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

[soupytwist]

I think that will come down almost entirely to where Paige goes from here/how THAT plot goes down. Although I do also think he's got a much more naturally spy-like bent than Paige does. Provided they get a chance to make it sound cool, I think he might well be much more open to joining them one day than they might think. I don't think he cares particularly about America as an ideal - where Paige I think it's clear does, and sees herself in a tradition of American activism.

[sistermagpie]

You know, I'm not sure if he doesn't care as much about America as an ideal as Paige does. I mean, Paige might see herself committed to ideals that are Christian/moral rather than American. At 12 Henry probably just by default sees America as "the good guys" and I could see him always retaining that affection even if he grew up and became more of a citizen of the world (which I can see him doing).

Heh. I think I just basically said they were like their parents as usual!

[soupytwist]

That's a really interesting point about how Paige views her morals, because to me her entire thing seems INCREDIBLY American. Not that there isn't religious-based activism all over the place, but the specifics of hers all just scream a very specific tradition which is also very specifically a patriotically American tradition.

I love your comment about Henry being like his dad and yet also probably having default America-good-guys ideas. I think that if introduced in the right way, he is sufficiently like Philip to be like, ok, my 'team' is my family and it turns out they're not playing with the people I thought, but that doesn't mean they're not my team. I don't get the impression he'd have much trouble doing that: like your comment said, he seems very pragmatic, adaptable. But if before that sank in he had a challenge to the idea of his parents as good people at all, like he saw them killing someone, then that could be different.

And I also like the idea he already knows! The response being "well duh" would be a surprise, if nothing else. :D

[sistermagpie]

Oh, I think she is incredibly American and absolutely coming out of the American tradition. I'm just not sure she's aware that she is, if that makes sense. Like at this point it doesn't seem like the world outside the US is even real to Paige, or if she can imagine anything that isn't American because it's all she knows. So I can imagine herself thinking of herself as being international even when she's being her most American. She's pretty conservative in terms of her style, for instance, shocked at Gregory's criminal past and bad neighborhood, for instance. When I imagine Paige traveling I do think she'd prefer doing it as part of a mission trip.

Where as with Henry I can see him preferring to grab a backpack and come back with stories about guys he met on the road and had adventures with. So yeah, I do think he has the potential to be able to separate politics from people. I think the showrunners once said Henry was the most American in that he was just a happy-go-lucky kid (and his essay on the American Revolution was simply "America won"), but I can far more easily see an older Henry passing for not-from-the-US than I can Paige.

The more I think about it, the more interesting I think it would be to see Henry find a balance like that. Because we know he's always been very close to his father, presumably looked up to him as a kid. By the time he did his essay on a "hero" (I think it was) he chose Stan who had a job that was more traditionally heroic--like he thought of his dad as nice, but not larger than life like an FBI agent.

It would be interesting to see him try to balance learning that his dad is actually the villain--Stan the G-Man is his hero and his nemesis is the crafty Soviet agent--but also a hero like Stan in terms of his intentions. In fact in some ways he's got more sympathetic qualities because we see him trying to protect so many people.

[treonb]

In what way is Paige incredibly American?

[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.

[soupytwist]

What sistermagpie said, but also that the tradition of activism she's working within is a very specifically American tradition. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that by the way!