buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 6:11:11 AM

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Commenters on popular culture are often given to celebrating that popular entertainment has "moved away" from the phony wholesomeness of white American suburban families.  Those who do this usually invoke "Leave it to Beaver," "Father Knows Best," and, perhaps, "Ozzie and Harriet."  They seem not to realize that the viewers of these shows knew perfectly well that the shows less reflected reality than expressed an ideal towards which the viewers were striving and hoped, in some ways, to eventually attain. 

Interestingly, however, these shows were outnumbered, in their own time, by portrayals of non-traditional families---usually single-father households.   "The Andy Griffith Show," "My Three Sons," "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," "Family Affair," and "The Rifleman" all depict single fathers attempting to raise young children---sometimes with a loyal female retainer (Aunt Bee in "Andy Griffith"), but more often with a male retainer ("Bub," then "Uncle Charlie" in "My Three Sons," and "Mr. French" in "Family Affair").  

What happened to these men's wives is seldom discussed; it is more or less implied that they are widowers, not divorcees, but one wonders whether there was some plague stalking wives or an epidemic of death by childbirth sometime in the early '50s to result in so many single-father households.  Single-mother households don't really get going until "The Partridge Family" and "Julia," though the latter is usually more celebrated for breaking color lines.

In any event, it seems that despite the conventional wisdom of usually-Left-leaning commenters on popular culture, even during the Golden Age of Suburbia the depiction of intact, conventional families was very much a minority subject in popular entertainment.

revobob 3/8/2020 8:40:03 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 1:  Buzz- It seems to me that the entertainment industry is so totally lacking in creativity and original thought that their two current choices seem to be either disinterring the corpses of earlier shows and painting their waxen cheeks with new CGI tech, or trying to come up with new ways to shock us into watching. 

More and more shows are using obvious minority (often in sexual practices) characters playing in what could as easily be 'normal' roles. I agree that the shows you cite were exaggerated in their white bread mainstreaminess, but they also adhered to a Judeo-Christian heritage that this country was founded on. This was depicted as a desirable example to emulate. I don't have a serious problem with portraying unusual relationships tolerantly (although such shows usually get turned off in my house), but as I have said here before I would like the entertainment demographics to match real world demographics. 

revobob 3/8/2020 8:40:05 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 1:  Buzz- It seems to me that the entertainment industry is so totally lacking in creativity and original thought that their two current choices seem to be either disinterring the corpses of earlier shows and painting their waxen cheeks with new CGI tech, or trying to come up with new ways to shock us into watching. 

More and more shows are using obvious minority (often in sexual practices) characters playing in what could as easily be 'normal' roles. I agree that the shows you cite were exaggerated in their white bread mainstreaminess, but they also adhered to a Judeo-Christian heritage that this country was founded on. This was depicted as a desirable example to emulate. I don't have a serious problem with portraying unusual relationships tolerantly (although such shows usually get turned off in my house), but as I have said here before I would like the entertainment demographics to match real world demographics. 

Occasional Reader 3/8/2020 10:11:41 AM

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In #3 revobob said: so totally lacking in creativity

/some irony in that being a double post

doppelganglander 3/8/2020 10:26:59 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 1:

The trope of the orphaned or motherless hero goes back a long way in Western culture. Off the top of my head, there's David Copperfield, Harry Potter, Bruce Wayne/Batman, Romulus and Remus, Oedipus (or so he thought), and more. Being orphaned or losing a mother (often in childbirth) was much more common in the past. Mothers in literature are an obstacle to the Call to Adventure - how are you going to travel to far lands and bring back boons for your people if Mom makes you come home in time for dinner?

This is also where stepmothers come in. In fairy tales, they are almost uniformly evil because they represent the bad side of mothers everywhere. It's not safe to think of your own mom as anything less than loving, selfless, gentle, and kind. All those qualities get dumped on stepmothers. 

lucius septimius 3/8/2020 10:38:22 AM

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Reply to doppelganglander in 5:

buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 12:30:18 PM

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Reply to revobob in 2: Reply to doppelganglander in 5:

I was thinking not so much of the Orphaned Hero as the prevalence of the Widowed/Single Father---and the number of times that the Widowed Father was the lead, instead of Father As the Head of a Nuclear Family Household.

