TELEVISION: King Lear
Terzian, Philip
KING LEAR TELEVISION Norman Lear recently announced his retirement from television production, and though the event may prove tO be his own version of Marlene Dietrich's farewell tours, and...
...He is assailed by problems that are, in their capacity to turn anyone into an Archie Bunker, quite genuine...
...or, put another way, it was conceived as an amusing vehicle for a serious ideamthe nonsense of bigotry--and built resolutely around that worthy goal...
...He invites us to laugh at his creations, not with them, and that is too easy to be anything but fraudulent...
...What this amounts to is that Norman Lear invites us--in fact, compels us--to laugh at Archie Bunker, and inadvertently it elicits our sympathy...
...Indeed, the Smithsonian recently acquired Archie Bunker's easy chair for its collection, so it is fair to say that Norman Lear has become an institution Of American mass culture...
...This is not comedy in any pure sense of the word, but social animosity, and cruelty, and it has been alleged to lighten our national psychic load...
...We don't sit back and enjoy it...
...I think, instead, it has added to it...
...to somehow miss the point, to say so much without saying what is simply true: we like to laugh, this makes us laugh...
...Of course, Norman Lear's work will carry on after him...
...It is also what motivates all his shows: racial animosity in The le#ersons, sexual animosity in Maude, class animosity in Mary Hartman, MAry Hartmat...
...I imagine the genre he has concocted will be with us for some time to come...
...He is surrounded by high-minded bores, including a wife who serves as a sort of mouthpiece for a brainless variety of feminism, and a daughter and son-in-law ~r with the wisdom of youth~ seek always to show him the error of his ways...
...What are they laughing at...
...What intrigues me about it is that it was not, in the beginning, intended to be funny...
...All in the Family, by reversing the comic process, outwits itself...
...Part of the irresponsibility of our current epoch seems to be that we seek again to be diverted for the sake of diversion: that entertainment need not promote a worthy goal, apart from entertainment itself, which seems worthy enough...
...What exactly could it be that makes All in the Family or Maude or The Ye#ersons amusing...
...PHILIP TERZIAN 21 July 1978:470...
...The future, then, grows more tantalizing with each week we continue to he pinned down by Norman Lear hilarity...
...Can we expect a revival of something like The Honeymooners which, in its crude way, has survived quite nicely into the era of Rhoda, by way of syndication...
...All in the Family brought Norman Lear to prominence when it began r 1971, and it has remained his flagship...
...He sets up his characters like a carnival barker, and appeals to some very low instincts...
...After all...
...The laughter of the "live studio audience" is the laughter of revenge and derision...
...It does, but surely the wrong lesson, for we have managed to assuage one form by practicing another...
...Television seems to detect social trends at least a few years after they have passed, and so it is that Commonweal: 469 Norman Lear, the colossus of the '70s, has in fact been a purveyor of a sense of the '60s--a notion that art, if that is quite the word for it, somehow serves best as an instrument of social change...
...The program presents him as less than a comic figurenit makes fun of him in a very unsubfle fashion, from his loudly flushing toilet to his perpetual defeats at the hands of smirking Puerto Rieans/blacks/ homosexuals/wonderwomen, etc...
...The problem with television is that its awareness of such things is sufficiently tardy as to be, in any significant sense, irrelevant: it only puts its stamp on presumption, or at least presumptions that agree with a majority of its viewers...
...Does this, by way of entertainment, teach us about bigotry...
...KING LEAR TELEVISION Norman Lear recently announced his retirement from television production, and though the event may prove tO be his own version of Marlene Dietrich's farewell tours, and though he has already been the subject of several columns, it is nonetheless an occasion worth pondering...
...people, after all, used to laugh at lunatics (and still do), and the sounds that come from Norman Lear's audiences have a scornful ring to them, it seems to me...
...the world is full of such mysterious things that we needn't try too hard to demonstrate their insanity...
...A definition of comedy is an insurmountable obstacle...
...He is obviously rather superstitious about it, for while his other shows change direction violently, cast off characters with abandon and generally experiment with their formulas, All in the Family has remained ever the same...
...etc., all of whom take great delight in making an ass of this wounded and bitter man, and winking at the audience...
...A humorist ought to regard a serious matter and treat it with irony, or turn it on its head and make it bizarre...
...Archie Bunker is a lower-middle-class resident of Queens, full of bile and frustration, and a holder of views about social matters shared, I fear, with all too many people...
...Surely the Iongest and dullest book I have ever read is Max Eastman's Enjoyment of Laughter--any analysis, whether incisive or instinctive, is bound, by its very intention...
...stock characters, a wisecracking brother-in-law, dissembling neighbor, maniacal dentist...
...Viewers of the future may wonder about its appeal, and may wonder further about what exactly it was trying to do...
...it is there all too plain to see, and can not be over-described...
...we lean forward with a gleam in our eye, and that is disconcerting...
...The motive, it seems to me, says a great deal about the phenomenon...
...Television cothedy, for good or ill, has been dominated by him in this decade...
...It is too much to hope for wit, but at least we can expect some humor...
...Watching Norman Lear's creations over the past few years I have sometimes asked myself why his audience is laughing...
...To that end, I wish him the very best, but I'm glad he is going away, if only for a while...
...Norman Lear calls for an antidote, and it is as clear and simple as laughter itself: some pratfalls, jokes, familiar phrases...
...surely he has had his imita= tors...
...What it amounts to as well is the fatal flaw in Norman Lear...
Vol. 105 • July 1978 • No. 14
