Department of English and American Studies English Language And
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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Zuzana Žilinčíková The American Family of the 1950s and its TV representation Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. 2014 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Zuzana Žilinčíková I would like to thank my supervisor doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. for his valuable advice throughout the writing process. Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………….…..6 1. The 1950s era………………………………………………………………………..7 1.1. Demographic trends…………………………………………………………….7 1.2. Economy and politics of the 1950s: End of WWII. and Cold war…………..…8 1.3. Suburbia………………………………………………………………….…....10 1.4. Social division of gender roles………………………………………………...12 1.5. Perception of the family of the 1950s…………………………………………13 2. Television in the 1950s……………………………………………………………..14 2.1. Television spread………………………………………………………………14 2.2. Television and family………………………………………………………….15 2.3. Gender roles and television (TV representation of men and women)………....16 2.4. Situation comedy – sitcom…….………………………………………………17 2.5. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet…….…………………………….…..…18 3. Analytic approach…………………………………………………………………..19 4. The Rivals …………………………………………………………………….........20 4.1. Episode summary……………………………………………………………...20 4.2. Identities...……………………………………………………………………..21 4.3. Practices………………………………………………………………………..22 4.4. Significance……………………………………………………………...…….27 5. The newlyweds get settled…………………………………………………………29 5.1. The progress in Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet…………………………….29 5.2. Episode summary……………………………………………………………...30 5.3. Identities………………………………………………………………….……30 5.4. Practices…..……………………………………………………………………33 5.5. Significance……………………………………………………………………36 6. Comparison of the two episodes…………………………………………………...38 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...…………39 Bibliography..…………………………………………………………………………..42 Introduction The 1950s are an interesting era in the development of an American family, especially for the enormous popularity of marriage, peak of the baby boom and rising importance of family life. We aim to provide an overview of the demographic trends in the 1950s and identify the characteristics of the era that were connected to this rise of family importance. In particular we focus on economic and political influence on family, the expansion of suburbia and the social division of gender roles. Moreover, in this era occurred an enormous spread of television in the United States. It became part of the life of an average American family and the broadcast included many family oriented programs. Therefore, television is an ideal source for gaining information about this period and about the character of American families. Television not only provides evidence about the family, but also contributes to the formation of an ideal that these families followed. The general features of television spread and its place in American homes are discussed in this thesis, as well as the typical display of male and female’s roles in the society. Last but not least, the thesis aims to explore the representation of the 1950s family in one of the most popular sitcom at that time – The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. We employ the tools of discourse analysis to identify the identities, practices and significance enacted in two selected episodes of this sitcom. First, we offer analysis of the first episode that was broadcast on the television in 1952 – The Rivals, and second we analyze an episode from the very beginning of the 1960s – The Newlyweds Get Settled. Although the number of episodes is restricted to two, it should at least partly capture the span of this period. 6 1. The 1950s era 1.1. Demographic trends The 1950s are considered to be The Golden Age of marriage (Možný 20). Nostalgically, it seems that the 1950s were “the last gasp of the traditional values” (Caldwell 2-3), but in fact the traditional values and importance of family was quite exceptional (Coontz 25). Most of the authors agree that the trends observed throughout the 20th century heads towards higher age at first marriage, rising divorce rates and lower fertility. These trends shifted in the 1950s and this era could be considered as a paradox to the long standing development (Hartman 84; Coontz 25). Moreover, this shift of the 1950s was for some scholars at that time quite surprising. Expanding job and educational opportunities, increasing birth control availability could have just as good led young people to postpone their marriages and childbearing (May 5). However, it did not. Instead, men and women got married at the very young age that was even record low: seventy per cent of women were married by the age of 24 (Mintz 179). Compared to the 1940s this number increased by thirty per cent (Mintz 179). The popularity of marriage was accompanied by the baby boom. The baby boom era is considered to be a period between 1946 till 1964, with the peak in 