I’m trying to think about when the American media dynamic shifted to allowing family scenarios in which the clearly smarter, more talented spouse was the one who wound up being the homemaker. Almost always the wife, of course.
Obviously by the time of The Simpsons the doors had been blown wide open, but what was the critical media franchise that was the lever? Maybe just the Simpsons itself? The Honeymooners came ~35yrs earlier of course, but I’m not aware that it changed the overall media dynamic much.
I think that there have always been shows that do this, to some extent. In addition to the Honeymooners, you might include shows like I Love Lucy, Bewitched, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. Shows like these were typically set mainly in the home, rather than following the work life of one of the characters.
I can see why it wasn’t the most popular format. New shows need to distinguish themselves from established shows, and setting a new show in yet another American home probably wouldn’t do that. Also, a home-based show eventually gets monotonous because of the limited setting, and so these shows can go to ridiculous lengths to break out of that setting (how many times did Lucy scheme to appear in Ricky’s club).
I’m all for homemakers having better representation, but I can understand why they are less focused on, which I believe is why they become relegated to sidekick status (which I think is why they often become comedy relief or serve more as plot devices than real characters)
These are reasonable suggestions, but I feel like it’s not decisively clear that the ‘stay at home’ spouse in those cases was notably smarter & more talented than the other, unlike Foxtrot, The Honeymooners and The Simpsons. I feel like in all three of those latter shows, it’s near miraculous that the husband was able to bag the attractive smartie, so to speak.
Actually, in I Love Lucy there was indeed something of a super-improbable marriage, in old man Fred somehow marrying much younger Ethel. I do recall reading that Vivian Vance felt borderline humiliated by being matched with chronic drunkard William Frawley, who was on thin ice in terms of taking ‘one more strike’ before being fired. He turned out to be pretty great though, IMO.
Oh, I’m sure my examples weren’t the best. This was all off the top of my head.
There are better examples, I think, but they come from shows where the cast was large enough and the plots complex enough that the drama of the show wasn’t as necessarily centered on husband/wife conflict. Many shows aren’t like this and in these, if you have a competent partner, most likely you will be a buffoon.
I dunno… kinda seems like you’re off an a tangent there, which is a very interesting tangent IMO, but still not really what I was trying to focus in on.
I’m not gonna state my theme point ad nauseam, but I suspect there are some very significant reasons why shows like The Honeymooners were rare in terms of the skewed husband-wife dynamic. Patriarchy probably being first. Patriarch and patriarchical tradition across pop media.
That is the real point I was trying to get at, explaining why it took so very long for a show like The Simpsons to finally break through.
Ah, I see. Because your original comment seemed to confine the question to American media and TV specifically, I thought your interest was more in the mechanics of storytelling in that genre than it was.
I’m trying to think about when the American media dynamic shifted to allowing family scenarios in which the clearly smarter, more talented spouse was the one who wound up being the homemaker. Almost always the wife, of course.
Obviously by the time of The Simpsons the doors had been blown wide open, but what was the critical media franchise that was the lever? Maybe just the Simpsons itself? The Honeymooners came ~35yrs earlier of course, but I’m not aware that it changed the overall media dynamic much.
I think that there have always been shows that do this, to some extent. In addition to the Honeymooners, you might include shows like I Love Lucy, Bewitched, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. Shows like these were typically set mainly in the home, rather than following the work life of one of the characters.
I can see why it wasn’t the most popular format. New shows need to distinguish themselves from established shows, and setting a new show in yet another American home probably wouldn’t do that. Also, a home-based show eventually gets monotonous because of the limited setting, and so these shows can go to ridiculous lengths to break out of that setting (how many times did Lucy scheme to appear in Ricky’s club).
I’m all for homemakers having better representation, but I can understand why they are less focused on, which I believe is why they become relegated to sidekick status (which I think is why they often become comedy relief or serve more as plot devices than real characters)
I toast your interesting thoughts!
These are reasonable suggestions, but I feel like it’s not decisively clear that the ‘stay at home’ spouse in those cases was notably smarter & more talented than the other, unlike Foxtrot, The Honeymooners and The Simpsons. I feel like in all three of those latter shows, it’s near miraculous that the husband was able to bag the attractive smartie, so to speak.
Actually, in I Love Lucy there was indeed something of a super-improbable marriage, in old man Fred somehow marrying much younger Ethel. I do recall reading that Vivian Vance felt borderline humiliated by being matched with chronic drunkard William Frawley, who was on thin ice in terms of taking ‘one more strike’ before being fired. He turned out to be pretty great though, IMO.
Oh, I’m sure my examples weren’t the best. This was all off the top of my head.
There are better examples, I think, but they come from shows where the cast was large enough and the plots complex enough that the drama of the show wasn’t as necessarily centered on husband/wife conflict. Many shows aren’t like this and in these, if you have a competent partner, most likely you will be a buffoon.
I dunno… kinda seems like you’re off an a tangent there, which is a very interesting tangent IMO, but still not really what I was trying to focus in on.
I’m not gonna state my theme point ad nauseam, but I suspect there are some very significant reasons why shows like The Honeymooners were rare in terms of the skewed husband-wife dynamic. Patriarchy probably being first. Patriarch and patriarchical tradition across pop media.
That is the real point I was trying to get at, explaining why it took so very long for a show like The Simpsons to finally break through.
Ah, I see. Because your original comment seemed to confine the question to American media and TV specifically, I thought your interest was more in the mechanics of storytelling in that genre than it was.
OMG, no… that would be a Titanic-sized issue to try to tackle!