Proud of You

“Sometimes I think you adopted me because Fred was such a disappointment.”

Hop (2011)

Often when I write a blog post featuring a specific book or film or television serial or stage production or piece of fiction in whichever other format, implicit in my doing so is a suggestion that I would recommend said piece of fiction as an enjoyable way for my dearly cherished readers to spend their time. I would like to make clear from the off that that is not so today; on the contrary, this post is about one of the least inspiring motion pictures I have ever seen. I can think of no redeeming feature on whose account I can honestly soften such criticism, unless one were to count the fact that one of the many facets of the film’s storyline that I greatly disliked will provide the analogy for the point I’d like to make today.

 

To suit the theme of Hop, a rather charming rabbit. Or hare. How does one tell?

The plot of Hop is so altogether unoriginal that it employs the most unbearably overworn trope of recent computer-animated films – that of a misfit son with crazy dreams failing to live up to the standards of his respectable and conventional father¹ – not once but twice. The two misfit sons are E. B., the CGI son of the Easter Bunny, and Fred O’Hare, an unemployed (human) Californian still living in his parents’ house. To spare you any unnecessary rendition of the tedious narrative that follows, I’m going to completely ignore E. B., and pluck out only two scenes that showcase Fred’s relationship with his dad, Henry.

The first is an intervention that Fred’s family holds with the hope of persuading him to get a job, move out, and generally start behaving like a competent adult. “You need to get a life,” is the way Henry puts it. A moment later, Fred’s adopted sister Alex chimes in: “Sometimes I think you adopted me because Fred was such a disappointment.”

“Alex, that is a very hurtful statement,” Henry chides her.

“You’re not denying it,” she counters.

The second is taken from the end of the film. After a series of rather silly and frankly uninteresting adventures, E. B. and Fred have been appointed as co-Easter Bunnies. Fred’s family aren’t massively more impressed with that as a career choice than they were with Fred’s previous unemployment; his mother describes his uniform as a ‘costume’ and Henry states that whenever Fred talks about delivering Easter baskets, he mentally replaces ‘easter basket’ with ‘pizza’ as a coping mechanism. But then E. B. stops by in the duo’s work vehicle (it flies, is pulled by a horde of festive animals, and travels the world bestowing gifts upon children, but it’s definitely not a sleigh, mmkay kids?) and all of a sudden Henry changes his mind: “Fred, wait – this is amazing! … I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time. I’m proud of you.” They hug it out. Fred thanks his father and trots back to his definitely-not-a-sleigh. “Easter Bunny – wow! The one who makes it all happen,” Henry continues to enthuse.

As I say, I’m pretty spoilt for choice in terms of things I disliked about Hop, but this one might just take the Easter biscuit.² Oh look, it’s the happy-ending reconciliation scene that inevitably caps off an instance of the misfit-son trope: Fred’s dad is proud of him now, isn’t it all wonderful? But Henry had made it abundantly, relentlessly clear that he was disappointed in Fred, right the way through the film, and only changed his tune at the sight of a leporine³ colleague and a set of flash wheels. His pride in his son has no basis but these flimsy trappings of success that Fred now carries. It arose in a moment and will presumably vanish just as readily if Fred is to lose those trappings for whatever reason. Are we the audience supposed to be satisfied with that as a conclusion? Shouldn’t Henry be proud of his son regardless of whether he has a fancy definitely-not-a-sleigh to drive about in? Shouldn’t he proud of his son no matter what?

Although actually, let’s pause on that thought for a moment. Suppose Fred had chosen a different career path; suppose he had become a professional serial killer, say. (Hard to imagine, I know, but indulge me.) Would it be reasonable for Henry to express pride in him then? Much as conditional pride seems shallow and valueless, if we’re to argue in favour of unconditional pride instead, then our only option is to claim that pride in an individual can be completely detached from any endorsement of what that individual actually does with his or her time – and I’m just not sure that I buy that. One can hardly tell someone, “I’m proud of you, but at the same time I think every life choice you’ve ever made is idiotic and evil.” What would the first half of that statement even mean in such circumstances?

 

Theoretical serial-killer Fred claims another victim. Proud of you, buddy.

I imagine that we all want the people we care about to be proud of us. (I certainly do.) But if they’re proud of us conditionally, then we’ll live in constant fear of falling short of their standards and losing their pride in us; and if they’re proud of us unconditionally, the victory is nevertheless hollow, because that means that nothing we do actually matters to them. What are they proud of, at the end of the day – just the idea of us, completely removed from the reality of what we’re actually like?

Is there a third option? Is there another way to be proud of someone?

Well, consider this: there’s another way to be proud of something. If I say that I’m proud of that essay I wrote or that artwork I produced or that solution I thought of to that tricky problem, the onus is on me, not the source of my pride. The essay doesn’t have to do anything to ensure that I’ll continue to be proud of it, nor is the question of what it’s like totally irrelevant to my pride in it. I wrote it in such a way that I’m proud of it and that’s the end of the matter. The essay is totally passive in this process; all it does is be written, by me, so that the entire responsibility for whether I will be proud of it rests with me, and not any agency of its.

Perhaps I’m stating the obvious; essays don’t, after all, have any agency of their own to exercise (whatever it might feel like when the actual contents of your word document have turned into something very different from the plan you discussed with your lecturer). And this kind of pride therefore can’t apply to inter-human relationships like Henry and Fred’s, because the latter does have his own agency independent of other humans, as do we all. But if you’re familiar with me and my weekly ramblings, you’ve no doubt already twigged that I have a somewhat different relationship in mind.

“For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brothers,” wrote the author of the letter to the Hebrews.⁴ Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers – why? Not conditionally, because of what we have achieved or the trappings of success we bear, seeing as nothing we do could ever meet God’s standards; not unconditionally, detached from the reality of what we’re actually like and so meaningless; but because we have been made of one with him who sanctifies us. That is now the reality of what we’re actually like, and that was all his doing, not ours; we had no agency in our being made one with him. He’s the author and we’re the essay. He’s proud of us because he has made us, in Christ, something worth being proud of.

Of course, when I write an essay, even if I am proud of it, it’s never going to be perfect, because I’m not perfect. God, on the other hand is, and so there’s no threat that he’ll make a mistake and end up ultimately producing in us something that’s not worth being proud of. Every bit of sanctification that he achieves in us, every way in which he edges us closer to being like Christ, is something worth being proud of – because Christ is worth being proud of. God is proud of us because he is proud of the one with whom he has made us one – the one who demonstrated love and mercy and humility and obedience and every pride-worthy virtue you care to name to the absolute maximum when he gave his life for us on the cross.

Our story, like Fred’s, ends up with us being reconciled to our Father. But we didn’t need a definitely-not-a-sleigh to convince him to be proud of us.

Footnotes

¹ More of my opinions on this narrative trope can be found in ‘Variation of Animation’, under ‘2016’ then ‘April’ in the box on the right, if you feel at all inclined to consider them.

² Easter biscuits, if you didn’t know, are really tasty sugary biscuits with currants in them that are for some reason associated with Easter. But the vaguely Hop-themed recipe to which I’m going to point you today is actually one for carrot cake which I tried out recently: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/classic_carrot_cake_08513. It makes a seriously good cake, but you’ll probably want to halve the quantities unless you own a cake tin the size of a small lake.

³ That is to say, of, like, or pertaining to rabbits or hares. I have found a directory of Latin-derived animal adjectives and am extremely pleased about the fact: http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/animalaj.htm.

⁴ My own translation, because I didn’t like the way the English translations tend to dream up a noun to attach to the number, but you can have the rest of the chapter according to the ESV as usual: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+2&version=ESVUK.