“How do I get that job?”: the one thing Tom Hanks would rather be than ‘America’s Dad’
Not to call his parenting into question, but Tom Hanks might want to have a word with some of his 350million-odd children, because ‘America’s Dad’ is letting an awful lot of things slide.
If you thought having to deal with Chet Hanks and his never-ending antics was bad enough, the two-time Academy Award winner has been designated as the patriarch of a nation that seems willing to lurch from one crisis to another, although most of that blame can be laid at one orange fella’s door.
It wasn’t a job he asked for, but it was nonetheless bestowed upon him by the masses, so there’s fuck all he can do about it. What’s strange is that, despite sharing many similarities, no matter how much they irritated Hanks in his younger days, nobody ever seemed to call James Stewart ‘America’s Dad’.
That’s a lot of pressure for an actor to carry, even if the star has largely lived up to his billing by projecting eternal niceness and radiating Americana from his every pore. He knows he can’t play villains because he’s Tom Hanks, and he also knows that he’s become an avatar for an entire nation, something he achieved largely by being very good at his job and showing that he’s not a dickhead.
And yet, it’s not his dream job. Obviously, it would be weird if any youngsters grew up in the United States daydreaming of being handed the impossible burden of serving as the entire country’s surrogate father, and as much as Hanks has settled into his ceremonial groove as ‘America’s Dad’, in another world, he’d have loved to be known as something else.
“I think that might say more about the induced trauma of family of origin issues for most of America,” he mused, reflecting on being ‘America’s Dad’. “I would love to be called something specific: the best park ranger they’ve ever heard. It was riveting to my eight-year-old mind. Believe it or not, part of me thought, ‘How do I get that job?'”
Sorry, America, but having all of you as his children wasn’t at the top of Hanks’ priority list. Instead, he wanted to be a park ranger. Not just any park ranger, though, but the best damned park ranger of them all, one who would keep tourists enthralled and enraptured when dishing out information during guided tours.
However, don’t worry, he remains dedicated to the task at hand. “I’m going to treat that seriously when someone comes in and says, ‘We look upon you as a dad,'” he added. “Because the best dads are going to offer up wisdom, patience, and just the right amount of discipline when the time comes.”
Hanks will embrace the concept of ‘America’s Dad’ “provided I don’t have to campaign for it”, but that’s not something he needs to worry about, because there aren’t many pretenders to the throne coming for his crown.
