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20/02/2022
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The Witcher: Geralt instantly became one of TV's best family dads.<
Posted on January 10, 2022, 2:01 PM
Geralt of Rivia, in The Witcher, is the living embodiment of the strong and silent hero. An elemental fantasy protagonist who spends his days slaying monsters, earning money, and sleeping with the women of each grateful town he saves. His masculine beauty, somewhere between the supple anatomy of classical sculpture and the super-sculpted steroid men of Charles Atlas, embodies the modern dad.
This (obviously) millennial kink-meme – one of the most pervasive sexual trends of the 21st century – fetishizes and reverses the original meaning of the term. What “dad” was in the 1950s and what he means today can be poles apart. For Geralt, it's oily platinum hair, a hair-covered jaw, cat-like eyes and a marked aversion to hair removal.
In theory, Geralt is better at being a dad than taking care of Ciri. He certainly looks better at doing the first thing. And yet, for a man whose expression and demeanor both define the word 'sulky', Geralt is surprisingly quick to open up to his parental 'destiny'. The Witcher, through the trusting relationship between Geralt and Ciri, builds on all the television fathers that have come before it.
The first television fathers were basic: starched white men locked in suburban domesticity. Leave It to Beaver's Ward Cleaver rarely interacts with his sons, other than to give them generic advice; bland and boring paternal reflections played in a loop, without real emotion. Even unorthodox fathers, like widowed Sheriff Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show, relied on conventional wisdom. TV shows make it clear that fathers are at the center of the family unit, like Jim Anderson in Father Knows Best, a sitcom whose title captures the essence of 1950s fatherhood.
I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners were among the first shows to deviate from the male expectations placed on their lead characters. Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban-American conga drummer, charmingly accommodates his wife Lucy's various quirks, and Ralph Kramden is beloved for his grimaces and theatrics. But it wasn't until The Addams Family and its nominal patriarch, Gomez, that television fatherhood truly broke free from its nuclear shackles and was allowed to run wild.
Unlike the standardized fathers of his day, Gomez isn't preoccupied with social protocol, though his insistence on autonomy for his children may have been a bit too progressive for most viewers. He announces that he is the one who “gives the orders here” and that “no one is obliged to obey them”. He refuses to let Wednesday and Pugsley go to school, because "why have kids just to get rid of them?" Gomez saw the truth: Children are not clones designed to live by proxy, and they will never be vessels into which parents can stuff their unfulfilled dreams – a philosophy echoed by Geralt all these years later.
In the world of The Witcher, those with power naturally wish to impose it on all others: for their statues to be erected in town squares, for their feeble lives to be molded by bards and historians into legends. Likewise, Ciri is besieged on all sides. Voleth Meir and the Wild Hunt, the Elves, the North, Cintra, Nilfgaard – everyone worth their weight in gold fights to acquire Ciri and her elder blood, because “a child born of dead parents” automatically becomes easy prey . Even the nameless baby elf carries the weight of his people's hopes (although he's not lucky enough to survive the random acts of betrayal that pass for politics on the Continent).
Geralt of Rivia, however, is one of the few people who doesn't treat Ciri like a puppet. He avoids the ridiculously grandiose names that people call him (including: "Child of Elder Blood", "Child of Wrath", "Child of Destiny", "Daughter of Chaos"). Geralt can go from helicopter parenting to dangerous days of taking his child to work, but to him she's never anything more than a child - with enough power to alter the course of history, but a child.
Nor does Geralt bother with the quaint patriarchal precepts of genetics and authority – on the contrary, his actions suggest that adults don't have to inflict their inheritance on children. He insists, albeit reluctantly, on Ciri's autonomy, despite the threats around them: a sign of confidence in his daughter's strength as well as his own.
Related to this article:Dwayne Johnson: Top 10 best “The Rock” movies to watch in 2022Modern television stories traditionally respect children more as individuals and approach father-child couples without denying what governs any healthy relationship: intimacy. Take Stranger Things, a series that focuses on the uniquely asymmetrical relationship between a super-powered pre-teen girl and her eventual father. Eleven has countless parallels to Ciri's overprotected life, starting with Jim Hopper, another stoic, heroic, and fluffy mountain man who turns into a somewhat kind, somewhat bossy, and mostly confused father after meeting El.
Few parents fight as hard and as badly as Hopper and Geralt. To hell with honor and integrity, all that matters to these two are their superpowered daughters. Ciri becomes Geralt's anchor, the reason why he dabbles in sorcery less and settles down for a long stay in Kaer Morhen. It's thanks to her that he comes up with lines that don't sound like Geralt's – “Yes, I was a child too” – classic dad responses to his daughter's skepticism. Along with Ciri's influence on Geralt, Eleven urges Hopper to expand her emotional palette beyond guilt and frustration, even though her olive branches tend to be 8,000 calories and soaked in lemon syrup. but.
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Ciri and Eleven teach Geralt and Hopper to temper discipline with flexibility, a risky course of action considering these fathers are virtually helpless when their daughters lose control of their powers. But these two men don't resist their fatherly obligations, they embrace them — and, more importantly, they're willing to learn from their children. Whether in Hawkins, Indiana, or Oxenfurt, Romania, tough love and careful tenderness help Ciri and El experience unfathomable power.
