My parents grew up in the age of television, but those early TVs were black-and-white consoles and they portrayed WHITES ONLY doing very middle to upper class things. I even grew up watching reruns of the famous series from their generation, like Leave It To Beaver, My Three Sons and Father Knows Best. Those shows were produced by old, white dudes, the ones who ran Hollywood. The networks hired censors to ensure that messages stayed away from anything slightly controversial. It was white bread, milk toast, whitewashed PROPAGANDA! It was McCarthyism, red scare, homophobic, xenophobic, every phobic you can name. It was all “Jeepers, Wally!” and “Aw, knock it off, Beave!”
Then America experienced a cultural revolution. Shows like Love American Style, reflected the changing social mores. Family shows, like The Brady Bunch, showed a happy, blended family run by two divorcees. It was a far cry from June and Ward Cleaver. TVs were now in full color and in multiples in American households. We were about to become the MTV generation.
I would have never thought of The Brady’s as groundbreaking, but as I thought about it last night in bed, it really kind of was. In the 1970’s, we hadn’t seen single-parent families represented, nor blended families and certainly no same-sex couples.
Fast forward to the generation starting their families now. They grew up with Modern Families, where a gay male couple get married and adopt an Asian daughter. Long gone are the network censors, yet the Hollywood moguls are still mostly old and white. The diversity represented on cable, Internet and streaming series is GALAXIES from Leave It To Beaver!
Heck, I grew up wondering where the people of color were in television and movies. But save for another blog post on racial diversity. Social mores held so dear in the 1950s and 60s have long since been shattered. And those antiquated early series that were no more than corporate-sponsored propaganda are relics of that bygone era. Good riddance. Not everyone in America is rich and lily white.
But it’s those faux stereotypes that push otherwise well-meaning older folks to pine for the good ol’ days. What was so good about them? Ask an African American person who might have grown up in that bygone era, the child of poor share croppers. They were never represented on those black-and-white consoles.
What people of my parents’ generation don’t realize is that they were spoonfed propaganda for so long that they bought into it. Many of them grew up with blinders on. Many still CHOOSE to wear them. They don’t think gay male couples existed back then and wanted to live out in the open as now?
It’s ridiculous! There were middle class African American families living in American cities, too. But where were they represented in popular culture? It was whitewashed, McCarthy-like propaganda. And because old people WISHED it was really like Leave It To Beaver, they long to return America back to the 1950s.
Think about it.
