Posted on 01/11/2021 10:14:04 AM PST by Borges
There was a time when racism could be funny.
On Jan. 12, 1971, a skittish CBS television network premiered an unusual television show as a mid-season replacement in its primetime lineup. The sitcom, modeled on a successful British version, starred veteran actor Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker, a bigoted dockworker living in Astoria with his dimwitted wife, feminist daughter and liberal son-in-law.
“The program you are about to see called ‘All in the Family,’ ” read a text advisory before the show (it would now be termed a trigger warning). “It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter we hope to show — in mature fashion — just how absurd they are.” The network hired extra operators to handle a tsunami of complaints.
The reaction was not what CBS expected. It was, in fact, more of a non-reaction. The pilot episode got 15% of the viewing audience, finishing in 55th place for the week. In its first month, “All in the Family” drew about 10 million viewers a week — monster numbers now, but decidedly anemic in a broadcast era of television where a successful show drew about twice that.
Perhaps ironically, the people most interested in the show in its early months were the intelligentsia.
“Is it funny, for example, to have the pot-bellied, church-going, cigar-smoking son of Middle America, Archie Bunker, the hero of ‘All in the Family,’ fill the screen with such epithets as ‘spic’ and ‘spade’ and ‘hebe’ and ‘yid’ and ‘polack’?” asked New York Times writer Fred Ferretti in a review that appeared the day the show made its debut. “Is it funny for him to refer to his son-in-law as ‘the laziest white man I ever seen’?”
Ferretti’s view was clear: “The answer, I say, is no.” Yet the dean of television critics, Cleveland Armory of TV Guide, proclaimed it as “the best thing on commercial television.” “Archie Bunker is real,” wrote Pamela Haynes for the (African American) Los Angeles Sentinel. “Far from protesting, members of minorities slandered by Archie should rejoice at this non-cosmetized portrait of the ‘master race.’ ”
The creator of “All in the Family,” Norman Lear, knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote and directed the pilot for the show. He went out of his way to cast a pleasant-looking actor for the part and to situate him in a loving, if boisterous, family.
“The point of his character,” he said of Archie, “was to show that if bigotry and intolerance didn’t exist in the hearts and minds of good people, the average people, it would not be the endemic problem it is in our society.”
There were some who objected to this premise, but Lear held fast. He also held fast to a formula that marked the show for its nine-year run: Every time Archie said something ridiculous or offensive, there was always someone — often his son-in-law Mike (Rob Reiner), daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) or his ingenuous wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), but just as likely a Puerto Rican nurse, African-American businessman, gay former football player, or any number of other in a diverse array of characters — who would highlight his absurdity. And yet Archie was also the quintessential working man who supported his family and who, every once in a while, would show flashes of decency.
But “All in the Family” was always more than a cleverly constructed political soapbox. What became the number one show on television for five years running was a miracle of artistry. Some of this was a matter of incomparable one-liners, like Archie’s famous malapropisms (“Patience is a virgin”; “Don’t draw me no diaphragms”; “It’s a proven fact that capital punishment is a detergent to crime.”). Some was a matter of acting, as in the remarkable plasticity of O’Connor’s face or Stapleton’s wondrous ability to find dignity, even wisdom, in the character of Edith. And some was the complexity with which the show handled topics that included rape, menopause and anti-Semitism even as it found humor in all of them. The affection the show engendered is visible in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where Archie and Edith’s living room chairs have been on display for decades.
Was there — is there — a risk that viewers could take Archie Bunker or his successors the wrong way, that they could secretly or openly embrace foolish or dangerous ideas? Yes. This is the price of artistic freedom — and vitality. But the potential gains in enlightenment and useful debate are worth it if we believe ordinary people can be entrusted with ambiguous truths. Laughter, among other things, can be revealing.
I always wanted to see a show like MASH and the military about the EPA or a welfare office.
The Partridge Family, anti-American?
Yes. Had the Sammy Davis one on late last month.
Partridge Partridge family predates Norman Lear‘s shows. And mash does as well for all intents and purposes.
I'm in the same age bracket as you and also grew up with the show. It might have been the intent of Norman Lear to present Meathead as the "reasonable liberal counterpoint" to Archie's bluster but as I grew older, I began identifying with Archie more and more and began viewing Meathead as a lazy bum who had no shame mooching off his wife's parents instead of making an honest living.
Not that Archie was what we would call a conservative today. For one thing, he idolized FDR and was pro-union.
“The Partridge Family, anti-American?”
Yup.
S1 E4 “See Here, Private Partridge!”
Just as they’re about to record their first album, the Partridges have a bomb dropped on them: ten-year-old Danny’s been drafted into the Army.
S1 E12 “My Son, the Feminist”
Keith promises his feminist girlfriend that the Partridge Family will perform at an upcoming rally, which puts them under attack from the morality watchdog group in their neighborhood.
S1 E19 “To Play or Not to Play”
Laurie refuses to cross the picket line and play when the hotel workers where they’re scheduled to perform go out on strike.
Start with those episodes and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It was right there all along.
They were responding to the culture around them. Do you think the model should be “My Mother, the Car”?
Sorry, I always saw the show as liberal propaganda.
The Partridge Family was un-American? No way. Danny Partridge was totally cool and if I’m not mistaken, Danny (Bonaduce) grew up to become a conservative.
I still don’t think anything made me laugh longer than, “Mr Davis, do you take cream and sugar in your eye?”
The way I remember it was that Archie did not idolize FDR. The first visit by Maude on All in the Family displayed that! Archie destroyed FDR on that episode. (It was Edith’s, and cousin Maude’s side of the family that though FDR was great. Archie was pro-union as you said though.)
It’s a wonder with all the “liberal propaganda” I grew up with and enjoyed, and yet here I am, a diehard Conservative.
Archie Bunker : [Maude refuses to get out of Archie’s chair] Well, I got the secret weapon that can lay this little lady right away. Here we go. This country was ruined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
Cousin Maude : You’re fat.
Archie Bunker : Sticks and stones may break my bones, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt...
Edith Bunker : Archie, you promised never to say that name again in front of Maude.
Archie Bunker : Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
Edith Bunker : [to Maude] He don’t mean nothing. His whole family was for Roosevelt.
Archie Bunker : That was for two terms. But that was it. We didn’t know the guy was going to hold on to the job like a pope!
No he did not. He also doesn’t fit into what the Left regards as the conservative constituency...he isn’t a fat cat CEO or a religious fundamentalist. He’s a blue collar union worker. Norman Lear said that one of the biggest leaps of faith he was asking audiences to make is to imagine that Caroll O’Connor was actually NOT Irish Catholic.
All in the Family may have turned 50, but it didn’t age well.
It’s still pretty funny. I’ve watched it recently. SOme of it is dated obviously.
Most 70s shows didn’t age well. Even now if I watch an old MASH episode, I think “This show really wasn’t all that great”, and I used to never miss an episode.
George Jefferson didn’t approve of the mixed race couple the Willises, and he always called his future daughter-in-law Jenny a “zebra.” He was the black version of Archie.
Your argument reminds me of a person I got into an argument on here years ago who claimed “The Honeymooners” was liberal elitists making fun of ordinary Americans.
Yes Lear is a liberal, but I think it wasn’t as one-sided liberal as maybe he intended. It’s not as if the liberals on the show were all that likable.
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