In 1971, I told my little brother that I was saving money to send him to Canada. I was 12 years old, and he was only 8, but the Vietnam War had always been the backdrop to our then-young lives. I figured it was only a matter of time before he would have to go. When I told him of my plan, he told me he wanted to go. I asked him if he knew what he would be fighting for. He said, “America” — plus, he would get to carry a gun. It seemed to me that America and its guns are what killed those four kids at Kent State the year before, the women and children of My Lai, and Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. But it didn’t matter. He was all “America: Love It or Leave It,” while I was “War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.” It’s still that way.
That conversation was the first time the contentious, topsy-turvy outside world showed itself inside our house. This was not an exchange unique to our family; it was appearing in households, workplaces, and public places throughout the nation. This was the world that a domestic comedy called All in the Family debuted in, irrevocably changing the face of network television.
By modern standards, All in the Family seems toothless, perhaps even quaint. But when it premiered on January 12, 1971, it was a welcome breath of fresh air. It featured the now-iconic Archie Bunker, a working Joe played by Carroll O’Connor, who died last week of a heart attack. Archie Bunker was unlike the television father figures who came before him. Archie lost his temper, drank beer, and ruled with an iron fist. He had “pet” names for everybody in his life. He called his ditzy wife Edith (Maureen Stapleton) Dingbat. His grown daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) was Little Goil. For his son-in-law, the college-educated liberal Michael Stivic (Rob Reiner), he had the best nickname of all: Meathead. But he had other names, too: “Jungle bunny,” “spade,” “coloreds,” “kike,” “spic,” and “chink” were the choice names he had for people of color.
It was horrifying to hear someone on television use that language — I still shudder when I remember the first time I heard Archie Bunker say “spic” — but it was also a moment of opening tightly closed doors and letting some air into the room. Television in the Fifties and Sixties was filled with hermetically sealed programs and sanitized portrayals of happy (white) families, where “challenges” were settled in 30 minutes, and everyone lived happily ever after. The real world was something else entirely. As the evening news brought scenes of death and anger, and cities of every size experienced their share of race and anti-war riots, tuning in to “happy, all-American life” on the small screen was becoming exceedingly preposterous.
All in the Family wasn’t an immediate hit. Some people of color worried that Archie Bunker’s bigotry would be deemed acceptable, while liberals said that Archie’s behavior was a perfect example of how absurd prejudice was. I don’t recall having a deeply critical view of the show at age 12, but I do remember a feeling of relief. A relief that formerly forbidden topics were being discussed in the open instead of being hidden as if they didn’t exist. What made Carroll O’Connor brilliant was that he infused the boorish Archie with a sense of feeling powerless in a very troubled world, a feeling, I think, most people at the time, no matter their racial, ethnic, or social background, could relate to.
In retrospect, some of the All in the Family episodes were highly moralistic. However, the show was most brilliant in episodes like “Sammy’s Visit.” In this episode, Archie’s conflicted ideas of race and celebrity clash when Sammy Davis Jr. comes to his home to retrieve a briefcase left in Archie’s cab. In short order, Davis understands where Archie stands on race:
Archie Bunker: Now, no prejudice intended, but I always check with the Bible on these here things. I think that, I mean if God had meant for us to be together he’d a put us together. But look what he done. He put you over in Africa, and put the rest of us in all the white countries.
Sammy Davis Jr.: Well, he must’ve told ’em where we were because somebody came and got us.
Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker was such a deeply refined character that when he left the role in 1983 and later took on the role of Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night (1988-95), it was like a splash of cold water. He had so embodied Archie, it was difficult to see O’Connor as any other character. Now that O’Connor has passed on, it’s difficult to believe that it came so soon.
Our Friend, the Chicken
We’ve all seen those horrifying segments on news programs about the poultry industry, which send us careening toward the tofu aisle. Feature films like Chicken Run entertain with their portrayal of poultry as fussy but good-hearted birds who just want to live their lives outside a pot pie. But when you see The Natural History of the Chicken, your ideas about the so-called innocuous farm animal will change. A chicken sandwich will no longer just be a chicken sandwich. It might be someone’s friend.
Critically praised at this year’s Sundance Festival and shown at the Alamo Drafthouse this year as part of the Texas Documentary Tour, this Mark Lewis film deftly blends sublimely colorful visuals with heartfelt narratives to reveal how chickens are as unique and complex as humans. A delightful alternative to prime-time reruns and lackluster summer replacements, The Natural History of the Chicken airs July 11, 9pm, on PBS.
E-mail Belinda Acosta at tveye@austinchronicle.com
This article appears in June 29 • 2001.