Father Time
By Eileen G’Sell
Daughters
Dir. Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, U.S., Netflix
A black-and-white montage flashes clips of girls primping for a formal affair—pulling up stockings, clasping a string of pearls, fastening the strap to a silver Mary Jane. The image is grainy, and the frame is shrunk to resemble a Super 8 reel. Strings trill and piano keys tinkle. One by one, the girls peer out the windows of the bus that will take them to a line of freshly shaven and suited men. “Our daddies are our mirrors,” declares a woman’s voice offscreen, “that we reflect back on when we decide what type of man we deserve, and how they see us for the rest of our lives.”
So opens Daughters, a documentary codirected by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton—the former a journalist and the latter, quoted above, CEO of Girls for a Change, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering Black girls. Set during the jittery, exhilarating moments before a daddy-daughter dance, the first scene would likely appeal to anyone with happy memories of getting dapper with their father. The difference: this soiree will happen at a federal prison, the capstone to a program called “Date with Dad,” for which incarcerated men spend ten weeks in fatherhood counseling to prepare to be (briefly) reunited with their girls.
While the film offers a sensitive portrait of the young women and children whose dads are caught in the correctional system, it also clearly seeks to redress misconceptions about the nearly 700,000 fathers currently imprisoned in our country. Daughters reveals that, when the dads are caught, so too are their kids: the family is also punished for whatever crime he has committed. Though over a dozen dad-and-daughter duos appear onscreen at the dance, the documentary follows four of the girls in greater depth: the adorably voluble five-year-old Aubrey, who boasts of being “the smartest one in class”; the indignant Santana, a ten-year-old who vows not “to shed one single tear” for her father’s sentence; rambunctious eleven-year-old Ja-Ana, who doesn’t remember her Dad’s face; and Raziah, a depressed 15-year-old who mourns “getting older…when he can’t be here to see the memories.” That each of these daughters is granted a range of concerns and idiosyncrasies is a testament to the film’s directors and cinematographer Michael Cambio Fernandez, whose camera captures the subtle flick of a scowl or bounce in a step.
The “Date with Dad” dance, the climax of the film, is shot on 16mm, a bold choice that serves to magnify the singular intimacy and intensity of the few short hours the daughters share with their fathers. As each girl anxiously walks—or, in some cases, runs—down the hallway to embrace her paternal “date” to the dance, it’s as though she is passing through the gates of heaven, where filial love heals the heartbreak of the past. When I saw Daughters at True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Missouri, a town pulsing blue in a very red state, the audience audibly sobbed.
But of course, the dance is not eternal bliss, as each girl is (sometimes forcibly) removed from her father at its end. Fortunately, Rae and Patton chronicle what happens in the ensuing years. For some fathers, a new-kindled closeness with their daughters inspires them to rebuild their lives when released from prison. For those like Aubrey’s dad, Keith, who is transferred to an out-of-state facility with no visitation rights, their lone evening boogying and bonding is a blip of light in an otherwise expanding void. Daughters concludes with a shot of Aubrey, uncommonly apathetic at eight, listlessly listening to Keith on her mother’s smartphone; he is a distant memory, and she is no longer a bubbly little girl.
Rae insisted to The Guardian that Daughters isn’t “a prison rehabilitation film,” but the last thing we see onscreen—to ardent clapping in my theater—are the words “95% of the fathers in the program have not returned to jail.” In other words, even if its directors didn’t intend to make a message film about the carceral system and rehabilitation, the audience may very well take it that way. For this reason, Daughters inhabits a tricky space: go too hard on the brutality that is The New Jim Crow, and likely turn off many viewers; home in on the heartwarming innocence of the girls, and indirectly reinforce the lack of innocence among the Black men who fathered them. A question to ask of any film that addresses social inequality: can anyone, regardless of political convictions, leave with all of their initial beliefs intact?
To be sure, I found Daughters deeply moving. But I also took pause at the applause all around me. Was it that I’d taught incarcerated men for three years at a state prison, such that witnessing the dehumanization—and undeniable humanity—of the characters wasn’t as jolting? Was it that, as a feminist, I was warier of sentimentality toward paternal authority, or the idea that one’s “daddy” is supposed to save the day? “Doing time” has been framed in the popular imagination as a type of penance for crimes against society. So too, has watching disquieting documentaries like Daughters been imagined—especially for white liberals—as a type of penance for a history of American racism.
Would someone moved by the familial bonds honored onscreen also be encouraged to reconsider the larger carceral system? Or would they simply judge the fathers for making “bad decisions” that keep them from their children?
“Bad decision” rhetoric tends to suggest abundant “good” decisions left unmade—positive life options that, for most people in poverty, are patently absent. Representing only Black fathers, Daughters could also suggest that Black men are the only fathers locked up nationwide, rather than the fact that, as a demographic, they consist of 88 percent in DC prisons (versus 32 percent nationally, about equal to Non-Hispanic white men). Given that poverty levels of incarcerated men are about double what they are in the general population—and that this true across racial demographics—it’s a bit disappointing that Daughters doesn’t more overtly allude to economic factors that undoubtedly led many of the fathers to criminal activity.
The film’s uplift seems to suggest that one Daddy-Daughter Dance can reduce recidivism; in another conservative implication, biological fathers are implied as necessary for a stable, happy childhood. Thus, I have to wonder if the cinematic choices that make the film so emotionally riveting could backfire. What continues to weigh on me is the speculation that, for all its heart, grit, and progressive ethos, for certain viewers Daughters may reinforce certain regressive beliefs, especially among those eager to believe that A Few Good Programs are all it takes to rectify the prison-industrial complex and its casualties.