This being Women's History Month, it is the month where the traditional greeting is, "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels!"---a statement that could only be made by someone who has never seen an Astaire/Rogers film, or was blinded by ideology while doing so.  The Astaire/Rogers collaborations were noteworthy for the amount of time they dance side by side as equals, over and above the fact that Rogers is usually the one calling the shots in their onscreen relationships.  Particularly in the pre-Code era, but even afterwards, films were replete with strong women who gave back at least as good as they got.

Going back to the family relationships displayed in early TV, it seems to me that, just as the "historians" most heard from during the preceding Black History Month have "blacked out," if you'll pardon the expression, the history of black achievement between the era of Harriet Tubman and, maybe, Booker T. Washington until Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King came on the scene (thus depriving most people of any knowledge of an era filled with black artists of stunning achievement), the facile declarations by so many supposedly-knowledgeable popular-culture "historians" that women were "invisible" or "victims" in pop culture until the explosion of the "Women's Movement" in the 1960s is also a gross distortion done for a political end.  While the genre phenomenon of the Single Father that I mentioned originally is interesting, and deserves to be examined without lapsing into anti-patriarchy nonsense, it is useful to remember that during this so-called era of female oppression and invisibility Alice Kramden was alway the moral and intellectual superior to her blowhard husband, and that Molly Goldberg was very much the center of, and head of, the extended family in the original "Goldbergs." 

Basically, I'm merely trying to urge people to think of films and television shows in terms of how they fit into, or break the mold of, a genre---and to consider, during these "history months," how much we are told to think about these entertainments, and the eras in which they were made, is misrepresentation or distortion done for political ends.

Occasional Reader 3/8/2020 2:27:31 PM

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In #1 buzzsawmonkey said: My Three Sons," "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," "Family Affair,"

Now there are three television programs that I haven’t thought about in years, despite having watched them pretty regularly when I was a kid. So, thanks for the memories.

buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 2:43:53 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 9:

You're welcome.  

A great deal of "The Andy Griffith Show," in particular, involves single-father Andy trying to teach his son various moral precepts---sometimes with difficulty.  Most of the other shows usually involve him in trying to resolve a difficulty not only peacefully, but without causing the people involved unnecessary embarrassment.  

It's a very interesting show---the more so since it is a genuinely "multicultural" production: it's produced by DesiLu, which was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's company, in conjunction with Danny Thomas---and a lot of the shows are directed by Sheldon Leonard (Nick the bartender in "It's a Wonderful Life").  So...you've got a show produced by an American woman, a Cuban, a Lebanese Christian, with a Jew directing---a show about American Southerners.  

lucius septimius 3/8/2020 2:51:20 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 10:

For me there was always some cognitive dissonance with that show, given that I had an Aunt Bea and she was a train wreck, married and divorced at least seven times and lived one step ahead of the bill collectors for 80 years.

doppelganglander 3/8/2020 3:12:57 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 7:

+++++++!!!

buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 3:25:16 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 7:

That's hilarious.  For some reason it reminds me of some old Peter Cook routine, in which he recounts the deterioration of some unfortunate, which ends, "...and now he lives his life as a rake, sleeping in leaves at the bottom of the garden. If anyone steps on him he jumps up and hits them in the nose."

doppelganglander 3/8/2020 3:26:44 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

Excellent points. The Single Father tropes may be a type of Fish Out of Water. You have the comedic potential of dad doing "women's work" (probably poorly, hence the presence of Mr. French and Uncle Charlie with their unique qualifications for the job). At the same time, fathers have the opportunity to show unexpected tenderness for their children, instead of the usual role of disciplinarian. 

