30 Days of TV Meme -- Day 5
I'm still trying to catch up, and I'm still a day behind.
Day 5 - A show you hate.
All in the Family.
Top to bottom: Sally Struthers as Gloria Bunker Stivic; Rob Reiner as Mike Stivic; Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker; and Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker.
I hated this one and saw it every time it was on. Why? Because my mother and aunt loved it to pieces, and because my aunt was in the same high school class as Norman Lear. Because of school solidarity, we ended up watching every Norman Lear production ever. And there were a lot of them.
I hated this show for two reasons:
1) Archie Bunker.
I knew that the show wanted me to believe that Archie was, despite a lot of narrow-minded isms, a decent person, and that if his liberal daughter and son-in-law could understand that about him and vice versa, a lot of problems would be solved. I knew that the show was, purportedly, about making prejudice seem absurd.
But I never felt that the absurdity came through. Archie lost a lot of the time because he was dumb or because his prejudices blew up in his face--but that only seemed to reinforce his prejudices. I always felt that Archie Bunker was not a good man but was the quintessence of the common man. I believed that he really DID hate and feel threatened by just about everybody, and that he wanted his world to be preserved in amber--unchanging, unyielding, comprehensible and safe.
There was also the fact by the time I was in college, some politicians were actually citing Archie Bunker as an early fictional spokesman of the conservative movement...like an early Limbaugh. He was being billed in some quarters as the voice of the people. Yes, of course it was billed as a comedy and of course the audience was supposed to be laughing at Archie--but there were also a fair number of people saying, "You know, he's got a point." Hell, I heard that from my own parents. It worried me.
So Archie Bunker's views acquired a gleam of respectability that the writers and the show's creator never intended them to have. This always worried me. Because this show was in syndication for a while--and there are some people who will believe that anything is true if you just say it loudly enough and often enough. Have a celebrity saying it loudly and often, and you've got a trifecta.
2) I never liked the way that women were treated on the show.
Archie Bunker treated his wife Edith, who was a meek and usually timid woman and who usually gave me the impression that she was afraid to contradict him, in a thoroughly contemptuous way. (There was one time when she told him to "STIFLE!"--the same term he always used on her--and I think the entire country applauded.) Edith--who was sensible and compassionate and not at all timid once you got her away from her husband--was consistently told to "Stifle herself" and was called "Dingbat"...not just once, but multiple times in each episode. Archie treated his daughter as if she was a naive and stupid bubblehead who just didn't understand how the world worked. (And, to be fair, he treated his son-in-law like a bubblehead to the infinite power.) They brought on a tough black woman and both Archie and her husband talked down to her. They introduced a recurring character who was a feminist and made fun of her looks and her politics. it just went on and on and on.
Oh, over time Archie was supposed to be mellowing (such as when he and Edith took in Edith's nine-year-old niece, Stephanie), but much of the time the mellowing was either very much at odds with the way I saw the character or the mellowing had to do with how the other characters were treating Archie. This happened a fair bit with characters who initially disliked him. Many times they came around, stopped disliking him and decided that America's "lovable bigot" just wasn't such a bad guy after all.
Which, please note, was very much at odds with the show's original point. Archie was not supposed to be lovable, respectable, accepted and enshrined; he was supposed to be a fun house mirror to America, showing just how ridiculous our bigotry was. Instead, he became a cultural icon. Ultimately, he did not so much change as learn when to keep his mouth shut. Those around him changed, going from seeing him as despicable to seeing him as acceptable.
I'm sure that the show was well-intentioned. And it won enough awards, so I'm sure there were good episodes that were original and well-done for their time. And it did lead to some good spin-offs. I'm not denying any of that.
But I think that, ultimately, it failed in its objective. It not only didn't make prejudice ludicrous and mock-worthy, but a number of people seemed to feel that it legitimized their bigotry by highlighting a bigot once a week.
I don't know what you call that, but I call it failure.
***
Day 1 - A show that never should have been canceled.
Day 2 - A show that you wish more people were watching (or that you wish more people had watched).
Day 3 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season).
Day 4 - Your favorite show ever.
