pearls falling apart.
Pete
Yes, again and again and again. But also — in many ways, the Batman story is so perfect to explore because not only is the father the ideal that they have to live up to, on the pedestal, but a lot of the stories are about him deciding he wants to learn what’s behind his father’s real legacy — or being forced to. Some of the things that differentiate different Batman stories are the different things he learns. Sometimes the story is Alfred telling him about what a great man Thomas Wayne was and him needing to live up to that — Batman: The Animated Series does that really well. Sometimes it’s: your father was a person who had incredible power and responsibility and he became a doctor, which was great, but he kind of let his company turn into an arms manufacturer and let his city fall apart — the Christopher Nolan movies. Batman is almost the perfect cipher because, think about every different kind of legacy you could have — there’s probably a Batman story for all of them.
Matthew
For sure. So sometimes it’s “can I live up to him,” sometimes it’s “can I correct his mistakes,” and sometimes it’s “can I be better than him.”
Pete
Sometimes it’s your mentor parent telling you you’re not living up to him. “Look at you right now — you’re not doing what your father would have done.”
Matthew
“Your father would be ashamed of you.”
Pete
Oh my God. I am in tears.
Mandy
Well, and it’s interesting — Matthew came on my podcast, Make Me a Nerd, and had me watch The Penguin, which I had been afraid of. You know, I’m not a superhero person — why would I enjoy a show called The Penguin? First of all, I think it’s one of the best things ever made, and I loved it so much. But it is almost entirely about the parental relationship between the Penguin and his mother. So here we are, adjacent to Batman, looking at the other side — and the first thing we realize is they both had mommy and daddy issues.
Matthew
In talking with Paul Hoppe — who’s been a regular co-host and guest on this podcast as well as many others, including on Marvel Movie Minute — he pointed out something interesting. Two really compelling stories that have been on screen recently are The Penguin and Moon Knight, because in both of them, when the protagonist is a child, a sibling dies — I think in both cases it’s drowning — and early in the story, the story we get is that their parent unfairly blames them for the death of that sibling. That leads to a lot of their mental trauma and helps shape who they are. More specifically in the case of Moon Knight, and the dissociative identity disorder that he develops. In Moon Knight it’s made fairly clear that he was a kid — it’s not his fault — but his mother blamed him for it. It’s an understandable but horrible thing: she had nowhere to go with her trauma and her tragedy, so she put it onto her defenseless child. You can both understand her and be horrified by it. The Penguin, though — where that seems like the same story until we realize: no, he actually did kill his brother. The mother is blaming him, but with very good reason, and she’s also afraid of him because of it. So yeah, to me, if you ever get a chance to watch those two in close proximity, it’s fascinating how they take the exact same issue and flip it.
Pete
I’d forgotten that about Moonlight, but The Penguin is kind of unforgettable. That’s our Cain and Abel story. It’s dark.
Matthew
It’s dark. It enables eight-year-olds going back to their parents like —
Pete
Yeah, gruesome. But that gets to another interesting take on those relationships: what is it about the parental relationship that allowed these kids to get to this point before they were properly imprinted with any values whatsoever? Those are some dark nature-versus-nurture stories.
Matthew
I want to go in a somewhat different direction. This is going to riff off of Tony Stark, but I think it’s true for a lot of other heroes: what happens when your parent dies? With some of these characters, like Bruce Wayne, it happens early in the story. But sometimes it happens much later. There’s a tangent here but I promise I’ll get to context: I was a pastor for many years and certainly dealt with a lot of families in grief. When I was helping them prepare for a funeral, my first wife was a nurse in nursing homes for most of the time we were together, so she had a lot of experience of patients dying and seeing how their families reacted. One thing that we both saw — confirmed both in literature and from other people I know — is that some of the people who have the hardest time dealing with the death of a parent are people who had a rocky relationship with that parent. There’s something unfulfilled — they’re worried they never got to tell off their parent, or never got to forgive them, or the parent never got to forgive them, whatever it is. Not always, but if there are three siblings and one of them says “we need to sue the doctor or the nursing home,” it’s probably the one who had the rockiest relationship.
