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Meta: Betrayal and Abandonment Issues in some of our Favourite Heroes
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bluealbertaskys
I was looking at the panels for Muskrat Jamboree (and lamenting because I wasn't able to go to it due to prior commitments) and something struck me to do with a few of the fandoms which are being discussed.
Pretty much half of the fandoms being represented have their main protagonist having betrayal and abandonment issues as their main focus. I'm wanting to focus on the three I know most about but I'm sure the rest of you could probably come up with others which use this template.
Due South
In Due South, the main protagonist Constable Benton Fraser is abandoned by his father after his mother's death and left to be raised by his grandparents. We get the impression that, although they probably meant well, their techniques whilst raising Benton are rather on the old fashioned side and attempt to raise Ben in the same way as they raised their son, Ben's father. I believe that they obviously hold Bob Fraser and his job in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in high regard which is more than likely why Benton chooses to follow in his father's footsteps despite knowing what kind of effect it may have if he were to choose to have a family at a later date. Having only that kind of role model to follow Benton does as expected and joins the RCMP but here he not only finds that he is abandoned when things go wrong, but he is also betrayed in such a way that he is then ostracised from the only secure thing in life he's really ever known up to that point. He would have known that at some point he'd have to leave the security of his grandparents place as he grew up but I believe he thought that by following in Bob's footsteps he'd have a job for life as it were as they had provided for his father up until his death, little realising that one of them (Gerard who, as well as being a colleague of Bob Fraser, was also probably regarded as a friend of the family) was responsible for his father's death. He is also kind of (albeit unintentionally this time) abandoned by Ray Vecchio when Ray goes undercover with the Mob. He is also betrayed by people either he or his family trusted when it most matters. Muldoon was a friend of Bob and Caroline Fraser.
Harry Potter
In Harry Potter the first and foremost (and by far the largest) issue is about how he was effectively abandoned by his parents and the circumstances of that abandonment. It's not just the fact that they died that Harry has to deal with as Fraser does above. No in this case his parents died protecting him and because of this he will always be constantly reminded of it; not just because of the physical impression it has left (the unusual scar) but also because everybody in the wizarding world knows about the circumstances and the sacrifice his parents made in order for him to survive. Fraser at least has more control if not complete control over who knows and how they find out, if they ever do at all, but with Harry it was common knowledge (and possibly common gossip) long before Harry even knew himself what and how it happened. He knew they had died of course but he never found out the truth about how until he was dragged into the Wizarding World. Later in the series Harry finds out he has a godfather, who he seems to become quite attached to fairly quickly as Harry sees him as one of the last links to his parents that he has left, in the form of Sirius Black, who again doesn't last long before being killed. Betrayal in this instance comes in the form of the Dursleys, Harry's aunt and uncle and their own son Dudley, Harry's cousin, who were supposed to look after him when he was entrusted in their care after Harry's parents were killed, but who instead treated him almost worse than anyone else. Both a sense of betrayal and also a sense of abandonment could also apply to the circumstances surrounding Albus Dumbledore's death quite late in the series as I think he was someone who Harry fully expected to be around for a long time to come and who he could rely on and believe in, if not to show him where to go, what to do and why he should do it (as I fully believe Harry to be capable of being able to look after himself and trust in himself and his own judgements for the most part) but to at least be there as a sounding board or to give advice should Harry really get himself stuck.
Torchwood
The first issue that springs to mind as far as Torchwood is concerned is when Captain Jack has been abandoned by the Doctor and Rose after The TARDIS - via - Rose made him to all intents and purposes immortal. You could argue that they didn't know that Jack had been revived but I gather from the bits and pieces I've heard about on the subject that it is not unreasonable to assume that Jack stayed on the space station long enough for the Doctor to have come back for him had he wanted to before Jack accepted that no one was missing him and found his own way off the station. And there is a list that stretches miles as far as betrayal issues go for our Captain starting with the Time Agency who wiped some of his memories, leading Jack to wonder in vain as to what he had done which would have justified that course of action and also to a certain extent by members of his own team at Torchwood as mentioned in my other essay. What intrigues me with Jack is that he tries to even the score by doing the same thing back to other people, through his conman tricks mainly, but in the end somehow always seems to come out of it all even more of a victim than before.
This seems to be a very common running theme throughout some of our favourite fandoms. Why is this do you think?
bluealbertaskysI was looking at the panels for Muskrat Jamboree (and lamenting because I wasn't able to go to it due to prior commitments) and something struck me to do with a few of the fandoms which are being discussed.
Pretty much half of the fandoms being represented have their main protagonist having betrayal and abandonment issues as their main focus. I'm wanting to focus on the three I know most about but I'm sure the rest of you could probably come up with others which use this template.
Due South
In Due South, the main protagonist Constable Benton Fraser is abandoned by his father after his mother's death and left to be raised by his grandparents. We get the impression that, although they probably meant well, their techniques whilst raising Benton are rather on the old fashioned side and attempt to raise Ben in the same way as they raised their son, Ben's father. I believe that they obviously hold Bob Fraser and his job in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in high regard which is more than likely why Benton chooses to follow in his father's footsteps despite knowing what kind of effect it may have if he were to choose to have a family at a later date. Having only that kind of role model to follow Benton does as expected and joins the RCMP but here he not only finds that he is abandoned when things go wrong, but he is also betrayed in such a way that he is then ostracised from the only secure thing in life he's really ever known up to that point. He would have known that at some point he'd have to leave the security of his grandparents place as he grew up but I believe he thought that by following in Bob's footsteps he'd have a job for life as it were as they had provided for his father up until his death, little realising that one of them (Gerard who, as well as being a colleague of Bob Fraser, was also probably regarded as a friend of the family) was responsible for his father's death. He is also kind of (albeit unintentionally this time) abandoned by Ray Vecchio when Ray goes undercover with the Mob. He is also betrayed by people either he or his family trusted when it most matters. Muldoon was a friend of Bob and Caroline Fraser.
