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threewaysdivided · 2 years

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I just read that ask about Vlad that you did and was wondering if you had any thoughts about Jack and Maddie. They have clear love for there kids and when they know they are in danger they will drop everything for them, but they also don't notice when there is somthing wrong going on. Valerie would be another good one, though I think that she mostly framed around how whe is manipulated by others (like Vlad).

(the Vlad ask)

So, I have quite a few thoughts on Maddie and Jack, and they’re probably some of the most complex.

I’ve talked about this before but one of the quirks/ bugs/ features of Danny Phantom’s tumultuous production and at-times-contradictory canon is that there can be multiple disparate readings that are all somewhat supported. And no more is this true than for the (nominally) good Doctors Fenton.

Let’s talk about the meta-side first because it’s kind of fascinating.

Issa Nicktoon

Sounds kind of dismissive to say it that way but I think it’s important to remember that Danny Phantom is an early 2000s TV7+ (i.e. “for kids”) Nicktoon and some artefacts of canon are clearly concessions to the medium.

As a formulaic episodic kids show, the Status Quo is God - characters rarely experience substantial change or ongoing arcs/ consequences and even episodic A-Plots tend to reset major developments by the end. (I’ve talked about some of the problems it causes for Sam specifically here.)

Things like hyperbolic cartoonery and Aesops are also in play; characterisation and situations getting hyper-charged or hijacked by the Idiot Ball/ Jerk Ball/ Conflict Ball etc. in service of jokes or whatever “moral lesson” a given episode might decide to be about. (It’s really not in-keeping for Danny to act like he did in Livin’ Large but the show wanted a “don’t be materialistic/ wealth isn’t everything” lesson so he got Jerk-Balled.)

There’s also stuff that mostly exists for narrative convenience, and that the producers either didn’t consider or actively try to avoid the implications of. Maddie and Jack being as clueless as they are about their kids is at least partially a convenience to keep them out of the way. The show doesn’t want to engage with the implications of ghosts being dead people, the implications of ghosts being sentient, or the fridge-logic/ fridge-horror ramifications of a bunch of its one-liners and contrivances. It wants to be a fun hero comedy cartoon with a spooky twist and it absolutely doesn’t want you thinking about any of it too hard.

Because of that, you kind of have to be selective about when to read things ‘to the letter’ and when to read things ‘in spirit’. Do you choose to take everything as having literally happened as depicted (even when those things could have terrible or story-breaking implications) or do you take the general impression from the whole and exclude specific outliers on the grounds that they only exist as a concession to the nature of the show?

Maddie and Jack’s Weird Fictional Niche

I also want to briefly touch on the unusual narrative space the Fentons occupy in the realm of hero-story-parents.

(For simplicity I’m going to take inspiration from OSP’s video and refer to the ‘secret’ side of the double-life that teen superhero/ urban fantasy protagonists interact with as the ‘fantastical world’.)

When it comes to stories with child/ teen heroes who have living parents, I feel like you can map most of them against 3 axes:

How aware are they of the fantastical world in general?

How aware are they of their kids’ activities in the fantastical world?

If they are involved in the fantastical world themselves, is it in a way that is supportive or antagonistic to their kids activities?

It’s a pretty stock trope for these parents to be both ignorant of the fantastical world (or at least, no more aware than the average person) and unaware of their kids activities. This is often done by putting these parents somewhere on the scale between too preoccupied/ overworked to notice what’s going on and actively uncaring/ neglectful/ abusive. Again, it’s mostly a narrative convenience to explain how the kids can get up to so many unsupervised shenanigans while also having a stable homebase.

Rarer is seeing parents who are directly involved in the fantastical world without being aware of or interacting with their kid’s activities. I think the most common version here is typically when the parents are studying some tangential aspect of the fantastical world while their kids fight villains/ have adventures somewhere else.

What’s weird about Maddie and Jack is that not only are they fully aware of the fantastical world (being the ones to open the portal), they’re also completely unaware of their kids’ presence in that world even though they’re active in the same areas, AND - most unusually - they are personally antagonistic to most of that world and Danny’s alter-ego in specific.

That’s pretty unique. Typically you would expect that to be a villain archetype; a classic setup where the parents act as the main Bad Guys (or are working for the Big Bad) while their kids assume secret alter egos and enter the fantastical world in order to stop them.

But that’s not what’s going on. Despite qualifying as secondary antagonists, Maddie and Jack are never presented or treated as villains; they have no ‘evil scheme’ or agenda, they are not sadistic or exploitative. The show frames them as likeable and relatable (if annoying).

And despite everything, both they and their kids sincerely love and want happiness/ success for each other.

The Fentons as Parents

To me, Maddie and Jack as parents embody the concept of and:

Someone can love you and hurt you.

Someone can want the best for you and not understand who you are at all.

