daredevilkink | Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

So tell me I'm not the only one who thinks it likely that Jack Murdock's father was abusive. Mrs. Murdock, heartsick at her failure to make her son a better man (his whole job consists of beating people up, after all), bitterly tells her grandson that Murdock men have "a devil" in them, after all. Jack's just as eager to get his son to escape this cycle of violence, and just as doomed.

That's my headcanon, anyhow. (And about the only thing that excuses that horrible line about Murdock men having a devil in them, although it's still terrible theology.) Y/N? Other thoughts?

SA: I said "excuses," I meant "explains." Because it still is a horrible, horrible thing to say to anyone, let alone a child who is related to you.

i definitely buy this.

i feel like jack's dad "letting the devil out" meant abusing jack(/possibly his wife too) so jack went into boxing as a healthier way to "let the devil out" (though i did wonder, after watching matt's confession in the first episode again, if maybe jack had ever abused matt. it could possibly read as if matt had experienced jack "letting the devil out" personally) and now matt is "letting the devil out" by protecting his city. i think matt really needs his anger to serve people instead of harm them and that mindset could definitely be at least partially attributed to a history of abuse, whether his dad's or his own.

AYRT: I completely agree that his "mindset could definitely be at least partially attributed to a history of abuse, whether his dad's or his own."

I kind of like to think that Jack did his best not to abuse Matt. He was trying his hardest not to be his dad, here. Which is why he treats Matty like a partner, not a punching bag, either physically or verbally. His kid is just so d*** smart. Not like him.

Honestly, I'd take Matt Murdock's childhood with Jack, as full of inappropriate pressure as it sometimes was, over Bruce Banner's, or Clint Barton's, or Steve Rogers' (in the comics, anyhow). Which is pretty much what my head-canon gives Jack. And I'd like to think that Matt would be even better than Jack with his own child(ren), if he ever settled down enough to have any.

SA: Although I'd absolutely jump ship to Peter Parker's childhood, in a hot minute, even with the fact that he's technically an orphan. +/- Banner-style tampering with DNA in the womb/as an infant.

Also, Marvel really likes the abusive dad theme, doesn't it?

Also, Marvel really likes the abusive dad theme, doesn't it?

They really do! And if a character has decent, loving parents, then the writers punish them for it with a backstory of childhood bullying (see Matt Murdock, Peter Parker, Billy Kaplan).

AYRT: So Steve Rogers pretty much got it from all sides, depending on who's writing the comic back story. Ouch. At least he had a lovely mother.

100% yes Clint's backstory is ridiculously sad (especially with some of the recent retcons) and Bruce's is downright horrifying. Both characters in the MCU had this erased though lol.

I think the biggest issue Jack and Matt have really is that Jack in the MCU treats Matt like an equal when he is nine. Matt asks if they have enough to pay rent and he stitches up his dad's face and Jack offers him alcohol to do it. It's clear he loves Matt very much but he's not very good at boundaries or making good life choices. Matt as a kid grew up in a loving but very broken home. Jack does behave like someone who had a very bad relationship with his dad so he's overcompensating by making his kid his friend.

Oh my god Matt with children. He is so protective of children. He would end up with one under his care for whatever reason and then somehow he would end up with ten little urchins all living in his apartment. Foggy we need to take on more clients. I have ten children to feed now.

matt having an apartment full of children and calling foggy like "listen, i can't come in today." and foggy being like "you need to take a sick day?" and matt just "actually, it's more like paternity leave."

Foggy comes over and is like 'holy hell Matt where did all of these kids come from'

Matt's like 'well see the thing is I keep rescuing kids who have no parents and they keep getting turned over to the authorities and put in really shitty homes and orphanages. So I asked this little guy, Bobby, I said do you just want to come home with me instead and I'll adopt you? And he said yes. And now I have ten children."

'Nothing stopped you in the snowball from one kid to ten kids'

'..........not really, no'

"you're like the oprah of adoption. you get a vigilante father figure! and you get a vigilante father figure! and you ge-"

"what can i say foggy? i'm an equal opportunist"

Re: Jack Murdock's father abusive?

(Anonymous) - 2015-11-17 09:06 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Jack Murdock's father abusive?

(Anonymous) - 2015-11-17 12:07 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Jack Murdock's father abusive?

