There's a Monster Under the Bed: Malevolent and the (In)Humanity of Children
Back in the first couple seasons, I used to be very invested in the way Malevolent handled the concepts of parenthood. But, as I think quite a few people have noticed too— the way the show presents parents and children has changed a LOT since then. Part 57 probably has the most obvious example of this in the whole show, so I feel compelled to talk about it a bit now.
Overall, Malevolent has decided that children are not people.
We can walk through every child or child-metaphor character in this show, and they all are treated as a bunch of different things: an object, a creature, a metaphor, a plot device— but never a person in their own right.
I think it's best we start with the most obvious example: Faroe. She is constantly pushed to the front of the audience's mind (there's what- two, three songs from the soundtrack under her name?), so it's pretty dang hard to not start with her narrative role.
Faroe is not a person. She is "Arthur's daughter," "his baby," the symbol of innocence meant to fuel his spirals of guilt, self-blame, and anger. Never is she allowed to have her own voice or presence in a scene without Arthur taking over as the focus. Yes, every second of this show is told through the filter of Arthur, and he's very self-centered so it makes sense that Faroe is often reduced to how Arthur feels about her. But you're telling me that— across 6 seasons of 1 hour+ long episodes— Hg couldn't find a single moment to portray Faroe separate of her father? There couldn't be a flashback, a comment from Daniel, a photo of her that John looks at and is able to deduce some kind of personality from?. She never once exists outside of her relationship to Arthur
On top of that, Faroe is a symbol. I mean, a literal symbol, not a character who represents something, but a genuine symbolic tool of the narrative. She is Arthur's lighter, the fire he starts, the warmth he created. She is a musical motif that plays at key emotional moments to facilitate men's development, the handful of chords used to draw an immediate emotional reaction out of the audience. She is the word that Arthur uses as a defensive wall, the word John uses as a weapon, the word Kayne uses as a tool to manipulate both of them. She is consistently an idol used by men— both inside and outside of the text— to craft what they want. And it stems from how girls have often been reduced to this inhuman symbol in fiction and in the real world, where they're used as an emotional tool. "Well think about the children", "she has to be sheltered and protected", "she's too innocent for this world", and other mindsets that place girls as an untouchable symbol of innocence and purity, to the point it strips them of their individual humanity.
(Addition after listening to Part 58, the show literally now has outright stated this exact mindset by saying "there are no minor chords in the heart of a child." The show now explicitly sends this message that children, especially young girls, aren't complex, unique human beings with their own lives and goals, but symbols of purity that adults should use as a tool for their own growth and development.)
Faroe isn't the only child character in this show either. As explicitly stated in Season 4, John is written to be a metaphor for childhood development/trauma, and so is Yellow. That, on paper, is fine! (in fact I personally adore it from a developmental and psychological lens, but that's just me). However, it's the gradual development of that metaphor that brings about the underlying issues. If John and Yellow, as fragments of the King in Yellow, are meant to stand in for a child, it becomes problematic to also tie in the plotline of them "learning how to become humans, and not monsters".
At their "births", they are inhuman, nothing more than a clueless creature that lacks basic personhood. Left alone, they would grow into monsters due to the supposed inherent evil in their nature. It then becomes their "parent's" job to teach them how to earn that personhood. The cruelty is born into them, and a goodhearted adult has to mold them into a "proper" human being. (I think there's more to talk about in that view of humanity as naturally inclined to cruelty outside of "proper" training/civilizing, but that's another conversation). So, Arthur steps in as that parental figure who has to fix the children. And Arthur's idea of teaching children, according to this metaphor, is to lecture them. It's to yell at them for misbehaving, and talk down to them as if they can't possibly know anything without his wisdom as the "actual human" directing them.
For John, this parental style is framed as working because he listens to Arthur. Arthur lectures from his personal viewpoint about how humans are the most wonderful creatures of all the living species out there because of their flawed nature, their stubbornness in not listening to the "bad, uncivilized people" (cultists/eldritch entities) and instead listening to the "good, righteous people" (people like Arthur). And John— because he was raised by Arthur, was unwillingly dependent on Arthur, and had no other influences during his early upbringing besides Arthur— believes and follows Arthur's mindset. John's childhood development isn't framed primarily as how he uniquely, independently grew into his own person; it's framed as proof of Arthur's success as a good parental figure, to show how he's improved since he raised Faroe. The metaphor of John as a developing child wasn't tailored to primarily bring more depth to his character. It was designed to serve Arthur's development first, and only to acknowledge the child of the parent second.
For Yellow in this metaphor, he clearly doesn't follow what Arthur says and instead grows to resent the man and his teachings. But why? According to the show, it's not because of Arthur's parental style and his beratement of Yellow's "disobedience" and questioning of Arthur's lectures. According to the show, it's because Yellow had another influence during his early development, a worse influence, someone whose parental style corrupted his childhood: Larson. Yellow is brought up by Larson, and because he was raised by a "cultist" (a term clearly defined as evil, malicious, and monstrous by the show), he is considered an object of failure. Yellow comes to represent the shortcomings of Larson in comparison to Arthur. Past S3, Yellow is never shown with the same nuance that he and John originally had. He's reduced to the "evil" side of Hastur, the "bad egg" of the family that disappointed his parent. He is simply yet another tool for the parental figures' development, a plot device meant to make us feel a certain way about Larson and Arthur before ever considering Yellow as his own person.