Someone can sincerely care about you and completely fail to recognise your needs.

Someone can want to support you and never be there when you need them most.

Someone can try their best and it can still not be anywhere near enough.

You can love someone and they can have hurt you in ways that might be unforgivable.

You can want to be with someone and they can be unhealthy for you to be around.

I think this is one of the places where Danny Phantom’s production being kind of a mess has allowed it to accidentally resonate with a rarely-depicted but very real emotional experience.

So, are they abusive and/or neglectful?

I want to be clear that abuse and/or neglect is in the impact, not the intent. That isn’t to say intent is irrelevant (especially in fiction) but the most important thing is the effect.

And from that perspective…

Yeah, even with the most generous ‘in spirit’ reading Maddie and Jack are at the very least emotionally neglectful to their kids. They are rarely present for their kids (definitely not consistently) and even when physically present they’re often mentally focussed elsewhere. They rarely listen to Danny and Jazz; often talking over them, derailing conversations to be about ghosts and dismissing Danny and Jazz’s opinions on the topic when they try to participate by offering counterpoints. While they don’t restrict their kid’s hobbies we rarely see them actively participate or encourage them on screen, and they often ignore Danny and Jazz’s attempts to express that they don’t want ghosts/ the supernatural being brought into all the family time they spend together. It’s very easy to read Jazz’s interest in psychology as her at least partially trying to find the emotional guidance and framework that their parents are failing to provide, and to pass that on to Danny second-hand.

The Fenton household seems like it could be a very emotionally lonely and invalidating environment for a child to grow up in. The thing with love is that it’s not just about feelings: it’s about actions, and (while Maddie and Jack no doubt feel and think that they love their kids unconditionally) what they have routinely shown Danny and Jazz is that - outside of emergencies - they will choose ghosts ahead of their children 90% of the time.

It’s also hard to ignore that - even in a generous reading - the Fenton parents probably do count as physically criminally negligent. They have a laboratory in their basement where they deal with potentially biohazardous substances but there is no containment separating it from the rest of the house (it’s unclear if there’s even a door). Danny’s chores include cleaning and equipment maintenance in the lab (some of which can be explosively dangerous) which he does without PPE or supervision. The unsecured portal releases ghosts directly onto the premises, sending them up through the house on their way to terrorise the town. Even outside the lab, the kids are at risk of being exposed to barely-tested stuff like Fenton-Foamer. Maddie and Jack bring unsealed ectoplasmic samples and power sources to the breakfast table, sometimes storing them alongside or even using them to prepare the food their kids eat. Danny only became Phantom (an event that either partly killed him or mutated him into some kind of hybrid) because a group of teenagers were allowed unsupervised access to a lab containing an un-signposted piece of malfunctioning equipment that was left connected to power. (And sure, maybe the trio shouldn’t have snuck down there in the first place but “rely on a teenager to never do stupid things” should not be the sole safety precaution.) None of that is good.

Taking a more strict ‘to the letter’ reading makes them seem much worse; at times crossing the line into ‘wilfully harmful’. There’s a joke about how Jack has made most of the lab work Danny’s job because he’s too lazy to do it himself. There’s the iron maiden thing, sometimes they lecture or scold Danny in a way that feels very not good, and then there was the whole bit about putting him in a spinner ‘to get the crazy out’ in The Fenton Menace. It’s not invalid for people to argue that, based on a strict reading, the Fenton parents could be some form of abusive.

The Problem with Their Parenting

I think the core problem with the Fenton’s parenting can be summed up in this diagram:

The surface level problem is obvious: Maddie and Jack prioritise their work over their kids way too much. That isn’t to say that parents’ lives should be 100% about their kids but they should be swinging for a better balance. At the very least they should be able to have more than a handful of conversations with their kids that don’t end in them making it all about ghosts. It’s like they can’t compartmentalise.

However, it’s that top one that’s the real problem. Maddie and Jack’s paranoid hatred/ fear/ distrust of all things ghostly is a consuming fixation. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s partially driving their obsession with their work.

That ectophobia also creates a very emotional unhealthy (and at times physically unsafe) environment for Jazz and especially Danny. Like I said in the DP’s asexual fanbase post every part of their lives from their language to their behaviour is steeped in casual prejudice. Not only is it psychologically harmful for Danny and Jazz to be internalising these beliefs, it’s yet another thing that makes their love feel less certain/ more conditional.

It’s also a super weird mindset for a pair of supposed scientists to have.

Ectophobia and Bad Science

Maddie and Jack are pretty textbook examples of the Fantastic Racism Trope; they have an irrational hatred for specific paranormal entities and some of the things they do could definitely be categorised as Van Helsing Hate Crimes.

