'All in the Family' star Jean Stapleton dies at 90

Chicago Tribune ^ | 06/01/2013 | Claudia Luther

[Monty22002]

Jean Stapleton, who played Archie Bunker’s long-suffering wife Edith in the long-running 1970s television series “All in the Family,” died Friday at her New York City home. She was 90.

Stapleton died of natural causes, her family announced Saturday.

[ansel12]

Thank you that is generous of you, you have grown on this thread.

It’s hard to believe, but this isn’t even your thread at all.

[Borges]

I was going to post an Obit of her but someone beat me to it.

[ansel12]

Nonetheless, you seemed to want to assert authority and permissions over the thread.

I really don’t think that you fully know where you are, or who we are, or the focus on conservative politics here.

Even trash like cheap TV sitcoms, can fall under political discussion, especially if their purpose is to promote left wing politics to the general public and degrade the culture and damage America.

[Borges]

As should be obvious by now I don’t think it damaged America or degraded our culture. There were variants of it in other countries. The themes (generational conflict) are universal.

[dfwgator]

So Edith is finally stifled.

[dfwgator]

The scene from AITF that will always stick with me was the scene at Thanksgiving Dinner, when Archie finds out that Meathead’s fried was a draft dodger who just returned from Canada.

You can just feel Archie’s outrage...he didn’t play it for laughs, it was heartfelt and very powerful.

[ansel12]

As should be obvious by now I don’t think it damaged America or degraded our culture.

I have seen you repeatedly display this total incomprehension in regards to Hollywood leftism.

I don't know what your purpose or interest is in freerepublic, you have a huge number of posts on just this thread, yet every indication is that you are a liberal who really doesn't have much interest in politics, and is blind to anti-conservatism that comes from the Hollywood left and is totally ignorant of any culture war, or conservative discussions of it.

[ansel12]

That episode aired on December 25, 1976 and is as good as any to demonstrate how this series worked.

Here is the episode from December 1976 you can watch the first 15 minutes as the audience is softened up by the media experts, or you can skip to the part where it really starts, at about 15:00 in.

Draft dodger amnesty was an issue at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcalHLtewXo

[Kirkwood]

Are you hard of reading? My point was that the humor was very even handed. Liberal characters were ridiculed as much as the conservative ones. Lear was liberal through and through, but he knew that the humor had to be evenly dealt to be a successful show.

[ansel12]

See post 88 and then post 168, the show wasn’t about splitting humor equally, it was about changing people’s minds, make them accept the left’s ideas, adopt liberal thinking, support liberal politicians, reject conservatism because it was simple and out dated, and had no real substance, it was merely a left over from some white male past.

Success was measured by staying on the air, WHILE delivering the political message and changing people and the culture.

[Borges]

Scenes like that played out across America at the time and no other other drama captured and reflected them as well. The fact that it STILL plays so well and is so powerful means that it transcends the politics of the time.

[Kirkwood]

If you seriously think that was the purpose of the show, then the producers and writers failed miserably. The conservatives I know who watched it thought it was funny. But you never watched it, so how would you know?

[ScottfromNJ]

“The Jefferson’s was also created and operated to promote Norman Lear’s leftwing views.”

Not to deny Lear’s left wing views, but the Jefferson’s showed that with hard work a minority family could achieve success in America and get their “piece of the pie”, which is hardly a left wing view. I believe George was a Republican too.

[LibsRJerks]

The scene from AITF that will always stick with me was the scene at Thanksgiving Dinner, when Archie finds out that Meathead’s fried was a draft dodger who just returned from Canada.

You can just feel Archie’s outrage...he didn’t play it for laughs, it was heartfelt and very powerful.

***

Youtube link for this?

Politics aside, AITF had a lot of other themes ...the Daddy’s Girl, Gloria is who always stuck out most to me as I watched it as a kid.

My husband to this day calls my daughter’s boyfriend Meathead ...(a liberal snot from Massachusetts ...;)

[PieterCasparzen]

My point was that the humor was very even handed.

