Racial Satire on Primetime: Till Death Us Do Part and All in the Family
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Racial Satire on Primetime: Till Death Us Do Part and All in the Family Abbey Marra University of Bristol Faculty of Arts Department of Film and Television Ushering in a new era for the situation comedy, Johnny Speight’s Till Death Us Do Part (BBC, 1965-1975) and Norman Lear’s American remake, All in the Family (CBS, 1970- 1979) introduced two protagonists who would become some of the first anti-heroes in television: Alf Garnett (Warren Mitchell) and Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor). Both working-class patriarchs with adult children living at home, they were stubborn, intolerant, and unabashed bigots who spewed racial slurs in nearly every episode. Alf and the Garnetts were Cockneys living in a run-down tenement of London’s East End, while Archie and the Bunkers were loud-mouthed “New Yawkers” residing in a working-class borough of Queens. Speight and Lear hoped Alf/Archie’s diatribes would give public domain to debates concerning prejudice apparent across Britain and the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Maintaining the traditional sitcom premise of family life and generational conflicts, the programs attempted to expand the genre by exploring content previously deemed inappropriate for popular television. The bonds of family contrasted with the conflicts of politics in a succession of arguments which made up a large portion of plotlines, allowing the two shows to use offensive, and particularly racist, terms on primetime television. While ratings soared on both sides of the Atlantic, the sitcoms also received a considerable amount of criticism for their offensive nature and possible contribution towards, and justification of, prevalent racist attitudes. Till Death was accused of failing to give a voice to the minorities it claimed to support, and critics warned that audiences often leaned toward agreement with the anti-hero’s political beliefs instead of mocking his bigotry. Although the programs were often steeped in controversy, they offered insight into the political and social understanding of race relations in Britain and the United States, opening up a public dialogue about racism in contemporary society that had largely been kept quiet. When Till Death first aired on BBC in 1965, audiences were introduced to a new situation comedy anti-hero with Mitchell’s embodiment of Alf Garnett (Figure 1). A Tory- voting, ill-educated, working-class monarchist with a vile temper, he refused to hear a bad word about the wealthy and loathed the growing population of Black and Asian immigrants. Living in a run-down tenement with dim-witted wife Else (Dandy Nichols), he was also accompanied by his adult daughter, Rita (Una Stubbs) and her “lazy-leftie” liberal husband, Mike (Tony Booth). The children represented everything Alf opposed, and many storylines centered around rows and debates over political and generational differences. Figure 1. The Garnett family in Till Death Us Do Part, 1965 Alf’s racial prejudice remained one of the program’s central themes, and he regularly used offensive terms when referring to the growing immigrant population, including “wops,” “blackies,” “Pakis,” and “micks.” Speight’s aim was to present a realistic portrait of Britain’s racial prejudice at the time, attempting to expose Alf’s bigotry and ignorance as a way to deflate racism in the UK. Racial storylines in a number of episodes focused on the rising Asian and Black immigrant population, which Alf considered detrimental to the “natives” in Britain. He believed immigrants were different to the English both biologically and culturally, consistently proposing that they were ultimately inassimilable within British society. Voicing the prevalent racist view that Black Britons were sexually different from whites, he argued that Black men had an innate desire to lust over white women. Using the example of Shakespeare’s Othello, he attempts to convince his family that Shakespeare “understood yer coon…he knew that if you let yer coon marry a white woman it don’t work … ‘cause a white woman can drive yer coon mad, see.” (Alf Makes the Address at Southwark Cathedral, 1974). He also repeatedly accused immigrants of coming to Britain for the sole reason of taking advantage of the NHS: “As crafty as a bloody wagonload of monkeys they are. Come over here they do an’ get all the false teeth an’ bloody false eyeballs they need; wooden legs, everything! Cop two thousand pounds an’ go home again, start up a business new men!” (Thou Shalt Not Steal, 1974). Alf’s wife Else echoed his racist opinions on occasion, such as one instance in which she will not allow a Black doctor to examine her: “My Alf was out there once, an’ he said if they ever see a white woman, you know, with no clothes on, like naked, some