Responsibilities Toward Children
In For Better or For Worse, the main responsibility of the man towards his kids used to be not to ignore the kids. Deanna didn’t complain about the limited number of things Mike did with the kids, but she did complain about how he worked too much freelance work. In today’s For Better or For Worse, we have a whole new category: If you take a non-traditional male job, you must prove to your children, you can operate successfully in that career, or live in shame and degradation. After all, a man is nothing to his children, if he cannot make them proud of his chosen career.
This is certainly a thought which probably stems from Lynn Johnston’s days before Rod Johnston stepped into the picture, when she was making money from her David, We’re Pregnant! book and possibly thinking these thoughts as she looked at little, sleeping Aaron. There is a common belief that the man has to make money and cannot, simply, be a househusband. Without this, I can’t make sense of Michael Patterson’s desire to prove himself to his kids.
Of course, what Lynn Johnston may have been going for, had nothing to do with any sort of logical view of Michael Patterson wanting success as a proof for his children. Sometimes she just seems to like a man to say he is responsible for something, as an indication of his nobility, as she did with Anthony Caine last year. As Michael has chosen a nontraditional career, Anthony chose to stay in a dead-end job; and Lynn Johnston feels the need to show just how well each of them are doing, in a way she doesn’t feel is necessary for the women in the strip. You will never see Elizabeth Patterson looking over a sleeping Anthony or little Frannie thinking the thoughts Michael thought in today's strip.
Humbled writer Michael Patterson plays the noble card, by thinking a thought to prove he knows he is responsible for his children. Now, all that’s missing from the picture is the announcement that Michael Patterson is making a small fortune in book sales, but I suppose that could happen tomorrow to finish out this story arc. Considering how slow-going Lynn Johnston usually is about these things, I might expect that announcement to come sometime next year after Christmas, and tomorrow may be something completely unrelated.
This is certainly a thought which probably stems from Lynn Johnston’s days before Rod Johnston stepped into the picture, when she was making money from her David, We’re Pregnant! book and possibly thinking these thoughts as she looked at little, sleeping Aaron. There is a common belief that the man has to make money and cannot, simply, be a househusband. Without this, I can’t make sense of Michael Patterson’s desire to prove himself to his kids.
Of course, what Lynn Johnston may have been going for, had nothing to do with any sort of logical view of Michael Patterson wanting success as a proof for his children. Sometimes she just seems to like a man to say he is responsible for something, as an indication of his nobility, as she did with Anthony Caine last year. As Michael has chosen a nontraditional career, Anthony chose to stay in a dead-end job; and Lynn Johnston feels the need to show just how well each of them are doing, in a way she doesn’t feel is necessary for the women in the strip. You will never see Elizabeth Patterson looking over a sleeping Anthony or little Frannie thinking the thoughts Michael thought in today's strip.
Humbled writer Michael Patterson plays the noble card, by thinking a thought to prove he knows he is responsible for his children. Now, all that’s missing from the picture is the announcement that Michael Patterson is making a small fortune in book sales, but I suppose that could happen tomorrow to finish out this story arc. Considering how slow-going Lynn Johnston usually is about these things, I might expect that announcement to come sometime next year after Christmas, and tomorrow may be something completely unrelated.
posted by howard at 11:26 PM
8 Comments:
I can see a really idiotic confrontation in Michael's future straight out of a bad TV movie. Y'know how the emotionally distant patriarch always justifies blowing off involvement in his children's lives by harrumphing that he thought providing for their future WAS his love for them in action? I can see Meredith and Robin having to listen to that idiocy in the year 2027.
Actually, I expect that Michael will find our he's selling really well within the next couple weeks, because such a revelation has absolutely nothing to do with how it works for writers in the real world. At best, we get royalty statements on a quarterly basis, and those without agents (like, apparently, Mike) usually can't actually glean from these statements how "many" books have "sold." Royalty statements tend to read like any legal-ish document, which is to say maddeningly inscrutably.
On the other hand, Michael may end up on a bestseller list or something, which while plausible, might result in a plague of poisonous wasps descending on Corbeil. Not that we've been engaging in aggressive breeding programs or anything. No, no.
DreadedCandiru2
I don’t see a confrontation like that of the bad TV movie coming from the pen of Lynn Johnston. As far as she is concerned, Mike is no longer the workaholic, absentee dad; thanks to giving up his job at Portrait Magazine. The proof is that he was willing to spend the month of September looking at old photographs with Merrie, and of course, the fact that his kids attended his book-signing. Notice, that Lynn carefully did not show Mike’s other book-signing or his newspaper or television interviews in which the kids could not have been involved. Mike, now super father, spends time with his kids, and yet worries that he needs to prove to them he has made the right decision.
We readers, on the other hand, have been once again robbed of an opportunity to see Mike juggle his kids and his work without the help of Deanna. For example, a sequence where Mike has to take his kids with him to a television interview, because Deanna has to work late at the pharmacy, could have been an excellent time to really show him as a super dad. Unfortunately, these types of things only seem to occur to me and not to Lynn Johnston.
dlauthor
I don’t know about you, but I have had poisonous wasps ready for Michael Patterson to be on a best-seller list since the first time I heard he was writing a novel. After all, how is this sequence going to end? “Mike’s book is a flop”, or “Mike’s book just sells reasonably well” does not mesh with a book so good that the very first publisher to which he submitted it lavished praise on it with the letter accompanying the $25K advance, and the publisher said that only minimal editing was required. I will be very surprised if Stone Season is not a best-seller. However, the other possibility for expressing the book’s goodness is the royalty check (more than the royalty statement). The royalty check must be large enough for Mike to say, “I’ve proved I am a good enough writer to support my children.” That is ultimately where we are headed.
Parenting to her must mean a two-person act. She'd no sooner have Mike interact with his kids without Deanna waiting in the wings than she'd put dressing on her salad.
dreadedcandiru2,
I think you're right. I can think of strips with Deanna alone with the kids, but I cannot think of any strips with just Mike and kids where Deanna does not make appearance at some point.
That's another thing; Elly and Deanna have to face the kids alone when their husbands are absent but you rarely see things go the other way.
dreadedcandiru2,
I can remember John alone with April when Elly took off to Mtigwaki to visit with Elizabeth after she broke her foot, and then again to experience the pow-wow. However, I cannot remember any similar situation for Mike and his kids. Perhaps the difference is the age of the children. April may have been considered to be old enough for John to be able to handle the situation.
Post a Comment
<< Home