(Anonymous) - 2015-11-17 12:48 (UTC) - Expand

ayrt: i am absolutely with you, especially your point about jack trying his hardest not to be his dad. jack's misguided (having your nine year old drink before he stitches up your face definitely disqualifies him as father of the year) sure, but i don't believe he was the absolute worst. although certain aspects of their relationship were unideal, jack clearly had nothing but love and respect for matt.

i also don't think jack abused matt frequently or even infrequently, i see it maybe being a defining event, something that happened once (i'm not excusing it at all, just to be clear) and that after it happened jack (who would never forgive himself for it) had a very frank discussion with matt about the murdock men and their devil. maybe that's when matt learns about his father's abuse and why his father is so desperate for matt to use his brain, to not be like him. the history of abuse in his family could also be cemented by the fact that matt (in tv canon, i've not read the comics enough to know) has been shown to be very protective of children.

yeah, i'd like to believe that if matt ever did have children he'd completely break the cycle.

when i say "ayrt" i mean i'm the "mindset could definitely be at least partially attributed to a history of abuse, whether his dad's or his own" anon

OP (and AYRT): Don't worry, I figured out which anon you were right away.

Your first paragraph? Is exactly what I was trying to say. Thank you. Misguided is the right word, here. I don't disagree that Jack made some poor choices with respect to his son. But I'd also like to point out that he has very few resources, either monetary or people-wise, which I think is the other thing the face-stitching episode is supposed to demonstrate. I don't think the show ever portrays him in any kind of positive relationship except with his son, so he has no one to help him figure out how to parent. (I'm assuming his mother is dead by the face-stitching scene, by the way.) And so little Matt Murdock has lessons in violence, poor self-care, and taking too much upon himself before he even loses his sight. Jack doesn't have the tools to realize that this is what he's teaching. Just, bleh.

Your second paragraph? I guess I can see it. My head canon is that Jack desperately tried to shield Matt from his anger, and also that he never knew his mother had shared her "Murdock men have a devil in them" theory with Matt. Which certainly doesn't contradict anything you said there, but my further head canon is that Jack never discussed his childhood abuse with Matt. He's trying to leave all that behind him, and out of their relationship entirely. Which is why, if Matt ever did catch a glimpse of "the devil" in his father in their one-on-one interactions, it was immediately followed by his dad sequestering himself to punch a wall for a while, or something, turning the violence in upon himself. (Which is still pretty traumatizing for a child.)

Of course, all of this is head canon, and your interpretation of what the show has given us works, too. And the show is never going to give us a Matt with children, because that's not the genre of the show. Which is why I'm loving the other conversation this prompt turned into. :)

In Man Without Fear, Jack hit Matt exactly once (for getting into fights, ironically). That was a pivotal moment in his life, and afterwards he decided to become a lawyer (I can't remember how the kid-logic went)

So gold star for you, anon!

"Misguided" I think is a good word to use about Jack's parenting. And that may also be the word to use about Matt's grandmother too, because I doubt she had any way of knowing what the impact of what she said would be and we only hear Matt's context surrounding how and why it was said, to be fair.

As a person who writes the majority of my fics delving into complex parental-child relationships (probably to exorcise demons about my own), let me say this though:

Too many fans and writers like to get out their torches and pitchforks about "evil" bad parents who abused their little woobies, even to the point of extremes.

Howard Stark is my go-to example of this. It's rare to find a fic about him being a bad dad that doesn't a) let Tony off the hook for all of his awful behaviours as an adult and b) feel the need to take his bad parenting beyond what you saw in canon and mischaracterize Howard as an alcoholic child abuser. I dislike that fans don't seem to think it's possible for Howard to have been, yes, a bad dad, but not an intentional one or that it's possible that Tony exaggerates his dad's worst qualities in his mind because their relationship was complicated. Or that fans NEVER want to acknowledge that his mom might even exist in that dynamic.

It's not just Marvel who loves to go to the abused parent well, it's fans too. Parents need to be either saints or totally evil. There's a weird "These things are ALWAYS awful and these things are ALWAYS good" approach to how fandom looks at parents.

Which is crazy, because I'm sure most of us here know that you can have parents who make terrible mistakes raising their kids but still love the hell out of them. And kids who rebel and think their parents are the worst when the parents only did their best. And situations that involve both. People have all kinds of failings as human beings that they accidentally pass along to their kids without meaning to that can really screw them the fuck up - they work long hours and are inattentive, they smother them, they try to make them their best friend because they're lonely, they teach them and pass along terrible habits like substance abuse or anger issues. And in all of those cases, it doesn't mean that the parents don't love their kids and deserve some sympathy for trying. Or that the kids don't love their parents anyway.

