Question of the week #63

[treonb]

How do you think Henry will respond when he finds out his parents are Soviet spies? 

You can expect spoilers for the entire first three seasons in the comments.

(There's no expiration date on these questions, so if you're reading this post months later and feel like jumping in, please do.)

Comments

[sistermagpie]

Just that I've never really heard her do or say anything that wasn't grounded in the perspective she has growing up. Everything she's been developing and exploring for the past few years are grounded in an American context, even the rare times it has to do with other countries. At least some of her clashes with Elizabeth have a little to do with their different perspectives. It's just her default on everything that I've seen so far. As I'd expect it's been her entire experience of the world.

Personality-wise she also seems a bit conservative and wary of things outside her comfort zone, so she doesn't strike me as somebody itching to explore differences on their own terms. Even when she wants to assert herself as part of something extraordinary (in a way happens to be very traditionally American) she wants her parents to be "normal."

[treonb]

Paige is a product of both the 1980s and the US, but she's also her mother's daughter. Elizabeth certainly sees herself as part of something extraordinary, and she's not American.

There's an American context to everything Paige does, because she lives there. But, for example, when she wanted to be politically active, she chose to go and protest against American nuclear weapons. Not, for example, for the rights of Soviet dissidents.

It's not that she's not American, or wants to be anything other than what she is, but I don't see what makes her particularly American.

[sistermagpie]

Elizabeth certainly sees herself as part of something extraordinary, and she's not American.

Right, but I didn't mean that made her American, I just meant that it's not like she found some particularly unusual-for-an-American way to do it. She's protesting with a church, which is very standard in American history, even (often especially) when it's protesting against American policy.

I don't think she's like the most American character or stands out as particularly American next to, say, Stan, Sandra, Matthew, Henry, Gregory....any other American character. My beginning point was to say that I didn't see Paige as committed to a particularly American ideal any more than Henry is--she doesn't seem to consciously associate her values with "the American way" or attach them to any American exceptionalism. I just also don't see her as detached from it either, any more than Henry is. She doesn't even really know anything else.