for four or more years, the 1960s gave us twenty-four such "hits."¹⁶

By breaking down yearly production figures in terms of motifs, we discover a clear movement away from the domestic toward the variant mode. From 1955 to 1960, the bulk of comedy production (as much as 95 percent) was in the domestic mode, the family comedy being the prevailing motif. Variant comedies were rare. But from 1964 to 1967, the per-

 A. SERIATION GRAPH OF THREE SITUATION COMEDY VARIANT MOTIFS

centage of domestic comedies fell as low as 41 percent while variant motifs gained favor, reaching a high in 1965 of 55 percent. The 1960s, then, saw the sharp rise of the variant mode which, during a brief period of intense production, pushed aside the normal fare of domesticity. The technique of seriation graphing, used by James Deetz and others to measure the popularity of such cultural artifacts as gravestones, demonstrates the ebb and flow of situation comedy subgenres and provides a visual representation of the decade’s preferences (See Chart II). The hour-glass shape of domestic comedy production indicates a decrease corresponding to the "squat battleship" shape of Variant production which is, according to Deetz, "typical of popular culture and rapid change."¹⁷ Overall, the 1960s brought increased comedy production,

125

experimentation with variations on the I 950s formula, a general resuscitation of the situation comedy, and a heightened success rate. It was a renaissance for comedy.

Various causes contributed to this startling productivity. To begin with, audiences were tiring of television’s increasing diet of westerns, sex, and violence.¹⁸ The medium had become, to use FCC Chairman Newton Minow’s phrase, "a vast wasteland of . . . formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, and sadism."¹⁹ And in 1961 when Senator Thomas Dodd’s subcommittee on juvenile delinquency castigated television violence as a social dilemma, network executives judiciously toned down their programming. As Erik Barnouw contends, the "rash of new comedy telefilms" was part of this therapeutic measure.²⁰

While this observation accounts for the shift to comedy, it does not explain the advent of the Variant Mode of situation comedy and its peculiar history. Initially, these variants served as mild rebuffs of authoritarianism. But by the end of the decade, they developed into conservative jeremiads attempting to call dissenting sectors of our culture back into the fold. In large measure the jeremiads failed, for by

Chart II

B. SERIATION GRAPH OF TOTAL DOMESTIC MODE AND VARIANT MODE COMEDIES

126

1968, when protest against the Vietnam War became dramatically visible to the nation during the Democratic Convention, situation comedy audiences began to turn away from the once-popular variants. To fully comprehend this development we must examine the comedy formula in terms of our culture’s dissolving family unit and the growing confrontation between liberal and conservative factions, problems which became highly pronounced in the I 960s. The evolution of the American situation comedy, then, follows four phases: the weakening of the conservative Domestic Mode comedy, the development of the initially liberal Variant Mode, the shift in the variant motifs toward pronounced conservative prlnciples, and the demise of the Variant Mode.

*  *  *

During the quiet years of the 1950s, the Domestic Mode comedy thrived with its dominant motif, the family comedy, sanctifying the insular, three- or four-person family unit. But by the mid-sixties the family motif was passé. Although some attempts were made to adapt it to the decade’s needs, it eventually vanished, giving way to the single parent-child motif. Various social factors caused the shifts within the Domestic Mode. As the nation liberalized under Kennedy’s "New Frontier" and Johnson’s "Great Society," and as the post-war baby boom matured into "the generation gap," the mystique of parental authority and white domesticity dissolved. Early on, the country’s most vocal youths rejected what they considered to be the establishment’s most sacred cows: conformity and upward mobility. Not only were parents and children at odds, but students and workers divided into liberal and conservative ranks. The confusion of social and political factions resulted in peace marches and sit-ins that increased in intensity and violence as the Vietnam War progressed.

Such activism was anathema to the family comedy. Whereas youths from the Free Speech Movement onward sought freedom of expression through thoroughly innovative means (love-ins, rock music, drugs, and political demonstrations), the domesticated situation comedy represented the growth of freedom and individualism within the highly controlled context of the family. But what seemed obvious to all was that the nation’s soaring divorce rate had turned the traditional family unit into an antiquated social concept. For those over as well as under thirty, the bromides of domestic comedy were not only outmoded but false. In general, the family comedy was unable to adapt its tired conservativism to the spirit of the times, and by the 1967 and 1968 seasons, no family comedies aired at all. One program, however, portrayed a healthy and

127

progressive family, well-attuned to the sentiments of the liberal age. For a while, it managed to preserve the family motif’s appeal.