Even when kids try to break the cycle - guess what? They create new cycles. A kid who grew up in abject poverty and viewed it as being because their parent was deeply lazy is going to grow up and be the parent who works such long hours that they never see their kid and spoils them with a Lamborghini on their 16th birthday, because that's how these things tend to go.

So I just really don't understand the "Jack is the worst dad ever" arguments. I'm glad that we seem to be having a conversation about him here that's more complex.

I just wish, in general, that fans would keep in mind the following (applying to Jack, Stick, Matt's mom and Foggy's parents too):

There's way more ways to screw a person up than just beating the shit out of them.
You can still absolutely adore a parent and want to please a parent who is deeply abusive to you.
MOTHERS also raise (or in Matt's case, don't raise) kids too and dad's don't deserve some weird pedestal our culture likes to put them on when it comes to little boys.
Mothers can often be just as abusive, if not more abusive, than fathers and are not always saintly either.
Kids have personalities and things that drive them as adults that have nothing to do with their parents - parents are not the be all and end all for why a person is screwed up as an adult.
Parenting is not an absolute. You can have the fucking Brady Bunch for parents and there can be things wrong with it and terrible lessons you learned from it. Parents are human beings who make all manner of mistakes that can end up accidentally creating the next President or the next Ted Bundy. There's no template to follow to end up with either of those things at the end of the day.

So can we all just try to be a little less judgmental about how the characters we love are raised sometimes? Or try and examine our assumptions about their childhood and think about why particular parental headcanons are so common and what they say about us collectively? There are a million great headcanons for parents in fandom, and I feel like they're rarely explored because fanon immediately coalesces and says "No. This."

Sorry. Rant over. Just had to get that one off my chest.

OP: I... hope this rant wasn't particularly aimed at me? Because I was trying to suggest Jack's father might have been abusive from hints in the show? I don't particularly think I have a yen for abusive parents, although I do love me some hurt/comfort. I just thought it might explain some things in the back story a little.

Also, the perfect summation for your rant? "God was a perfect parent, and look how His kids turned out."

Something you didn't go into in depth:

Parenting is hard, but single parenting is even harder. I think everyone can agree with that. And Jack is definitely a single parent.

PLEASE, anybody, correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading (way back in the Dark Ages) something about parenting types. (It was NOT about abusive families, as far as I can remember.) Authoritative parents, who gave their children boundaries but didn't try to control them, were obviously considered the best. BUT a two-parent household with one parent permissive and the other authoritarian tended to do as well as a one-parent household with an authoritative parent in raising kids. That was something I'd never thought about in re: single parent homes before, but I still ponder it to this day. A second parent can help cover gaps in time, money, chores, but also in *parenting styles*. But when you're alone, you're responsible for all of it all by yourself.

AYRT - No it wasn't aimed at you or even this thread really. I'm glad we seem to be thinking about it more complexly here. It was more aimed at some of the "Jack is a shitty dad" people or even some of the people who oversimplify Matt's relationship with Stick or turn Foggy family into a 70's sitcom family made of hugs.

Sorry if I hijacked things at all. :P

OP (&AYRT): No, how dare you hijack a discussion of parenting in the MCU to talk about... parenting in general? And more particularly, in fannish versions of the MCU?

I think people like to make parents (particularly fathers) EVIL because it's simpler in the same way that comics are usually simpler: you are allowed to hate this person. But just as Daredevil made the villain more sympathetic (although, honestly, I was bored stiff by the Wilson Fisk scenes and never had much sympathy for him at all--give me Magneto any day), there's room for a little more nuanced view of parenting. I've heard a lot of praise for Daredevil being, not darker, but more gritty and realistic; can't that carry through into our interpretations of Jack Murdock?

So, thanks for *contributing to* (not hijacking) this discussion.

(And I've been known to indulge in a good anonymous rant or two at times myself. It's cathartic.)

Speaking of which: I do think Stick did profoundly more damage than Jack did, because he did his best to destroy Matt's ability to form meaningful relationships. He did it for what he thought were good reasons, but his world view is profoundly twisted. Even a soldier, which is supposedly what he wanted Matt to be, is meant to have fairly close bonds with those around him, to be able to trust in them and rely on them in terrible circumstances. (I'm not trying to romanticize the "band of brothers" thing here. Please, anybody, correct me on this. It's not like I've ever served.) Jack may have modeled poor coping mechanisms and given his son too much responsibility, but I still think isolating Matt was worse. (Then again, maybe he would have been stolen by HYDRA or something if he were too trusting, so there's that...) If that's an oversimplification of that aspect of their relationship, it's definitely one supported by the show.

