Under the Dome with Only Microsoft for Company

Confession: I have not read Under the Dome, but I have watched it. It is so very nearly bad enough to be wonderful, but not quite. Anyway, I was curious how the book compared, so I read James Parker's New York Times review, which includes plot details such as President Obama writing a letter to the town's dome-entrapped citizens and a second selectman seizing control of the police department, ready to enact his right wing agenda now that de facto secession from the U.S. government has occurred. Parker closes:

     The coalition that forms against him includes a journalist, a librarian, an Iraq
     veteran, some acned skateboarders and an English professor from
     Massachusetts who (rather wonderfully) has just edited an issue of
     Ploughshares. Get ready, libruls, King seems to be saying: If the dome
     comes down, you’re going to need one another. 

In other words, it's the then-present day of 2009, a year after Obama's election, and it's recognizably our world, complete with our president, our war, and our literary magazines. It's got guts and gore, but it also has a political viewpoint.

In contrast, on the TV show the Iraq War veteran is retained, as well as the power-hungry government official, but there's nothing Iraq or Tea Party-specific about either of them. And the Zuzu's petals of the whole thing, Ploughshares? It's not there either, George. Yet we're in our world, product-placement-wise, from Microsoft to Prius, and others have written about the strange and unlikely ways these products have been introduced on the show. I know I'm writing seriously about a not-serious show and a book I haven't, ahem, read, but I think it's worth noting that Bad Stephen King Adaptation + Microsoft doesn't only = cringe-inducing viewing. It's that some proper nouns have ascended while others have been erased. It's Microsoft - Politics which creates such an empty vessel.

Not every story based in our world needs to ground itself in our real political names; of course alternate-reality narratives and straight-up allegories can offer politically and culturally astute commentary. I just think it's interesting when we keep the signifiers without the significance; for example, keeping the Iraq War veteran in name only. What does this accomplish? What box does it check off? Is it just a shorthand for, "This character is an experienced badass who has been through the shit"? Does the director think, "Let's show a photo of him with his Army buddies and their guns and call it a day"? How do actual Iraq War veterans feel about such characters?

I'm writing this late at night/early in the morning, so maybe my brain is fuzzified, but I'm also wondering now about political cameos on shows such as The Good Wife. Is this another example of a signifier without significance?
 
   

All the Presidents' Sitcom

When I wrote about the transition from Nixon to Reagan, reference-wise, on Family Ties, I thought that there was a transition, a gradual diminishing of the former and ascendancy of the latter; that was how it seemed in season four, which aired from September 1985-May 1986. But now that I've finished re-watching the show, it would be more accurate to say that Nixon and Reagan co-exist, and over time the treatment of Reagan becomes sharper, moving beyond parody into moments of critique.

I started noticing the shift in season six. Elyse's aunt Rosemary shows up unannounced and exhibits signs of Alzheimer's. The doctor says, "Rosemary, you didn't remember who the president of the United States was" as an example of her memory loss. Rosemary (played by the wonderful Barbara Barrie) says, "I know Ronald Reagan is president. I just can't accept it."

Barbara Barrie; her most recent work was a small role on Enlightened.

Then, when Alex takes over Skippy's job as a mall Santa, a girl says she doesn't believe in Santa and wants to know why, if he's the real one, there are Santas at other malls, too. Alex answers, "I have some of my elves, uh, dress up like me to pick up the slack. It's the same way that President Reagan can't be everywhere, so he sends his assistants in his place."

"I don't believe in him, either," the girl replies.

Audiences might have recognized Ellen Hamilton Latzen from Fatal Attraction.
Here she's not asking for a rabbit, though.

These episodes aired in November and December 1987, respectively. By the end of the season, in May 1988, the Reagan jokes have grown in substance from denial and disbelief to biting commentary. Andy is making a popsicle stick bread box as a gift for Nick to thank him for teaching the children's art class at the Y. But Alex has other ideas; he wants to make Nick the Reagan Ranch out of popsicle sticks: "I even have plans for a little pop-stick Ron and a little pop-stick Nancy."

Elyse, listening in, asks, "How about a pop-stick jail for his Cabinet?" The studio audience laughter quickly builds to applause and cheers - one of the most enthusiastic reactions in the show's entire run.

Alex goes ahead and makes his own Reagan Ranch anyway.

What happened? I've got one phrase for you: Iran-Contra affair. By May 1988, the Tower Commission and Congressional committee reports have been released and Reagan has given speeches, but Casper Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, has yet to be indicted, and Oliver North is not yet on trial. It's also the middle of a presidential campaign, and many people have questions about George H.W. Bush's knowledge of and involvement in Iran-Contra.