I say all that to get to Civil War, because one of the chief motivating things for Tony Stark is finding out — forgive me for spoilers for something a while ago, but still — that the Winter Soldier killed his parents. And yes, he talks a lot about how they killed his mom, because he loved his mom and had an unproblematic relationship with her. But I think most of why he is so motivated and kind of out of his mind — not listening to logic, not listening to reason, just needing revenge — is because of this exact same thing. Because it wasn’t a healthy relationship with his dad. The traumatic nature of it means that killing his father seals everything: his father will never get a chance to change, will never get a chance to say “Tony, I was wrong, you’re the good one, you’re better than Cap, you make me proud” — whatever it was going to be. And that’s why Tony goes so off the rails.
Pete
That’s so interesting as a parenting lesson. It reminds me of T’Challa too. Black Panther is one of the rare stories where the father was revered and they had a complicated but loving relationship. But the parenting hook you bring up is so interesting, because what we learn is that kids will eventually audit the values of their parents — and they will probably not first inherit our joyful stories. They’ll inherit our blind spots. And that’s terrifying to me. I’m sorry, Mandy, I felt like I was going to interrupt you.
Mandy
Not at all. There’s also something in what we’ve all heard — the expression “pain fades.” When you lose a parent, sometimes the negative fades and you start to only remember the good things and miss the good things. And I think for some of these characters who, while their parents were around, resented them and didn’t want to be anything like them — then the parent dies, and it’s like a switch flips: all I want now is to be like them. Perhaps there’s an element of pain fading.
Pete
Yeah. “I hate my dad.” “Yeah, I know you really hate your dad.” “How dare you say anything about my dad!” That double standard kicks in: longing and legacy.
Mandy
That was a powerful scene, Pete, by the way.
Pete
Thank you. There was so much depth.
Mandy
Yeah, I felt the backstory. It was great.
Matthew
One thing that’s been on my mind a lot — particularly today, talking about it with someone very close to me — is the way music can affect how you think about these things. Whether it’s particular songs connected to your relationship, or just because of the themes they’re about.
I bring this up because do you guys remember a song from the 80s by a band called Mike and the Mechanics called “In the Living Years”? That is one of my father’s favorite songs, and also one that really hits him hard, in part because he had a very fraught relationship with his own father — a real breaking point where his father truly betrayed him in some terrible ways. And then, as I understand it, his father died before they could have any resolution. I’m now at a more reconciled position with my father than I’ve been for most of my life. There’s still a lot of tension, and I’m probably always going to have night terrors when he’s coming to visit because of years of history. But we’re in a better place. I remember there being a lot of years where that song was what came to mind for me — that idea of: is he going to die before I’ve ever gotten him to admit what he did? Before I’ve ever been able to forgive him? Before he’s ever going to be proud of me?
So this goes into a larger thing I was thinking about as we have this conversation: there are ways in which superpowers and superheroes make these particularly interesting stories, but also — none of us can fly, none of us have laser vision or heat breath or freezing breath, but we all have parents. In our case, we all have kids. And I think maybe part of why these stories love to tell us this is because it’s the way we can relate to them. We can say: I’m not a billionaire, but I have a fraught relationship with my dad, so I can relate to Tony Stark.
Pete
Capes and superpowers are the metaphor delivery system for “I can — or can’t — be loved as I am.” It becomes a much more compassionate way to talk about identity and how parents try to love the version of the kid that makes them feel the least afraid. I think the first X-Men movie — or maybe the second — you know, there was the one where a girl’s parents sent her away because she kept touching kids and killing them. What was her name?
Oh, Rogue.
It was a Rogue story. And I think it did that very well, showing how complicated the relationship is for parents who are terrified of their kids. The metaphor being: we don’t understand each other, and it doesn’t matter why — we don’t understand each other because we don’t know how to accept differences from our lived experience.
Mandy
Well, these themes run through absolutely everything. The parental issues are the heart of Greek mythology, soap operas, sitcoms.
