Apr 26, 2010
Why can’t people in TV dramas talk about their moms and dads?
Has anyone else ever noticed that in shows like Lost or 24, when referring to their parents, characters always say mother or father, and never say mom or dad like normal people do?
Why do you think this is?
(And if you haven’t ever noticed, listen for it. It’s kinda disturbing.)
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The obvious reason is that it’s written in the script.
The less obvious reason probably has something to do with a subconscious detachment from parental units. My divorced parents always refer to the other as “Your Mother..” or “Your Father…” when talking to one of us about them. This seems to be fairly common in this age when the percentage of people whose parents are still together is dwindling. I notice the usage of Mother/Father is on the rise among my peers who don’t associate any warm feelings to their parents.
It’s to do with vulnerability, I think. To speak of dad and mum is to be a child. To speak of father and mother is to be a person with relations.
On Lost, Hurley talks about his dad and Sawyer refers to his dad as “daddy” all the time. The kids on Parenthood talk about their moms and dads all the time. *shrug*
Of course, now that you’ve said that, I am now going to hear that ALL THE TIME.
Also: Geez, can I use the phrase “all the time” more? *hits self*
Hmm. Good call. I exaggerated.
Perhaps I didn’t notice cuz it sounded so normal.
I’ll stick with 24 as my example, I guess. :)
Jack’s daughter calls him Dad on 24.
On 24 it is always “mother” and “father” and it drives me nuts! I have always wondered why they do it too. It sounds so serious, maybe that is why….
Edgar (season 5, may he rest in peace) called his mother ‘mom.’
Like everything, the family must be dissolved and replaced. Painful for now.
When I address my parents, I call them Mama and Baba, which is Greek for Mom and Dad. But when I talk about them to other people, I talk about them as “my mother” and “my father.”
I’ll listen to my peers (I’m in college) and see what they say.
I always wonder why people abruptly end conversations on television and in movies. If someone is angry with somebody they just walk away. Who just walks away without saying anything? Even if someone is mad, they usually say something rather than just walking away.
The same goes for phone conversations. After hearing the person on the line respond to a question the character often hangs up the phone. Without saying goodbye. Or anything. Who does that? This happens even when someone isn’t angry. In real life, the person would call back and say, “We must have been disconnected,” only to have the other person reply, “No, I was done talking with you so I hung up.”
Strange!
My wife’s parents are divorced. She has a better relationship with her step-mom that her biological (her step-mom led her to Christ).
Early on in our relationship it was always confusing for me to hear her ambiguously say “Mom” because she used it interchangeably for both. So we resolved to call her step-mom “Mom” because of the familiarity and warmth associated with it and “Mother” for her biological mother because of it’s connotation of respect and place in her life.
Because realistic diction is unrealistic: (warning – TV Tropes link ahead)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic
I think the real issue is that this season of 24 has horrendous characters with horrendous script writing. In an effort to make the whiny 35-year-old teenage “arab” character, Kayla, seem more culturally appropriate they have her wheeze out the names “mother” and “father” with annoying regularity.
Kim Bauer on 24 calls Jack dad, and refers to him as dad, in (almost) all cases.
Sometimes when characters do that (not all the time, obviously) it represents a detached relationship. If you refer to your parent as ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’ it often alludes to the fact that you have a relationship with them. But calling them ‘Mother’ or ‘Father’ sounds a lot more detached, and even if you call them ‘Dad’ to their face – see Jack Shepherd – you might still refer to them as your ‘father’ or ‘mother’ behind their back, because you feel detached from them.
But this doesn’t work all the time, because Sawyer obviously didn’t have a great relationship with his ‘daddy.’
so true!!! Jack from Lost always says…”my father…”