All in the Family

“All In The Family”

Eleanor (Ruby) Francis

March 1, 2013

In January 1971 American families were welcomed into the home of the Bunker family, a white middle-class family living in Queens.  The sitcom, All in the Family, was amazingly successful with a colorful cast of characters led by Archie, the bigot that America tuned in to watch weekly for five years in anticipation of comic relief about sensitive issues.  During a time of racial inequity in the “land of the free and the home of the brave” All in the Family brought an unexpected truth to television as it addressed racism, homosexuality, sex and other subjects that, at that time, were not for prime-time.  Norman Lear, the show’s creator intended for the comedy to help relieve racial tension at a time when there was still a great deal of inequality in America.

The Bunker family included Archie, “a conservative, superpatriotic, working-class American who brow beats his kind, but, ‘ “dingbat” ‘ wife, Edith” (Vidmar and Rokeach 36).  Archie was quite masterful in the use of racial slurs, using terms like coloreds, spades, specks to describe Blacks and Jews.  Daughter, Gloria and son-in-law, Mike, an unemployed college student lived in the Bunker home, as well.  Mike, referred to as “Meathead” and “Polack”, regularly provided “effective rebuttal” to Archie’s off-handed comments (Vidmar and Rokeach 36).

        “Preferred”, or “dominant reading”, used in reception studies, is defined as the “producer-intended meaning of a piece of content; assumed to reinforce the status quo” (Baran and Davis 258).  “Reception studies” are “audience-centered and focus on how various types of audience members make sense of specific forms of content” (257).  The intention of Lear was to use the comedic tirades of Archie to soften the country’s racial divide, at least for 30 minutes, one night per week.  According to Vidmar and Rokeach, Lear intended for Mike’s responses to Archie’s “convoluted” thinking to make sense thus changing society’s ideas about racism.  Bringing bigotry out in the open and making fun of it would and have people talking about it and give viewers insight into their own prejudices.  These factors would, according to Lear’s line of thinking, reduce audience prejudices (Lear qtd. in Vladmear and Rokeach 36).  

One example of such open bigotry is clear in the 1972 episode with Sammy Davis, Jr.  At a point in the show there was a dialogue between Archie and Sammy about whether Archie was prejudiced as he had been told by Mike and Gloria.  He asked Sammy if he looked prejudiced.   Sammy replied, “Oh Archie, don't tell me you're really paying attention to those young kids. What do they know? I mean, you prejudiced? Look, if you were prejudiced, Archie, when I came into your house, you would have called me a coon or a nigger. But you didn't say that. I heard you clear as a bell. Right straight out, you said "colored."  Archie’s response was, “Yeah, that’s what I done all right” (Lear, All in the Family).  Archie, the family patriarch, would make these kinds of comments with no remorse as if he was a man who confidently knew no better.  That’s what made the show so funny to non-prejudiced people.  His clear ignorance about the ever evolving world around him left him stuck in a time warp where he believed, according to the Bible, that “God put you [coloreds] over in Africa; he put the rest in all the white countries” (Lear, All in the Family).