Nontraditional Fathers and Daughters (Spoilers)
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Ohhh...so that's where rollergirls come from.
I’ve fallen a little behind in my postings. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older. Perhaps it’s because my daughter’s getting older. Both are reasons to be driven to distraction, but I’m trying to get on top of things again. I have to say that it was easier to find daddies and their girls than it was to find fathers and sons. Maybe because the dynamic offers so many ways to be more dramatic. It’s like my father told me when he found out I was having a daughter “When you have a son, all you have to worry about is that one boy. When you have a daughter, you have to worry about all the other boys out there.” Right or wrong, fathers and daughters in popular media make for compelling viewing. Some of my favorites after the jump.
Young lady! As soon as you stop wallcrawling...you're grounded!
10. Peter and May Parker – I guess we should start with a somewhat obscure one. From the M2 Marvel Universe comes the future of the Spider-Man franchise, with Spider-Girl! The reason I liked the book so much is that May Parker showed something that Spider-Man had been missing for years. She had all the troubles of a super-hero coupled with the problems of being a teenage girl. And, I need my Spider comic book to center on someone who’s having problems. Spider-Man is still around, but he’s missing a leg, and constantly worried about his little girl, who, it turns out, is just as compentent as her old man. If you get the chance to read it, you could do a lot worse than checking out Spider-Girl.
Whoa...great haircuts all around for these two, huh?
9. John Kramer (Jigsaw) and Amanda Young – Is there not a more twisted father/daughter relationship anywhere? John Kramer, or Jigsaw is a serial killer with a different take on things. He engineers traps for those he feels are wasting their lives. In the end, they end up killing themselves (usually through inaction) trying to escape his traps. In the first film, the only survivor shown onscreen is Amanda Young, who was apparently so happy to still be alive that she joined Jigsaw as his apprentice. The relationship plays out through several movies, but the main point is Amanda’s fierce loyalty to John. A quality, you’ll find, that he brings out in a lot of people.
Do as you're told, or I'll touch your daemon!
8. Lord Azrael and Lyra Belacqua – In the His Dark Materials trilogy, this pair are probably the furthest from an actual father/daughter team that y0u’ll see on this list. Lyra goes through most of the first book not knowing who her father is, and when she tries to rescue him at the end of the book, he repays her by killing her best friend. What an asshole. He doesn’t acknowledge her as anything but a nuiscance until the last book, when he begins to see her worth, and gives his life to further hers. You’ll notice I’m not mentioning Lyra’s mother Mrs. Coulter…mostly because she’s such a bitch, but a least she has a heart, something Lord Azrael can’t claim.
Yes...this was the BEST picture I could find.
7. Angelo and Lisa Provolone – Oscar is one of my favorite underrated films. I love everyone’s performance in it, including Sylvester Stallone’s. What? I’m not ashamed! Playing his daughter Lisa is Marisa Tomei, and the ONLY character who isn’t impressed that Angelo is a bigtime gangster. When Lisa lays a pregnancy scare on Angelo, he must find the father, the exchaffeur Oscar. That’s just a small part of the movie, and if you haven’t seen it, you might me missing something you could fall in love with. I’ll say this for these two. It’s more than a little funny to watch Angelo give to his daughter all the grief that his father gave to him.
If Agent Smith were your dad, you'd be a badass, too.
6. Elrond and Arwen – Confession time, I suppose. I haven’t read all of The Lord of the Rings. However, I’ve read The Hobbit several times. One of the cooler characters shown is Elrond, who immediately commands respects from the ragtag group of stingy ass dwarves. In the Lord of the Rings films, Elrond’s daughter Arwen is shown what I’m given to understand is a bigger role than in the books. She’s pretty badass, all told. At least in the first movie. After that, she’s kinda the reason I fastforward through the elf scenes. Whoa! Was that another confession? Shit…I’m going to lose my nerd card after all that. The last scene with these two together in it, though, where Elrond is handing her off to Aragorn? That shit gets me everytime!
A true argument for birth control.