Of course, there's one more major child character in the show: Lillith. Hoooo boy Lillith. She is, firstly, a roulette wheel of a character who is shoved into fulfilling whatever loose narrative hole is left open at a particular moment. But, that does happen to include a child figure at a couple different points in the show. When we first meet her as Mr. Scratch, there's a genuine parallel between her as a child and John as a child. It's during the Mr. Scratch plotline that Arthur first explicitly calls John a developing child. Also, at the end of Part 38, John says that Scratch "looks at them like a lost child", drawing another comparison to childhood between him and Mr. Scratch. Except, because Lillith is pushed from narrative device to narrative device, her metaphor as an abandoned child in this moment is forgotten by the show's writing. She is used as a tool for a quick moment of emotional drama, then quickly shoved aside once that purpose was used up. As Scratch, Lillith never gets shown as a full, complex human being that happens to be a child, but a child-shaped object that is used for Arthur and John's story, and then discarded.
Then through most of Season 5, Lillith isn't really considered a child character by the narrative up until the finale with Part 52. Here, she gets to be a child object for Kayne's story, and it goes- well... bad. Because as soon as her parent shows up, Lillith immediately gets cast aside (literally and metaphorically) so that her father can take the entire spotlight. All the attention goes to Kayne and how he feels about his daughter, his little girl, all while Lillith has her voice entirely removed, emphasizing her role as an object for the parents to use for their own development. Kayne removes the personhood and agency from a child so that he has all the control, because in this show, that's what parents are meant to do.
Now, you might think "Whoa, hey, isn't 'Kayne's actions toward Lillith during Part 52 represent Malevolent's philosophy on parenthood' a super bold statement you're making?" Yes, it kinda is. But it's not unfounded. Because pretty soon, half a season later, we see Arthur do the exact same thing. Lillith in Season 6 is, once again, a child character (although written extremely different than her child metaphors before, but again, she's bouncing around on the narrative roulette wheel). And now, Arthur is taking on the parental role. So how does he parent her? By yelling, by arguing and berating, by lecturing on and on about what makes him a "proper" human being, and what makes the child insufficient in "true" humanity. And when Lillith argues back, when she starts to express any personality and independence that Arthur doesn't approve of, her puts her in "time out"— exactly like Kayne did. And if the narrative frames Arthur's strict "shut up, sit down, and obey your father" parenting as the right thing to do, then Kayne's actions toward Lillith in Part 52 are also representative of Malevolent's version of good parenting. Good parenting in this show means stripping the child of their unique voice, and inserting what the parent deems "right" upon the child. It means making children like Lillith objects, and if that object ever acts up in the eyes of the parent, the parent can push them aside and punish them however they see fit.
(A quick personal addition here: Lillith is written in Season 6 to be a bit of a turbulent child, perhaps one a little older than John and Yellow were written to be, and perhaps one with more behavioral issues. In my own personal life and as a secondary teacher, I deal with many preteens/teens who have behavioral issues due to shitty circumstances just like Lillith does. So the way Malevolent writes Lillith hits particularly uncomfortable for me. A kid is a kid, full stop, no matter how old they are and no matter what kind of trauma-effects they're dealing with. And just because a kid struggles with more disruptive behaviors doesn't give you any right to dehumanize them, to yell at them and threaten them, or to shove them aside, make them shut up and hide their personality, and pretend like they never existed. It doesn't matter what behavioral issues Lillith is struggling with, if the show is going to write her as a child metaphor, it has a responsibility to acknowledge the rights and humanity of children who historically have been marginalized, silenced, and abused.)
And there's so many more examples of children not allowed to be people in this show. The baby from Part 2? Just a plot device to project Arthur's issues onto. The creature in the mines from Season 3? An inhuman beast whose upbringing corrupted him beyond salvation or compassion as an individual being. Uncle is just the same. The daughter from Part 45? A gross obstacle to highlight John's "humanity" that he learned from Arthur's parenting, and a tool for the two men to strengthen their character dynamic. And Addison? Yet another symbol of innocence to fuel Arthur's emotions toward himself.
Child after child in this show are reduced to symbols, tools, inhuman creatures— things that need the control and guidance of a "proper, just" person to tell them how exactly to be a "correct" human being, and that remain unworthy if they do not follow that parental control. This show fundamentally argues that children are not born as full, complex persons each with their own rich and independent lives. This show argues that children are tools for parents, objects to highlight how good or bad a parent is, rather than children being people in their own right. And this show argues that, at a certain point, children are doomed to be cruel, angry monsters if they do not have a "proper" parent to train them, or if they do not obey a proper parent's orders.
This framing of children almost wouldn't be an issue if it was shown as wrong, gross, and unfair toward children, but it isn't. Because Arthur is consistently raised up as the model of "perfect humanity" in the show, Malevolent is telling us that Arthur's view on parenting and childhood is the correct view. It's telling us that children's individual lives are secondary to what they mean for a parent. It's claiming that children lack true independent souls until they fall under a parent's control. It's reinforcing harmful, marginalizing mindsets that children who struggle with behavioral disorders or trauma-responses from their upbringing are improper, subhuman, and better off silent and invisible. It's painting a picture of children that is flat, one-dimensional, and black-and-white. It's telling us to stop viewing children as people.
Clearly this is the hill the show is willing to die on, since we're in the last couple episodes, and clearly there is not going to be any redirection or adjustment to this theme. There's nothing wrong with a show taking on child metaphors like the ones in Malevolent. There's nothing wrong with spending a significant portion of narrative time to tackle the full spectrum of kids, parenting, and childhood development.
There is, however, something wrong with only reinforcing old and harmful views on children, rather than pushing forward to a kinder, more accurate, and more accepting portrayal of this group of people.
Children are perhaps the most vulnerable population across time and space, and both historically and in the present, they are reduced and stripped of their humanity. As readers and listeners, we shouldn't accept a dehumanizing portrayal of children at face value. We should look at a portrayal of children in something like Malevolent and use it to reflect on whether or not we agree with these simplistic reductions of children, and how we can use that reflection to reconsider the ways in which we, writers, and the world either erase or uplift the personhood of children.