Pete
Most importantly, The Breakfast Club. That’s what is so compelling about these stories. Yes, it’s cool to have capes and be able to fly — that’s all really cool. But I don’t know that would be enough. People need to see themselves up on the screen, and the way to do that is through these complicated parental issues. What’s interesting is that I think it’s the capes that become the front door for people who otherwise don’t think about these relationships in those terms, and it becomes easier to accommodate complex emotional relationship conversations, just because they’ve been exposed to things like the Rogue story.
Mandy
And it combines the laughs and the lights — we have to put cheese around the pill to trick the dog into eating the pill.
Matthew
And I think there’s something really interesting happening now in terms of superhero media. There are people who love the fight scenes and all the pixels, and that’s true. But I know I’ve certainly been in movies where I’ve been like, “Can you guys stop fighting and go back to him talking to his mom? That’s what I care about.” And that’s also a very me thing. Oh yeah — but it’s not just me, I think.
Mandy
Certainly not. But I think a lot of people are on the other side: “Stop talking to your mom and get back out there and start kicking ass.”
Matthew
This is a tangent, but I’m going to hold it up because it is the thing I want to recommend to everybody. No spoilers. But if you’ve ever been curious to see a story about people with superpowers that is not a superhero story — it is a story about people going through life, in this case struggling actors who just happen to have superpowers — watch Wonder Man, because it is everything that I and other people who’ve been frustrated by “why do we always have to have the big fight?” have been wanting.
Pete
Mandy, you need to watch this. You will love it. I’m going to do it on the podcast with you. You will absolutely love it. It’s eight 30-minute episodes — it’s basically a double feature. You can get through it.
Matthew
And I’m your guest for that — unless anyone else wants to join, but I’m definitely your guest.
Mandy
Wait, Matthew, you’re saying “unless anyone else” — there’s no one else here.
Pete
It’s just me, and I have just been shut down.
Matthew
No, no — I’m not in Hollywood. You might have a friend who’s better for it. Whatever.
Mandy
Oh, anyway. Enough Wonder Man. Maybe I know him and I’ll get him.
Matthew
Enough making the vegan sausage. Let’s get back to this topic. This is not my Star Wars podcast, but if I can ever bring something back to Star Wars, I will. Let’s talk about Luke Skywalker. In his story in the original trilogy, we get a number of different parts of this all happening at the same time. We start out with him as the child of a dead father — who he thinks was just a nobody. He then learns that his father was the best pilot Obi-Wan ever saw, a cunning warrior, a great friend, a great Jedi. And now he wants to live up to this legacy, and he also wants to avenge himself on Darth Vader, who killed his father. Then he finds out Darth Vader is his father, and he doesn’t want that to be the case. He finds that it is. And now everything he knew about his father is wrong. Then eventually — spoiler for something 40 years old, apologies — he’s in the position of not only having come to accept that his father is this most evil MacEvilsson, but actually thinking there might be some good in his father, and trying to save his father and save the legacy of his father. Pete, what are your thoughts on Luke Skywalker and daddy issues?
Pete
Luke is such a great vessel for all of the major relationship types, and the journey changes so dramatically from movie to movie. First he gets to be obsessed with hero worship. Then he learns that his father failed him as a mentor. So others have to step in — other mentor parents get to step in, to shape who he is in the absence of the one person whose responsibility it was to make him a safe adult. And then we have it from the other side: the villain dad model. What is the villain dad model of Darth Vader? Most of the villain dad models for decades were just masculinity critiques, and veiled “oh my God, is my son gay” stories, and “I don’t know how to deal with that, so I guess I’ll be a supervillain.” Luckily, I think they’re more complex than that now, and I think we’re getting through it. But the abusive, weaponized father figure that is Darth Vader is all about: how do I make you live up to who I am through power and control and authoritarianism? And not being able to do that. So I think the delight of the Vader story — as simple as it is — is actually fairly complex. And it goes both directions, because we get Vader with us on the journey —
Mandy
And we don’t get — I was going to say something.
Matthew
No, we do — what you just said, I was going to say that too. You just happened to ask Pete first.
Matthew
Did I miss anything? Did I do it right?
Matthew
Oh yeah, I thought maybe I was going to jump in there.
