In the forty-first episode of the second season of Gargoyles, the team travels to Flagstaff to help Elisa’s father resolve a part of his history. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Gargoyles.
I still see some of the same problems within this episode as I did in “Heritage,” especially the cardinal sin that we non-Native and non-indigenous folks commit so frequently: equating every tribe and nation with all the others. This episode did feel closer to something far less ambiguous than “Heritage,” but as far as I could tell, the writers still appeared to have grabbed customs or visual references from multiple different groups and combined them all in one. Like, are these people Hopi? Navajo? They could certainly be both, but the episode doesn’t ever make that case at all.
It didn’t help that the flashback at the start of “Cloud Fathers” tread familiar ground. That whole set-up – Peter leaving home despite his father’s protestations – seemed to be the same thing we’d already seen. Peter rejected his heritage and his traditions to seek a better life in the outside world. IT’S BASICALLY THE SAME STORY. Thankfully, that’s about the only thing that the two episodes share. Instead, this is about how Team Gargoyle guides Peter Maza back to his home and what that means for him. Initially, he just wants to stop Xanatos, A NOBLE CAUSE INDEED. There’s something deeply satisfying about that, y’all, because it shows that the Maza family cares about the world independent of Elisa. They’re not involved because of her. And I respect that the show is willing to give us glimpses of their lives outside of the main action, you know?
I’ll also admit that I love the trope of someone being introduced to something fantastical – like Peter learning of the gargoyles – and then refusing to believe a separate fantastical thing. LIKE COYOTE THE TRICKSTER GOD. Dude, there are living, breathing gargoyles literal inches from you, and you don’t want to believe in one of the gods of the religion you were raised in? “Cloud Fathers” paints Peter as stubborn, both in the flashback and in the present time. He’s incredibly resistant to change! And it made me wonder: how had he reacted privately after learning about Derek? About where Elisa had been? I got the sense that it was much harder for him to acclimate to new things than his wife, who dealt with the strangeness of Elisa’s life in stride. But that stubbornness wasn’t just a negative thing, and I’d argue that his dogged pursuit of the truth led him right where he was supposed to be: in Xanatos’s warehouse.
I haven’t said it in a while, but: fuck Xanatos. Y’all, he openly brags about being a villain in this episode! It’s him at his most antagonistic, his most egotistical, his most uncaring. There’s a vicious criticism of cultural appropriation within this story, intentional or not, since it’s about how Xanatos re-purposes and steals things of great cultural value for his own need. The sacred carvings he uses to lure Coyote to that site represent this perfectly: he takes them and gives them a new meaning. They’re part of a trap, not a cultural tradition. He also melts down the Cauldron of Life to make Coyote 4.0’s new suit. Nevermind the cultural meaning of THAT, either! We don’t even find out what happens with that vat of acid, which probably destroyed those carvings.
Xanatos is unchecked greed. He is the force of capitalism within this story. He does what he does because he wants to and because he can. He always escapes responsibility, and it would be silly to discount how much his wealth acts as a shield.
Thus, Peter’s return to the Coyote trickster has an extra meaning. He manages to get Xanatos to leave Flagstaff and the land he leased from the tribe. But Peter also finds a connection to his heritage that he thought he’d lost. SO THANKS, GARGOYLES, FOR DEMONSTRATING THIS THROUGH THAT ABSOLUTELY NOT OKAY SCENE WHERE PETER VISITS HIS FATHER’S GRAVE TO APOLOGIZE. NO, NOPE, NOT READY FOR THAT NOW OR EVER.
The video for “Cloud Fathers” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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