Captain's Blog, supplemental. Stardate: Unknown.
Danny Fenton: An Analysis
Even though he’s a cartoon, Danny Fenton is more human than most “real” teenagers on TV. Danny Fenton is your average high school freshman- except he’s half ghost! He leads a dual life, kicking back as normal teenager Danny Fenton, his human side, and kicking butt as superhero Danny Phantom, his ghost half. He has your normal embarrassing parents and a normal sister, Jazz. Well, almost normal. His parents are Jack and Maddie Fenton, world’s foremost ghost hunting experts. He spends most of his free time with his best friends, Tucker, a computer geek, and Sam, a goth ultra-recyclovegetarian and environmental activist.
Part of why Danny is so inherently human is his flaws. He has a bit of a temper. To quote a dialogue between Danny’s archenemy Vlad Masters and Danny in
Reign Storm: “Sneak attack. Good, Daniel. You’re getting more like me with every battle.” “I am NOTHING like you!” “Oh you’re not? Using your powers to get back at people you don’t like? Throwing the first punch? You’re more like me than you know!” And some of Danny’s own speech that supports this is in the episode
Masters of all Time, after Vlad infects Sam and Tucker with a deadly disease he has, ecto-acne, which forces Danny to help him: “I swear, if they find a cure, I’m gonna make you wish they hadn’t!” It’s swatches of dialogue like this one from
Double Cross my Heart between one of the Guys in White, a team of top-secret government ghost catchers and Danny that make this ghost kid seem so human: “A pre-pubescent specter operating freely? Unacceptable!” “Hey! I have TOTALLY hit puberty! See that? TOTALLY a chest hair!”
Another thing that separates Danny Phantom from less realistic heroes, one dimensional such as Superman is that he’s not excessively moral. For example, this is his response to his friends after accidentally getting the envelope of CAT test answers in
The Ultimate Enemy: “Guys, come on! I would’ve loved to have spent the last month studying, but I was fighting ghosts! Besides, if you think this test is so meaningless, why do you even care if I cheat? Why shouldn’t I open this up and study the answers, huh?” Still, he is separated from anti-heroes such as Lobo or Wolverine in that he’s not excessively immoral either. For example, he hesitates before opening the answers. Also, he holds back when he fights Valerie in
Life Lessons, even though he knows she isn’t, but because of her good intention of getting rid of evil ghosts, he doesn’t try to kill her.
Moreover, he has a normal life outside of his life as a superhero. He has to deal with Technus, self-proclaimed “ghostly master of technology and all things electronic and beeping” and the big English test in
Teacher of the Year He has to fight teenage ghost hunter Valerie Gray as Danny Phantom and parent a flour-sack baby with her as Danny Fenton in
Life Lessons. He goes through life like a normal person. He has feelings, as evidenced when he has to deal with low self-esteem and battle evil ghost Penelope Spectra in
My Brother’s Keeper. He has feelings for his best friend Sam, but does to hide them because he doesn’t know she likes him back. For example, in
Shades of Gray after Sam shocks him back to human mode with the “fakeout-makeout”, he’s blushing and has a face that clearly says “I love my life.” And in
Control Freaks, he is able to resist Freakshow’s hold on him when Sam is put in danger, like when she had a tightrope cut from under her or when she accidentally backs off of a moving train on a bridge while trying to save Danny. In
Memory Blank, when he doesn’t even know her thanks to Desiree the wishing ghost granting Sam’s accidental “there are days I wish I had never even met you!”, he initiates a fakeout-makeout as a cover for why they were in his dad Jack’s lab. And in
Double Cross My Heart, he gets jealous and uses his ghost power of invisibility to spy on Sam when she gets a suspicious boyfriend, “Gregor” from Hungary, really Elliot from Michigan, who is in reality a fraud. You can tell from the look on his face he is crushed when he sees her kiss “Gregor.” Overall, he has a normal life.
In closing, let me state that not only is Danny more human than most teenagers on TV, he has more depth as well. He has to save Amity Park from evil ghosts on a regular basis, but still has to deal with self-esteem, relationships, and other issues that are more close to home. By juxtaposing issues in a slightly fantastic environment, Danny helps us deal with life’s little problems.
