OUAT

[katewrites]

I finally realized what drives me nuts about Once Upon A Time. It wasn't the same flames on the side of my face fury I felt when I quit Supernatural, probably because I've never been particularly invested in Once Upon A Time. OUAT was my guilty Sunday "Oh, look pretty people and reasonably silly plots!" pleasure. But over time, episodes have begun making me angrier and angrier and I think it's because the central idea of OUAT is that Family Is The Only Thing That Matters. Only OUAT has a very strict definition of family and that is biological parents to their biological children.

For me, it started when Henry (who had been raised since infancy by Regina) defined only Emma as his "mother." I'm not saying that being raised by an evil queen would be awesome, but it looked like Regina was doing her best to be a good mother, and had been his mother as long as anyone in Storybrooke knew. The show explicitly, over and over again, hammers home the point that bio parents are the only real parents.

There is not a single instance in the show where a step-parent or adoptive parent was considered a "real" parent. Regina was evil to Snow White (when a more interesting twist would have been Snow and Regina against Snow's evil father, or even a "Snow, Glass and Apples" approach to it). Charming's twin's father was evil to the core.

Which, yeah, they're drawing from source material that makes step parents pretty evil, but at the same time, they're trying to deconstruct and reimagine the fairy tales that they're using as templates. They make all the heroines baddass and strong, yet they can't seem to value anything other than a nuclear family.

ANYWAY. I was watching Leverage and Community and I realized that the central idea in the shows that I do love is created-family. The idea that it doesn't matter who your DNA comes from, the people that matter are the ones that care for you and the ones that consider you family. Even when Leverage folks meet their family (Nate and his father, Eliot and his), the importance is that they are actually cared for by their created-family. Eliot meets his father, and it's entirely off screen, and the next episode he is back with the crew as though nothing had happened.

Comments

[goodbyebird]

I realized that the central idea in the shows that I do love is created-family.

Yes, this, absolutely! One of my favorite narrative things <3

Oh this is maharet83 btw. Swapped my handle.

[katewrites]

Right? I love, love, love created family, because I think that that's the most fulfilling narrative structure for me, and OUAT sometimes seems like a thesis AGAINST created family.

[ani_bester]

I do enjoy OUaT but I agree with you. I didn't though have the initial problem with Henry lookng to Emma as his mother because to me it really had never seemed Regina valued him as a person and more as a prize, so I saw child devoid a loving parent figure trying to find one on his own.

However, the way the handled Cinderella gaveme som epause, and then there was somethign Hansel and Gretel but danged if I recall exactly. Time and time again though the show has IMHO harmfully devalued adoption as a responsible and good decision for some people, and has -as you said- repeatedly devalued adoptive parents.

So I like it, but that theme always gives me huge paused and makes my skin crawl.

[katewrites]

Yeah, I think that if it was Henry alone, if he was the only one with "step-parent is not my real parent" thing, then I would be more easily able to handle it. But over time, I feel like it's gotten exponentially worse, because every episode involves some sort of family backstory and parents.

I also think that the show's outright confusion over whether Regina is a good guy or a bad guy has made it worse. On the one hand, she's always doing evil things to the other characters in flashbacks, but then the narrative is about her redemption (which I find so much more interesting than modern!Snow and Charming) so Henry's rejection is literally only there to make her more unhappy.