5. Lestat de Lioncourt and Claudia – The Vampire Lestat, bastard that he is, helps create a vampire from of his protege Louis’s victims. A six year old little girl named Claudia. Lestat loves her like a daughter early on, while she still learns from him how to kill, etc. That’s the only real beauty in Interview With The Vampire, and you have to read other books to find out. Interview is told from Louis’s point of view, and the later book are all from Lestat. You can’t be certain of anything you’re reading, all told. Claudia finds a way to rid herself and Louis of Lestat, and she gives it the old college try, but Lestat eventually finds them, and with a little help from Armand, manages to rid his world of the sixty-odd year old woman in a six year old’s body. In other books, you discover that he’s filled with remorse about this.
My, what a big book you've got there, grandma.
4. Rupert Giles and Buffy Summers – Speaking of vampires, the second pair on this list that isn’t blood related are a pair of vampire killers! Giles, the Watcher and Buffy, the Slayer have a mission in life. Just one. Rid the world of evil when they can. Buffy’s quite good at it too, but she needs help and training from librarian Giles. But, that’s not all she needs. You see, unlike other characters I’ve talked about, it’s implicitly stated that Buffy’s biological father is still around, he just doesn’t seem that interested in her or her troubles. When Buffy needs a father, she turns to Giles, and he provides that role in spades. The great thing about Giles, however, is that while he does what he can to ease Buffy’s life, he’s not above making things difficult for her as an object lesson, and more often than not, she’s a better person for it.
Mmmmm...pi. Er, pie.
3. Homer and Lisa Simpson – Have you ever noticed, on The Simpsons, that most of the familial relationships in the show are father/daughter and mother/son? Rarely do you get an episode which focuses on what’s going on between Bart and Homer that doesn’t devolve into strangling of some sort. And, when Lisa and Homer are at odds, it makes me uncomfortable, much like when Bart and Marge don’t get along. Lisa makes allowances for her father’s lowered IQ, and Homer finds a way to, at time, impart some much needed worldweariness to his daughter, who, I think, will live up to all his expectations of her. One day, she will be president and win the Nobel prize in kickboxing. Homer and Lisa’s relationship has, through the years, provided the show with a center that would have been missed, had it not been present.
The only person who can call her Jean and get away with it.
2. Atticus and Jean Louise (Scout) Finch – To Kill A Mockingbird may well be the only book that I was forced to read that I was happy about. So far as a piece of literature goes, it paints a southern tableau of Americana and has joined the ranks of popular media as one of the best stories ever produced by this or any other country. At the heart of this is the relationship between it’s most memorable character, aging lawyer Atticus Finch, and the narrator, his daughter, Scout. The story of racial injustice is as compelling as anything else you might read in your life, but the hook that makes certain you stay to hear the message is how good a father Atticus is to Scout and her older brother Jem. There’s a reason that Atticus Finch is the American Film Institute’s number 1 hero of all time, and it’s a privilege to see him through his daughter’s eyes, making him larger than life, and yet still familiar as a human being.
Bet you can't tell which one is which, huh?
1. Keith and Veronica Mars – Yes, I struggled about this, I certainly did. So, how did a pair from a cancelled UPN teenage girl detective show beat out the greatest popular hero of our times? The answer is that I know these two. When you watch Veronica Mars, a show that is easily as complex as Twin Peaks was, without being nearly as confusing, you get the sense that you know disgraced sheriff turned local private investigator Keith Mars and his daughter Veronica. He knows his daughter’s limitations, he treats her like a person, and he guides her through life, ultimately providing her with a setting in which she can make her own decisions. Not all of them are the right decisions, but you can bet when Veronica does something wrong, it’s her father’s voice she hears in her head. Through the first season, the question of Veronica’s paternity comes up, and when that was resolved, it still remains one of my favorite single scenes in TV history. I can’t recommend this show highly enough, and not simply because both Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon act in the second season.
Well, there’s ten pairs of fathers and daughters for you to think about. Again, with this list, much like other, there was plenty of source material, and I will revisit this someday. Of course, this was done for my daughter’s birthday, and while I hope that she one day grows up and ignores most of what I had to say here, I hope she can remember that I love her, and I always wanted the best for her. Y’know…just like Keith Mars!
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