However, while it makes sense for the routinely-terrorised townsfolk of Amity Park to be generally anti-ghost based on their experiences, it’s very strange for Maddie and Jack to also have this mindset (considering that they were the ones who chose to actively seek them out for ‘study’), and even weirder that they are the ones who most strongly spread that rhetoric to the community.

The Doctors Fenton are very unscientific in a lot of ways; they don’t use any form of the scientific method (hypothesise → test → repeat) when it comes to ghosts, and they seemingly went into the field with series of pre-set beliefs that they had formed before gathering any firsthand data.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” -Sherlock Holmes

Not only that, but they’re very incurious about most ghostly things. They seemingly aren’t interested in studying the behaviour of ghosts, their habits and interactions (ecto-ecology), or questioning why they might act a certain way. Their approach seems to be more about hunting/capturing ghosts, taking them apart to see how they physically work and then using the remains to build new, more effective anti-ghost technology.

From that perspective, it’s almost worth questioning whether their anti-ghost prejudice is actually serving a self-protective function: if it’s less about the belief and more about what it enables. If ghosts are inherently evil, dangerous, non-sentient/ impulse-driven, incapable of feeling pain or emotions and only imitating these things as a manipulative defence/ predation strategy then it’s not morally wrong for Maddie and Jack to hunt them and subject them to inhumane experimentation. That might explain why their rhetoric has internal inconsistencies (“non-sentient manipulator” is an oxymoron) and why they continue to cling to it and double-down even when faced with contradictory evidence. So long as they believe it, they never have to feel guilt or question themselves.

Obviously the actual answer is that it’s a Nicktoon and Maddie and Jack ever significantly changing their beliefs/ behaviour is Forbidden by the Formula™ but we’re analysing from a Watsonian perspective right now so hush.

It would be interesting to know how they might have come about this belief in the first place, since it doesn’t seem to be from firsthand data. Maybe they’re working from bad anecdotes or folklore, biasing towards the idea of ghosts as evil. Maybe they’re carrying a personal bias from an early firsthand encounter (perhaps in their college days) that left a terrible first impression.

Whatever the case, the fact that they keep holding onto this hypothesis and dismissing alternatives, rather than actually testing it against the mounting pile of obviously contradictory evidence, kind of shows how unwilling - or maybe unable - they are to consider that they could be wrong.

“one of the greatest human failings is to prefer to be right than to be effective” -Stephen Fry

Narcissism vs Egocentrism

Something that strikes me is that Maddie, Jack and Vlad are in some ways extremely similar. In the Vlad post, I said that one of the things that makes Vlad so dangerous is that he shows signs of malignant narcissism. Similarly, I think the main thing that makes Maddie and Jack so unintentionally harmful is that they are supremely egocentric.

Egocentrism refers to someone's inability to understand that another person's view or opinion may be different than their own. …an egocentric person does not necessarily obsess over things like success, beauty, or status. They simply don't consider other people in their decision-making. -Verywell Mind

It’s more obvious in Jack because of his general social cluelessness; his opening line in the whole show is asking if insisting the kids want to hunt ghosts and then completely ignoring that all three say ‘no’; he brings up the ‘Hairy Chin’ nickname because he doesn’t see how that ‘funny memory’ might be embarrassing or hurtful. Maddie is more socially savvy but there is also a benign condescension/ dismissiveness in her reaction towards views other than her own. They are both more capable of compassion than Vlad but, like him, they show very little natural empathy.

They both also tend to assume their perspective is universal/ correct, and/or not consider how their actions might affect other people. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that maybe other people don’t want to talk about ghosts all the time. They don’t consider how barging into the school and making a ruckus might impact their kids socially or hurt their relationship with the faculty. They never develop perspective that maybe they should put aside their exhausting yearly Santa argument for the sake of a positive holiday experience with their kids, even though that argument never goes anywhere. They don’t seem to include their kids in making family plans and just take it as read that Danny and Jazz will be totally on-board and satisfied with whatever they decide.

At times it’s like they borderline forget their kids but then believe they should/ act like they have a really close relationship with them when they do pay attention. (They actually do this with Vlad as well - Jack treating him with the same overly-close college-roommate familiarity despite years of silence). It’s almost a failure of object permanence; they disappear off into their own minds and come back expecting the other person to be exactly the same as when they left - like a reverse-weeping-angel who freezes whenever they’re not being looked at. And when they do notice something is amiss (or someone gets upset with them) they often default to wondering what is wrong with the other person rather than considering whether they might have done something.

None of this is to say that Maddie and Jack are malicious, or to suggest that they don’t like or care about their kids. It’s more like they’re trapped in their own little bubble of being The Heroic Doctors Maddie and Jack Fenton, Genius Ghost-Hunters Extraordinaire and it completely walls them off from the reality of other people’s needs and feelings. They simply don't consider other people in their decision-making and unfortunately their kids are part of the other people. They do love Danny and Jazz. They love them so much… when they remember that they exist.

