"All in the Family" -- Beloved Classic or Necessary Evil?

For those of you who aren39t old enough to remember anything that happened before the internet came along All in the Family is an American 1970s sitcom created by TV legend Norman Lear and Alan quotBudquot Yorkin It starred O39Connor as super bigot Archie Bunker Jean Stapleton as his wife Edith Sally Struthers as his daughter Gloria and Rob Reiner as his soninlaw Mike Stivic It followed the daytoday goings on of an apparently realistic workingclass American family Remember back then American viewers were much more familiar with the wholesomeness of TV families like the Bradys or the Cleavers and not so much with a television show that basically held a mirror up to their own probably racist homesFast forward to the present day and I39m watching hours and hours of this show trying to see what the world saw back then You know what I saw A super racist old white guy who represents everything I39m against Then I thought about CBS39s The Neighborhood and something I said about it back in 2018In The Neighborhood a white family moves into a predominantly Black neighborhood and is met with resistance by their gentrificationwary nextdoor neighbor Calvin Most of the show is some version of Dave Max Greenfield just trying to befriend Calvin and Calvin Cedric the Entertainer just treating him like crap It39s pretty funny Point is what I said was this quotThe same way that one might imagine being in the opposite sex39s shoes when considering how sexist something is I imagined how I39d feel if Calvin39s character were a white man Suddenly his immediate disapproval of Dave and his fam felt a lot more unsettlingquotYou know why Because now I realize Calvin is just a Black Archie Bunker and guess what Archie was a racist sexist piece of sht with this quotheart of goldquot that everyone keeps talking about but that I39ve been too busy being offended to find I39ve programmed myself to shut people like that out and take solace in the idea that one day society will leave their ancient and bigoted ways behind like the ignorant dinosaurs that they areHowever that realization alone did make me reconsider one other thing Archie Bunker was as important to the development of the television landscape as he was racist and he was racist as hell I mean we39re talking about a guy who bragged about banding together with his racist neighbors and voting to not allow a Jewish family to move into their neighborhood this is literally like season one This is a guy who openly threw out more slurs than I honestly care to type right now and belittled his wife daughter and her husband on the daily He also blindly trusted the government and regularly displayed that unique brand of entitlement for which outoftouch old men are known But again I realized eventually that all of that was amp8230 necessaryNot too long ago comedian Roy Wood Jr said during a set quotYou know one white ally that goes unsung in my opinion is evil white characters in civil rights moviesquot Now of course he39d go on to talk about Leonardo DiCaprio39s contributions to the film quotDjango Unchainedquot but that train of thought got me thinking The villains who do the best jobs make me hate their characters which ultimately serves the greater purpose of the art Robin Williams39 character in Mrs Doubtfire was honestly a financially irresponsible manchild who violated a court order but Sally Field39s portrayal of his exwife Miranda made him seem like a lovable goof and her like kind of a dick The story needed that If Django39s eventual victory was to mean anything spoiler alert I guess then DiCaprio39s villain had to be like the racist which meant that Leo was going to be saying the Nword a lotSo for people to see the error of Archie39s ways they first must see him err and the reason this show has even been revered for so long is because of the honest conversations that were being had on the series and now in front of America No one was talking about rape or divorce or gay rights or women39s lib or the quotNo Jews in our neighborhoodquot meetings that apparently took place because TV was too busy trying to convince us that every white dad was Mike Brady and that every white cop was just like Andy Griffith in MayberryMaybe sitting through an episode of All in the Family now isn39t as much fun for me as it was for viewers back than because I have much more uptodate and relatable content available to me Maybe the reason that content is able to exist at all is because of the fact that All in the Family opened the door for shows like itself to exist a trend that would eventually spawn work like the aforementioned The Neighborhood among many others and maybe the reason that any of that stuff worked at all is because Carroll O39Connor gave us the villain that we needed him to beSo if after 50 years of impacting American culture this show39s greatest achievement is the space it would eventually create for other works to push the envelope and address the issues they feel that they must then I39d say that all of that would have been impossible without Carroll O39Connor being the ally we all needed by giving us the villain we all hope to one day live withoutCheck out Ed Martin39s column about All in the FamilyClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT | BECOME A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTOR

"All in the Family" -- Beloved Classic or Necessary Evil?

Author

Publish date

Channel

Archived in

Ainsley Andrade

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT | BECOME A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTOR

"All in the Family" -- Beloved Classic or Necessary Evil?

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Ainsley Andrade

TAGS:

Cookies