The Kramdens are an interesting case. Ralph constantly threatens to send Alice "to the moon" with a punch "right in the kisser," yet you know he'd never lay a hand on her. Feminists see domestic violence and women being controlled through fear. I see a woman who is dominant in her relationship and gets what she wants. At the end of the day, Ralph always admits "you're the greatest, baby." The Honeymooners is also an early example of the Hot, Smart Wife who is inexplicably married to the Incompetent Schlub. The King of Queens is a recent example, along with a raft of commercials featuring the dad who can't operate a washing machine.

buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 3:32:13 PM

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In #14 doppelganglander said: The King of Queens is a recent example, along with a raft of commercials featuring the dad who can't operate a washing machine.

Katharine Hepburn's failure to cook breakfast for Spencer Tracy in the closing scene of "Woman of the Year" is an interesting reversal of that trope.

lucius septimius 3/8/2020 3:46:03 PM

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Reply to doppelganglander in 14:

In the widower father category, another interesting case is Gidget, especially the overbearing married older sister who tries to be mom.

buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 3:46:28 PM

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By the way, since this is "Women's History Month," let us take a moment to look at the inspiring saga of Lena Himmelstein Bryant Malsin, the founder of Lane Bryant.

Starting out on a borrowed $300 in a $12.50 a month storefront, her concentrating on maternity dresses had her grossing $50,000 a year a mere 6 years later.  

Like Gertrude Berg, creator of, scriptwriter for, and star of "The Goldbergs," first on radio and then on television, she was a woman who made her own way, very successfully, during the era that the women's movement types would have us believe was nothing but a black hole of groaning oppression.

buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 4:07:19 PM

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By the way---one of the things worth considering about Lena Bryant and the company she created is not only that she triumphed over adversity and did well for herself (while creating a company that did well for its employees also), but that her creation and popularizing of maternity wear was an incredibly liberating thing for women of that day.  

It was not uncommon for women then to be "confined" during the later months of pregnancy, i.e., not to be seen in public as that was considered risque if not actually obscene.  By her making maternity wear that was "street respectable," more women had more personal freedom.

Kosh's Shadow 3/8/2020 4:17:00 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 11:

On my mother's side, I had 5 maiden aunts. My mother was the most normal from that family. (They should have sued producers of Party of Five, but died before the show was on)

Two uncles, one died before I was born, but left behind a stamp collection, various German items collected in Iceland or somewhere else in WWII, and a lamp made of cartridges of various sizes.

Other uncle had two daughters, wife died when they were young. One was in the same amateur theater group with Leonard Nimoy.

Picture of the lamp:

doppelganglander 3/8/2020 4:33:20 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 16:

In the novels and films, as in real life, Gidget has both parents. The older sister appears in the first novel but not the subsequent books or movies. I'm not sure why they killed off mom and reintroduced the sister in the series.

The backstory of Gidget is fascinating. The author and his wife were Czechoslovakian Jews who fled Hitler. For all her girlishness, Gidget is portrayed as a bit of a feminist icon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gidget 

buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 4:38:45 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 19:

Cool stuff.  

Cartridge/shell casing art is a whole collecting sub-genre; I've seen examples of Arts & Crafts-style vases made from WWI shells, and several pieces which had hammered designs---including one from the Israeli War of Independence which had a Hebrew inscription hammered into it.

Let me point out that the socket on that lamp has a thread around its top, which was used back in the day to hold a shade.  Such shades are increasingly hard to find, but if you remove the upper portion of the socket (it will snap out), and replace it with a more-modern upper that has the holders for a lampshade "harp" (any really good lamp store should have, or be able to get, one in solid brass, to match the rest of the socket), you can add the harp and a modern shade and actually get some use out of it.  If the switch is shot (it could be, by now) the entire socket is easily replaced.

Kosh's Shadow 3/8/2020 4:59:11 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 21:

I probably have a shade that fits it.

And it works, last time I tried.

buzzsawmonkey 3/8/2020 5:15:50 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 22:

Great!  I hate to see an historic item like that not in use.