of ‘em can’t control themselves” (Intolerance, 1966). In the same episode, Alf loses his voice yelling racist abuse at a football match, and is later forced to see a Black doctor. He brags about his willingness to be treated by the man, although he calls Black people “Sambos” in front of him, and in a conversation with his family declares, “Well of course he’s a coon, of course he’s a Sambo. I got nothing against the man, but you got to face up to facts.” For Alf, the doctor’s skin color marks him as innately primitive, regardless of social position or educational background. The remaining minutes in the episode unfold as a generational conversation about immigration, with Alf and Else declaring migrants’ alien nature and lack of education, while Rita and Mike counter with liberal arguments reflecting the more progressive position of British youth. When analyzing Till Death, it is important to note that Speight did not necessarily conceive the series with a particularly racial agenda. Rather, he aimed to utilize race as one of the mechanisms with which to offer social commentary and criticism of the generational and class differences in Britain (Jones 64). Indeed, many reports saw the program not as a race comedy, but as a social and generational battlefield. However, race has since become the lens through which the show is remembered, and remained a recurring theme throughout the program’s run. Both the BBC and Speight argued that by allowing Alf Garnett to voice racist opinions, ordinary viewing audiences would be forced to laugh at his bigotry, thus serving an educational purpose. In a 1975 interview, Speight verbalized his views on the matter of race: “There is still deep-seated racial prejudice in this country, based on ignorance and fear. But my show brings it out in the open and tries to make people realize how silly it is” (Schaffer 470). This anti-racist agenda matched BBC policy on racial prejudice—in a memorandum on race relations, it was noted that the BBC shared the basic moral attitude that underpinned the Race Relations Act; they aimed to promote race relations while condemning racial prejudice (471). Alf’s diatribes throughout the show are not only aimed at Black individuals. In another episode, he accuses Asian immigrants of bringing disease to Britain, suggesting that they be quarantined upon arrival, “the same as they do with animals…put ‘em in quarantine an’ squirt ‘em with carbolic an’ things!” (Alf’s Dilemma, 1967). Alf later becomes convinced that immigrants are responsible for his stomach virus: “It’s your bloomin’ Lascars bring it in with ‘em. Listen, they’re not English bugs, they’re foreign bugs, they are!” Tying into a wider discourse concerning Asian primitivism, Alf comments on immigrant hygiene throughout the episode, telling his daughter Rita that if she “want[s] to go out there, to their own countries and see ‘em, most of ‘em, blimey, most of ‘em are sittin’ on the pavement with flies crawling all over ‘em!” Soon after the program aired on BBC, debates began to circulate about whether Alf was being presented as an object of ridicule or sympathy, the former positioning the show as a critique of small-minded bigotry, while the latter allowed audiences to identify with Alf’s racism, their justification apparent by their broadcast. With an increasing number of racially motivated storylines, the BBC soon realized that audience reactions to the racial humor were unpredictable and diverse. During an episode entitled, “The Blood Donor,” Alf sits with Mike in a hospital waiting room about to give blood when he notices a Black man seated a few feet away. He then lectures his son regarding the need to separate donated Black blood from white blood, causing a number of audience members to write opinionated letters to the show. One viewer wrote in to add weight to a negative response to a broadcast from a Black viewer on the BBC’s Talkback program, informing Controller of Programs Hugh Wheldon that “it was a very sad reflection to hear a colored fellow human being say that the immigrants thought we had something to offer them in Great Britain, but this was not so after seeing the disgusting behavior and comments by Garnett during the “Blood Donor” session” (Schaffer 466). Wheldon promptly sent a reply: “To say that Alf Garnett’s view of “coons” and giving blood donation to colored people confirms that Britain has nothing to offer immigrants is like seeing The Merchants of Venice and concluding that anti-Semitism is rife in the Home Counties” (467). Commenting on the same episode, another viewer praised the BBC for challenging racist theories in such an original way. Enid Hutchinson’s letter to the Director General reads: “I thought last night’s program of the Garnett family did more to root out false unscientific ideas about blood, race and heredity than any number of earnest biology programs” (467).