More detailed, careful and honest analysis is needed.

One has to fully and carefully analyze both the script and the portrayals given by each actor in great detail. Facial expressions, body language, what is said, probably more importantly what is not said, etc.

Meathead constantly made snide remarks accusing Archie of being racist; Gloria and Meathead constantly made snide remarks accusing Archie of being misogynistic - most every episode had numerous instances of this.

Only a very, very few times (I can only recall one, where Archie and Meathead were stuck in a refrigerator and you see Meathead's facial reaction implying that he perhaps had some flash of perception, after YEARS, that perhaps Archie's perspective had much to do with the environment he lived in). All a reasonable person can think is "DUH". If you live in a relatively safe and pleasant neighborhood where one or more ethnicities are predominant, and nearby neighborhoods have other predominant ethnicities and those neighborhoods are more run down and have more crime, and you see people from those neighborhoods moving into yours, of course you're going to be concerned about your community. Whatever the ethnicity and culture, people feel more comfortable in what is familiar, and when they see their familiar surroundings changing and their ethnicity and culture at risk, they are going to be defensive. This is what troublemakers do (which in reality is a key part of globalism's strategy) - they purposely pit groups against each other and urge them into attacking each other, instead of leaving them alone. They create conflict where there is little or none, sometimes for their own wicked pleasure, but very often for personal gain.

Never in the script do the Gloria or Meathead characters ever acknowledge one single reason for any problems of the world - other than the racism and mysogyny of Archie and men like him. It's never "politicians in general", or sometimes Archie's type of politician and sometimes theirs, it's ALWAYS Archie's type of politician that's the "bad guy" - their politician is always the "good guy". Anyone that Archie likes, friends, heroes, war buddies - anyone - they are always portrayed as either dumb or bad or both. While every feminist and everyone of every race other than caucasian - is always presented as a "good guy". Lawyers, bureaucrats, policeman, criminals - whoever it is, it's always the same: if Archie likes them they're bad, if Meathead likes them, they're good.

What's not in the script, but is implied in 100% of the script ? Men like Archie are intrinsically evil and the root of the world's problems. It's always presented as acceptable to lash out at Archie, because the principles he lives by are presented as wrong and evil.

With a smarmy false facade of fairness, George Jefferson is always presented as the black version of Archie. Racist, but black. They are presented together as two peas in a pod, both being diehard believers in essentially the same principles, and hating each other purely because of race. Never mind that George pulled himself up by his bootstraps and was a successful business owner. This is never presented as a redeeming quality in George; his wealth is presented as what is "wrong" with him; he's always either too ambitious or too cheap to suit the scriptwriters.

Archie and George are both presented as treating their respective wives extremely poorly, taking advantage of their hard work and loyalty. God forbid actual real adult men, who take the responsibility to have jobs and businesses and support their families through legitimate effort, actually be presented as trying, and succeeding in their own measure, to support their households and fulfill that Scriptural duty. Neither man was a freeloader, they paid the freight for the freeloader. They would simply openly discuss the freeloader as a freeloader. Neither one routinely made excuses for freeloaders and criminals the way the scriptwriters did through the "heroic" leftist characters - which was always to lament, in a most heinous hypocrisy given their consistent silence on George's and Archie's upbringing and environment, that it was somehow the fault of "society".

Regarding the wives, do husbands and wives squabble sometimes in real life - yes. But a simple count of how many scripts implied that the husband was wrong, versus how many scripts implied that the wife was wrong, and you'll undoubtedly find that the husbands were portrayed as "wrong' in that series close to 100% of the time.

The only "wrong" that Meathead and Gloria were portrayed as being guilty of: their youth and passion. Yes, they were portrayed as being in the wrong frequently, but it was always implied that their principles were on right side of the argument, they just had youthful indisgressions, misunderstandings, wanting too much too fast, were afraid of new life situations they found themselves in, too much passion, etc. It's never that they had the wrong principles. All the characters were portrayed with personal, human shortcomings, but Archie's and George's principles were always mocked and presented as evil, while the lefties were portrayed as implicitly "right".

