Dads aren’t funny any more. That seems to be the latest
development in the media this Father’s Day. We’ve always known that dad’s
aren’t funny. They tell terrible jokes, and chuckle to themselves why we all
roll our eyes. They pick you up from friends’ houses wearing unfashionable clothes
listening to power ballads on the car’s achingly unhip CD player. Dads aren’t
funny.
But they’re not funny on television either. The joke has
worn thin. We don’t want any more incompetent dads messing it up, getting it
wrong, failing to dress or feed their children properly, maiming pets or
setting fire to sheds. The stereotypes are not helping.
There are two reasons for this: A report and a survey. Let's look at each in turn:
The Report
The ‘Fractured
Families’ comes from the Centre for Social Justice, claiming that single parent
families we growing at a rate of 20,000 a year. Useless fathers who are so
useless that they are absent are no laughing matter. Ever keen to take a moral
stance, the report points out this breakdown costs around £46 billion a year,
or £1,541 for every taxpayer. Forget the pain and anguish of broken families.
Someone’s got to pay for all this. And it's you. The taxpayer.
The Survey
And then the real story: an online survey from the mighty Netmums
said that dads were all too frequently stereotyped as “lazy or stupid” on TV
shows, adverts and in books. Out of 2000 (self-selected) parents asked, almost
half “slammed books, adverts and children’s TV shows like Peppa Pig, The
Simpsons and the Flintstones.” Yes, I know. Almost half is less than half. And The Simpsons isn’t not a children’s TV
show. But that is not the point here. With Father’s Day only days away, this
briefly became a story. The Times
editorial said the image of the hapless dad “has gone from gag to cliché to
ubiquitous slur”.
The message is clear: Dad’s aren’t funny any more.
Why are fathers such easy targets for comedy?
And why is so
hard to subvert the current narrative of useless dads? There is an easy answer
to this. Comedy exploits surprise and subversion. Fathers are authority
figures. Anything that makes a traditional seat of power look ridiculous is subversive
and therefore frequently funny. It’s why jokes about politicians, princes,
bishops and bankers are easy to do – because these people have tended to get
their own way so we don't need to feel sorry for them. Technically, it's satire.
In the same way, everyone used to assume the father was ‘in charge’,
the key bread winner, decision maker and law giver. Patriarchs have pretty much
been the narrative in most households in almost all societies across the world
for the last 6000 years. Reinforcing this is not artistically all that interesting.
All Change
The fact is that dads are no longer the authority figures they
once were. This means that jokes about not knowing how to cook or change a nappy
means that lots of these jokes have worn thin – to my generation, at least. For
my parents, who are nearly seventy, the old way is still lodged in their minds.
This is why Jim Royle still works as an old-fashioned stereotype. He still
exists. But the Jim Royles are dying out. Fathers who are involved with their
children are expected to do more and more.
The way I am involved in bringing up
my children looks very different to the way my parents brought me up. I
regularly get my kids dressed, cook their dinner, give them baths, wash their
hair and put them to bed, much to the amazement of my mother. I try to explain
to her that I don’t do these things because I’m an exceptional father. I’m not.
In fact, if I didn’t do them, many people (including my wife) would think
considerably less of me. It’s just that fathers do this stuff now. And so the some
of the stereotypes will have to change, purely because the old ones will no
longer ring true. And comedy is about truth.
Stereotypical
We should not be surprised that TV shows and adverts perpetuate
stereotypes. Audiences like stereotypes (see
Death by Civilisation, Part 1: Chapter 11).
Stereotypes are easy to understand quickly – so we can get on with the story
and do the jokes. And then they can be subtlely subverted if time permits. But
time does not permit in adverts in which they have 10-30 seconds to sell you
toothpaste or wood stain. Ronseal’s view of fatherhood is limited to
encouraging men to feel man enough to defend their castle by putting wood
preserver on their fence.
Redressing the balance and showing ‘positive role-models’ is
comedic death, especially if it feels preachy or untruthful. Even when it’s
realistic, it’s not cool. Family sitcoms like My Family or 2.4 children have
never been hip. And the mainstream domestic comedies that have felt fresh and
subversive sidestep children – and fatherhood – altogether. There were surprisingly no
children in The Good Life, Ever Decreasing Circles. Or One Foot in the Grave. Even Terry and June managed to avoid their
grown up children most of the time.
But there is one show which has pulled off a very need
trick:
Modern Family, which has a patriarch in Jay, an old-school beer-drinking
my-word-is-law I’ll-be-in-my-shed kind of dad. He keeps learning that these
ways don’t always wash, especially with his grown-up gay son, Mitch, and his
extraordinarily precocious step-son Manny. And then there’s his son-in-law, Phil
Dumphy, who is a hands-on, I’m-your-friend kind of dad. It’s toe-curling, but
he’s doing his best. And that’s what we want to see dad’s do. Because it's the truth. Dad's do their best. It's just their best is often lousy. And if they get
hit in the face with a rake or covered in goo in the process, so much the
better.
If you want to read more articles like this one, buy
Death by Civilisation, available as a paperback or an e-book on Amazon
here.
