So, I just watched Once Upon A Time 2x03

[oneiriad]

So far, I'm liking season two well enough. Mulan especially has potential to become a favourite. That said, I am beginning to be beyond fed up with this series' seriously fucked up version of family values. Did I seriously just hear a villain justify his actions with "my wife used birth control"?! I mean, the obsession with biological family to the exclusion of all else is bad enough (even if it can be argued as reasonable considering the prevalence of evil stepmothers in fairytales), and I find myself having an extremely low opinion of Henry, because really, evil queen or not, Regina is the only mother he has ever known, she has not been shown to in any way treat him as anything other than her son or in any way hurt him, so his treating her as the enemy throughout season one and his continued emotional manipulation is - pretty not good. Seriously, show - I know you're American, and Disney, but come on.

Comments

[neotoma]

Did I seriously just hear a villain justify his actions with "my wife used birth control"?!

I didn't get that from King George's speech. I got that his wife had been cursed, not that she was voluntarily not having children.

I think the show is somewhat constrained by the fact that is based off of fairy tales, and at least in the english-language versions, there really is a bias against stepfamilies and adoption...

[oneiriad]

I don't remember his exact line (and inconveniently deleted the file already), but if I remember correctly, King George said something along the lines of "She was cursed. She drank..." One instance of passive, one instance of active, and no outside party mentioned as doing the cursing. Add to that, that whatever that potion is, apparently King George very conveniently has access to it himself, well, I could easily see King George as the sort of person who would choose to use the word cursed in the situation, even if it was his wife's choice, especially if her making it would bar him from having a true-born heir and thus defy him. And I am not exactly impressed by how the royals of The Enchanted Forest tend to act to begin with.

So yeah, I read it as "my wife used birth control". But maybe that's just me.

And yeah, fairytales in general has a serious bias against stepfamilies and for that matter mothers in general, but since this show cheerfully plays with and even subverts other stories, it is rather unfortunate that the "anything not biological family" trope is played so very straightforward.