He held a mirror up to all Rednecks and made them look ridiculous.
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Nobody called him a redneck.
I don't think you know what a redneck is.
red·neck
n. Offensive Slang
1. Used as a disparaging term for a member of the white rural laboring class, especially in the southern United States.
2. A white person regarded as having a provincial, conservative, often bigoted attitude.
I don't find it offensive and I doubt most rednecks do either. What shocked urbanites the most about Archie Bunker was that he was one of their own, not a rural southern "redneck" as you put it.
It was clever to make Archie from the north. They were thus able to concentrate on character, not tyhe bashing a region of the country.
Anyone who lived near where Archie did (Queens, NY, if memory serves) wouldn't have been too shocked by him...
cjhsa, you got it wrong the second time. I never called him a redneck and I went with: A white person regarded as having a provincial, conservative, often bigoted attitude.
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He played the perfect bigot and after all the laughter had died down, the racists and bigots were exposed in all their stupid glory.
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Political satire is of the highest calibre in countries run by dictators. It existed under the Nazis, Stalin and perhaps even under Mao Tse-tung.
When a comedian can lose his life for a joke, he has to tell it in such a way that the flat foot does not get it.
Well, I'm a white boy with a provincial attitude, and a racist according to many here at A2K, especially those who support illegal immigration. I liked the show and the characters, except for Meathead, who I always wanted to punch.
Archie Bunker has been repeatedly voted the best TV character of all time by critics and audiences alike. Probably the only "character" that outdid him during the era was a real person, Ali.
Illegal immigration has something to do with race?
BEsides, science has proved that race is only a social construct and most suitable for satire.
I'll second the notion of wanting to punch "Meathead"....Bam! Pow! Whack!...take that you big city, whiny ass liberal.
Naturally, most of the time I found myself in total disagreement with his {Mike's} viewpoint, but every so often he would simply make sense. Those are some of my favorite moments from that show...I can't explain the feeling I got when that would happen, but it was...strangely satisfying.
Now, that does not mean that I routinely agreed with Mr. Bunker either, perhaps in his basic arguments, yes, but not in his follow thru. Generally I fell somewhere in between the two extremes of the characters, and was able to laugh at both sides, as I'm sure most Americans did...which is part of what made the show great, across the board.
My family of origin began watching All in the Family because the men my father worked with said that Bunker reminded them of my Dad. Interestingly, my Dad liked to give himself a verbal pat on the back every once in awhile and comment that he was the man at work who ate his lunch with the Blacks and Jews, a liberal high water mark in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s when he was laborer. My Dad does have Archie's sourness and dry turn of phrase.
I grew up in the Bronx, and most of the people I knew were exactly like Archie Bunker. (No surprise for this urbanite.) What made the show superior was that Archie was more than his politics or his bigotry. He was a multidimensional person, not a caricature. Archie was a hard-working family man whose life wasn't easy. The Archie-Meathead clash was real in a lot of families of the time the show was produced.
Surprisingly, yesterday was Muhammed Ali's birthday. Didn't realize it when I made my previous post. I had the pleasure of meeting him not once but twice back in the late 1970's. Happy belated birthday Muhammed.
Roberta wrote:I grew up in the Bronx, and most of the people I knew were exactly like Archie Bunker. (No surprise for this urbanite.) What made the show superior was that Archie was more than his politics or his bigotry. He was a multidimensional person, not a caricature. Archie was a hard-working family man whose life wasn't easy. The Archie-Meathead clash was real in a lot of families of the time the show was produced.
I think Archie was endearing because he, ever so slowly, did change. If Archie never changed at all, people would have probably grew tired of him and considered him hopeless. It was like watching your son grow up and learn, or having a long-running argument with a friend, then one day the friend starts seeing your side of the argument.
The entire cast evolved. It was wonderful to watch Edith grow especially. I still remember the episode when she wore pants for the first time.
Isn't that amazing? Pants. For the first time.
Today most women wear the pants in the family.
Back in the eary 70's as well. Edith was the last of the holdouts and it was funny. She only wanted to make a point because she never wore pants again. Not that I recall.
Definately without a doubt 100% the best TV character is Jackie Gleason as Ralph Cramden... He filmed all his episodes live, and improved a great number of his lines I give an honorable mention to the rest of the cast of the Honeymooners, for being able to keep their composure when Jackie Gleason surprised them with something rediculous. No one else can even come close to comparing to Ralph Cramden
I always thought that Jackie Gleason was overrated, and the character Ralph kramden was overshadowed by Norton(Art Carney), but then I've always been more impressed by understatement than hyperbole. Of course considering that the show was produced in the fifties, being one of the first sitcoms, even spousal abuse seemed funny.
Ralph kramden made Archie Bunker seem like a deep thinker.
I liked another Gleason character as well: the Poor Soul. As I remember, it was done either in mime-style or close to mime, but without the white make up. The poor soul wore a buttoned cardigan -- was it correctly buttoned? -- and always seemed to have stuff happen to him. The character had pathos and a kind of folkloric element (no longer can keep the schliemiel and the schliemazel straight in my mind) to his quiet dignity.
