House of Eratosthenes

Last winter I had a family council with my son about movies that have “Doofus” Dads in them. The reason for this, was that we had just seen such a movie and I had come to appreciate, over time, that this was part of a trend. I had no idea how big a trend it was, until we were finished. We found something, like, 50 or 60 movies like this.

Movies are not trivial. Movies are important. During their formative years, our children come to form their opinions about the world around them…through movies. Nobody wants to admit this, since if the person admitting it is a kid, he makes himself look like a dolt, and if that person is a parent, he looks like he’s abdicating his responsibility. Well, the truth of the matter is you can’t stop this.

Maybe there’s an opportunity available if you’re still married to the kids’ mom. Maybe not. I don’t care. I found a way to turn lemons into lemonade. I’m not in a position to fully control what my son can see, but I’m in a great position to instill healthy habits about how to process it. So that’s exactly what I did.

But wow. Sixty movies? I had no idea.

Since then, I have come to learn something else about movies with “Doofus Dads” in them. My resentment toward this mind-numbed, silly movie-making habit isn’t so much as a Dad; although it is partially about that, since it makes my job as a Dad much harder than it should be. No, most of my resentment is as a consumer of movies. I figure, when I spent money on a movie, I’m paying someone to be creative. Going solo, going on a date with “She,” going as a fam and paying through the nose for overpriced candy and popcorn. Or renting. Or catching on cable. I figure, there’s some huge money going toward someone to render the service of showing a ilttle bit of Goddamn creativity. That is the advertised service, it’s paid-fer in advance, so let’s see it.

The “Doofus Dad,” I have come to realize, isn’t simply a father-figure who is a doofus. There are three rigid, rock-hard, uncompromising, distinguishing characteristics for the Doofus Dad.

He is unintentionally funny, such that while your appreciation of the humor may involve sympathy with the actor, it must also involve salient disrespect to the character himself;

He is dysfunctional in a way that creates problems for himself and those around him, usually this is in the area of time management, wherein his balance is tilted toward work and away from family;

He is oblivious, or at least quiet, about his dysfunction, until the last ten to fifteen minutes of the movie when he has his sickeningly predictable “OMYGAWD!!” moment.

Pretty structured, huh? But let’s concentrate on that second bullet about the dysfunction. There’s a lot going on just within that.

The trope about spending too much time away from the family is recycled in cookie-cutter fashion, way out of scope of anything that could represent real life problems in any numerically proportional way.

Spending time away from family may involve not being absent from the family itself, quite so much as missing out on special occasions.

The attribute of honor often figures prominently in this. Broken promises and all that. The filial characters do a lot of bellyaching and pissing and moaning about “you proooooooomised to come to my sooooooooccer game!” and crap like that. (Side note: When my son is being intellectually lazy as all nine-year-olds are going to be from time to time, I really appreciate the crap out of being held to promises I didn’t make. Piss up a rope, you lazy Hollywood people who are probably childless yourselves. Assholes.)

I notice a common theme in the “dysfunction” of actually caring about what the family actually achieves and desiring to hold the family membership, individually or as a whole, to some standard. In Cheaper By The Dozen II, the two dads are competing with each other and, toward this end, demanding effort from their wives and offspring. It is implicitly understood that these guys are assholes. Not because they’re ruining what should be a fun recreational activity, but because of their expectation of effort. Which, back in my day, was exactly what Dads were supposed to do. (Those were the Dads that deserved the capital “D”.)

The repeated failure to uphold promises, leads to a tragic fracture of trust with the children. This is usually exploited by means of having the adorable moppet-kid flash a melancholy expression at the camera the minute the Dad makes a promise, so the audience can see the poor little tyke doesn’t know what to believe anymore.

The act of instilling values in the kid, or even showing an interest in the kind of values the child should learn to respect as he matures, is repeatedly assaulted by the movie inustry for no reason whatsoever. Often a Dad comes to occupy the “Doofus” role for the sin of simply expressing a personal opinion, other than the most politically-correct, about anything. Anything at all.

Usually, it’s left unresolved just from where the tyke should learn “Dad” type things — right and wrong, how to change a tire, what’s wrong with the world & what individuals should try to do about it, etc. etc. One thing is for sure: It isn’t Dad. Most of the time, it’s the space alien or strange animal responsible for the main plotline of the movie; nearly as often, this question is left completely unresolved. One other choice is an unstated implication that after the closing credits scroll by, the Dad will indeed bear the responsibility for teaching “Dad” type stuff to the tyke, but only after he has cleared up his glaring problems — invariably, by abjuring himself of being a “Dad” at all, and instead evolving into a position of some weird older best-friend type guy.

Long list, huh? And yet…out in our highly-creative “Hollywood” land, we got an awful lot of product being pumped out that conforms to it, every word of it, hand-in-glove.

I was noticing that about, of all movies, this one. Claire Danes is on the phone with her father at the beginning of the movie, which is a clever way of establishing that Claire Danes is in the movie and so is her character’s father. Subject of the phone call? The father, a general in some unspecified branch of the military, has work related obligations and can’t make something. Wedding, or something. And Claire Danes whiiiiiiiiines away, in perfect allegiance to the tired ol’ trope, “You prooooooooomised!!!”

Now I don’t want to spoil the movie for any who may have not seen it. But this has nothing — NOTHING — to do with the plot. It is completely detached, unrelated, even awkward.

ASSHOLES. It’s like, when the script is being written, someone’s in the room ready to bust kneecaps if the “Doofus Dad” cliches aren’t religiously tossed in.

Like I said, I really resent this as a Dad. I resent it even more as a person who pays big money — well, big money to me, anyway — for what are supposed to be highly imaginative and creative intellectual products, meticulously sculpted to make one or several memorable experiences for my family, such that we end up closer to each other for having sat through it together.

That’s what movies used to be. I don’t think they even want to be in that business anymore. Well, as the customer it’s up to me to define what the job is, and they impress me as not really wanting my money that badly.

[…] — the madcap adventures of a little poorly-drawn cartoon boy named Bart. It turned out his doofus dad Homer had special resonance with our now thoroughly-vaginized audience, and in the years to come […]
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Memo For File XXIXSunday, October 22nd, 2006

Memo For File XXIX
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006