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The Vanishing TV Family
By John W. Kennedy | August 12, 2008
I don’t watch much television, at least new shows. Beyond Jeopardy! and Monk, there’s not much I find to my liking.
But recently I subjected myself to watching all sorts of current fare for the sake of research. In a TPE feature story that will be in Sunday’s edition, I write about how television in the past 50 years has changed in its depiction of the American family. Lately, it’s not a flattering portrait.
While the typical 1950s TV wife and mother might have been romanticized a bit too much, Stephen Winzenburg, who has been teaching students about the impact of the small screen for a quarter century, says U.S. Census data bears out that TV reflected society. Most women did stay home, raise families, cook and clean half a century ago.
Some of my favorite series in the past have dealt with life on the home front, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Waltons and The Wonder Years. Family-themed shows have been top-rated in the Nielsen ratings throughout most of the history of the medium, starting with I Love Lucy in the 1950s, to The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show in the 1960s, All in the Family and Happy Days in the 1970s, to Dallas and The Cosby Show in the 1980s.
The recently concluded TV season didn’t have a lot of wholesome family programs. But I checked them out so I would know a bit about what I wrote. Two and a Half Men again finished as the highest-rated sitcom last season. A large portion of the show follows hedonistic womanizing by one of the brothers.
Then there’s the highest-rated scripted series, Desperate Housewives, which is really a campy soap opera. The series focuses on the sexual frustrations and desires of four women in one toney neighborhood.
And of course there’s Brothers and Sisters, which in May gave us TV’s first primetime same-sex commitment ceremony.
I think I’ll stick to my DVD collections of The Waltons from the 1970s.
On Wednesday, I’ll talk about why the current state of TV comedy isn’t a laughing matter.
Topics: television |
August 12th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Monk is fun to watch. Lucy was OK, until it moved into the post-divorce episodes, which had a bitter undertone.
In recent years, as the meaningless sex, violence and gay agenda has dominated network shows, my wife and I have found escape in the Discovery channel (Dirty Jobs, Most Dangerous Catch), and reading.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Then of course there is the Style network, which is all my sister’s watch…