Good Dad Porn

Growing up in the 1980s and 90s with an absent father and an in-over-her-head mother, TV became my co-parent.

My dad ran off—or maybe he was kicked out by my mom, details are fuzzy—when I was about four or five. I don’t know my exact age, because, like I said, details are fuzzy. My mom does not like to talk about it now, and her strategy for dealing with it then was also to just not talk about it. I don’t have siblings, and I’ve gotten conflicting information from other family members. So, I’m left piecing together a very blurry, imprecise account of what actually happened. But whatever, what even is reality or memory or the past?

Most of the other kids I knew all had dads. (Again, it was the 80s-90s and I lived in a conservative slice of Southern California). I didn’t have a dad and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know how to ask them, or my mom, or anyone, about that elusive phenomenon—the capital-D Dad. So I was left viewing these dads, who were all around me yet very definitively not-for-me, as these kind of mythical creatures. They swooped their kids up and carried them on their shoulders, built dollhouses and go-carts, and called their daughters Princess. I watched in both awe and confusion from afar on my fatherless island. I had no direct experience (that I could remember) of Dad, and inevitably my early concept of Dad was warped.

We can debate the necessity of dads (or lack thereof) for early childhood development forever, and research findings seem to pendulum back and forth on the matter. I’ve had friends with bad dads tell me I was lucky mine left. Perhaps true. My few visits with my dad in later teen years really didn’t confirm or negate this possibility. And he’s long dead now, so I have to accept that some answers are lost to the winds of time, as are some reconciliations.

It’s perhaps not surprising that I learned about dads from popular media. King Triton from The Little Mermaid is the Ur example of Dad for me. Mean, dominant, quick-tempered, but ultimately comes around as a big softy in the end. Homer Simpson, too, was an early example that at least tempered my impressions, though he too typically came around in the end as a kind of minimal-effort hero. (See the episode “Lisa the Vegetarian”; I’ll save the fact that I was also a precocious vegetarian and know-it-all Lisa for another time.) Shows like the animated Inspector Gadget, where the plucky young bookish girl and her dog did all the things for her bumbling parent, really spoke to me, though in that case the dad was more mom-coded for me.

Enter Dad Porn. Or more precisely, Good Dad Porn. I don’t mean literal porn as in sexually explicit content. Instead, I’m using capital-P Porn deliberately broadly. By Porn, I mean media that presses down hard on the feel-good buttons in our brains. Even if it’s something our logical brains don’t want. You’ve probably heard the term Food Porn, which is Wikipedia describes as “a glamourized visual presentation of cooking or eating in…visual media.” I’m invoking the word Porn here in a similar way. I’m also using capital-D Dad and capital-G Good here to signify something like the Platonic ideals of Dad and Good. Good in this sense is not only something positive, it is something that becomes indispensable for living virtuously. And since it comes from Dad (read: the patriarchy), it’s not something that comes from within you, it’s externally granted.

There are two early 90s movies in particular that fit into the role of Good Dad Porn for me: Father of the Bride (1991) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). Can you even think of dreamier Good 90s Dads than Steve Martin and Robin Williams?

As a fatherless tot, I was a total rube and completely ate up the early 90s movies that sold me the fantasy of the indispensable Good Dad. A Good Dad isn’t flashy, but goshdarnit he’d do anything for his kids. And, importantly, you are incomplete without a Good Dad. This comes, perhaps, in response to the moral panic de jour around single motherhood. This moral panic was epitomized by then Vice President Dan Quayle’s notorious 1992 condemnation of single motherhood, where he attacked Murphy Brown, the fictional character played by Candice Bergen on the TV show of the same name. This rode the wave of earlier racist-based attacks on “welfare queens” by Ronald Reagan and his conservative ilk. These attacks were influenced by regressive societal fears of equal-but-opposite threats—(1) poor women (majority black or brown) who get money from the state rather than a man; and (2) financially independent women who get money from business or whatever instead of a man. Either way, and in all iterations in between, single women are bad and single moms are worse. Because once dads become dispensable, patriarchy unravels. This fear spectrum stems from one of the most basic fears inherent in patriarchy: women who don’t need men. Or more precisely, women who have access to basic resources without being wholly dependent on a male family member.