Mandy
I don’t know a ton about Star Wars, and I guess I never went that deep. To me it was just, “Oh crap, this evil guy’s my dad.” I didn’t think about him then trying to save him. I just haven’t seen them in a long time.
Matthew
Yeah, no, that’s really fair. It’s not a musical. I mean, it could be — but we’re not there yet.
Pete
The line between “I’m keeping you safe” and “I’m keeping you small” is very fuzzy. And that’s one we get in the Luke-Vader story that’s more nuanced than just whacking each other with light beams.
Matthew
Now, Luke is — as much as I love that story — yet another example where both of his parents are dead. But in his story, we just never talk about his mother, except in his and Leia’s very brief memories of her. And obviously, today we’ve been talking almost exclusively about dads and dad issues.
There are mothers in these universes, and there are some mommy issues of various kinds. Pete, you brought up Frigga. Talk a little more — I kind of sidestepped it because I still wanted to talk more about the Tony Stark angle. But in your perspective, what is the role of Frigga for both the hero of that family and the villain — Thor and Loki?
Pete
That’s a really interesting one, because I think we actually do get not just more influence on the superhero in question, but also on the villain in question, because they are stepbrothers. And the whole idea that Frigga gets to influence, by way of her affection, the direction of these characters is something we see across these properties. With Thor, she obviously takes a backseat to Odin’s affection because Thor is royal blood. She has a much more nurturing role with Loki — the adopted, kidnapped son. And I think we really do get a sense that she is doing the yeoman’s work of trying to develop this guy into something special and unique. And it doesn’t always work, because the family bond is so broken in the Thor family that she doesn’t have enough staff to make him the person she wants him to be. It’s really complicated.
Mandy
I have a question going back to Star Wars, if I may. And I know this podcast is not about nerding out at me — I get that. It never occurred to me until right now that Leia is also finding out that Darth Vader is her father. Do they deal with that? Because it feels like it’s Luke and Darth — that’s the whole story. And is that just patriarchy, or are daddy issues more important for young men? Why do I not know that Leia is also facing that?
Matthew
In the movies, it doesn’t get dealt with at all. And it’s sexism and patriarchy.
Pete
And I think it’s bad storytelling too. It’s just rudimentary, terrible storytelling.
Matthew
Right. And I think it’s continuing a trend in terms of whose emotional journey we care about. There’s a scene where Luke and Leia have both lost something in the last 12 hours. Luke has lost the mentor figure of Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom he’s known for maybe two weeks. Leia has lost her entire planet, including her parents and everyone she has ever known and loved.
Leia comforts me about what she’s going through. And you look at that scene and you’re like, “Oh my God, come on.” I will say, though, one of the things I love most about the Star Wars universe is that people have been using some of the animated shows and the books to fill in a lot of gaps that don’t get talked about. There’s a fantastic novel called Star Wars: Bloodlines that deals with exactly this — it’s about Leia having a political career 15 years later, and it being revealed that her father was Darth Vader. There’s a lot of time spent inside her head. She talks about how her brother got to experience a bit of Anakin in their father, which she never saw. She was tortured by Darth Vader, had her planet destroyed by Vader and Tarkin, and the book really goes into how she’s both jealous of Luke, but also is perfectly happy just thinking of Vader as the monster — she doesn’t need warm, paternal feelings about the guy who tortured her and blew up her planet. And it goes into some interesting stuff about her political legacy: what do people now think of her as a politician in the New Republic, now that they know she’s part of the bloodline of Anakin Skywalker slash Darth Vader? It is so interesting. And I know — up until modern times, 99% of superheroes were men. So we think of them and their parental issues. But it’s occurring to me for the first time — this might be uncharted territory. I’ve got to go write a script.
Pete
There really are some interesting mother-hero stories. You look at characters like Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy — his mother, Meredith Quill, is the emotional origin of the entire story. He watches her die in the hospital, and that is the beginning of his entire arc and his entire inability to mature. He is still the kid in the hospital room — that’s his log line. Shazam is another one I just thought of: Billy Batson’s character — maternal abandonment is the wound, and all his powers are the coping mechanism. But one that would be interesting to explore more fully — and I don’t know how often you’ve talked about this on your show, Matthew — but Jessica Jones. Jessica Jones is the hero, and the mother wound is the “you can’t escape your origin story.” That’s a fascinating one because it is straight-up mother-daughter, and we don’t have a lot of those.
