The CBS network’s Saturday night lineup during the 1973 season featured a veritable Mount Rushmore of American television: All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and The Carol Burnett Show. Perhaps the greatest single evening ever assembled in TV history.
Running from 1971 to 1979, All in the Family set that revolutionary tone, as these shows delivered relevance and social commentary to a television landscape too long suffocated by antiseptic Cleaver-esque families, Bewitching fantasy sitcoms, and rural nostalgia like the Beverly Hillbillies.
Creator Norman Lear brought the era’s political polarization, cultural tensions, and economic malaise into the more manageable terrain of TV for Americans to talk through in their own living rooms. The Bunker family’s weekly clashes encouraged uncomfortable conversations about rapid social changes, ultimately pointing to a potential path forward.
So, stifle yourself meatheads. I’m Joel Rhodes “Telling History.”
All in the Family was based on a British show, but the working-class Bunkers of Queens New York – reactionary Archie, ditzy Edith, head strong Gloria, and hippy Michael – spoke directly to the generational conflicts and cultural war animating our nation in the late Vietnam era.
Archie is a classic buffoon character – heir to the Honeymooner’s Ralph Kramden and godfather of Homer Simpson. Yet this card-carrying member of Nixon’s “Silent Majority” symbolized the “bunker” mentality and “status panic” of millions of disillusioned Americans feeling claustrophobic and resentful after the sixties. Stagflation blocked their upward mobility at the same time they were being asked to make room at the economic table for previously marginalized groups – women and people of color – made more visible and economically competitive by rights-based social movements; seemingly leaving Archie with a smaller slice of a shrinking economic pie.
As he passively-aggressively lashed out at imagined enemies and competitors – in language and racial slurs that clang offkey in 21st century ears – All in the Family broke new television ground discussing racism, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, abortion, Vietnam and Watergate; one of a handful of TV’s most influential shows.
In a testament to the polarization and growing conservative mood of the 1970s, Lear actually thought the left-leaning son-in-law character Michael Stivik – who Archie denigrated as meathead – would be the show’s hero; never envisioning Archie as the star.
But Lear gave Archie – played by Carroll O’Connor – a certain humanity. Despite all his shortcomings, he was an endearing bigot who still loved America and his family, even as both held him accountable for such ignorance and prejudice.
This dynamic clearly stuck a chord with Americans, making Archie a touchstone in our cultural wars. Much like Charles Lindbergh in the 1920s, Bunker appealed to both sides of our divided nation, as Americans across the spectrum projected their own values and attitudes on him. Traditional Americans longing for the good ‘ol days identified with Archie Bunker railing against social changes he couldn’t stop as the show’s opening theme “Those Were the Days” attested. They elevated him to hero. On the other hand, progressive Americans embracing the future branded him a bigoted, small-minded villain.
Yet both watched, giving the show an enormous and enduring audience. And like the Bunkers, All in the Family offered a pathway for reconciliation, suggesting that our gaps might be bridged through family. Appropriately enough, Edith and Archie’s living room chairs still sit side-by-side in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