Bush quickly becomes fodder for jokes on the show; the very next episode, the first of season seven, opens with the words, "All right, who did this?" It's late October 1988, and the family has defaced Alex's campaign poster of Bush.

And a few minutes later, Alex's girlfriend Lauren brings up Iran-Contra directly. "I'm not gonna vote for Bush," she tells Alex. "For one, I've never fully accepted his explanation of his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair."  (We never get to hear her other reasons because Mallory turns to her father and asks excitedly, "Bush had an affair?")

In between this episode and the election, Family Ties fits in one more Reagan dig. Alex is reading Robin Hood to Andy, but in the grand tradition of reading aloud to young children, he's changed the story. "It was about Robin Hood, how he stole from the poor and gave to the rich," Andy reports.

"No, no, that's not Robin Hood, Andy," Steven says. "That's Ronald Reagan." (This is greeted by the studio audience with both laughter and, not boos or groans, but low sounds of moderate disapproval. The same mixture of sounds occurs when Alex tells Andy in a later episode, "You know how lucky you are, Andy? Born under Reagan, raised under Bush. I mean, with any luck at all, you will have a completely Democrat-free childhood." I really want data on the political makeup of the Family Ties audience).

Election morning dawns at the Keatons with some seriously depressed Democrats (this episode aired on November 13, five days after the actual election).

"In August, Dukakis looked like a shoo-in," Elyse says.

"Yeah, that was before he got into the tank," Jennifer notes, flashing her own newspaper.

But this is about as current events-y as Family Ties gets, and the tone of occasional critique dissipates in the final season; in fact, Bush is largely ignored. The show returns to Nixon when Jennifer writes a play about him for her history class and Alex tries to influence her script. Nixon is still an emotional flashpoint for the characters, but he's also a denatured joke; (the episode features Alex delivering a speech as Nixon, an extended impersonation).

Nixie, the Nixon fan magazine: one of many fake texts featured on the show. 

Others include the I Love Republicans pop-up book that Alex gets for Andy and,

my personal favorite, Shirley MacLaine's There Must be a Higher Power in the Universe if I'm Making So Much Money Doing What I'm Doing, which Steven brings home for Mallory. 

And Nixon is almost sentimentalized in the final episode; when Elyse goes into Alex's room one last time before he leaves home to take a job on Wall Street, it's Nixon's face that is visible out of the darkness. We feel Elyse's loss of Alex and feel nostalgic, and Nixon gets all wrapped up in those emotions. But then Elyse turns on the light, sits on the bed, looks at the picture, and abruptly turns it face down. It's a humorous break in an otherwise serious moment, and it reminds us that, although others at the time had difficulty separating the politics from the person, these characters were consistently able to do so. The mother loves the son, not the 37th president.

Research shows that we've become more politically polarized in the years since Family Ties. The June 2014 Pew Research Center report "Political Polarization in the American Public" notes: "Three-out-of-ten (30%) consistent conservatives say they would be unhappy if an immediate family member married a Democrat and about a quarter (23%) of across-the-board liberals say the same about the prospect of a Republican in-law." Watching Family Ties has made me look at those numbers differently - I see the flip side more easily: that's 70 and 77 % of conservatives and liberals who would be OK with a family member marrying someone from another political party, not insignificant figures. I also think: what's so bad about unhappy? Steven and Elyse aren't happy that they raised a son who very early in life decided he was a Republican, but that's the son they have. And I wonder, how many Keaton families exist today - or even existed back in the '80s? My conservative brother raised conservative daughters; my more liberal brother is raising liberal children. Leaving aside all the similarities between the two major political parties today, do parents raise politically different children? And if they do, where can we find them on TV?

One More Nixon Recommendation: Watergate Sue

If you're geeking out over the many pieces about the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation, let me add one more to your list: Watergate Sue, a comic by Megan Kelso than ran in the New York Times from April 1 to August 9, 2007. It chronicles the pregnancy of a woman who was herself born on the day Nixon resigned, but it primarily covers her mother's own pregnancy and obsessive TV-watching of the coverage of Nixon's final months in office. It's got a lot of good stuff: family dynamics, verbatim dialogue from the hearings, reproductive issues, and even a bit of Seattle (where the family lived in 1974). 

The Visible Bridge or What Was Nixon's Favorite TV Show?