Example: the episode where the married Gloria poses nude for their "artist" friend. The posing (alone with the artist in his "studio") is portrayed as fine, Archie is wrong for thinking it's wrong, Meathead was only wrong in not being able to control his jealousy, and Edith is generally clueless in her standard wise, clueless way.

After all the laughing 25 minutes later, the audience does not realize that through this "sitcom" they've just been desensitized to the idea of a married woman trotting off to an artist's studio to pose nude for him, and ha ha, hee, hee, we're hopelessly old-fashioned and ignorant if we think there's anything wrong with it.

[boop]

Great insight! Very well put.

Although Lear obviously wanted Meathead to "win" every argument, if you look at what Michael was saying in the 70s and compare it to what actually happened in the future, you discover he is flat out wrong, laughably so. Like the spray can ozone statements, or the crime being caused by poverty or "the system".

Several instances where Michael IS called out on his hypocrisy, like in the "pushback game" where Lionel essentially accuses him of considering him a "black friend" not just a friend. And Mike ends up storming out, because he doesn't like the truth.

Or when Mike shows old-fashioned jealously/closed mindedness over the Gloria posing in the nude. Or hilariously when Cleavon Little breaks into the Bunker's home and Mike tries to "understand" the burglars. The burglars just mock him.

Turns out that Mike is not nearly as "open minded" as he thinks. He just an unthinking knee-jerk liberal.

And if you listen to what Archie says, he often does make a lot of sense, even if saying it in a non-PC way.

[TalBlack]

“If you haven’t learned the essence of humor by now and continue to view the world thru your own myopic political microscope then you are one pathetic and boring individual.”

“Pathetic and boring”, Great! Then I won’t be hearing from you anymore?

[ansel12]

"If you seriously think that was the purpose of the show, then the producers and writers failed miserably."--"But you never watched it, so how would you know?"

Your brilliant idea that I hadn't seen any of the series and and lived through it, shows how you can be so ignorant of what is going on around you.

That also explains how you could have missed the effectiveness of the series and it's role in a change in America that only you could have missed.

[ansel12]

The only "wrong" that Meathead and Gloria were portrayed as being guilty of: their youth and passion. Yes, they were portrayed as being in the wrong frequently, but it was always implied that their principles were on right side of the argument, they just had youthful indisgressions, misunderstandings, wanting too much too fast, were afraid of new life situations they found themselves in, too much passion, etc. It's never that they had the wrong principles. All the characters were portrayed with personal, human shortcomings, but Archie's and George's principles were always mocked and presented as evil, while the lefties were portrayed as implicitly "right".

Example: the episode where the married Gloria poses nude for their "artist" friend. The posing (alone with the artist in his "studio") is portrayed as fine, Archie is wrong for thinking it's wrong, Meathead was only wrong in not being able to control his jealousy, and Edith is generally clueless in her standard wise, clueless way.

After all the laughing 25 minutes later, the audience does not realize that through this "sitcom" they've just been desensitized to the idea of a married woman trotting off to an artist's studio to pose nude for him, and ha ha, hee, hee, we're hopelessly old-fashioned and ignorant if we think there's anything wrong with it.

Good post, and you are right, the left always won on All in the Family, the starting point of the audience was always moved gently left by the end of the 25 minutes.

[ansel12]

See post 175, George Jefferson served his purpose as well.

The job of Norman Lear was never to hit you over the head to confront middle America and drive them away, it was to get you to watch, and to use his 25 minutes to always move you gently to the left of where you started.

If you study advertising you learn that the dumbest commercials that people mock as too stupid to be effective, are often the most effective, because they don’t trigger the defenses of the audiences mind, rather than think or ponder, the audience merely absorbs a couple of simple, basic, messages which are repeated for months and years.