Matthew
And it’s not the — as I said, there’s a lot of sexism in the way mothers are often portrayed. Star-Lord’s mother is a great part of his story, but she’s not a character.
Pete
She’s not a character. She’s an avatar. Martha Wayne is a paragon of maternal virtue. And for a while we’ve been getting the flip side — there are a number of characters now, often the kind of second villain in a movie or something in a TV show, where part of what makes the person a villain is that they have the most overprotective boy mom of all boy moms, and they’re a bully, and the mom is like, “No, you’re smarter and better than those kids.” And one of my personal favorites — in part because it’s more complex — is in the Netflix Daredevil show: Wilson Fisk’s origin story is that his father is abusing his mother and he kills his father. In what I think is a completely justified moment of self-defense, or defense of someone else. But instead of his mom saying, “What you did is okay, let’s go to the police, let’s explain it,” his mother says, “We’re going to chop up the body and hide it.” In this very moment of values — you did a good thing — she goes in the worst direction.
Mandy
Well, it’s bonding. That’s quality.
Matthew
Yeah, it’s arts and crafts. There you go.
Matthew
Yeah. The Jessica Jones story is a great one, especially because — and I admit I haven’t seen it in a while, but I know we did a podcast episode about it. It turns out her mother has powers too. And she’s one of those heroes who, for a lot of the story, is afraid to be a hero and doesn’t want to be one, because she has a temper, she can go off on people, and she doesn’t think she has the noblest of intentions. At times she’s scared she’ll use her powers for bad reasons. And what is she scared of? She’s scared of turning into her mother — because her mother is someone with superpowers who uses them in bad ways. And yeah, it’s great. We definitely want to talk about both her birth mother and her adopted mother — Trish’s mother — who was also a kind of stage-mom stereotype, but I think is very well portrayed in terms of how much she damages both Trish and the adopted daughter, Jessica.
Pete
I would throw in one more, which is one the MCU is forced to back into — which may be interesting. We talked about Black Panther and his relationship with his father. With the death of the actor who played Black Panther, Shuri — the sister — is now the Black Panther, and the father is dead. So the relationship is now, by necessity, mother-daughter in these stories. What a glorious opportunity to explore some of these issues in a way that is not quite so viciously masculine and see what comes of it. I don’t have high faith that they’ll do it, but the opportunity is there.
Matthew
I think they will, if for no other reason than the mother is played by Angela Bassett. Angela Bassett wants to explore some stuff. She got nominated for an Oscar for the second movie — and I think, frankly, she should have won. It’s funny, I hadn’t even thought of that until now. But in terms of superheroes who have a dead father and a living mother, Black Panther is one of the best — how much they gave the Queen to do and the depth of her role.
Pete
One does not casually cast Angela Bassett.
Matthew
Very true.
Mandy
Well, speaking of daddy issues — very, very quickly. Matthew, what are you going to do if you show Star Wars to Penn when he’s able to comprehend it, and you start to talk about these things, and he says, “Dad, I don’t care, I just want to get to the lightsabers”?
Matthew
I had to think about this long and hard before I had a kid, and I did my research, and I have a solution. There is a traveling circus that has guaranteed me a good price. They said they need him before he’s 10 to be able to fully train him. But if he at least starts with the lightsabers, I think we’re okay — he can grow into it. If it’s “Dad, this is so boring” — yeah, we’re selling him to the circus, and that’s that. Okay.
Pete
I think that’s really good, because you’re leaning in on the “I made you for a purpose” trope. And I think it’s important to have a motto.
Mandy
Great answer.
