| We
need another hero. . .
Our contemporary gunslinger, Supernanny
Melissa Lenos
We begin with a troubled family, terrorized and unable to manage
their surroundings. A stranger arrives – seemingly out of
nowhere - with no past and no personal details. The family is
suspicious of the stranger at first, but once they’ve accepted
this mysterious person into their home, they recognize that he
has skills that would be useful to them. The stranger teaches
the family to cope with their difficulties, remains for a final
battle and then departs into the sunset alone.
Any fan of Westerns recognizes this plot – it has been
rehashed and re-imagined throughout the history of American film,
most popularly in Shane (1953) and Pale Rider
(1985)1. Cultural critic Will Wright identified this format as
the classical Western plot, the plot that “people
think of when they say, ‘All Westerns are alike.’”
Less obviously, it’s also the plot of every episode of ABC’s
reality show Supernanny.
The “Supernanny” of the title is Jo Frost, a 32-year-old
English nanny who travels around the United States teaching frazzled
parents to discipline their children and regain control of their
homes. Frost is our contemporary gunslinger, riding alone, dominating
the community that she enters, altering it for the better and
then speeding off in the sunset to the next family in need. While
the show originated in the UK and has multiple versions running
in multiple countries, I’m particularly interested in the
program’s success in the US, and why the format is exceptionally
suited to American viewers.
Our visual entertainment tends to run in genres, and all American
film genres play a role in our cultural identity. Genres create
formulas for romantic comedies, horror films, Westerns; why are
these structures so popular over time? Why are we so frequently
content to watch the same story over and over again – even
more so now that remakes are such a dominant factor in Hollywood’s
output?
In the 1920s, Vladimir Propp conducted a study of Russian folktales
that examined the ways in which so many of the tales had similar
structures. His results look like complicated mathematical equations;
each event and character is given a symbol and after time, it
is clear that the structures repeat and recycle over time and
geography with small alterations. Propp discovered that, for the
most part, there were actually very few stories, but that the
individuals that performed the actions in the stories, and their
methods for performing those actions, were what changed. The story
of Cinderella (in its traditional form, not Disney’s) is
an easy example; it turns up all over the globe in varying forms
with very little variation. The glass slipper, for example, might
be ermine or satin or not a slipper at all, the number of stepsisters
may change, occasionally the stepsister and stepmother figures
are brutally executed at the end, and so on, but the story, and
its cultural meaning (that virtue and patience prevail, as well
as a sort of promise of eventual class reversal for the downtrodden),
remain stable. Part of the idea here, then, is that the recurrence
of these stories satisfies some sort of cultural need –
they reinforce our ideas about certain social structures and mores,
they teach lessons and emphasize social ideals.
More recently, Will Wright uses the work of Propp and others
to examine how the stability of story forms continues in contemporary
film. The Western structure has always been important to Americans;
Westerns portray Manifest Destiny, a major part of our cultural
mythology; our battle with the land; our desire for expansion;
and our fights with some sort of “Other” – Native
Americans in early Westerns, and later the land itself, or homesteaders
versus ranchers, and so on. Like most film genres, Westerns fade
in and out of favor. They were popular at the dawn of film (The
Great Train Robbery) and enjoyed steady popularity through
films such as Stagecoach (1939) and resurged again with
spaghetti and revisionist Westerns in the 60s. Other than the
El Mariachi films by Robert Rodriguez, Eastwood’s Unforgiven
and a few other popular exceptions, Westerns have faded considerably
from the American film landscape. Do we simply not need the Western
anymore? In this piece I’ll discuss our need for the lessons
and satisfactions of Western structure and explore how we can
fulfill our cultural needs through some other source. Enter Supernanny.
Wright actually breaks the structure of the “Classical
Western” into a numbered list that is comparable to Propp’s
pseudo-mathematical formulas:
- The hero enters a social group.
- The hero is unknown to the society.
- The hero is revealed to have an exceptional
ability.
- The society recognizes a difference between
themselves and the hero; the hero is given special status.
- The society does not completely accept the hero.
- There is a conflict of interests between the
villains and the society.
- The villains are stronger than the society;
the society is weak.
- There is a strong friendship or respect between
the hero and a villain.
- The villains threaten the society.
- The hero avoids involvement in the conflict.
- The villains endanger a friend of the hero.
- The hero fights the villains.
- The hero defeats the villains.
- The society is safe.
- The society accepts the hero.
- The hero loses or gives up his special status.
Each episode of Supernanny begins with nanny Jo Frost
riding in the back seat of a London cab. She opens a portable
DVD player to examine the submission footage of a family. The
family begs for Frost’s help; the frazzled parents are intercut
with their ill-behaved children. Frost glances conspiratorially
at the audience from time to time, clucking and shaking her head.
