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Feb. 24th, 2011 07:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedSent back: Popotan, disk 1
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Brought up some issue about Malcolm in the Middle with Mom that's been nagging away at me shortly after she came home. Even though I never watched the last episode, from what I gather on both Wikipedia and TV Tropes & Idioms, Malcolm's entire family has planned for him to be unhappy in life. Lois forbade him to get an office job so that he has to continue to hold his custodial job through Harvard, and they all expect him to work his way up to becoming the president of the United States. Even though Malcolm made it known that such visions are unrealistic and that such choices are his own to make, he decides to go along with it anyway. So, basically, he's sacrificing his own happiness for loyalty to a family that made all these arrangements for the sake of ruining his life.
Normally, I would be pissed off for him. The moral of the show is that no matter how old you get, your parents will always hold authority over you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
But wait! That wasn't exactly the case with Francis. He didn't exactly have a choice when he was put into military school, but he eventually free himself from all power she had over him. So, while his life never got any better even then, he did at least manage to avert the aesop in question. And, according to the Hilariously Abusive Childhood page, Malcolm is the second closest to him to recognizing Lois for her psychologically abusive nature.
So, basically, Malcolm is an idiot for accepting his family's plans for his entire life. While he definitely should take the chance to attend an Ivy League school, it's not like Lois and Hal would be able to punish him if he did betray them... especially if they're dead by then. Hell, punishment loses all meaning when the person giving it doesn't want the recipient to be happy anyway.
(If it weren't for the Rule of Funny, everything in the above cut would constitute a rather blatant Wallbanger. Some might say that it does anyway.)
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So anyway, I showed her the examples on the pages for Family Unfriendly Aesop and What an Idiot (the latter of which I wrote). Her response is basically that it's a TV show and it's meant to be funny. Exactly what I predicted she would say, but I had to get it off my chest somehow. I tried to stop her from saying that it wouldn't be funny if anyone was nice to one another, but no, she just had to say it. Don't remember what triggered the following, but she then went into this rant about how she has to hear about all this the minute she comes home from work (actually, it was while we were both seated at the dining room table, and she asked me if anything was new), and how I constantly need something to gripe about because I'm bored from a lack of structure in my life, and that at least half of what I look up is something negative to read about, and the she has to hear about it. She goes into her room to do something, and I pull up a past entry where Chelle explained in a comment that repetitive and obsessive behavior is a trait of autism, and that it will never go away.
(Mom later explained that she had a bad day at work, and didn't eat lunch because she had lost her appetite.)
So, we were about to go for another walk at Cathedral Pines, and things started to calm down between the two of us as we were about to get in the car. While we were there, I brought it up again, and this time, Mom was more reasonable about it. While there is the fact that comedy is by definition anti-logical, there actually is some logic to the whole issue in question. Even though the humor in the show is that Lois and Hal took it to the extreme, it is true that raising children is about building character and bringing out their full potential as members of society. In fact, our own family isn't that much different: While I was able to settle for a Bachelor's degree, and Marie probably isn't gonna go much further, Brian is supposed to aim for a Master's degree, and is due to go to some school in Washington where it rains and snows constantly once he graduates from Cornell. Like Malcolm in his own family, Brian is the smartest of us three kids, and there's really no reason for him to waste so much potential. (Then again, I'm not sure if that was his own choice or Mom and Dad's choice for him.)
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Brought up some issue about Malcolm in the Middle with Mom that's been nagging away at me shortly after she came home. Even though I never watched the last episode, from what I gather on both Wikipedia and TV Tropes & Idioms, Malcolm's entire family has planned for him to be unhappy in life. Lois forbade him to get an office job so that he has to continue to hold his custodial job through Harvard, and they all expect him to work his way up to becoming the president of the United States. Even though Malcolm made it known that such visions are unrealistic and that such choices are his own to make, he decides to go along with it anyway. So, basically, he's sacrificing his own happiness for loyalty to a family that made all these arrangements for the sake of ruining his life.
Normally, I would be pissed off for him. The moral of the show is that no matter how old you get, your parents will always hold authority over you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
But wait! That wasn't exactly the case with Francis. He didn't exactly have a choice when he was put into military school, but he eventually free himself from all power she had over him. So, while his life never got any better even then, he did at least manage to avert the aesop in question. And, according to the Hilariously Abusive Childhood page, Malcolm is the second closest to him to recognizing Lois for her psychologically abusive nature.
So, basically, Malcolm is an idiot for accepting his family's plans for his entire life. While he definitely should take the chance to attend an Ivy League school, it's not like Lois and Hal would be able to punish him if he did betray them... especially if they're dead by then. Hell, punishment loses all meaning when the person giving it doesn't want the recipient to be happy anyway.
(If it weren't for the Rule of Funny, everything in the above cut would constitute a rather blatant Wallbanger. Some might say that it does anyway.)
-----
So anyway, I showed her the examples on the pages for Family Unfriendly Aesop and What an Idiot (the latter of which I wrote). Her response is basically that it's a TV show and it's meant to be funny. Exactly what I predicted she would say, but I had to get it off my chest somehow. I tried to stop her from saying that it wouldn't be funny if anyone was nice to one another, but no, she just had to say it. Don't remember what triggered the following, but she then went into this rant about how she has to hear about all this the minute she comes home from work (actually, it was while we were both seated at the dining room table, and she asked me if anything was new), and how I constantly need something to gripe about because I'm bored from a lack of structure in my life, and that at least half of what I look up is something negative to read about, and the she has to hear about it. She goes into her room to do something, and I pull up a past entry where Chelle explained in a comment that repetitive and obsessive behavior is a trait of autism, and that it will never go away.
(Mom later explained that she had a bad day at work, and didn't eat lunch because she had lost her appetite.)
So, we were about to go for another walk at Cathedral Pines, and things started to calm down between the two of us as we were about to get in the car. While we were there, I brought it up again, and this time, Mom was more reasonable about it. While there is the fact that comedy is by definition anti-logical, there actually is some logic to the whole issue in question. Even though the humor in the show is that Lois and Hal took it to the extreme, it is true that raising children is about building character and bringing out their full potential as members of society. In fact, our own family isn't that much different: While I was able to settle for a Bachelor's degree, and Marie probably isn't gonna go much further, Brian is supposed to aim for a Master's degree, and is due to go to some school in Washington where it rains and snows constantly once he graduates from Cornell. Like Malcolm in his own family, Brian is the smartest of us three kids, and there's really no reason for him to waste so much potential. (Then again, I'm not sure if that was his own choice or Mom and Dad's choice for him.)