Which was my point. Most people are not introspective.
This is very much like Feiffer’s satirical “How could Nixon have won? I don’t know ANYONE who voted for him?” Most everybody I knew voted for Nixon, which was an accurate reflection of the vote.
Satire is most effective with people who already agree with the satirist. It is primarily self-congratulatory for people who get the joke. And maybe AITF was more effective than it seemed to me for those people whose beliefs were not written in stone, people who could be nudged into a less anti-social belief system. But I never heard someone say, “All in the Family last night really made me think.”
I was only around twelve years old when I saw it, but the episode where Archie failed to make the prestigious Cannonballers bowling team made me think about the outrage I was just starting to hear from adults about affirmative action.
To recap, Archie was thrilled to be going out for the team - they wore yellow shirts, and “I look good in yellow”. Archie returned elated from the tryout, having bowled the same score as the other candidate (Charlie Greene) who was black.
From a lifetime of benefitting from his color, Archie was confident that he would be chosen over an equally qualified black man, and felt no guilt over it. But he was stunned to learn later that pressure from other teams in the league with large minority membership had forced the Cannonballers to pick Charlie.
As always, Edith got the best, and final, laugh of the night. “Don’t feel too bad Archie - Charlie will look good in yellow too.”
Maybe, in addition to people who already agree with the satirist, satire is also effective on people who are just learning about an issue, and making their minds up?
One episode I remember was when Archie’s good friend Stretch Cunningham died and Archie was delivering the eulogy at his funeral. And when he got to the funeral, he was surprised to find out that Stretch had been Jewish.
Archie realized a couple of things. Stretch was his close friend but he hadn’t known him as well as he thought. And Stretch had concealed his religion from Archie which made Archie realize Stretch hadn’t really trusted him. Stretch liked him and had been his friend - but he apparently also thought it was possible that if Archie had known he was Jewish it would have ended their friendship. And Archie was forced to realize that might have been true.
As a young liberal, I was always frustrated by AITF, because Mike Stivic (“Meathead”) never really gave the best arguments for his point of view. He was, in his way, just as shallow as Archie! He’d throw out “talking points” taglines, but he didn’t have any real understanding.
I was too young to realize this was intentional! I always thought the show was conservative political theater, in which the only liberal was being sandbagged and straw-manned!
Now…I get it! The show gently mocks everyone and everything, eschewing all political extremes, in favor of a soft and friendly humanism. Edith was usually the only one to come out of it looking good.
AITF was not aimed only at changing the Archies. IMO it was aimed more at the people who surrounded the Archies, giving them ammunition to rebut his claims and confidence to speak up in the face of his bullshit. It was a way of saying, “Your time is coming to an end, and we’re not going to sit back and take it any more.”
FWIW my dad reports that HIS dad had exactly the kind of introspective moments and changes in attitude the show seemed to be going for, as a result (in part) of watching the show. Sorry, I don’t have further details.
I really love what you wrote. Maybe I’m a lefty (or more conservative than I think or actually an honest-to-god moderate) but I really thought that AITF made fun of EVERYONE. Meathead was a fatuous self-involved liberal; Archie was a almost cartoonish conservative; Edith was a long-suffering martyred wife. The strenghth of the show was that with all that overlay, you could still see the essential humanity of the characters. When push came to shove–they made the right (not necessarily easy given each viewpoint) but the right decision.
After Archie and Edith took custody of Stephanie, her father wrote a letter to her, which Archie intercepted. It contained a passage, “Mrs. Bunker is a fine woman, and eventually, you’ll get used to Archie”.
When Archie signed Stephanie up at the Temple Beth Shalom, he received a Star of David necklace for her. There was comic relief in that he now belonged to the temple.
Archie walked home and saw Stephanie playing on the porch. He gave her the necklace. He walked towards the door, and just before he went inside, he said,
“Hey. Ya know, ya gotta love someone to give 'em one of those. You gotta love… everything about 'em.”
Maybe, AITF was just a damn good comedy and drama show?
Archie was the star of the show and that’s the probably the main reason why some viewers actually identified with him and his views. He wasn’t portrayed as an all-out bad guy and he wasn’t portrayed as a complete loser. He was often making jokes at “Meathead’s” expense and others, just as they were making jokes at his expense.
You can make a show or film with the main character being a murderer, pimp, prostitute, or a gangster, more than likely people are going to identify or sympathize with them, and mostly because they’re written and portrayed with sympathetic qualities.
Archie was the archetypical middle-aged white man of the 70s. The world was changing around him and he had no idea how to deal with it. Things he’d been taught were the truth for most of his life were becoming ideas that were seen as evil and wrong.
He resisted the changes as much as he could, but he wasn’t made of stone. When the truth became obvious, he usually managed to assimilate it enough to come around in his attitudes. The Archie of the 1971 was definitely not the Archie of 1983.
I was a very young child when AITF/AP was airing. My parents weren’t even close to Archie in attitude. But I never hated Archie. It was obvious even to a kid that Archie was able to grow and develop, and did, almost constantly. There’s a soft spot in my heart for the crotchety old hardhead, even 30-odd years after the show ended. A lot of that was Edith…she softened his image, because you knew that he had to have redeeming qualities for as Christian (in the good sense) a woman as Edith to love him like she did.
God, when Meathead came into a little bit of money, I think from a small inheritance, and gave it to the McGovern campaign on the last day when it was a done deal, and got all snotty at Archie for suggesting that he pay some goddamned rent with it… man did I want to punch that tubby smug asshole in the face.
Ohhhhhhh. You wanted to punch Stivic. “Tubby smug asshole” doesn’t narrow it down much. Maybe you’d be clearer with “tubby smug Polak asshole.” I always hated him because he was an embarrassment to all liberals, like Gloria was an embarrassment to all whiny dumb blondes.
… Good point. Although Meathead was generally more “smug” than Archie - Archie could be smug but I wouldn’t call that a defining term. Perhaps “longhair tubby smug asshole”?
Ohhhhhhh. You wanted to punch Stivic. “Tubby smug asshole” doesn’t narrow it down much. Maybe you’d be clearer with “tubby smug Polak asshole.” I always hated him because he was an embarrassment to all liberals, like Gloria was an embarrassment to all whiny dumb blondes.