Day 5 - A show you hate.
***
Day 5 - A show you hate.
All in the Family.
Top to bottom: Sally Struthers as Gloria Bunker Stivic; Rob Reiner as Mike Stivic; Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker; and Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker.
I hated this one and saw it every time it was on. Why? Because my mother and aunt loved it to pieces, and because my aunt was in the same high school class as Norman Lear. Because of school solidarity, we ended up watching every Norman Lear production ever. And there were a lot of them.
I hated this show for two reasons:
1) Archie Bunker.
I knew that the show wanted me to believe that Archie was, despite a lot of narrow-minded isms, a decent person, and that if his liberal daughter and son-in-law could understand that about him and vice versa, a lot of problems would be solved. I knew that the show was, purportedly, about making prejudice seem absurd.
But I never felt that the absurdity came through. Archie lost a lot of the time because he was dumb or because his prejudices blew up in his face--but that only seemed to reinforce his prejudices. I always felt that Archie Bunker was not a good man but was the quintessence of the common man. I believed that he really DID hate and feel threatened by just about everybody, and that he wanted his world to be preserved in amber--unchanging, unyielding, comprehensible and safe.
There was also the fact by the time I was in college, some politicians were actually citing Archie Bunker as an early fictional spokesman of the conservative movement...like an early Limbaugh. He was being billed in some quarters as the voice of the people. Yes, of course it was billed as a comedy and of course the audience was supposed to be laughing at Archie--but there were also a fair number of people saying, "You know, he's got a point." Hell, I heard that from my own parents. It worried me.
So Archie Bunker's views acquired a gleam of respectability that the writers and the show's creator never intended them to have. This always worried me. Because this show was in syndication for a while--and there are some people who will believe that anything is true if you just say it loudly enough and often enough. Have a celebrity saying it loudly and often, and you've got a trifecta.
2) I never liked the way that women were treated on the show.
Archie Bunker treated his wife Edith, who was a meek and usually timid woman and who usually gave me the impression that she was afraid to contradict him, in a thoroughly contemptuous way. (There was one time when she told him to "STIFLE!"--the same term he always used on her--and I think the entire country applauded.) Edith--who was sensible and compassionate and not at all timid once you got her away from her husband--was consistently told to "Stifle herself" and was called "Dingbat"...not just once, but multiple times in each episode. Archie treated his daughter as if she was a naive and stupid bubblehead who just didn't understand how the world worked. (And, to be fair, he treated his son-in-law like a bubblehead to the infinite power.) They brought on a tough black woman and both Archie and her husband talked down to her. They introduced a recurring character who was a feminist and made fun of her looks and her politics. it just went on and on and on.
Oh, over time Archie was supposed to be mellowing (such as when he and Edith took in Edith's nine-year-old niece, Stephanie), but much of the time the mellowing was either very much at odds with the way I saw the character or the mellowing had to do with how the other characters were treating Archie. This happened a fair bit with characters who initially disliked him. Many times they came around, stopped disliking him and decided that America's "lovable bigot" just wasn't such a bad guy after all.
Which, please note, was very much at odds with the show's original point. Archie was not supposed to be lovable, respectable, accepted and enshrined; he was supposed to be a fun house mirror to America, showing just how ridiculous our bigotry was. Instead, he became a cultural icon. Ultimately, he did not so much change as learn when to keep his mouth shut. Those around him changed, going from seeing him as despicable to seeing him as acceptable.
I'm sure that the show was well-intentioned. And it won enough awards, so I'm sure there were good episodes that were original and well-done for their time. And it did lead to some good spin-offs. I'm not denying any of that.
But I think that, ultimately, it failed in its objective. It not only didn't make prejudice ludicrous and mock-worthy, but a number of people seemed to feel that it legitimized their bigotry by highlighting a bigot once a week.
I don't know what you call that, but I call it failure.
***
Day 1 - A show that never should have been canceled.
Day 2 - A show that you wish more people were watching (or that you wish more people had watched).
Day 3 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season).
Day 4 - Your favorite show ever.
Day 5 - A show you hate.
***