Escapade Panel: John: Good Hero, Bad Dad?

[sylvia_bond]

 

Panel: SPN: John: Good Hero, Bad Dad?

 

At Escapade this year, kathyem1 and I ran a fantastic and fun panel called John: Bad Dad. But then we (K'Kathy) changed it a bit to be less provocative, because really, I don't know any fan who thinks that John was totally horrible. So at the end, this was the description about the panel, and points for discussion, in case we ran out of things to say, which, needless to say, didn't happen:

 

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Panel: SPN: John: Good Hero, Bad Dad?

 

Description: Leave your weapons behind but I think it would be interesting to discuss what kind of father John Winchester actually was. He has so many good qualities and so many bad ones....people get so riled about this subject, it might be nice to hear some debate on it.

 

• Telling Sammy to stay gone when all he wants to do is go to college. Most parents would be proud. 
•  Handing a gun to a nine-year-old. WHAT the fuck was he thinking? Was the hope of giving a gun to a nine-yr-old to protect himself worth the risk?  
• Leaving Sam in the charge of another child, Dean. Again, what was he thinking? As a mom, I hope that kids like that are helped by CPS. (Child Protection Services) 
• Uprooting the boys to chase monsters. No family, no friends, just fellow hunters. I’m sure they moved as often to avoid other well-meaning adults trying to help the boys as they did to chase monsters.
• He offered up his kids on the altar of revenge.  
• John = Bad Dad, start with a list of his dubious choices as a father, taken from the series, make a chart He wasn't all good, but he wasn't all bad, either. What did he do right? Where did he screw up? 

***

 

So then, at the panel we had a two-column list. On the left was anything good we felt John did or was, anything positive. On the right, we had all the bad things he'd done or was. On the left hand side, I drew a smiley face. On the right, I drew a frowny face. After a minute of consideration, I added dark eyebrows and a perpetual five o'clock shadow. To be in keeping with the subject of the panel, namely John Winchester.

 

It was a pretty orderly panel, I felt, considering the volatile nature of the subject matter. To sum it up in brief, we were able to fill up the "bad" column twice as fast and three times as long as the "good" column. Thusly, because I love The Dad, I added stuff like "dark," "tall," and "hairy," at which point a fan shouted out "AND he makes beautiful babies," so I added that because it was true.

 

Our final conclusion, based on this discussion, was that John was a bad dad, because of the fact that he basically sacrificed his children for his revenge, played favorites, and all sorts of neglectful behavior. At the same time, he wasn't a failed parent, because he did raise two kids who grew up to be amazing, brave (and a whole bunch of other good qualities) men. So there's that. My conclusions, as I stated above, are general, because I think this was the consensus of the panel, but by no means is it definitive or absolute. Your mileage on John may vary.

 

Below are the columns, I'll put the bad one first, because that's where we focused, and the good one second.

 

(PS It was also interesting to note that an item in the bad column would show up in the good column for very different reasons, for example, training a child to use a gun at a very young age.)
(PPS Some of the items are reasonable conjecture, others come straight from canon.)\
(PPPS We determined not to go to the lowest common denomenator and blame the WHOLE thing on the YED, even though that’s basically true. Besides, John could have made different decisions than he did, so that’s what we focused on.)
(PPPPS Also, we brought up the idea that in the old days, giving a gun to a ten-year old was not necessarily a bad thing, but a potential means of survival. And while this is true, the general concensus seemed to be that while certain behaviors in wartime are warrented, John usually went to the extreme, and the effects on the boys was negative.) 

Bad

 

• Was absent.
• Did not provide basic care and supervision, which is not an issue for teenagers so much, but it is when you leave children under 10 alone in a motel room, and especially that you leave a 10 year old in charge of a six year old, like, all the time. Which we were sure happened, because Dean is tired of hearing The Dad's instructions, because he's heard it a million times.
• Gave guns at 9 years old/sawed off shotguns for a 10-year-old.
• Never let Dean be a kid.
• Was psychologically screwed up/bent on revenge.
• Was broken
• Created lack of self-worth in Dean. (Helped create.)
• Made a choice not to dig into the trenches until boys were old enough, instead went right to "war," regardless of the effect on his kids. (Not that he didn't care, but he made this choice, which many felt was detrimental to the boys and not the only choice he could have made.Additional comments include the idea that The Dad chose to hunt rather than buckle down and stick it out - evidence of other hunters with a stationary home base were mentioned, ie Bobby, Caleb, Pastor Jim, Elkins, the guy Evil!Sam killed.)
• Made many choices not to inform even when the boys were older.
• Had an explosive temper. (Many mentions of friendships that ended in gunfire might indicate a lack of stability of emotion or temperament. While no one suggested that he abused the boys, there seemed to be enough there about the drinking to indicate that it could have or did get out of hand. One from the Pilot about Sam's easy reference to the fact that The Dad had gone off with "Jim, Jack, and Jose," which I thought, originally, were people, but are actually, the first name basis names of three hard liquors. The second comes from Nightmare, where Sam says, "Well, a little more taquila and a little less hunting and our lives would have been like Max's." Dean says nothing to this. Max, by the way, was beaten for YEARS by his Dad and his uncle. So it seems that to Sam, the leap for John to have been very abusive was not a big one.)
• Kicked his son out when the son won a full ride scholarship to Stanford. Most parents would have been proud. Of course we know WHY John was upset, and naturally so, seeing as how he considered Sam in danger, but to disconnect from his son like that felt extreme to many. It seemed to point out that it was John's way or the highway, which is not very balanced.
• Constantly slammed Dean. (The off-hand comment in Dead Man's Blood about Dean not taking care of the Impala.)
• Had control issues.
• Was a survivalist. (Which doesn’t mean that all survivalists are bad parents, but they have a choice how to raise their kids, and we felt that it was a negative one.)
• Placed too much of a burden on Dean, Dean had to raise Sam.
• Raised Dean as a weapon.
• Never returned phone calls.
• Provided twisted love.
• He isolated his boys from the world, kept them in dangerous situations, and basically created a situation where his boys experienced the Stockholm Syndrome.
• Forced his quest on his children.
• Requested that Dean commit fratricide.
• Was a very bad communicator. 
• Had problem with long term relationships, therefore could not teach his boys how to have good ones.
• Had tunnel vision about his demon hunt.
• Played favorites. (Which is funny because we all felt he favored Sam over Dean, yet Sam is the one who is so angry with him.