1957. During this period more than 75 million babies were born and the 1950s brought the greatest population increase observed in one decade (Monhollon xiii). Divorce rates, on the other hand, declined for the first time in 1947 after a period of eighty years of continual increase. From 1946 to 1955 crude divorce rates1 dropped from 4.3 to 2.3 and fluctuated between 2.1 and 2.3 until 1963. After 1963 the divorce rates returned to the trend observed in the previous era (U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare 9). These statistics, however, have to be considered with caution because at that time national divorce statistics did not exist 1 Number of divorce per 1000 population (U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare 59) 7 in any meaningful sense (Caldwell 9). 1.2. Economy and politics of the 1950s: End of the Second World War and Cold War The 1950s is a postwar (The Second World War) era as well as an era of the Cold War. Both these circumstances had severe influence on the life in the United States as well as on family itself. In the postwar period the U.S. economy was booming. The economic growth was primarily fostered by manufacturing, construction and defense spending and the advances in technology caused American business to growth even stronger (Monhollon xvi). The 1950s are, moreover, characterized by extensive spread of consumerism (Ewen & Ewen, 35, Monhollon xvii). From the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the 1950s, consumer spending rose by sixty per cent (Spigel 32). Most importantly, the biggest boom in consumer spending was in household goods, such as household furnishings and consumer appliances (Coontz 25, Spigel 32). Spending seemed to reflect beliefs about a good life. The goods that the middle-class families were buying fostered family values and gender role division (May 15). Moreover, vast majority of Americans improved their economic situation, and it was reflected in the significant rise of the middle-class. This term labeled population with income between 3,000 and 10,000 dollars per family. From thirty-one per cent in the 1920s the middle-class constituted sixty per cent of population by the mid-1950s (Coontz 24-25). The economic situation that caused expansion of the middle-class was in large also translated to the growth of suburbia that was characterized by single family houses (Ewen & Ewen 174). By the end of the 1950s, seventy per cent of families 8 owned a house, eighty-seven per cent had a television and three quarters of families possessed a car (Coontz 25). Despite the economic prosperity of the 1950s, not everyone was so well of. Majority of the older population lacked medical insurance (Coontz 30). Moreover, approximately one quarter of the American population was poor and the poverty was much more widespread among minorities (Coontz 30). Indeed, the minorities were “almost entirely excluded from the gains and privileges accorded white middle-class families” (Coontz 30). The political reality was also connected to the movement towards domesticity. May (12-13) argues that the Cold War had severe effect on people and most importantly on the revival of domesticity. The double-edged goal in this anticommunist period was freedom that should provide liberation from the hardship of the past, and security in the future. However, freedom that was represented by secularism, materialism, bureaucratic collectivism and consumerism seemed to undermine the security (May 13). May (10) terms it as a “paradox of anticommunism”. Domesticity seemed to be the solution that should diffuse consumerism and other disturbing tendencies that were supposed to undermine the security. Although rather the opposite was true, it was believed that within home these tendencies could be tamed and contribute to happiness. Family seemed to offer a “psychological fortress” that would protect them against themselves and domestic containment was perceived as a way of personal, but also political security (May 13). 9 1.3. Suburbia After the war, in the late 1940s, throughout the 50s and 60s, the rise of suburbia can be observed. Between 1950 and 1970, the suburban population rose from 36 million to 74 million – the population of suburbs more than doubled (May 162). This enormous growth is also observable in the number of new housing units. During the 1940s, 9.8 million of new units were built. In the 1950s this rose to 14.9 million and in the 1960s to 16.8 million (Hayden, 38). Before that, suburbs in the United Sates have been socially diverse. Only after the war better paid workers – the middle class were able to buy houses in suburbia in large, and thus constitute the majority of suburbs’ inhabitants (Harris & Larkham 22- 23). This was to great extent work of the U.S. government in cooperation with the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). The policies aimed at supporting the development of suburbs in various ways. For example, thousands of miles of limited-access highways were approved by the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956 which enhanced the development of suburbia (Haralovich 65).