Comments on: Guest Essay: The Absent Father

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:58:46 +0000

Oh. Nevermind. My bad.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:26:16 +0000

You’re slightly misquoting me — I said that all the men I met while working in comics either had absent fathers or were sick as kids or both. Note two important distinctions: I was talking about my personal experience, and I had an important OR in there.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:31:17 +0000

Miss, Jopanna, I think this is the bvest time to state how much I really dislike that infamous comment of yours, because I find it offensive.

Saying that the people who work in comics have “absent father figures” is like saying that all feminists have mental disorders. It’s offensive, overgeneralizing, stereotypical, and wrong. I’m sorry if this is offending you in any away…does thiat make sense? ^_^

And Freud was a sexist jerk who sublimated his own sexual fantasies into his ‘psychology’ theories.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:14:01 +0000

Hee hee hee. A picture’s truly worth a thousand words, I guess.

By: Roche

Roche — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:16:34 +0000

No offense Johanna, but I’m thinking this hot topic for discussion might be a little outclassed by the two hot topics kissing two posts above. :) Maybe you could bring it up again next week when the guys scroll off the bottom of the page?

By: Allan Harvey

Allan Harvey — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:53:18 +0000

I know nothing about psychology, but it may be relevant that Jerry Siegel’s father was as absent as it gets: he was shot and killed during a robbery while Jerry was still a youngster. It was following this traumatic event that Siegel came up with the notion of Superman, a hero who could not be taken from those he loves by bullets.

By: Ed Sizemore

Ed Sizemore — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:14:05 +0000

I will offer here a couple of quick and incomplete thoughts. I have a problem with most things Freud, but especially this absentee father hypothesis. First, during WWII, heroism and patriotism were widely praised. Superhero comics were riding this cultural wave. Remember there is no television and most news coverage of the war was by newspaper accounts. Comics offered boys pictures of men being brave and fighting for justice against the odds. It is easier to do a playground reenactment of a comic book scene then a newspaper story. After WWII, we get the rise of movie serials and then television. Comics are a static visual medium going up against these a dynamic visual medium. Why read about Superman, when you can see him on a thirty foot high screen. Why comics are successful during one period of history and not another is a very complex question and we have to look at a lot of data before we can begin to really understand the forces that effect comic sales.

Equally complex are why superhero comics embody certain gender roles and social attitudes. I have a feeling that there is no one prevalent personality type among superhero comic creators and bureaucrats. We are going to find the superhero comic industry personnel are a diverse lot. Plus fans are as much to blame and as creators. Don’t forget history and tradition have inertia of their own. I don’t think we are every going to find one meta explanation for the current state of superhero comics. The best we can do is keep asking questions that cause us to go beyond surface phenomena to deeper motivations and influences

By: ~chris

~chris — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:29:00 +0000

Interesting thoughts. So why did I switch form superheroes to indy comics after my dad passed away? (Note: I’m not offended by any implications. And individual differences don’t disprove general truths.) BTW, I wish journalists would stop incorrectly using the term “begs the question” when they mean “raises the question.” BTW2, thanks for adding the comment Preview and Notify buttons!

By: roche

roche — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:25:39 +0000

Well, that's a neat work, David Oakes The idea of the absent father has a few more layers to it. Men in late 20th century* America weren't taught to identify, express, or talk about feelings. (ref Garrison Keeler, passim) Having an emotionally unavailable father is a problem for both males an females from that slice of culture. Granted, a physically absent father is different, I know that, I've experienced that. But it probably leads to the same kinds of stories. (Or does it? Somebody should follow that up.) It's kind of striking how many manga (shonen and shojo) feature an unavailable/dead father figure.** At first it seemed a cliche - how many stories about young boys with dead/missing fathers who left them a giant mecha/magical sword/baking career can there be? I've thought a bit about this and I think the life of the salaryman after WWII has a lot to do with this: Get up early six days a week, go to work, leave late (only after the higher rank people leave), go along with the (socially required) late night drinking, arrive home late, rinse, repeat, occasionally until death. (See the entry on Karoshi.) Meanwhile mom (usually younger) stays home (somebody has to) and plays the role of the saintly mother. It's like a curiously over-amplified version of 1950's America. Probably no accident, then that you get such great heroic/romantic stories about kids making their way in the world sans parents (or sans competent parents.) It's certainly more palatable to write a escapist story about a dead or missing father than an emotionally unavailable one. *I'll limit myself to talking about the culture I grew up in. Your mileage will definitely vary. The label-less-ness problem probably goes back to the later part of the 19th century or earlier. **Or dead mother with incompetent father, e.g. Ichigo's family in Bleach. Or both are gone, e.g. Inuyasha, Fruits Basket, Kenshin etc.