As a situation comedy, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) is unique in that it successfully divides its attention between both worlds of home and work, offering audiences shifting angles of comic vision rarely found in earlier family comedies. Also unique for its day is that Rob Petrie, the mediating character who masters both realms, is both a "climber" in his profession as a comedy writer and a "solid citizen" of the Westchester suburbs. Like earlier protagonists, Rob gets into embarrassing situations but varies from his predecessors in that he is neither egocentric nor entirely foolish. Alone in a police station and inspired by a gun rack, Rob fantasizes that he is a tough, gun-toting Hollywood cowboy until a bemused policeman catches him in the act. In another episode, he explores the forbidden thrills of motorcycling, but just as his wife predicts, he is humiliated by a cycle gang. Unlike the climber of earlier comedies who tries to become someone he cannot be and who is rightly deflated, Rob seeks the freedom merely to be himself; he rarely represses his fantasies, and, interestingly enough, he frequently succeeds. He exercises his free spirit and expands the limits of his roles as husband, father, and professional. A sign of his inherent stability is that despite his explorations, he willingly returns to home base. To a large degree, then, the program achieved a perfectly balanced accommodation of the liberal spirit of the age and the conservative, home-centered principles of the domestic comedy formula. The program also displayed, if at times covertly, the liberal politics of the day. Although a diffident "little man" with engaging eccentricities, Rob will rise toward heroism if pushed. When, for instance, one of his neighbors refuses to rid his lawn of crabgrass, Rob manages to control the childish passions of his other neighbors from growing into mob violence. With brief references to hoods and burning crosses, the episode reveals Rob’s unconditional stand against intolerance and his role as a positive spokesman for the Great Society. In this view, The Dick Van Dyke Show was one of the first programs to feature minorities in secondary roles. Various episodes focused on situations involving Jews, Latinos, blacks, and even members of such aberrant subgroups as prisoners, gamblers, and bums. This awareness of America’s multicultural society is best seen in a classic episode in which Rob fears that his newborn son has been switched at the hospital with the child of another, as yet unseen, family. Tensions are resolved in a brilliant moment of recognition and embarrassment when Rob discovers that the other father is black. The audience is as shocked as Rob; it does not occur to us that the plot of a television comedy might hinge on the color of a character’s skin. We are forced to see that blacks

128

are sufficiently human to be mistaken for "one of us." Furthermore, because blacks (since the removal of Amos ‘n ‘Andy) had been excluded from situation comedy for several years, the episode reinstated the black man into media humor, not, however, as the butt of a joke but as the deliverer of a punch line. Given that the program aired during a period that culminated in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it is clear that, in the positive spirit of its day, The Dick Van Dyke Show provoked new ways of thinking.

Despite its longevity and popularity, The Dick Van Dyke Show failed to set a pattern for other family comedies. Liberalized or not, the traditional family comedy was out of step with the problems of America’s faltering family structure. Quite naturally, the broken family or single parent-child motif, typified by My Three Sons (1960-1972) and Family Affair (1966-1972), replaced the family comedy. Because divorce was taboo in television well into the 1970s, situation comedy’s fragmented families in the l960s were generally made up of a widower or legal guardian, his children or wards, and their male servant, all of whom are left motherless to fend for themselves. The threat of the father’s absence, a perennial fear throughout most episodes, undercuts the father’s parental authority. That the servant must manipulate to effect a balance between the father’s professional needs and the children’s psychological needs also argues for the weakening of the father as a solid citizen. Ultimately, the motif focuses more on the children’s heroic patience and understanding than the father’s ability to dispense wisdom. Although this maturity in the child indicates an advancement in the characterization of situation comedy children, the parent-child motif served more as a palliative to audience anxieties over broken homes than as an acknowledgment of the growing power (if not maturity) of the nation’s youth.

The attempt in The Dick Van Dyke Show to liberalize family comedy and the noticeable shift from family comedy to parent-child comedy reveal the limited degree to which the Domestic Mode could adapt to its audience’s apparent need for more critical comic forms. From 1960 to 1968, Variant Mode comedies increased in number and popularity, and as a group virtually eclipsed the family motif for the three seasons between 1965 and 1967. The variant motifs (rural, military, and fantasy) presented something fresh to the television audience. Although families appear in many of these comedies, their "situations" are not family-centered. Instead of grappling with the domestic problems of growth, restraint, and social climbing, such programs as The Beverly Hillbillies, Hogan ‘s Heroes, and Bewitched focus on broader, more socially oriented conflicts: country folk deflate urban materialism and pretensions, free-spirited prisoners of war outsmart autocratic Nazis, an imaginative

129

housewife quietly excels amidst fatuous businessmen. The result is one of burlesque or even at times satire rather than mannered comedy. The fantasy comedy in particular with its use of special effects might call for characters to shrink, disappear, or "translate" into lower creatures. In one episode of Bewitched, Ben Franklin is transported against his will to modern times only to view with dismay the sorry state of his nation’s progress. Through such "marvels," television in the I960s could expand into a Cockaigne Land of submerged social commentary.