And it’s worth noting that the behaviours and feelings we see from Danny and Jazz align pretty well to how dealing with egocentricity can affect people:

Low self-worth: feeling irrelevant, as if your opinions don't matter Self-doubt: questioning your own judgment or perception Confusion: wondering if the person recognizes their egocentric ways Sadness: feeling sorry for the person or sad for yourself after interacting with them Anger: frustration and anger over not feeling seen or heard Resentment: becoming bitter toward them for the ways they behave and how you feel after interactions Detachment: a desire to move away from the person as much as you can in order to protect your sense of self. -Verywell Mind

What to do?

I want to reprise the same idea I expressed in the Vlad post: Maddie and Jack are not Danny and Jazz’s responsibility. Functional relationships require participation from both parties. And when it comes to relationships between children and adult parents/ mentors it is not the job of the child to assume primary responsibility for managing the relationship, their parents’ feelings or their parents’ lives.

As it stands, this relationship is not functional or healthy. Something’s got to give.

Which is painful and complicated because they all do love each other.

It’s that idea of and again:

You can love someone, you can want their affection, their approval, a positive relationship AND you can be in a position where continuing to stay and try for that will end up doing more harm than good.

I see things going one of two ways:

1. The relationship gives

The kids end up leaving - either cutting contact or at least pulling away.

There are a bunch of things that could lead to this. Maybe their parents don’t accept Danny when the truth comes out, and they have to flee. Maybe Jazz moves out and offers for Danny to come and stay with her. Maybe they just grow up, move away to have their own lives and rarely come home.

The best outcome here would be Danny and Jazz being able to reach a place where they feel safe (emotionally and physically), unconditionally loved and can start healing into a sense of confidence/comfortableness with themselves: whether that’s just with each other or as part of some kind of larger community/ found family group.

2. Maddie and Jack's behaviour gives

Here something would need to happen to shake Maddie and Jack out of their egocentrism, make them realise how much their ectophobic obsession has been hurting their kids and their relationship with them, and that they need to make a committed effort to change their behaviour if they want a hope of salvaging things. The thing with love is that it’s not just about feelings: it’s about actions.

Considering how resistant and generally obtuse Maddie and Jack can be towards accepting things they don’t want to realise, this could require a quite drastic inciting incident (Danny being hurt, the kids deciding to leave), although it could also be a slow build of subtle things that eventually breaks the dam.

And I do want to stress that ‘change in behaviour’ bit. This kind of quasi-redemption-arc really needs to be about recognising why the behaviour was harmful and realising they want to be better. If it’s primarily about absolving themselves of feeling bad or undoing undesirable consequences then it’s still egocentric; in which case there’s no guarantee that they wouldn’t backslide down the line, or slide into a near-identical behaviour that’s just superficially different enough to avoid the same criticism. The main goal and reward of a redemption path is the character(s) on the path growing into better people.

As for actually reconciling, it would be up to Danny and Jazz to decide when and if they want to accept any prospective olive branches. Forgiveness is admirable, but not owed.

Like I said, it’s messy and complicated.

Someone can love you and hurt you.

Someone can try their best and it can still not be anywhere near enough.

You can love someone and they can have hurt you in ways that might not be forgivable.

And, as parents, Maddie and Jack Fenton are - quite by accident - some of the most emotionally complex, realistically flawed and believably human characters in Danny Phantom’s canon.

#Danny Phantom #DP meta #Maddie Fenton #Jack Fenton #Maddie and Jack Fenton #The Fenton Parents #Scattered thoughts #thecatlounge #3WD Answers #Definitely some of the most divisive characters in DPs fandom #I think it’s the ‘And’-ness of them #That they are simultaneous capable of love and hurt #They are loving and caring but ‘loving and caring parents’ is not synonymous with ‘good parents’#the world is not divided into 'good people' and 'pure monsters'#I think there’s definitely some merit to fan-theories that Maddie and Jack might have some form of neurodivergence (perhaps ADHD or Autism)#That make them more prone to hyperfixating/ less attentive to others’ emotions/ less aware of social relationship decay #I think they had kids because they sincerely wanted children and to be a family #But maybe didn’t consider that their kids were inevitably going to become ‘other people’#I understand why some people might feel defensive about this take or reluctant to label them poorly #From person experience: I have an egocentric close relative #And it took me into my early 20s to realise #that just because someone loves you and tries for you #doesn’t mean their behaviour can’t still regularly cross a line into hurtful/ neglectful/ toxic #I am now in a low-contact relationship with them #And in some ways it CAN feel like giving up when you make that call #But sometimes you HAVE to make that call because there is no way to make them acknowledge or change their contribution to the problem #You cannot do the work of two people by yourself #Intent only goes so far #(I mean. We might distinguish Murder from Manslaughter. But at the end of the day. Someone is still dead either way.)

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