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Fathers, sons, and dragons: Three generations bond at the movies
How to train your father
Posted June 17, 2010
In 1983, when I was a kindergartner, my dad and I drove out to a mall in the Baltimore suburbs, where we sat together in a dark theater to watch the movie Return of the Jedi. I’ll never forget the climactic scene in which Darth Vader throws the Emperor down the shaft to save his son, Luke.
I am now about the same age my dad was back in 1983. Recently, he and I drove to a mall in suburban Phoenix, where we sat together to watch the animated movie How to Train Your Dragon. This time we were accompanied by two more recent additions to the family line – a pair of little boys of about the same age as I was in 1982. One was my own son, and the other was my father’s second son (my only sibling happens to be 26 years younger than me). Coincidentally enough, the movie How to Train Your Dragon is a tale about a boy’s relationship with his father. The movie was a hit with all 3 generations, perhaps for different reasons.
A Perfect Film for Father’s Day, even if your father isn’t an evolutionary psychologist
Since 1983, my dad and I have seen many films together. As we’ve noted in earlier blogs, Hollywood movies are rich in evolutionary themes. Look at the big blockbusters of all time, and you’ll find they focus on Getting the Girl, Getting Ahead, Getting The Bad Guy, and Getting Along. These are the same fundamental social motives that run through everyday life (although evolutionary psychologists like my old man call them by slightly less catchy names, such as Mating, Status, Self-Protection, and Affiliation; see Kenrick, Griskevicius, Neuberg, & Schaller, 2010).
How to Train Your Dragon features all the key themes of classic Hollywood movies. The hero, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, is a Viking, and the son of a great warrior, but he is himself a rather scrawny and overly thoughtful little fellow, poorly equipped for a life of pillage and mayhem. Because of his non-Viking-like tendency to reflect on things, he is not very popular with the other Viking kids. Hiccup’s only real friend is a dragon, which doesn’t do much for his popularity, since his fellow Vikings are constantly at war with the local dragons, and regard it as their duty to slay them whenever possible. The movie scores high on the theme of Getting Ahead, since as you could have predicted from the beginning, the nerd triumphs in the end, turning his bleeding heart attitude toward dragons into a great strength, which allows him to pacify the great beasts whilst his peers are being beaten by them. The movie’s focal audience is the pre-puberty crowd, so Getting the Girl is presented in the most G-rated fashion, but it’s nevertheless there, and of course our hero manages to win the heart of a lovely young Viking girls who dismissed him at the start. Getting the Bad Guy, as you might expect for a movie aimed at little boys, is also there in big bold form – first in the form of fighting off the local dragons, and in the end, in the form of a battle with the evil uber-dragon who is responsible for the delinquent behavior of all the lower local dragons.
The clear message of the movie is that brains can win out over brawn, and that cooperation can triumph over conflict. In many ways, this is the story of Homo sapiens as a species – it is our ability to solve problems and to form social alliances that has allowed us to succeed in the face of larger, much tougher, predatory animals, and tougher, predatory groups of other people
Getting along with your father
The hero’s biggest problem, however, may not be the dragons. His biggest problem is his relationship with his father. His father is a big muscular brave warrior, skilled at all those warlike things for which Vikings are famous. The scrawny thoughtful Hiccup, who would be more at home in a modern upper middle class suburb with a computer and a pile of books, is clearly a disappointment to him. When people discover that Hiccup has befriended a dragon, it is the ultimate insult to the old man. Just as in Return of the Jedi, familial balance is ultimately restored. The old Viking recognizes and respects Hiccup for what he is (of course, that requires that the boy first win the battle of all times with the meanest dragon anyone had ever seen).
And as evolutionary theorists are now increasingly realizing, the bond between fathers and their families is something that distinguishes human beings from most other mammals. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that’s a theme in many movies. Consider a partial list: The Godfather, Lion King, Kramer vs. Kramer, Big Daddy, In the Name of the Father, October Sky, The Rookie, The Shining, and Shine.
Many of these father-son movies follow one of two arcs:
1. The father and son disagree but eventually, the father learns to accept the son’s way (October Sky [the movie about the Rocket Boys], The Rookie, Return of the Jedi, and How to Train Your Dragon).
2. The father and son disagree, eventually, the son learns to accept the father’s way (Lion King, The Godfather, In the Name of the Father)
Intergenerational conflict represents an important theme in the evolution of human culture. As psychological anthropologists Rob Boyd, Pete Richardson, and Joe Henrich have oft noted, there is a lot to be gained from heeding the wisdom of the previous generation, who have learned how to solve many of the local problems (how to build a boat that won’t leak, how to catch fish, how to avoid being eaten by lions and other dragonoid creatures). At the same time, cultural evolution also involves innovation, and sometimes the younger generation recognizes that the world has changed, or that there’s a better way to catch a fish. Hence, although these films tend to favor either the innovation or the tradition side of the argument, there may be a more general message: The old and young generations both have something to learn from listening to one another.
A 3 generation recommendation
How to Train Your Dragon has been one of the year’s most popular, and most critically acclaimed films. Though it came out a few months ago, it’s probably still playing at a local theater. We both give it an A, and so did our two young sons (whose opinion counts for more in this case. All four of us recommend you see it with your son on father’s day, regardless of your age.
Earlier blog on evolutionary themes in film
Avatar 3D: Evolutionary Psychology Goes to Hollywood
References
Henrich, J., and Boyd, R., 1998, ‘The Evolution of Conformist Transmission and the Emergence of Between-Group Differences,’ Evolution and Human Behavior 19: 215-242.
Kenrick, D.T., Griskevicius, V., Neuberg, S.L., & Schaller, M. (2010). Renovating the pyramid of needs: Contemporary extensions built upon ancient foundations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 292–314.
Kenrick, D.T., Neuberg, S.L., Griskevicius, V., Becker, D.V., Schaller, M. (2010). Goal-Driven Cognition and Functional Behavior: The Fundamental Motives Framework. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 63-67.
