Return of the Patriarchs
63
it is right. Insert your own joke about Bush administration policies and scandals
here. Scrap’s narration turns out to be a letter to Frankie’s estranged daughter,
explaining that Frankie never came back to the gym after ending Maggie’s
misery. “No matter where he is, I thought you should know what kind of man
your father really was,” Scrap concludes. The final image of the film is Frankie
back at the diner, presumably having some of that lemon pie. The tone is
nostalgic and sentimental. It is an odd chord to strike in a film about senseless
tragedy and loss, and it only makes sense if we are supposed to identify with
Frankie. This is a textbook example of how hegemony is supposed to work
under patriarchy; we are presumed to mistake the patriarch’s interests and point
of view for our own.
While democracy and maturity both involve necessary measures of selfdetermination in order to be free and responsible, patriarchy requires submission
to the dictates of the father-figure. In his book Moral Politics, the cognitive
linguist George Lakoff delineates paradigmatic differences in the politics of
conservatives and progressives. Lakoff asserts that that the two groups both
employ the metaphor of the family to conceptualize and articulate their political
positions, but differ in the kind of family they theorize.
According to Lakoff, conservatives embrace a Strict Parent model of
family. In this model, a Strict Parent is deemed necessary because the world is
thought to be a dangerous place, and children therefore need to be disciplined in
order to survive the Darwinian ordeal of existence. Any leniency toward or
indulgence of children is considered a moral lapse, because it fosters weakness
that will ultimately endanger the child. In the Strict Parent paradigm, being
strong is the same thing as being moral. Since morality and strength are thought
to be the same thing, and since success is proof of strength and fitness for
survival, success is also considered a sign of morality. Therefore, failure is a
sign of weakness and immorality. The people who succeed or fail do so not
because of structural inequalities (such as institutional discrimination against
race, class, or gender), but because of their personal characters. Strength of
character is formed through children learning self-discipline and self-reliance,
qualities which are deemed necessary to succeed in life’s harsh contest. These
qualities are presumably learned through obedience to the authority of the Strict
Parent, usually the father. Since the success or failure of children and (by
extension) society is dependent on the discipline of the father, the exercise of
parental authority is itself considered moral, justified, and paramount;
conversely, threats to that authority are seen as immoral, unjustified, and
misguided (Lakoff, 67-84). When the Strict Parent is a father, and when the
family metaphor is extended to the whole of society and its institutions, LakofFs
Strict Parent model is a good description of the logic of patriarchy.
If Lakoff is correct in his assessment of the Strict Parent model, it goes a
long way toward explaining the conservative obsession with fathers and
fatherhood. It also helps explain the logic behind the 2005 version of War o f the