In the spirit of Rick Perlstein's The Invisible Bridge (which I'm totally asking my mom to get me for my birthday!), let's look at the transition from Nixon to Reagan on Family Ties, shall we? In season one, Steven's conservative father visits and when the subject of Nixon comes up during dinner, he says, "Nixon was framed, you know." Steven tries to calm down by excusing himself, but from the next room he yells, "HE WAS NOT FRAMED! HE WAS A CROOK!"

Alex also had a House Un-American Activities coloring book.

The scene is played for laughs - Steven returns to the table and mildly asks someone to please pass the potatoes - but the indictment is not itself the joke. That episode aired on November 3, 1982, only eight years after Nixon's resignation, and in the early seasons of the show the serious lessons of Watergate share space with the humorous adoration Alex feels. Nixon is the political Rorschach test and sun; Reagan is practically a distant star. 

By season four, while the show hasn't abandoned its references to Nixon, they've increasingly become linked to objects, relics of Alex's childhood that serve as signifiers of his precociousness and early political affiliations. There's his Nixon lunchbox, his Nixon rattle. Reagan isn't totally immune from such treatment; Alex uses a framed photo of the president as an educational tool for his infant brother Andrew:

"74 years old, he still has his own teeth. I mean, this is everything you'd want in a president."

(This world-leaders-education-for-babies joke would be used to great effect two years later in the film Baby Boom. In that movie, the babies get actual flashcards!)

But beyond such visual gags, by increasingly focusing on Alex and making him mostly likable, the show served to make Reagan more palatable, too. Alex liked Reagan; therefore we could, too.

Yet while this conflation of character and president was occurring, the show nevertheless had an "ambivalent relationship with the value system of the Reagan era," as  Bambi L. Haggins notes in her essay "There's No Place Like Home: The American Dream, African-American Identity, and the Situation Comedy." Haggins also argues that Family Ties exhibited "self-conscious parodying" of these values.

You can see some of that parody in this season four dialogue between Alex and Steven. Alex is watching CNN footage from a Reagan press conference:

Alex:  He was just talking about this new Star Wars defense system, Dad. It is great. We're going to build these, these space weapons that can shoot down Soviet
missiles. Now, if the Soviets build space weapons that can shoot down our missiles,
we're gonna build bigger space weapons to shoot down their space weapons. And
if they build bigger space weapons to shoot down our space weapons, we'll build
even bigger space weapons to shoot down their space weapons that shoot down
our space weapons.

Steven: Finally, something sensible is happening.

   

"Well, uh, either you got that bank job or Richard Nixon has re-entered politics."

Dialogue like this troubles the simple picture of the show delivering a sunny, good-looking White House proxy and makes it seem kind of incredible that Reagan called Family Ties his favorite TV show - did he actually watch it? Or was he just aware that it had an avowedly Republican character who was played by that actor who was in that cool time travel movie that also mentioned him?

It's also easy, re-watching this show, to forget that Nixon was still alive when it aired, that as much as Nixon the Character haunts and guides the lives of the show's characters as a figure from the past, a real man sat at home…probably not watching this show.

The Big Chill in Columbus

OK, I'm not done re-watching Family Ties - I'm only to episode five, season five - but already there's plenty new to discuss, and I just couldn't wait. Because, of course, I am a nerd.

In keeping with that nerdiness, I started doing research to see who else has written about the show, and one of the pieces, "The American Family on Television: From Molly Goldberg to Bill Cosby" from the Journal of Comparative Family Studies includes this passage:

     In Family Ties, one of the few shows in which politics was even
     mentioned, political preference is much like having an occupation.
     The characters, especially Alex, talk about politics but hardly ever
     participate in the political process. Characters do not battle for
     social change.  

Muriel G. Cantor does overlook the season one episode where the parents, Steven and Elyse, go to jail for protesting nuclear weapons, but I concede that there's a lack of engagement in subsequent episodes.

There is some engagement: Elyse leads a group fighting a re-zoning law at the end of season one, and in season two Alex pretends to support the Equal Rights Amendment in order to get a girl to like him and goes to jail in the process, but in season five when Steven has the opportunity to be part of the revival of a political magazine named Scavenger that he and a friend started at UC Berkeley, he finds that he's no longer radical enough for his old friend Matt.

There are fascinating details that emerge in this episode. For one, Steven expresses an aversion to being arrested, stating that "getting arrested is way down on my list now. Right below being shipwrecked." He does have a young child at home and more bills to pay - with two children in college and one in preschool - none of which he had in season one when he and Elyse were arrested, but it's still a telling shift. He's thinking ahead to the election in 1988 and which Democrats might run, an interest and investment in the two-party-dominated U.S. political system that his friend disdains; Matt is far more interested in anarchy.