Harry Potter
In Harry Potter the first and foremost (and by far the largest) issue is about how he was effectively abandoned by his parents and the circumstances of that abandonment. It's not just the fact that they died that Harry has to deal with as Fraser does above. No in this case his parents died protecting him and because of this he will always be constantly reminded of it; not just because of the physical impression it has left (the unusual scar) but also because everybody in the wizarding world knows about the circumstances and the sacrifice his parents made in order for him to survive. Fraser at least has more control if not complete control over who knows and how they find out, if they ever do at all, but with Harry it was common knowledge (and possibly common gossip) long before Harry even knew himself what and how it happened. He knew they had died of course but he never found out the truth about how until he was dragged into the Wizarding World. Later in the series Harry finds out he has a godfather, who he seems to become quite attached to fairly quickly as Harry sees him as one of the last links to his parents that he has left, in the form of Sirius Black, who again doesn't last long before being killed. Betrayal in this instance comes in the form of the Dursleys, Harry's aunt and uncle and their own son Dudley, Harry's cousin, who were supposed to look after him when he was entrusted in their care after Harry's parents were killed, but who instead treated him almost worse than anyone else. Both a sense of betrayal and also a sense of abandonment could also apply to the circumstances surrounding Albus Dumbledore's death quite late in the series as I think he was someone who Harry fully expected to be around for a long time to come and who he could rely on and believe in, if not to show him where to go, what to do and why he should do it (as I fully believe Harry to be capable of being able to look after himself and trust in himself and his own judgements for the most part) but to at least be there as a sounding board or to give advice should Harry really get himself stuck.
Torchwood
The first issue that springs to mind as far as Torchwood is concerned is when Captain Jack has been abandoned by the Doctor and Rose after The TARDIS - via - Rose made him to all intents and purposes immortal. You could argue that they didn't know that Jack had been revived but I gather from the bits and pieces I've heard about on the subject that it is not unreasonable to assume that Jack stayed on the space station long enough for the Doctor to have come back for him had he wanted to before Jack accepted that no one was missing him and found his own way off the station. And there is a list that stretches miles as far as betrayal issues go for our Captain starting with the Time Agency who wiped some of his memories, leading Jack to wonder in vain as to what he had done which would have justified that course of action and also to a certain extent by members of his own team at Torchwood as mentioned in my other essay. What intrigues me with Jack is that he tries to even the score by doing the same thing back to other people, through his conman tricks mainly, but in the end somehow always seems to come out of it all even more of a victim than before.
This seems to be a very common running theme throughout some of our favourite fandoms. Why is this do you think?
no subject
I mean, it sounds intriguing, but I can't make the connection with what I was saying. I'd love to see more about it though - even just to be able to talk to you more sensibly than this - where was it discussed?
no subject
Certainly, fandom couldn't be having its big-league Incest kink if there weren't plenty of biological families within which to commit incest! But even apart from that, Heroes is about, among many other things, the creation of a Family of Mutants, but along the way, we have the Petrelli clan and the Bennets and Nikki-Jessica, DL, and Micah.
One of the things that Farscape is about is a man who keeps trying to send letters to his dad (and who, much later, marries and has a child), although along the way he does form a not-terribly-terrestrial family.
Friday Night Lights is about good and bad parenting as well as about the brotherhood of Panther football.
So, I'd say that a very large number of shows are about the creation of families--sometimes even by marriage and rearing children of the marriage.
no subject
Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly enough. I appreciate that there *are* family units in these shows, it's just that in my opinion - in the shows I know - they seem to take very much of a back seat. It's as if the protagonists make their own, alternative if you like, family out of the other main characters. By removing the conventional family of spouse/children/parents etc. from the inner circle, you allow the character to emote about the loneliness & the various incidental characters. And that to me looks like the easy way out, because achieving this in a normal domestic setting would be very difficult. That's what I meant.
If you take Farscape, for example, yes, the connection with the father is there, but they are physically separated, and all the "adventures" happen with the people on the ship, without the bloke's family getting in the way of the action(sorry his name escapes me at the moment, but I know who you mean). On top of that, there's all the angst about him being away from home and all that.
That's what I was trying to say. It is a lot harder, in my opinion, to create convincing drama within a well-established and stable family unit. And you'll forgive me, but the families in Heroes look hardly well-adjusted, so there's plenty of scope for drama there. *g*
If the other shows you mention do that then that's good. BTW I am really enjoying this discussion, but I have to be up and at the airport in - oh dear - 4 hours, so if I don't reply to anything for a couple of days it won't be out of rudeness.
Who Loves Ya, Baby?
As you say, conflict is pretty important for interesting TV, although it could be located inside a family unit, or the family unit could be a bulwark against it as well. But I think that it's a common pattern for the Loner hero to construct a family, and it's far from uncommon for the family to be in existence at the beginning of the show.