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:

 

***

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]

No worries, my dear, okay? I totally appreciate that you stopped by to check on what I was nattering about. And remember these were notes from a panel discussion, so I tried to grab everything. You'll see some things get duplicated a bit.

And a lot of it is evidentiary - is that the right term - like, I can see the trees bend, so I can assume that a wind is blowing? So we saw the results of John's parenting, and a smattering of acutal interactions, and have to conjecture most. I don't think we're far wrong, but at the same time, we could be seeing canon where there was none. And in the end, we did agree that his boys turned out just fine, if a little messed up on the inside.

I think, yeah, he shouldn't have abadonded them, but maybe left the hunt for the thing that killed mom until later, when the boys were old enough to take the stress of moving pillar to post. That was one thing we felt John could have done differently. To his credit, he is the LAST man who would ever abandon his kids.

What I think the panel's general thought was, for example, in light of the network of friends that John had or his training of his boys, sure all well and good, esp in a time of war, but we felt (and I felt) that he was excessive in his "need to know" mentality, or his unwillingness to realize that his kids were kids, that at that age, putting a 10 year old (and younger, possibly), in charge of Sammy over and over and over, in situations not just for the night or for a few hours but for DAYS, it just seems excessive. That's where his parenting goes awry, the excess and the tunnel vision. The way he seems to feel that the sacrifices are worth it, making that choice for his kids too young to make it for themselves anyway, and too young to realize how whacked it is. He's not a horrible person, but but he's not the best parent. I think.

I love John. He's a good man. He's just not the best dad.

[blacklid.livejournal.com]

I know, I know. It's just that... it is so easy to judge him. It seems like people have a difficult time putting themselves in his shoes.

I'll shut up after this last thing: I'll defend his timing. As much as it sucked out loud for the boys, there was really no way he could have waited. If someone commits a crime, the immediacy with which an investigation is begun has everything to do with its success. I'm sure that his desire to protect them clashed constantly with the knowledge that doing so effectively would burden them in possibly scarring ways. I think he did the best he could and he raised two awesome sons. *stops being overly protective now*

How obvious is it that I adore John? LOL :)

*hugs you*

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

I adore John too, so you're not alone there. And you know, this panel was a bunch of very reasonable fans, who were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the negative issues just kept aclimbing and aclimbing. I was considering all this on my drive home today, that our intent was to examine the issues, and that we did. The conclusions people draw is up to them, and surely there was tons we forgot.

And then there's this...you know, he's hunting that demon for 22 years, the thing that killed Mom, and he's pretty driven. He drags his sons behind him, and guess what? He didn't have to kill every evil thing that crossed his path, but he did. Yeah, he rather sacrificed his sons for his revenge, yet at the same time, he saved a LOT of people a lot of pain. Even if it was only one a year, that's 22 people saved who wouldn't have been, plus exponentially, the number of people also saved because John got rid of the bad thing. No doubt single handedly. He was brave, he was fearless, he was clever, self reliant, he was a whole HOST of good qualities. So I love John too.

It's just that when I see him slamming Dean or putting yet more responsibility on his shoulders, it gets me all riled up. I'll just disagree and say that I think he should have waited. Lord, at least till Sam was ten.

Hugs right back!

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

I don't see that he COULD have waited; surely, as far as he was concerned, YED was still after them/they were all in danger. How can you put that on hold to play happy families?

The problem is that I love all three characters (the actors don't hurt my eyes either *L*)

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

To be sure, their handsomeness is made of awesome! There's lots of things John could have done differently or sooner or later. I'll never get tired of discussing it, I think!

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

Do you agree, then, that John couldn't 'wait a while' before taking the course of action he did *believing himself and the boys to be in immediate danger*

:o)

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Well...no. : D
I think he could have made different choices and allowed the children some time to grow up. He admits this in IMTOD that he made Dean grow up too soon. He had his reasons at the time, but....I think I'm just realizing now that any way you slice it, we can justify each decision both good and bad. So I can't close the book on this one, you see?