Backseat Stepdad

This is so My Anaconda Don't or What What (In the Butt). Early days of a phenomenon on the Internet so bizarre that it is instantly fascinating. Then the typical lifecycle: niche, mainstream, parody and remix, peak, decline. ‘Backseat with Step Daddy’ is currently in the parody and remix phase where every form of written media is just applying this one structure to every topic. In six months or so it will be ancient and just a reference that everyone is aware of but no longer relevant. For now though it’s the inside joke of the Internet that no one quite gets but everyone is having fun pretending to.

From a true story, it would be a huge invasion of privacy for all the real people involved unless everyone consented to its publication. However, publishing a totally fictional internal world is quite standard and, of course, can be edited to make a far better story than real thoughts (however honest) would be. Sympathetic thoughts about his partner’s children would be very risky for the real author of such thoughts. Of course, our internal judgments are often ugly and we can’t even defend them against our own rational views of them. But, in a story, the author can make the protagonist’s private judgments seem ever so sympathetic. And, they are. Because the author is in complete control of the rest of the narrative. In reality, our thoughts are often neither here nor there and can be pretty vile. But, these thoughts in the story are the ‘edited for television’ version – honest enough to believe that they are real, but ‘ polished’ to make us like this guy.

It is a very complex and very disturbing relationship between the Emperor and his wet nurse (lo and behold, another Oedipus complex). There are countless stories of forbidden love. Some of them are even like love stories to the people involved. ‘Brokeback Mountain’, for example, is a movie of forbidden love, and very emotionally devastating. ‘Phantom Thread’ is another, a very disturbing movie of a very complex and powerful and OCD-obsessed man and his obsession with a young woman and her with him. (It’s not stepfather/stepdaughter, so don’t get alarmed.) These movies are so much better at giving you the feeling of that kind of relationship without making you go through the spiritual and cultural equivalent of actually having that relationship.

You could do a whole series around films about forbidden emotions within families, as opposed to between two people. The emotions are still spoken for and it is still taboo, but the structure is different. For example, Francesca Scarvell writes about Cronaca di un amore and the desire of the father for his daughter. I was thinking of Ellenburger’s comment about The Lost Daughter and saying that it’s a film about a bad mother and her flashbacks to when she abandoned her young daughters. The core of the film is the taboo of maternal ambivalence and desire outside of motherhood. In a way the film is a story of forbidden love – of the mother’s love for her freedom over her children. Even though this is a stretch for your query, it would be a far more rewarding film to explore than just another story of forbidden love within a family.

This is another beloved character that we love to watch in films. He is typically a bit gruff and perhaps not part of the main family but in the end he is so lovable that he ends up being the greatest father figure to this other person outside of his own family. We can recall the classic ‘Big Daddy’ starring Adam Sandler as Sonny, an eccentric and quirky man who after a night out drinking wakes up the next morning to find a baby in his care. Despite it all he goes on to care for the baby until the real father turns up. This film packs a lot of laughs throughout but it is a beautifully warming movie at the end of the day too. The ‘fun uncle’ or ‘best friend dad’ is once again another great example of why the ‘unconventional dad’ is so popular with audiences today.

The biggest symbol of love and learning for how to be a parent is found in the movie “Mrs. Doubtfire”. In the movie Robin Williams plays the part of Daniel, a male spouse who wants to spend more time with his children after a divorce, so he dresses up as a female nanny named Mrs. Doubtfire. Most of the movie he is in ‘nanny’ mode, playing the part of a fun, loving, young, and loose ‘uncle’ to the children, but eventually the mask comes off and he exposes himself as their real dad. The movie not only shows him learning to be a father to his children but also a better husband to his wife.

Taking a different turn, ‘The Game Plan’ is an action-packed film where a football player (Dwayne Johnson) finds his life turned upside down when he discovers he has a daughter he never knew existed. Fumbling his way through parenting and accidentally finding humor in moments meant for tears, he attempts to learn how to be a good dad. Scenes of him awkwardly attempting to braid his daughter’s hair and sitting at a tea party with her were sweet.