•••

The primary way my child brain absorbed this moral panic was on sick days watching daytime talk shows like The Jerry Springer Show, The Jenny Jones Show, and Ricki Lake[1]. Springer, which began in 1991, was especially famous for on-air reveals of paternity tests, and men hooting and cartwheeling when their “not the father” result was announced. Because dads are the valuable commodity here, not women or children, especially not from the unfavored classes. If I didn’t have a dad, my kid brain reasoned, it was probably because I didn’t deserve one.

These talk shows also loved the trope of “wild” (read: bad) fatherless adolescents. Concerned yet helpless mothers would come on the show lamenting their uncontrollable teens. Wild teen behavior usually involved sex, sex work, and drugs, and was inextricably associated with absent fathers and low income. Often, these wild teens were given “good girl/boy” makeovers—because in America if you don’t have a father or money you can at least be saved by a TV host who can turn you into a decent human being with a pair of khakis, a cardigan, and by slapping that slutty lipstick off your face. (Such a better policy option than welfare, because we all know when women are provided with financial support they just be shoppin’.) The price of such makeover-cum-salvation was to be (unwittingly?) the subject of derision and shame and pity by audiences, both live and forever through syndication.

Wide-eyed and zero-contexted, my little fatherless self thought: “Shit. Those kids don’t have dads. I don’t have a dad. I am missing something crucial. Though I have no idea what exactly.” I interpreted this various messaging as: To be good, one must have a father, and not just any father, a good father; Good Dad = Good Me. I was lacking the thing that society told me was indispensable to be Good. And so, when Good Dads were represented in popular media, I latched on.

In Father of the Bride, Steve Martin plays George Banks, a father whose daughter is about to get married. Banks has all the classic dad traits: he’s a penny-pincher (but in a lovable way), he’s helplessly witless about all things wedding (read: super hetero), and he’s fiercely jealous/suspicious of his daughter’s bridegroom (but like in the sweeeeetest way possible).

“She’ll always love me, of course,” Banks says, “but not in the same way. I was no longer the man in my little girl’s life.”

More than anything, goshdarnit, Banks loves his family and would do anything for his daughter that will always be his little girl (eek?!). The Banks are also causally wealthy as fuck. Watched through a modern lens, this scenario reads as super creepy, but even on my most recent rewatch George’s Banks’ obsessive love for his daughter Annie is…Porn. I can’t help it and kind of hate it, but there are little clits in my brain that tingle and release dopamine when Banks thinks these iconically problematic lines at Annie’s wedding:

“Who presents this woman? This woman? But she’s not a woman. She’s just a kid. And she’s leaving us. I realized at that moment that I was never going to come home again and see Annie at the top of the stairs. Never going to see her again at our breakfast table in her nightgown and socks. I suddenly realized what was happening. Annie was all grown up and was leaving us, and something inside began to hurt.”

No dad ever thought this about me, and never will. Annnnd maybe that’s for the best. Who knows. But what if I want to feel what it’s like to be problematically obsessed over by a dad? What if I want to let my younger self feel what she desperately longed for, even while I reject the roots of those wants in my adult life? A.k.a, what if your girl got some Daddy Issues??

I can always throw this movie on and hear these words. And I can even enjoy the tingles while I spit out my drink in laughter at how ridiculous and gross and patriarchal these lines are. Maybe it’s commonplace to feel conflicted about the Porn you enjoy. (Anyone…?)

Mrs. Doubtfire has a similar effect, although I’d say the movie is overall less problematic. Of course, it has plenty of bits that haven’t aged well, and any 90s movie that represents cross-dressing or drag is bound to portray some elements of transphobia. But a generous interpretation gives the movie a pass, for the most part, even offering at times solid queer representation (“Uncle Frank and Aunt Jack”). And I sometimes wonder if this movie helped set a foundation in me to implicitly trust dudes with femme presenting tendencies more than hyper-masc presenting dudes. People in drag, queer, gender-bending, and trans spaces—yes please! My neighbor who drives a Hummer with truck nuts—I’m naturally suspicious of you, bro.