The fiery warmth of Geralt's parenting style is clearly seen in the first episode of Season 2. The two unlikely traveling companions meet Nivellen, a mysteriously cursed man: Geralt and Ciri accept his hospitality for the night, but each of them reacts differently to the story of their host's misfortunes. Geralt realizes his friend hasn't been entirely candid, while Ciri hopes to snap Nivellen out of his gloomy talk about monsters and forgiveness.
But when Nivellen restores the truth to her tearful story, Ciri's childlike innocence – already warped by the destruction of her home and family – is all but shattered. This is the point of no return for Geralt. He has no choice but to lead by example and coldly turn his back on his friend.
Whether Geralt is offended by this revelation seems out of place. What matters is that Ciri learns that her new father would rather believe women than blindly support another man. Watching Geralt drift away from a once dear friend, his daughter becomes his top priority, both in his eyes and in the eyes of the audience. Until then, their interactions are little more than casual sessions, but the fireside chat that follows their exit from Nivellen's is the core around which the father-daughter relationship germinates. Although limited by the regressive rules of his society, Geralt strives to build a stronger framework for Ciri's emotional growth.
Sadly, Geralt's quasi-feminism is no match for Big Mouth's Elliot Birch, TV's sweetest dad, who treats traditional masculinity as one of endless versions a man can embody. Elliot emits a radiant 'daddy-cream' from each of his heavily hydrated pores: gender, genitals, masturbation, sex – there's no subject so obscene that it doesn't shock this wonderful man. Nestled in the relative safety of Westchester County, New York, Elliot Birch has access to all the basic tools of fatherhood: caring for three children while taking on peripheral responsibilities like Jay Bilzerian and Andrew Glouberman.
However, in a world as fragmented as that of The Witcher, where people are passionately xenophobic and their children are disempowered, there simply isn't enough room to discuss the nuances of puberty. Even the residents of Kaer Morhen, a community versed in biology and alchemy, are unaware of Ciri's needs as a teenager, such as "cloth for when she receives her blood." Wizards push, coax, coax Ciri to become stronger, faster, better — more witchy, less princess — but the show establishes that just dressing her in rags and feeding her off-season mushrooms isn't enough to pull off the job. childcare courses.
Related to this article:Ada Twist, Scientist: What is the series about?The Witcher informs his men, possibly all men, that they have "chosen to be ignorant assholes". But for the most part, Kaer Morhen is a medieval Full House (though it's hard to imagine Danny Tanner as a hardened monster hunter), a bunch of adorably goofy men who do their best to co-parent. Wizards' initial hostility turns to affection over time; they fight tooth and nail to retrieve Ciri from the clutches of Voleth Meir, risking their lives and/or limbs without hesitation.
TV family dads (or their paternal surrogates) are no strangers to sacrifice: Ned Stark allows the Lannisters to strip him of his dignity for Sansa (Game of Thrones), Rupert Giles blatantly denounces the Council of Watchers for Buffy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Homer reveal, in an unusual tender moment, how hard they're fighting to secure a bright future for Maggie (The Simpsons). In contrast, Emhyr does not hesitate to sacrifice other people's children to get closer (politically, if not emotionally) to his own daughter.
The notion of parental sacrifice is often shrouded in vague abstractions, but its narrative consequences are painfully real. She explains why Geralt leaves his beloved Kaer Morhen in the season finale: he can't bear the thought of losing Ciri or his witcher family. This also explains how the Geralt-Ciri equation acquires its third factor: Yennefer becomes a tentative mother figure when she surrenders her body and soul to Voleth Meir in exchange for Ciri's freedom. All three become a glorious subversion of the nuclear family – biologically unrelated, to be sure, but uncompromising in their hope for a better life.
Fatherhood on television has come a long way in recent decades. It is no longer the kingdom of men in checkered suits, pipe smokers, who have nothing to offer but watered-down proverbs. The cheeky boomer ideologies embraced by Al Bundy (Married… with Kids) had to give way to sensitive morons like Hal Wilkerson (Malcolm in the Middle) and Phil Dunphy (Modern Family). And there is still so much to accomplish in this almost neglected sphere of fictional relationships.
No one said raising kids would be an easy job. Fatherhood is hard, chaotic work with no certainty of success (an idea so radically obvious that it skipped the early decades of television entirely). Geralt is terrified of failing, of making mistakes that would cost his daughter his happiness. He understands that everything he does may end up being for nothing, but he goes for it anyway. Geralt de Rivia adapts to his unexpected role with grace and sensitivity, a change that underlines the fundamental principles of fatherhood: change is inevitable, life goes on.
Season 2 of The Witcher is now available on Netflix.
Manon DelangePassionate about fantastic worlds and the Geek imagination, Manon devours the news of Pop Culture. After a school of journalism, she joined Mirror Mag to lend a hand to the teams in place. The latest articles by Manon Delange (see all)
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