Matthew
Let me throw my last question at you both, because I know we’re almost at an hour and I want to respect everyone’s time. How has becoming a parent — this is for superhero movies, but also just for anything — changed how you view parent-child dynamics? I know that a lot of the stuff I saw when I was a teenager — I think I had a fraught relationship with my father, but I was also an angsty 16-year-old who thought that not letting me eat what I wanted or stay up after a certain time was clearly a sign of human rights violations that Geneva needed to know about. And as I start to think about my own child, there are times where I’m watching things where you should totally sympathize with the kid, and now I’m sympathizing with the parent a little bit more. For you two — particularly in superhero stories — are there times where there’s stuff you watched in your pre-parenting days that now you’re watching again and going, “I’m sympathizing with the parents a little more than I used to”?
Mandy
I’ll go first, because I’m not going to talk about superheroes, and then you can end on Pete. When I watched Parenthood I was a teenager — maybe 12 — when it came out. And I thought: just let Martha Plimpton do whatever she wants and sleep with her boyfriend. Why are you so uptight, Dianne Wiest? And now I watch it and I am Dianne Wiest through and through. I can’t fathom what is motivating Martha Plimpton. It’s a total reversal. You see the other side of everything depending on where you are in life. And becoming a parent has made me deeply understand the other side of it — and be terrified of teenagers.
Pete
I think the best properties are the ones you can watch as a kid and see yourself, and also still love when you watch as a parent and still see yourself. Because there are things you watch and then think, well, I now hate this thing. We couch it in words like “that didn’t age well,” but really it means “I can no longer see myself in this thing.” There’s no avatar for me in this property. And then when my kids disagree, I make them watch a supercut of Cersei Lannister and I’m like, “See how good you’ve got it.”
Matthew
We’re fine. Now shut up. I like it.
Yeah, I was telling a friend earlier about how when I was a kid, “Sweet Home Alabama” had one of the sweetest guitar riffs I’d ever heard and I loved it. And then I learned more about Neil Young and what he means when he says “the Southern Man don’t need him around anyhow” — and just how racist and broken the Confederate ideas in that song are. Can’t listen to it the same way. And Ghostbusters is still one of my favorite movies, but if I watch it with my kid, I’m going to say: “One day you’re going to like someone of whatever gender — everything Bill Murray does in this movie, don’t do that. He’s a stalker. It’s not okay.” So yeah, it’s funny how those things change.
Well, Mandy and Pete, you are both incredibly prolific artists and creators of podcasts and other things. Mandy, starting with you, where can people find you?
Mandy
Make Me a Nerd on TruStory FM, or anywhere you get your podcasts.
Pete
And I just edited a Goonies episode for Mandy, and I love it so much. With all-time favorite Chrissy Lenz talking about The Goonies — oh my God, I missed that movie so much and didn’t even recognize how much I missed it. So yes, go listen to Make Me a Nerd. It’s lovely.
Matthew
I just need to interject that I have been afraid to rewatch The Goonies because it was such a childhood favorite, and rewatching Ghostbusters and a couple of others hurt me so much. I’ve been worried that one didn’t age well.
Mandy
It does. It ages well. And it was medicinal, as I said on my podcast.
Mandy
It was like, I needed something to get me out of a bad headspace, and I thought Goonies will do it. And I don’t do anything without podcasting about it, so I reached out to Chrissy and she was a charming guest. Wonderful.
Pete
Yeah. Sometimes you just need to hear two people love on something for an hour. That is what you get with this. I miss it so much, Goonies. It’s on my list.
Matthew
And Pete, I think you do one or two or 75 podcasts.
Pete
Got some podcasts. TruStory FM — I’m involved in some way, shape, or form with all of them. So pick one and you’ll find me. TruStory.fm — we would love you to visit.
Matthew
Well, thank you both so much. This has been a fantastic episode. To our listeners — as always, thank you so much for tuning in. We’d love to hear your thoughts as parents, as kids. Talk to us about what you think of these issues. We’re definitely going to have Mandy and Pete back to make this kind of a recurring segment. Let us know what other issues around superheroes and parenting you’d like us to discuss. Thank you so much. I’m myself, Matthew, along with Mandy and Pete — and all the people of the great state of Minnesota, which is currently under federal invasion. Fuck ICE.