The submission video ends with the parents begging “Supernanny”
to come and help. Frost declares that she is on her way and speeds
off down the road. Frost is “unknown” to the society
of the family in many of the same ways that the gunslinger is
unknown to the communities that he enters. She is wandering and
rootless; the opening credit sequence implies Frost’s arrival
direct from a stereotypical red English phone booth to the US,
flashing traditional clichés of “Englishness”
and then the rolling Midwestern landscapes that she cruises in
her black cab. It is not just that we know nothing about Frost,
but that her identity appears to be purposefully shaded. Frost’s
clearest popular culture counterpoint in this sense is Mary Poppins,
who resurfaces occasionally throughout the first season of Supernanny.
One mother, during a confessional session, claims, “She’s
just like Mary Poppins!” Another mother, a few episodes
later, seems mildly disappointed that Frost isn’t more
like Poppins. Why the discrepancy? Poppins, both in book and Disney
form, appears to work with the children in opposition
to their parents. Frost’s relationship is with parents and
is almost solely based in terms of how to control the children.
The “English Nanny” figure in general also appeals
to American pop culture assumptions about the English, which I’ll
get to momentarily.
The program rarely mentions Frost’s qualifications for
giving child-rearing advice, much less identify whether she, herself
is married or has children (she is not and does not). The families
are all past, history, and confessional, as in the Classical
Western. The Supernanny parents discuss how they met
and fell in love on their application DVD, and throughout the
episode, we’re inevitably exposed to the parents’
conflicts over child discipline and housework. In Shane,
the Starretts celebrate their wedding anniversary (Marian wears
her wedding gown) and discuss their past at length. The complicated
relationship between Hull and Sarah in Pale Rider is
a major plot point.
In addition, although Frost always introduces herself to the
parents as “Jo Frost,” she is usually referred to
as “JoJo” by the children and, bizarrely, “Supernanny”
by the parents – both in speaking to her directly or about
her in their confessional one-on-one sessions with the camera.
This is reminiscent of the character Shane, again – his
character has no last name and no past. Eastwood’s character
in Pale Rider is simply known as “Preacher” –
and it’s left open-ended whether the character is actually
a clergyman or if the identity is one that he has taken on in
order to travel incognito.
Frost is, of course, invited into the homes rather than appearing
out of nowhere, but there is frequently conflict between her and
the parents, usually the father. In Season 1, the parents’
behavior is consistent from episode to episode. Mothers are almost
exclusively stay-at-home, or work as teachers. Those episodes
are shot during summer break or other periods when the mothers
are home all day. Fathers frequently work long hours, or have
jobs that require them to be out of town for long periods of time.
The father of the Jeans family, for example, works and lives in
a different city during the week and is only home on the weekends.
The mothers, as a whole, are optimistic about Frost’s ability
to help the family. The fathers range from skeptical to downright
hostile, bristling at her take-charge attitude. One episode ends
with an outtake of a confessional-style moment when a father who
has been particularly hostile attempts to explain his behavior:
“The British tried to control us once, 200 years ago, and
we had a revolution,” he says. “Now they’re
trying to control us again.” The invisible cameraman realizes
that the father is talking about Frost, and begins laughing uproariously.
The father looks momentarily startled, and then smiles weakly,
leaving the viewer in doubt as to whether he was joking. The mothers
are typically eager students, although Frost occasionally angers
them or makes them cry by criticizing their parenting methods.
Frost appeals to a certain eager American self-imposed subservience
to “intellectual” Brits. Consider Simon Cowell’s
clever cuts on American Idol, or Anne Robinson snapping,
“You are the weakest link, goodbye!” Slate’s
Ad Report Card analyst Seth Stevenson even claims that a British
accent can make voiceovers in commercials sound “more reliable”
to the viewer.
As far as identifying the children of Supernanny as
“villains,” to which some readers may object, the
parents themselves refer to their offspring as “devil children”
or “evil,” and Frost’s frequent breaching of
the fourth wall by looking at or speaking to the camera reinforces
the sense that it is “us versus them.” The children
are shown as disruptors of the home, as out-of-control and dominating.
Frost occasionally repeats her goal in the program, which is “restoring
power back to the parents.”
The parents are occasionally shown to be at fault for their children’s
appalling behavior, either from a lack of discipline, or (almost
always in the case of the father) a lack of presence. Frost frequently
speaks to the parents in front of the children about how to discipline
or punish them; we can occasionally see the children in the background
staring agape and wide-eyed up at the adults discussing them as
though they are not present. The prevailing image is one of homes
in complete chaos, ruled by petulant and conniving children, while
parents flail helplessly and turn to Frost for direction. In each
episode, Frost leaves the parents for a “test run”
after she has given her instruction. Not infrequently, the mothers
break down in tears at the thought of being left alone with their
children, or laugh nervously and say that they won’t be
able to run the household without Frost. After she departs, Frost
watches the family on video from a well-appointed living room
with a mug of tea, until she finds that the parents are failing
in some way and cries, “I need to go back!” She returns
in her cab and corrects the parents, finally leaving for good.
Each episode ends with a check-in scene in which the family comments
on how their lives have changed for the better because of Frost’s
intervention. Kids and parents frequently cry when Jo leaves,
a less dramatic version of Joey Starrett famously crying out for
Shane, or Megan screaming “Preacher!” into the distance
as Eastwood rides away.