Scavenger seems like a misnomer for their venture; a scavenger feasts on the dead, but Matt and the other contributors clearly think that the two-party system is still in need of killing. One of them criticizes Steven in a meeting by saying, "you're suggesting that people actually go out and vote for one of the two prevailing political parties…the only vote that counts is a vote against the system." But Steven wants to be neither a vulture nor a hawk - not only in the political sense of being to the right, but also not in the general sense of wanting to hunt, to be an activist. He's in all ways a dove.

Does this turn away from the Scavenger represent an actual shift in values for the character or the show, or a continuation? After all, we know from earlier episodes that Steven voted for McGovern in 1972, so the guy who wrote "The Two-Party System: Tweedledum and Tweedledee" for the original iteration of the Scavenger hasn't been around for awhile. While it may be a continuation that the character himself is only just now noticing, it does seem like a shift for the show, signaling that we won't have any repeat prison performances, or if we do, they'll be a joke, like Alex's, not a sincere extension of ideals. Steven may still voice his concern for nuclear disarmament and hang an old Ban the Bomb sign above the fireplace to welcome Matt, but it looks like Steven won't be going to jail for this cause, or any other, again.

There's a moment when it seems like the character and the show itself may be aware of this: when Steven asks Elyse if he's changed, she replies, "I think your social conscience has held up pretty well," and he laughs shortly and says, "Right. And the tax credit from Amnesty International proves it." Writing a check is different from other kinds of activism, the show observes. But then Elyse continues:

     You do make a statement, Steven. You make a statement by the way
     you live your life, by the way you raise your children, by choosing
     a job that doesn't compromise your principles. Those are political
     acts, as strong as anything you ever did back at Berkeley.

Here we see a character endorsing an argument that politics can be lived primarily through the family. It's not quite a disavowal of the public sphere, but it does argue that raising kids and going to work are enough, and in that regard it seems to join other works that seek to placate the idealistic young people of the '60s who have become the comfortably middle class parents of the '80s. It's OK, the show says through the character of Elyse. You're still a good person.

And in case that message wasn't clear enough or the messenger was suspect for being a fellow member of that generation, after Elyse leaves the room, Alex walks in to reassure his father as well. "Listen, Dad," Alex begins. "Over the years, you and I have searched for some common political ground. We searched…and searched…and searched" (studio audience laughs). "And even though we haven't agreed on anything yet, I really respect your ideals, you know? And the fact that you respect mine. You set a good example." The child absolves the parent.

To be fair, raising children to be respectful, independent thinkers is no small thing; nor is having a job that reflects your values. There's also a point here to how people can change, how different we can be at 40 from 20, and research from Pew shows that many older adults are more conservative than they used to be. But it's impossible not to feel like the show is withdrawing politically at this point in the series, the protesting and getting arrested of 1982 replaced with the benign Reagan jokes of 1986. I'll write more about this is in a later post; in the meantime, I leave you with this great poster and some relevant Ohio ERA history...because I'm guessing if you've read this far, you're a nerd, too:

He cares about the First Amendment, but, sadly, not this one.

Our TV, Ourselves

In the season one Family Ties episode unfortunately titled "Oops," Mallory's friend Cindy finds out she's pregnant and struggles with telling her mother. First, they confide in Mallory's mother, Elyse.

"I'm so confused," Cindy says. "I don't know whether to have an abortion or put the baby up for adoption or keep it."

It was December 22, 1982, only one month away exactly from the tenth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, and the extent to which this decision had become an established fact in American lives seems reflected in the structure of Cindy's sentence; she lists abortion alongside adoption and becoming a mother as a possible choice. It's X or Y or Z, each possibility given equal weight.

We don't learn what Cindy chooses to do - the main point of the episode is about establishing open communication with her mother - but even that unresolved ending feels different from how this same subject matter would be handled on later television and film, where the point often feels like an avoided abortion  - whether that's avoided through miscarriage, as on Party of Five in the 1990s or adoption, as in Juno in 2007. The prevalence of these alternatives makes stories where a character actually has an abortion, as on Friday Night Lights or The Obvious Child, rarities and news. And not knowing the outcome of a pregnancy, as in the case of Cindy? Other than the 1996 film Citizen Ruth, I can't think of another example off the top of my head, although I'm sure there are more. Still, the dearth of such examples seems telling: in most mainstream TV and film, women's bodies need to be resolved.

"Did I really look like that when I was born?" Jennifer wants to know.

