Dear Avid Reader,
Ugh. More writing. Are you even reading this? Who cares. I'm writing it anyways.
Geez I'm a real downer today. Moving on.
He's Quiet...It Just Comes Out Loud
What is it about fathers? Dads are funny and cool. But when it comes to one's own father, isn't there a little bit of resentment. Maybe even hate?
John Wayne is often blamed for the emotional withdrawal of the American father. I tend to agree with this. Look no further than this week's film. Wil Andersen is a big believer in the "tough love" school of parenting. And viewers typically get a sense that they are supposed to find this endearing. This is because the kids rally around his death and steal the cattle back from Long-Haired Dan. I think they were just worried about not getting paid.
Alright! We've Seen What You Can Do With A Boy, How Are You When They Come A Little Bigger?
Viewers shouldn't gloss over of the fact that Wil's actual children turned out to be "bad". This should give viewers pause. Even Wil admits that he might have failed them in some way. So we see that being tough is cool, so long as it is is for a month, and as an employee. It's when someone has to put up with it for an entire childhood, it kinda pisses them off. And it doesn't even teach you how to be "good", you turn out "bad". Face it, acting like John Wayne makes for a sucky parent.
There is a notion that tough love is some how good. But what is "tough love"? Let's define it, at least for parenting. The worst way I can describe it is that the parent acts straight up distant and cold, like Wil Andersen in the movie. Only showing small hints of having a warm-blooded heart. The best way I can describe it is being nice to a child until they break the rules. Then the parent MUST punish them and become an entirely mean person. It's "for their own good". But isn't that the way an employer treats an employee? Or how a cop treats a driver at a traffic stop? Isn't "for your own good" the reason that TSA gives for having to touch an air-traveler's swimsuit area?
Tough love advocates will say this definition is too simplistic, but I say it is accurate. And if they don't like my spanking by essay, then they can sit in the time out corner. Don't make me take my literary belt off.
Slap Some Bacon On A Biscuit And Let's Go! We're Burnin' Daylight!
Let's try some emotional appeal. When a parent dies do they want the following scenario?
Scene opens in a church, at a funeral. A middle-aged man walks to the podium. He looks at the open casket. The body of his father lies peacefully within. The man clears his throat and grips the podium. "My father, was a man. And above all else he expected us to be disciplined. And that is what I will remember most, his corrections. No one here could say they had a more fair or more professional father than I did. That is all." The middle-aged man walks slowly back to his pew and grips his wife's hand and cautions his own children about being disruptive in a church. Scene.
Parenting shouldn't be results based. A family isn't a company. Looking at an offspring's manners or good behavior as the chief criteria for success is dumb. It basically means that the parent is most interested in how the child is perceived by others because the offspring is a reflection of themselves. And that is, to put it eloquently, bullcrap.
Boys Are Always Guilty Of Something Nasty. What Could It Be This Time, I Wonder?
When Wil dies, he looks into the eyes of the children and tells them, that they are better than he is. He could have been encouraging them the whole cattle drive but withheld his kind words to make them hard for a harder world. In fact, in the case of Stuttering Bob, he humiliates the kid for having a speech disorder. Seriously?
But why does he relent at the end? It's because he realizes there, as life is ebbing away, what a total asshole he has been. He wants to try and go back on a lifetime of holding his loved ones at arm's length. A lifetime spent grinding rather than loving. He becomes scared. He realizes that his legacy is one of pain.
Why didn't he yield? Why didn't he accept the people closest to him even though they made mistakes? Maybe the mistakes weren't that bad. No, of course they weren't. Are his sons near? Maybe he could apologize now. No, they are long gone. They finally left him, weary from being being told they didn't measure up.
But, he was only thinking of them, right. Couldn't they see that by pushing them away he was preparing them for the cruelty they were to face after they left home? Only, now does he realize that he was taking away the only refuge someone has in the harsh reality of gowning up. He took away their home. Home became the harsh world. He turned it into a place that was not a sanctuary, but just another place they we going to be disappointed. Another place that they were excluded. Wil prepared them, all to well.
Big Mouth Don't Make A Big Man
But these kids, these cowboys that surround him now. They will remember Wil. Wil wants to change. He wants these boys to know that he is proud of them. Like Ebeneezer Scrooge, he wants a second chance. He sees the light, the error of his ways. These kids will receive all the goodness that Wil's sons never received.
But alas, it's too late. One line can't reverse the hurricane of "tough love" that Wil devoted his whole life to churning. And breaking and showing a softness here as he is dying is truly the weakest thing he can do. It proves that he wasn't brutalizing these people for them, he was doing it for himself. At this crucial moment, he looks in the face of his life and he blinks.
The casket is closed Wil. No take backs.
Until Next I Post,
James
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