Recent films are bringing another twist to this gruff but lovable father figure: even when he makes mistakes, simply showing up for his children is enough. This is particularly evident in the recent true story of Instant Family, in which Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne adopt three children including a hardened teenager. Watching the father figure struggle to connect with the teenager, often getting things wrong but realising she needs a friend as much as a parent, is a very real and powerful take on this.

I'm taking a chance here and suggesting 'A Little Romance' (1979). It's about two young teenagers who set off to Venice. An older man is their guide for the two of them. While this isn't a stepmom, it has the intergenerational feelings of a mentor/special guide to two young teens falling in love. This is, after all, a movie about a forbidden love that is also guided. Many stepmoms function as a first safe guide into the sex love of a teenager, plus often is forbidden at first too.

I am therefore associating the ‘stepmom’ figure with the archetype of the ‘initiator’. Stories featuring initiation, mentorship and first love/s set within unusual social contexts will all hit some of the same notes as this trope, even if they don’t literally feature a step-parent. Looking for examples of ‘An Education’ or ‘Mona Lisa Smile’ (note that the latter’s teacher-student relationships are purely inspirational, and not romantic in any way) might therefore prove fruitful.

I also try to find stories where the step-parent is just as lost as the kids in order to defy the thousands of years of fairy tales’ depiction of the stepmother as the default evil person. Modern films try to undo this perception, but it is hard to get rid of the shadow of the evil stepmother.

'Once Were Warriors' is another brutal, unflinching film from New Zealand - and in this one the central violence is between the parents, with the children's suffering and the total failure of both parents to create a safe, loving home the core of the movie. As a counter-balance to many of the fairly positive step-parent relationships portrayed in movies today, 'Once Were Warriors' is a necessary and very tough film to watch. 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape' is a slightly gentler take on life with an incapacitated mother and her children - including teenage Gilbert - having to raise her. The new woman in Gilbert's life promises him a chance to escape from his familial responsibilities to care for his mother and return to his carefree adolescence - but she also represents a threat to his duties as a parent to his mother.

There’s a great set of parents in ‘Easy A’ of the main character, but then there’s the side-story of her best friend. Her best friend has an annoying little brother. He’s being raised by his two gay dads. Again, this is handled amazingly well in ‘Easy A’, and it’s normalized for a teen-comedy in a really progressive way. The step-parents are just parents in this movie. They’re really great.

What a brilliant story device – a play within the story. They can say things in the play that they could never say in real life. They can blame the play, blame the script, blame the characters, blame the setting. They can deny responsibility until the denial collapses. That is the moment of the story, the collapse of the fiction and the reality that it hides. The denouement is the aftermath of the collapse. The two are left standing in the wreckage of their pretenses. It’s a classic trope, the play as truth-teller. But here it is brilliant because these two characters are so prone to performing in their daily lives already. It’s poetic justice to use a literal performance of them to break down their figurative personas.

This is stretching it a bit, but Richie Tenenbaum’s deeply troubled relationship with his adopted sister, Margot, in The Royal Tenenbaums could be classified as romantic. He loves her and it destroys him. Although Margot is not the stepmother of Richie, it is another example of love trespassing family boundaries. I perceive this in a very different way than I would in a more serious dramatic film, than in a wacky and offbeat comedy, and than in a perverted and seedy thriller. Perhaps the visual style of a film has a lot to do with perceiving such relationships in a particular way.

And the title of the book implies a sequel. ‘Too Hot at the Backseat’ is a journey to some end point. The backseat of the car is a transition point between passenger and driver. So, a sequel to this would logically be ‘Just Right at the Destination’ or ‘A Chill in the Driver’s Seat’. I admit I was playing with the title of the book, but the implication is clear – the author is setting up a narrative promise that isn’t being fulfilled in this book. The structure of the book reads like the first act of a larger saga. We don’t get to learn more about the protagonist’s power in this book. We get the origin story for the protagonist’s power, and then the story ends with a big curtain fall. It’s the worst kind of ending for a superhero-adjacent story.