Initially, variant comedies exhibited anti-authoritarian tendencies. In watching them, liberal and conservative alike could thumb their noses at society’s hypocrites, stuffed shirts, and tyrants. As Bob Claver, producer of the 1967 fantasy The Second Hundred Years, observes, his comedy (about a Klondike gold digger who is frozen alive for a century and returns to his son and grandson a younger, confused, but wiser man) speaks for those who "collide with the establishment and who enjoy seeing someone.., in his fight against the world."²¹ Thus, at a time of rapid and unsettling social change, the variant comedy served as a form of controlled criticism, allowing viewers to vent steam over such problems as increased technology and materialism, the generation gap, and dissent. But toward the end of the decade, the nation had divided to such a degree that the variant comedies could no longer appease both liberal and conservative factions. Instead, they came to represent a reactionary position and, as audience response data indicate, their popularity soon died out.

Rural humor has always played a significant role in television comedy, serving to remind audiences of their pastoral roots and native common sense. Seriation graphs demonstrate that rural comedies enjoyed the strongest and most consistent support during the variant fad. Although a relatively small number of programs fall into this category (9), they lasted for an average of five years, more than twice as long as the average fantasy, military, or even family comedy. But early versions of the rural motif, despite the countrified accents and settings, do not vary appreciably from the standard urban or suburban ambience typical of the traditional family comedy. Rural climbers scheme and rural solid citizens pontificate in much the same fashion as their urban counterparts. Little attempt is made to use the rural setting as a springboard for social commentary. A case in point is the successful The Real McCoys (1957–1963), which depicted the trials of a young West Virginia family transplanted in California’s San Fernando Valley. Most of the episodes focus on the wily and cantankerous grandfather’s schemes to outsmart his neighbors or avoid his "Girlfriend." But when sonic booms begin to destroy his peace of mind, Amos confronts the military establishment

130

with righteous indignation. In dropping his role as alazon, the yokel becomes a common-sense spokesman for the American people over a minor issue. Such episodes are rare in this program, and the same may be said for a later version of the motif, The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), set in a small North Carolina town. This program’s ritualized opening pictures a boy going fishing as if to manifest a world most of us would like to think Huck Finn experienced: "mighty free and easy." Although it continued into the 1960s, evidence of social conflict rarely penetrates this small domestic world. Sheriff Andy’s chief occupation is controlling the whims of the townsfolk and in particular the fiery temper of his martinet deputy, Barney Fife, through his low-key and genial common sense.

In contrast to these programs, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971) provides a more direct criticism of American life by focusing on the clash between urban and rural sensibilities. Here, an Ozark family’ strikes oil and moves its new wealth to Hollywood. Jed, Granny, Jethro, and Ellie Mae are broadly drawn caricatures of mountain folk, and much of the program’s comic effect stems from the stupidities of these backward people. Granny continues to put wood in her electric stove. Jethro hires a model to pose for him while he sculpts, but the model is only there to look at; he sculpts a raccoon instead. None of the Clampetts figure out what the doorbell is for. Simple-minded but also simple-hearted, these hillbillies care for the land and thrive on generosity. They stay in fashionable Beverly Hills, for instance, only because they do not want to disappoint their scheming banker, Mr. Drysdale.

But more than laughing at the Clampetts, we laugh at the embarrassment they cause for society’s well-heeled snobs who have lost touch with their native roots. In one episode, President Armbruster of the Clampett Oil Company visits Beverly Hills with his new wife to look for their "dream house." They arrive incognito to avoid the Clampetts, who in a previous episode had treated them to an unbearable dose of down-home hospitality. Mr. Drysdale, however, has learned that the Clampetts are fed up with modern life (oil company and all) and want to return to the Ozarks. To keep them in Beverly Hills, Drysdale forces the unwilling Armbrusters to call on the Clampetts. Thinking that the Armbrusters cannot resist country living, the Clampetts put them up in the old cabin (which they have moved from the Ozarks to the back yard). The ensuing scenes of bucolic misery show how low the highborn Armbrusters will sink in order to preserve their status. The irony is compounded by the fact that the "agonies" they must endure are merely simple pleasures to the well-meaning Clampetts: rainwater baths, fresh goat’s milk, and stick whittling. The episode clearly satirizes the materialism and pretensions

131