Before Cindy comes over to the Keaton house, 10 year-old Jennifer sits down on the couch with the copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves that she's taken from Mallory's room. Alex, the conservative teenager, objects to "a book like that being in this house," but Elyse sets him straight: "There's nothing wrong with this, Alex," she says. "It's just a health and sex manual for women."

This scene, and much of this episode, amazes me and makes me a little sad, too. I love that it's "just" a manual, just another day for this family, but it makes me sad that their ordinary day, 30 years later, feels more than a little extraordinary now.
 

Those Other Ties Beyond the Family

In re-watching Family Ties, one of the elements that has struck me the most is the political content. Some of it is played for laughs, as in a season two episode when Alex considers taking amphetamines to cram for exams and consults with his framed picture of Nixon.

"Would you do something you knew was wrong?" Alex asks the former president. Cue studio audience laughter. 

But other times the politics are more serious and the ideas behind them not as easily encapsulated in one image or joke, as in the season one episode where the parents, Steven and Elyse, are arrested at a Thanksgiving Day protest of nuclear weapons. All the other jailed protestors sign a piece of paper agreeing never to protest again and are promptly released, but not these two, even though it means they'll be apart from their family on a very family-oriented holiday. The First Amendment means just that much to them.

I was transfixed with this story line. I couldn't imagine a 2014 comedy being so civic-minded, though in fairness I've been far more devoted to dramas recently. Even comedies that center on the workings of government, like Veep, are primarily focused on the shallow and manipulative hijinks of the individuals wielding power; few characters are funny and have laudable, public-minded convictions.

And a show not about a workplace but an actual family, like Modern Family? I've stopped watching it, but from what I did see, I can't imagine any of those characters going to jail for justice. As others have noted, Modern Family is problematic for a number of reasons, one of which being that it presents affluence as normal. Another is that it views family ties as The Most Important Thing.  

In Stephanie Coontz's phenomenal The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap,  she busts the notion of a "return" to private life as the cure for societal problems. She writes, "the idea that private values and family affections form the heart of public life is not at all traditional. …John Adams argued that the foundation of a virtuous republic must be 'a positive Passion for the public good.'" (The academic in me is fighting the urge to give you a page number right now :) She closes that paragraph: "The passion to have a baby or spend more time with one's family was not high on the founders' list of public virtues." Zing!

Seriously, though, there are times when all of that is easy to forget, when a person can feel crazy or blasphemous for not wanting children herself or for valuing something in addition to her family. And so I was surprised to find you're-not-crazy backup in a 1982 TV episode with the word "family" in the show title.

The nukes episode ends with the kids and grandparents bringing Thanksgiving dinner to the jail.

The family that goes to jail together stays together.

One could argue that ending this way seeks to reassure viewers that the family is The Most Important Thing on the show after all. But I think it's significant that the parents are prepared to stand up for the public good with or without the others; public virtue comes first and spending the holiday with one's family, second.

Are there current TV comedy episodes that I'm forgetting/unaware of that similarly value democratic values in action? 

The Heartland of Nonbelievers

Some smart blog posts I read today - one about Ted Cruz's rhetoric of the "real America" and another about the future of queer theater - have got me thinking. I'm hungry for representations - in politicians' speech or in art - that assume certain ways of thinking and living. In other words, Cruz claims that Texas = America and D.C. does not; I want to hear a politician talk earnestly about "the heartland" and mean New York City. I want to watch a show where a death occurs and no one utters the word "God." Or where a gay couple - or any couple - are happily without children, and it's not a defining aspect of their identity. Or where living spaces are normal-sized and as unremarked upon as the giant apartment on Friends or the lush real estate on Modern Family.

I know that there are some politicians and some plays, movies, and TV shows that embrace or at least approach the perspectives I'm discussing. What I'm (naively? misguidedly?) hungry for in this moment are mainstream, mass audience, nationally-known examples, ones as available as the click of a remote control or mouse.

In his first inaugural address, President Obama said, "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers." One of my friends was in the car with her husband at the time, listening to the address over the radio, and after she heard "nonbelievers," she turned to him and exclaimed, "He just said our name! We're famous!"
 
I do want more of those kinds of moments in our national discourse, where the facts of our pluralistic country are presented in fuller array. But here I'm talking about something stronger. Maybe I'm advocating a view as one-sided as the individuals and institutions that frustrate me. But if so, it's because lack has made me hungry for moments of one-sided abundance. I'm not saying that my politician or my TV show would bash Texas, God, children, or large houses. She/he/it would simply treat as normal, as self-evident, other views, other ways of living.

What would we call this?