AYRT - I agree with you about that characterization of Stick for sure. I wouldn't call that an oversimplification. Plus, I really appreciate that you took time to give some thought to the other side of the Stick issue, which is that it's entirely possible that if Matt were too trusting, especially with his abilities and circumstances, that he could have potentially been taken advantage of to a much greater degree than what Stick was trying to do.

Also, I would totally read a "Hydra got to Matt before Stick could" AU! Oh man, that would be awesome. A non-isolated, super-trusting Matt Murdock who 100% believes in Hydra's missions and goals because they stepped in and nurtured him when nobody else would and DIDN'T walk away? That is some angsty, good stuff and totally what I'm here for. (If nobody else prompts it based on this, I will).

Holy shit please prompt that it would be amazing

Re: Jack Murdock's father abusive?

(Anonymous) - 2015-11-18 18:53 (UTC) - Expand

Except that "Jack is a shitty dad" and "Stick is a terrible person" are also completely valid interpretations.

We all have different life experiences. A father leaving their kid with nothing but PTSD and insurance money is kind of a sore point for me. In my opinion, it cancels out any of the "well, he loved his kid and was just trying is best with what little he had to work with" argument because Matt grew up with prize money instead of his dad, and it didn't have to happen.

And then Stick came in and took advantage of Matt when he was vulnerable, abandoned him, and then showed up again when he had a use for him and spent the entire time gaslighting him.

That's not complex. That is nothing short of fucked up.

OP again:

A father leaving their kid with nothing but PTSD and insurance money is kind of a sore point for me. In my opinion, it cancels out any of the "well, he loved his kid and was just trying is best with what little he had to work with" argument because Matt grew up with prize money instead of his dad, and it didn't have to happen.

I think we may have a difference in worldview here. I'm not a philosopher, I'm just trying to remember a little from Philosophy 101 here. (Literally, it was Philosophy 101. That's how little I know.)

Your argument seems to come from a basis of consequentialist ethics: "the morality of an action is contingent on the action's outcome or result" (quoting from Wikipedia's article on normative ethics). The outcome was: Jack Murdock dead, Matt inheriting the prize money AND bet money (remember, Jack bet on his fight as well). Jack obviously went into the fight with at least a strong expectation that he would die as a result of it; therefore, according to the consequentialist argument, that was what he was aiming to do. He was deliberately trading his life for the prize money for his son. I would like to point out that Matt says he never told his father about his senses; Jack had no way of knowing Matt would actually hear him get shot, that he would manage to get to his cooling body before anyone else. The PTSD resulting from that is something he had no way of accounting for.

But I don't agree that this was all of Jack's thinking, and I have trouble with consequentialist ethics as a whole. For one thing, it can have problems seeing any difference between a martyr and a suicide. But there is a big difference. For one, death is the acceptable, if not desirable, trade-off; for the other, death is the goal. If anything, Jack is closer to the martyr on that scale. Not that I'm going to claim that's what he is.

No, Jack is caught in a trap (partially of his own making, since he willingly threw fights before). Either he continues to accede to the demands of the people rigging the fights, and teaches Matt not to bother trying to do what is right (apathy); or he tries to refuse and Matt is used as leverage to force him back into it (fear); or he takes the third option, and does his best to win the fight, accepting the consequences.

If we assume Jack is working from a virtue ethics or deontological ethics perspective, his main motivation is not the money for Matt--that's just being prudent. Instead, moved by Matt's recitation of Thurgood Marshall, he is finally "dissenting from the apathy, dissenting from the fear," and doing what he knows is right: fighting his best as the ethics of his profession demand. Would you really prefer the alternatives? Would they make you think more highly of Jack?

What did Matt learn from Jack's death? I think that Matt learned that fighting for what is right, (particularly with the literal, physical meaning of the word "fight,") and refusing to "play the game" for the corrupt people pulling the strings, will lead to your death. I think that the first time Matt puts on that mask, he honestly expects to die from it eventually (just as Claire later voices). But he has finally decided that that helpless little girl; those frightened, brutalized women; all the cries for help that are amplified by the sirens; are worth more than his safe life as the attorney his father would be proud of. In the end, Matt has even more in common with the parts of Jack that Jack didn't want him to inherit than an aptitude for fighting and the anger that Matt has termed "the devil"; he also has that willingness to die to protect others.

And thank goodness, or there'd never be a Daredevil.

Also, I don't think anyone on this thread has really disagreed with your perspective on Stick?

New Anon to this thread but holy cow. This comment is just. Perfect. I agree so much with everything you say in this, it's awesome.

<3