Norman Lear died December 5th at age 101. Created shows like All in the Family and several spin-offs and spin-offs of spin-offs such as Maude, The Jeffersons and Good Times. I didn't know it until years later, but Diff'rent Strokes and Facts of Life were his work, too. His shows had their own extended universes.
Even as a ten-year-old, I didn't understand why a supposedly radical or at least liberal show like All in the Family was so anti-working class. The audience would laugh whenever Archie mentioned that he was in World War Two and I would strain to see the joke. Why was a radical like Meathead so dismissive of the war against fascism? Now I find it strange that four adults live together and the only one with a job was the bad guy.
Here are the words of Richard Nixon himself on All in the Family:
“Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the screwball daughter. The son-in-law apparently goes both ways. This guy enters. He’s obviously queer, wears an ascot, but not offensively so. Very clever. Uses nice language. Shows pictures of his trip and all the rest. And so then Arch goes down to the bar. Sees his best friend, who for two years used to play professional football as a linebacker…God, he’s handsome virile, strong, this and that. And then the fairy comes into the bar…”
I know the episode he was talking about. I guess it's nice that Nixon watched. I had Republican grandparents who liked the show, not because they were rooting for Archie but they were amused by Meathead's frustration with him.
I wish they'd show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman again somewhere.
All In The Family was the American re-make of the British Till Death Us Do Part, most of which episodes are on YouTube. Again the conservative working-class father figure (in the British show he works in the docks) is the figure of fun while the left-wing son-in-law doesn't work. Johnny Speight who wrote Till Death Us Do Part was on the left but yes, you can read an anti-working class agenda into it (or at least anti-conservative working class).
ReplyDeleteIn Till Death Us Do Part the docker claims to have fought in WW2 and often hints at having been a spy or served directly under General Montgomery, but in reality he had a reserved occupation and wasn't allowed to fight.