Pop Psychology - Archie Andrews

My girlfriend loves to read Archie comics and I often read them too.  However, it still amazes me that even in our modern enlightened era that a character so manipulative, objectifying and using women in the most shameful manner, is still so popular.  And portrayed in children's comics as a positive role model!

Now, to use that phrase that I personally disdain, 'Don't get me wrong!'  I'm as much of a [wannabee] male chauvinistic pig as the next guy.  The idea of a harem of beauties all doing my bidding is... well, lets not go there! :)

However, I was thinking today about Archie and his friend Jughead as I sat doing my morning ablutions in the bathroom.  And I thought of one thing that may explain, or added to, Archie Andrew's attitude of women.   Lets talk about family life since many schools of psychology say that that's where our psyches get made, where we get our best qualities and all of our hangups.

If you read Archie comics, you'll notice that both Archie and Jughead, of course, have loving and caring nuclear families.  Nothing wrong in this little white nirvana world.  No one's on the sauce, no one rages except when the writers portray the fathers as more the 1950s stereotype who most once in a while "lay down the law" on their wayward women and children.

However, I've noticed something interesting.  Usually, whenever Archie and his mother have interactions, its almost always negative.  She's nagging him about something, scolding him about something.  If they have a rare 'family moment', its Archie doing something nice for her.  The Andrews family, while operational, is, one gets the feeling, rather cold, distant.  There is a detachment from each other.  Whenever Archie tries to do something with his father, a little father-son bonding, it usually goes [hilariously] wrong, played for comedy.

On the other hand, Jughead's situation is portrayed as just the opposite on average.  His mother is often shown offering him advice.  In the old-timey ones, she's shown doing stuff for her son like dying his socks (in a pot that, of course, our gourmand Jughead tries to sample to his shock).  On the whole, when punishments need to be doled out, its often Jughead's rather non-descript and balding father who does the scolding and the "laying down of the law."

Okay, you know where I'm going with this.  But in this case, the result is not as it was once expected.  The "theory" of homosexuality once said that Archie should be a homosexual.  Strong mother, weak father, blah blah blah.  However, in this case, something else happened.  Archie gained a total objectification of women, a total case of seeing them not as people, not as his "future self" as Kantz would argue, but as mere toys, lumps of flesh to be used and enjoyed.  Sure, he values his 'harem', he is rarely truly abusive to Betty or Veronica, but to Archie, they are like pets.  

Could it be that this is really a reaction against a cold and domineering mother who only interacts with her son in cases of punishment or scolding?  Archie could be treating women like this as a reaction, almost a psychological revenge.  Or perhaps, because his mother was so cold, he now reacts to women with equal coldness.  

Jughead, for all his misogyny and 'women-hating' reputation, rarely comes close to mistreating women as badly as his best friend.   He is just not into them.  It isn't even an aversion since it doesn't seem to actually cause him distress or displeasure being trapped by the odd young woman like Trula Twyst, he just doesn't have time for it.  A guy I knew at that age once said to me that he "needed a girlfriend like I need a hole in the head."  He was a very ambitious person and, if he kept up that energy, is probably running his own business somewhere or something.   

Archie, acting out against cold parents, is turning in to a monster.  A man who objectifies women not out of choice or plan, but because he can't help it.  To him they are not human, do not exist like that.  They are just strange meat-bubbles that float around in his reality that he can catch every now and again and get pleasures from.  

Jughead seems to be turning into his father.  Well, he doesn't like to work hard, but his mind is his own and if he lets Ethel or Trula catch him, its when he chooses and when he's got time for it.  

I wish I had been Jughead.