 

Good

• 
  He was an idealist.
• Taught his children how to protect themselves.
• He cared for and doted on his boys.
• He protected his boys to the best of his ability.
• Had a policy of “leave no man behind.”
• He produced two amazing men.
• He did not intend to mess up Dean.
• He prepared for war because that’s what he saw, his intentions were good.
• He loved Mary.
• He was an excellent hunter.
• He had the following fabbo qualities: Dark, tall, beautiful, great teeth, sexy voice, sexy stubble, and, he made beautiful babies.

Personally, I feel bad for John. He was between a rock and a hard place, and being a former Marine might have dictated to him the choices he needed to make, regardless of whether they were civilized. I think the worst thing he did was to raise his boys in the isolation that he did. I mean, they didn’t know about other hunters until halfway through season one, yet John knew about them for years. There’s nothing worse than feeling all alone in the world. Even if your world is hard, if you have someone to be there for and who will be there for you, that makes it easier. The boys only had The Dad and each other, which explains Dean’s desperate need to get either or both of them back.

 

Comments

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

In the old days, guns were necessary for survival, so the logic of some people in the panel, totally understandable, was that the same could be applied to the Winchesters. But we were thinking that circumstances might warrant training and familiarity, but hardly, like you pointed out, the expectation that a 10 year old and a six year old would be allowed around a sawed off shot gun with the safety off for DAYS and then, the ten year old is expected to USE said gun on a supernatural creature that he doesn't know anything about, that is, he doesn't know how to kill it, like, while it's feeding. John's expectations were totally off the charts here, and of course Dean failed, and that breaks my heart each and every time.

And I agree with you about your distinction there. I think that's the concensus the panel came up with - he was a bad dad but he didn't fail totally as a parent. I like your distinction even better, because it's more clear about what the conflict is here - can we say he's a good person, while allowing that he was a shitty dad. You don't often meet such complexity in a character that was in less than 15 episodes!

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm tracking the logic now: less the standards of a particular historical era than the extenuating circumstances of a time of war.

John's expectations were totally off the charts here, and of course Dean failed, and that breaks my heart each and every time.

Mine too! Because of course, Dean only registers the failure, not the unmeetable standard... or at least he did for a long time. I think he has gained a little perspective on that score in the time we've known him, in that he's explicitly acknowledged that John put too much on him a couple of times now. Especially in relation to the expectation that if he fails to save Sam, he'll have to put him down.

I'm pretty separating it out that way. It lets me revile the things he does as The Dad, but still genuinely like & sympathize with John, all without any pesky cognitive dissonance.

It feels like a lot more than 15, since, even when John's not actually in the episode, he's still very present in the things they do, informing the way they relate to other people and to each other and the men they've become.

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's not really fair to compare a 10 year old of today with a ten year old of 1850 or somemthing. Different circumstances.

Poor Dean. He didn't realize, I've come to realize, now that you've pointed it out, that the high expectations his dad had of him were always too high, just too high. At ten you shouldn't be expected to realize this, but it took Dean till he was what 28? That's a long time to feel like a failure in the eyes of the man you admire most.

Agreed on John and The Dad. He was a bad dad, but a good person. And, frankly, sexy as hell.

I have always felt that even when the Dad wasn't there, in an ep, he was. : D

Me, I'm praying for another flashback.

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

And, frankly, sexy as hell.

It's a fact. Nobody wears three days of beard quite as well as JDM. And I speak as a fangirl who could lick the beard right off of Jensen Ackles's face given half a chance.

Seriously. It's a thing of beauty. I'm pulling for Sam & Dean to adopt some disguise requiring facial hair... *snerk* Lumberjacks! Then they would be simultaneously scruffy & wrapped in flannel!

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Oh, lumberjacks! Don't get me started on lumberjacks! I love them scruffy and sweaty and in flannel and STRONG.

You know, those disguises they wear never hide their faces. I wonder why that is. And they never wear hats, except in the bank job ep. Not that I'd want them to hide their faces, eh. But I've seen pictures of the J's and they look EVER so cute with part of their faces in shadow. I'm thinking in particular a picture of Jensen in a knit cap. It's pulled so tightly down he looks about 16.....

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

I am way too enamored with this lumberjack image now. I shouldn't be hoping for a hunt for bigfoot or the investigation of a haunted lumbermill... & yet, I am.

Yeah, that's a good point: their disguises never really alter their appearances, which probably should actually be a priority, since they're striking enough to be memorable, especially when they also start asking suspicious questions. Plus, it would be fun for us: beards, hats, hornrimmed glasses, etc.

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Now they stated quite clearly in Jus In Bello that bigfoot does not exist, nor does santa clause. However, Dean thought vampires didn't exist, and they did, so.....I'd like to get them out in the woods again big time! Camping, which they hate! But there'd be tons of flannel and bug repellent and five o'clock shadows, and those dumb hunter hats....you know the ones with the ear flaps?

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

I do know the hats you mean... that scenario would also give them the opportunity to reference Looney Tunes! This must happen!