The Modern Parents

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The Modern Parents is a comic strip from the British comic Viz.

The creator is John Fardell, who both writes and illustrates the strip. It is one of the most enduring and frequent strips in Viz, having appeared regularly since the early 1990s to the present. It is a parody of 'left-wing' middle-class parents.

It has a similar theme to Fardell's other creations, like The Critics, in satirizing the snobbish attitude some liberals have towards everyone else.

1 Malcolm and Cressida
2 Tarquin & Guinevere
3 Other characters
4 External link

[edit] Malcolm and Cressida

Malcolm and Cressida Wright-Pratt (a pun on 'right prat', prat being British slang for an idiot) are the modern parents in question, adults whose obsession with equality, political correctness, liberalisation, and environmental awareness often works against their basic role as parents to despairing eldest son Tarquin and backgrounded younger child Guinevere. The Modern Parents do not believe in gender stereotyping or traditional childhood activities such as visiting fairgrounds, frequenting fast food restaurants, taking part in games or competitions, playing sports or with toys, enjoying foreign holidays, or even going to school.

They take the moral high-ground because of their apparent ideologies. Both of them have large upturned noses, perhaps indicating how they turn their noses up at what they believe to be the ignorant bigotted masses of unenlightened people. Cressida has her hair pulled back in a tight pony-tail and Malcolm has a scruffy beard and incredibly large teeth. Both have a tendency to talk with their eyes closed and noses stuck in the air, as if they were preaching.

Malcolm and Cressida were not originally married as they believed it to be an outmoded and sexist institution that enslaved women. However, they did eventually marry simply in order to get their hands on wedding gifts. They had their own pagan ceremony and had their own politically correct vows written ("Do you, Cressida, take Malcolm to be your husband so long as you find convenient?")

They both seem to think victimhood is some sort of achievement, with Cressida delighting in pointing out that, as a woman, she is apparently an oppressed minority. Malcolm, in turn, frequently claims he has "Sensitive Persons Syndrome" which, as well as being completely made up, happens to get him out of various things. For example, as a committed environmentalist, he insists he supports public transport, but cannot use it himself because of his Sensitive Persons Syndrome preventing him from getting on a bus or train. However, he does point out that his Volvo "is Scandinavian, so it must be eco-friendly." Additionally, the pair are white British, yet often identify themselves very vaguely and dubiously with all sorts of ethnic minorities — such as claiming to have some Celtic heritage, or that they were Native Americans in a previous life.

Malcolm and Cressida also believe that all humans are equal even to the extent that there is no such thing as immaturity. As a result, their eldest son Tarquin is often greeted by the sight of his parents openly having sexual intercourse (having also previously announced this intention to their kids) and has to shield Guinevere from such activity. Each story of the Modern Parents finds the parents forcing the kids into participation in some new wide-eyed, hare-brained post-modern activity which ostensibly encourages a policy of togetherness but ironically ends up with Tarquin and Guinevere often escaping to their much more realist uncle Eddie who supplies them with the ice creams and trips to theme parks which their parents refuse to allow. While the children are enjoying themselves with uncle Eddie, their parents are likely to be suffering or arguing due to their latest idea/scheme going horribly wrong.

[edit] Tarquin & Guinevere

Tarquin is the elder child, aged about twelve. As he knows how to be a con artist, Tarquin is a very effective foil to Malcolm & Cressida. Even if it only stems from his desire for normality or a desire to make money. His almost Machiavellian ability to play the political game is not only a means of resistance to the parental authority, but also diametrically opposed to Malcolm & Cressida's half-baked, wide-eyed schemes. Tarquin is very calculating and methodical in his manipulation of Malcolm & Cressida. In fact, because of his conservative (pro-establishment) outlook (at least in comparison to his parents), he could be a parody of the rebellious teenager, only he does it with style. He also has a more rational, realistic worldview that rejects vague ideas about spirituality and seems grounded in evidence and deductive reasoning.

An example of his Machiavellian streak is when Malcolm & Cressida take him to a "Whole Self Centre", claiming that Tarquin suffers from an "erotic shame complex". Tarquin tells them that he's picked up a few ideas and talks of a workshop, which ostensibly is about discovering the inner child. He gets the attendees to undress and get into the foetal position, where they think it's moving that they can learn from young people. He then gets them to touch each other, dance, and feel each others bodies. The scene changes to reveal that there are several smartly dressed businessmen queueing to get up a ladder and paying to see through the windows. This workshop is just a front for a sleazy peep show.

His younger brother is Guinevere (which is actually a female name, but Malcolm and Cressida liked the name Guinevere and, when they found out their second child was a boy, decided to give him that name anyway, as they do not believe in gender-specific names.) He was born during the course of the comic strip and, interestingly, has grown from a baby through a toddler to his current age of about six. This is despite the fact that characters in cartoons and comics do not normally age. Even more curiously, no-one else in the strip seems to have aged in the meantime; certainly Tarquin remains the same approximate age at the outset of the strip. Guinevere, whose named is usually just shortened to "Guin" by his brother, is still largely a passive character, often easily upset by his parent's whacky schemes, his big brother Tarquin often coming to his rescue.

[edit] Other characters

Malcom and Cressida have many other friends who, like them, are all middle-class, extremely politically correct and often into various causes such as free tibet or combatting (or, more commonly, expressing paranoia about) global warming. Most of them have children who, without exception, have the same despairing and uncooperative attitude towards their parents as Tarquin and Guinevere have towards theirs.

Cressida's brother, Eddie - more commonly known as simply Uncle Eddie - is a normal guy who acts as a counter-weight to his sister and brother-in-law's outlook on life. Eddie treats his two nephews, Tarquin and Guinevere, like normal boys; giving them junk food, letting them watch cartoons and taking them to theme parks or the cinema. Naturally, the two boys think Uncle Eddie is great. Uncle Eddie is married, although his wedding ceremony was interrupted by Malcolm and Cressida pointing out the sexist connotations in the traditional marriage vows. This was just before they themselves got married after seeing all the gifts Eddie and his bride received.