In Mrs. Doubtfire, Sally Field (playing Miranda Hillard) divorces Robin Williams (playing Daniel Hillard) for very legitimate reasons, though we’re left feeling sorry for the poor divorced dad who is forcibly taken from his kids by court order, much to his deep despair. Daniel Hillard, we learn, will go to the most extreme lengths—dressing up like an old woman and doing actual housework—just for the chance to spend some time with his kids. What was most remarkable to my little kid brain was that he would go to these lengths even without getting “credit.” That is, even if his kids never learned that it was him under the latex and wigs and granny dresses (which was the goal), it would all have been worth it to him. What a Good Dad! So we in the audience forgive him immediately for his deep and bizarrely over-the-top deception of his family—which from Miranda’s point of voice could be reimagined as a horror movie—because in the end it was all for the purest-of-heart cause. He’s a Good Dad going through a bit of bad luck who just wants to hang out with his kids, Miranda!!!!

This stood in stark contrast to my dad, who put in literally no effort (to my knowledge) to hang out with me. And who, in fact, seemed perfectly chill to fuck the fuck right off, leaving me behind in No-Dads-Land.

Good Dad Porn exists for dads too. The Ur example here is Taken (2008), where Liam Neeson (playing Bryan Mills) uber-heroically rescues his daughter from racistly-depicted sex traffickers, just in the nick of time, her virginity snugly intact.

Is it bad to like Dad Porn? Dad Porn movies and content are steeped in patriarchy, they raise the Good Dad up on a Mount Olympian pedestal, and they infantilize the women worshiping at its base. Just like regular porn, I guess. Just like regular movies and most media, I guess.

Advice Daddy Dan Savage, host of the Savage Lovecast, often gets questions from parents about how to talk to their kids about porn. One aspect of his advice is to explain porn as analogous to superhero movies. Porn is to sex, as superhero movies are to life. That is, they’re both in the business of fantasy.

Good Dad Porn, I think, operates in a similar way. George Banks and Daniel Hillard are fantasy dads—too good to be true, but like creepily too good and kinda bad at times. In this way, the Porn of Good Dad Porn really helps me make sense of these movies. One of the greatest revelations of my life was when I realized I could have mixed feelings about things. Imagine! People and art and things, even things we like, contain multitudes; they can be both good and bad at the same time. In fact, they usually are. So have some fun with it (like how my partner and I call each other Daddy during sex). Multiple realities make as much sense as one, and holding two+ truths at once can feel healing and liberating. Sometimes I just want to be free enough to like what I hate.

So, I say enjoy the Porn, wallow in the fantasy for a bit. Be self-aware. Do the work. Do your best to acknowledge deep-seated problems embedded within; interrogate why you enjoy these bits; be grateful for the opportunity to interrogate the inner workings of your brain and body and soul—because you’re alive, dammit!; change if you want, or at least don’t reproduce the problematic aspects in your daily human interactions; forgive yourself for all the weird feelings you have about all the things. And then enjoy it again.

Also, you are free to choose your own Daddy. Or to be your own Daddy. Or to be a Daddy for others. Or to tell all Dads to fuck the fuck right off. If you do want one, find someone who’s dying for the job and who is really, really Good at it (or bad, depending on your tastes). Be subversive with it, embrace the weird.

•••

Before going, I want to note that the one and only time I felt truly represented as a dadless youth was in the 1995 movie Now and Then. Tween BFFs Teeny and Sam are camped out in their treehouse, and Teeny comforts Sam, whose parents recently divorced and whose dad leaves and (importantly, for me) does not come back. Set in the 1960s, Teeny lists all the single-parent households represented on TV (The Brady Bunch, the Partridge Family, My Three Sons, the Beverly Hillbillies, etc.).

TEENY: You see Sam, there are no perfect families. It’s normal for things to be shitty.

SAM: It may be normal. But it still hurts. All those parents died, Teeny. My dad chose to leave. I really miss him.

TEENY: I’ll always be here for you.

What are some other examples of Dad Porn from your life?

[1] Quick hat-tip to the genuinely awesome dad portrayal in John Waters’ 1988 cult classic Hairspray, where Jerry Stiller plays Wilbur Turnblad, the endlessly supportive Baltimorean father of Tracy Turnblad (played by Ricki Lake) and husband of Edna Turnblad (played by the supreme Divine).