Finally, a Smart TV Dad
October 16th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
Background: TV often portrays men and fathers as idiots--to watch some videos of "dad as idiot" TV commercials, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
We've done two campaigns against these types of commercials, and have been more or less successful. To learn more, see Campaign Against Anti-Father Verizon Commercial and Campaign Against Anti-Male Advertising on our campaign page here.
If you have a daughter in the nine-year-old range, you're probably familiar with the Disney show Hannah Montana. My daughter often forces me to watch it with her. Well, "forces" isn't exactly accurate, since she snuggles up in my arms as we watch, which would probably make even going to the opera worth it.
Anyway, there's a surprising thing about this show. In an era when we have a long parade of "doofus dads," in Hannah Montana the family is being raised by a single father, and the father is actually a smart, loving, very-competent dad who is respected by his children. It's refreshing to watch a show where a father's intervention in a crisis or incident isn't just a set-up for a joke about what an idiot he is.
In the show, the father, played by country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, is a widower who is the sole caretaker of his children and who gave up his successful career as a country singer to raise his kids. Hannah is played by Billy's real-life daughter and the show often has nice flashbacks of pictures of the two of them together as the little girl grew up.
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October 16th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Quickly, somebody get a Disney email we can contact. If they get lots of positice feedback from the public about this, they'll be more likely to continue the trend.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
My daughter loves that show too and we watch it together quite a bit. I'm a musician too and she often likes to write songs and have me put them to music with her.
Anyway, you might like this, Glenn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_es_vB6dd2Y
It's a song Cyrus wrote about dealing with his daughter's success and eventual independence.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I bet they wrote him a doofus role and he stood up to them, as ornery country boys are wont to do.
Taking into consideration this, and the many pro-man country song lyrics you post, it seems to be like male country singers are perhaps unwittingly the best torch-bearers of the men's movement.
Considering the man-hating venom spewed by The Dixie Chicks and Carrie Underwear, you can't blame 'em.
October 16th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
The other day, my son's TV show ended at Hanna Montana followed. Before I bothered to change it, I watched for a few minutes. In this episode, Billy Ray Cyrus (the father) was portrayed as being sick. One of the two kids in the family, the brother, had planned on going to see a baseball game with his friends. The sister instead manipulated the situation by planning a "family day" doing what she wanted to do. This happened on two occasions, each time after which the brother heard what she was suggesting to dad and obnoxiously ran out yelling, "No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No!" When he confronted his sister about how she was cutting into his plans, she dismissed it as unimportant. "Somebody said that baseball game you missed yesterday didn't even have any hits. Boring!" The brother, smoldering, replies, "That's because it was a no-hitter."
You would think that the all-wise father would step in and sort this mess out, but of course he's too ill to be bothered. Guess who wins by default?
You got it: Sister wins. And dad proves he's too weak to handle standing up for the boy in the family. Father as weakling.
October 16th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
She's the star so It's defensible.
October 16th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Didn't we just read where young girls were DEMANDING to get into her concerts and, gasp, some were going for $4,500 a seat! Did that come out of mom's or dad's wallet?
DanH
October 17th, 2007 at 8:16 am
John-
You should've watched the whole episode. By the end, brother and sister work it out and she realizes that she's been manipulative and thanks her brother for everything he does for her.
As a 42 year old man, I should be ashamed for knowing that, but I make sure to be aware of what my daughter is watching on TV.
That is, when she's not grounded from it.....which is a lot lately.
October 17th, 2007 at 8:48 am
That is nice... but it does fit with my experiences of Disney:
If the parent/child bond is an important part of the story, Disney protagonists are rarely lucky enough to have two parents. They're lucky if they've got one. I don't know why this is - whether it's because they want to support kids with single parents, or it's just more fun to write them. Lilo lives with her sister, Goofy's a single-father, Jasmine's mom is nowhere to be seen, ditto Ariel's. Bambi's dad is unheard of, Nemo's mom dies tragically before he's born, and Jim has a chip on his shoulder in Treasure Planet because his dad abandoned his mom.
Not complaining, it's just something my brother noticed a long time ago and it seems to stick.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:55 am
They do that to leave the possibility of a romantic subplot for the protagonist.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
@Tim.
That makes sense - I suppose that's why, outside of family sitcoms, everybody on TV is single.
October 17th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Two intelligent and good-hearted TV fathers that come to mind: Ignacio Suarez from Ugly Betty and Tom Baldwin from The 4400. Besides the Disney preference for single parent characters, I have noticed that competent fathers on TV and in movies are likely to be single. It's as if writers think men can be good parents but don't really want to be. Only after their wives die do TV men pick up the slack, like women becoming acting congressmen when their congressman husbands die.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:13 am
There's a good point, I've also noticed that men are only portrayed stupidly if there is a woman to compare them with. Obviously they are trying to please the female viewership, but obviously females don't reject seeing men portrayed positively, they only want to be shown to be superior when compared.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Other Tv shows I have seen that portray fathers positively:
"Shark" whose college age daughter chose Dad to live with and it show how they have bonded. Mom is coming back into the picture currently, but it shows that problems can be handled in an adult way.
"Ugly Betty",mentioned, whose mom died and the 3 children are being raised by dad who is doing a great job.
And "Desperate Houswives" give their male counterparts a surprisingly strong position in the respective disfunctional families. Most of the men seem to be very connected with their children or would like to be.
November 4th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
I'm gratified that there does seem to be some change, and it isn;t at all unusual to find a movie or TV show where dads are seen in a positive light.
I'm thinking in particular of "The Pursuit of Happyness"
November 20th, 2007 at 8:18 am
John-
Not only should you have watched the whole episode, Dad being sick is an important part of the plot. It's precisely because the kids have to learn to work things out without Dad intervening. They had to come up with a reason why Dad wouldn't solve the problem, so Dad was too sick.
They also could have portrayed the brother as a total doofus, but they didn't. Hannah is the star, so he's definitely not center stage. He's not as smart, nor as attractive, nor as talented. But he's a pretty good big brother and often part of the solution in the plot. He's not just there to be laughed at.