Assignment #4 ("All in the Family")

“All in the Family” differs from modern family sitcoms in its sense of reality. It is done in a very calm, low context style featuring ‘situations’ based in common occurrences. A show like “Modern Family”, however, is quite different. The characters are often placed in extreme situations, to hold the audience’s interest before delivering the moral message. For example, the “All in the Family” episode featured Archie at home and his favorite bar. Whereas in the relatively recent show “Family Matters”, the main characters went on a vacation in the mountains where their cottage was missing a wall; thus allowing for the bitter cold and drifting snow to fill the room. “All in the Family” does not take their characters into such extreme situations. Perhaps, considering its social agenda, the writers felt having such outrageous situations would detract from the character’s credibility. This would make their goal of social advancement all the more difficult.

Despite the differences in the ‘spiciness’ of the circumstances featured in “All in the Family”, the use of ‘shock factors’ remains prevalent in the modern sit-com. The case and point is “Modern Family”, which is a show basically built with families that are considered outside the norm. There’s a gay couple, an interracial couple with a large age gap, and the classic dysfunctional white family; all of which serve to redefine the accepted idea of family.

Where the Archie Bunker character is an exercise in bigotry in the hopes of denouncing it, the ‘modern’ families is a waltz with alternative life-styles in an effort to normalize them.

While this mentality of social progressivism remains the same, the topics addressed do not. The current regime of television is careful to avoid certain offensive content, the whole ‘politically correct’ issue, and bigotry is a big one. While modern TV will occasionally feature a bigot character, they are consistently demonized and judged. Archie Bunker, however, is a protagonist, he is the character the audience is supposed to identify and sympathize with. He is unapologetic about his flagrant bigotries, despite the fact that he is designed as a tool to fight such hate. The candid and unabashed use of slurs and insults would never make it through onto today’s networks. It is the shame of our nation; a nation that wants so desperately to believe that mainstream racism is dead. The nature of modern networks will not allow for another Archie Bunker. He is simply too raw for modern TV, he is a side of us all that we would rather not admit to.

Image citations:

http://www.alamo.edu/pac/faculty/pmyers/hist1302/1301Theme11.html

http://www.screenshotblog.com/posters/family-matters-1989/

http://www.tvfanatic.com/gallery/modern-family-poster/