Of course, Supernanny does not follow the Classical
Western structure verbatim – most Classical Westerns aren’t
exact carbon copies of each other either, but vary based on era,
geography, box office trends, the studio and star system status,
and myriad other factors. The overarching framework of the Supernanny
narrative, however, is virtually identical to that of the Classical
Western. As Propp noted, the actions remain the same, but the
actors and the details change according to the society’s
needs. One of the more interesting variations, for example, is
the sexual appeal of the gunslinger.
The gunslinger is a loner, but he protects the traditional family
structure – even in Pale Rider, in which the family
is nontraditional (Hull and Sarah are an unmarried couple living
together with Megan, Sarah’s daughter from a previous relationship),
the structure of the family remains traditional: two parents and
a child. This is part of the reason the gunslinger is portrayed
as an outcast – at first he disrupts the familial structure.
The wife’s sexual attraction to the gunslinger (as well
as the daughter’s, in the case of Pale Rider),
and the ineffectual (impotent?) husband’s obliviousness
to this tension places the gunslinger in the position of sexual
power in the household, but it also reinforces the rationale behind
his departure at the film’s end. He has no particular role
in the family and threatens sexual disruption in spite of his
aid in restoring order, so he must leave. One can imagine circumstances
under which Supernanny could follow the trend of gunslinger-as-virility;
nannies have frequently been viewed as potential threats to marital
peace - possibly more so since the Jude Law/Daisy Wright scandal
- but the program adroitly avoids any possibility for Frost to
be read as a sex symbol by completely desexualizing her. She is
dressed in extremely conservative blue or plum colored suits and
prim pumps, her hair is pulled into a severe chignon, she wears
glasses; the producers succeed at making her look considerably
older than she is. From time to time (particularly when she is
playing with the children), Frost is shown in more casual clothing,
but is always dressed very conventionally; she wears solid muted
colors, long pants and long sleeves. Any time that she is interacting
with the parents for any extended period of time, she is back
in her suit. The trope of having the fathers threatened by Frost
or skeptical of her skill also removes any sexual tension; her
ease of control of the household, sureness of action and forceful
manner could be identified as traditionally masculine characteristics.
This movement away from the traditional structure is somewhat
perplexing. The gunslinger in Classical Westerns is designed to
appeal to heterosexual women through his attractiveness and quiet
strength. He appeals to masculine clichés of virility,
and the husbands in the films are portrayed as somewhat envious
of the gunslinger’s skill and perceived virility, but also
of his free-floating lifestyle and lack of formal responsibility.
Keeping this in mind, it appears that Frost’s character
is meant to appeal to married women with children because she
is simultaneously the perfect housekeeper and “mother”
figure, and yet she has no husband, children, no home that we
ever see, and – again – no formal responsibility.
Her own “home” space is clean, quiet and entirely
her own; she comes and goes as she pleases. She has both the skills
and the freedom that the mothers/wives lack, and yet does not
threaten the stability of the family because she is not “designed”
to attract their husbands.
Some critics (professional and otherwise) dismiss reality television
shows as so much trash, appealing to the lowest-common-viewer
denominator, or as simple solutions to the high cost of television
production; shows like Supernanny are notoriously cheap
to produce – there is no cast to pay, less writing needed
than for traditional programming, the smallest camera crew is
sufficient, and recently, reality programs do not even need to
offer cash or a prize to encourage participation. This doesn’t
account for why we find the programs appealing, however, and in
the case of a program like Supernanny, we can see the
roots of one of our oldest and most popular film and television
genres re-worked for the contemporary American family, with the
gunslinger saving the day by putting the villains on the “naughty
spot,” restoring the peace and reinforcing the traditional
family structure and riding into the sunset.
Notes
1. I not only utilize Wright as a theoretical jumping-off point here, but my introduction also acts as an homage to his poetic approach to cinematic description in Sixguns and Society. (back)
Works Cited
Mary Poppins. DVD. Directed by Robert Stevenson, 1964;
Walt Disney Video, 2004.
Millman, Joyce. “Rude Brittania.” Salon.
23 April 2001.
http://archive.salon.com/ent/col/mill/2001/04/23/weakest/index.html
Pale Rider. DVD. Directed by Clint Eastwood. 1985;
Warner Home Video, 1997.
Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Trans.
Laurence Scott. Indiana University Research
Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Statistics. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1958.
---. Theory and History of Folklore. Trans.
Ariadna Martin. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Shane. DVD. Directed by George Stevens.
1953; Paramount Home Video, 2000.
Stevenson, Seth. “Ad Report Card: Hoover Glam.” Slate.
15 December 2003. http://www.slate.com/id/2092529/
Supernanny. Episodes 101-111, broadcast 17 Jan through
2 May, 2005 by ABC.
Wright, Will. “The Structure of Myth and the Structure
of the Western Film.” In Cultural Theory and Popular
Culture: A Reader, edited by John Storey, 119-134. New York:
Prentice Hall, 1998.
---. Sixguns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western.
Berkeley: UC Press, 1975.
---. The Wild West: The Mythical Cowboy and Social Theory.
London: Sage, 2001.
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