by Joseph Levendusky
There are several clips on YouTube of the great actor Carrol O’Connor explaining how Archie Bunker’s attitudes limited his horizons and his satisfaction in life. Archie is a classic self-limiter in a tragic American mode. As much as he may harm those around him, he does the most damage to himself.
Archie’s poisoned outlook prevents him from enjoying much of what life has to offer. He is incapable of appreciating his day to day existence. As soon he crosses the threshold of 704 Hauser Street, his long-suffering wife Edith is subjected to a litany of woes. Archie’s day is rarely a good one.
Where did Archie’s outlook come from? A clue comes in an episode where Archie drunkenly explains to his son in law, Mike Stivic, “Geez, your father, that’s guy who taught you to play ball. . .your father who loves you, he ain’t gonna lie to you. . .if he says don’t play with the coons, then you don’t play with them.”
The psychologist Alice Miller wrote that social norms can mask great barbarities in the way we raise our children. That’s what everybody thinks. That’s what everybody does. My mother explained to me recently that when she was young, most white people used the “N” word. It wasn’t considered inappropriate. It was the norm.
But social norms can also mask great self-inflicted tragedies. Archie is typical of many working class dads of his generation. Though they might have unwittingly facilitated much barbarity, they often harmed themselves greatly in the process.
Their station in life demanded that they play a role that was self destructive. They were slaves to their jobs. In the face of adversity, they were stoic and oblivious to their feelings. They learned to be knee-jerk, old school disciplinarians. Intimacy was distrusted, even when being intimate. They didn’t have enough time with their kids. Mothers knew their children far better than fathers did.
For working class men of Archie’s generation, the ultimate cruelty was that they were persuaded that their patriotism required them to relinquish beloved children to fight, and be damaged, or die, in an insanely misguided and pointless war. The hard hats, who in the aftermath of the Kent State shootings, beat anti-war protestors in New York were predecessors of the lower class Trump supporters who vote for a man who then actively and consciously undermines their vital interests.
In the end, the role demanded of these Dads too often turned them into broken old men, alienated them from their children, and shortened their lives.
My own Dad was a resolute member of Nixon’s “Silent Majority”. We argued politics much in the manner of Archie and Meathead. A second-generation American, in a decidedly ethnic family that had weathered the Great Depression, he believed resolutely in the compact offered by his country. Do your part. Play by the rules. Give your best effort honestly. Keep your promises. Despite chronic health conditions that could have kept him on the home front in World War II, he went to his draft board physical and convinced the doctors to let him serve.
After the Kent State shootings, he told me that if I protested the war, after being ordered not to, then I would deserve to be shot. He disliked Muhamad Ali and Martin Luther King. He flew the flag every day. His faith in the American way of life was unshakeable. That is, until the system in which he so deeply believed let him down hard.
After working thirty-two years behind a desk for the A & P supermarkets, he was given the sack just months before being eligible for a full pension. Many of his long-time colleagues got similar treatment. Bought in a leveraged buy-out, A & P’s new management raided the pension fund to service the resulting debt.
Though he should have been able to retire comfortably in his late fifties, he bounced around for another twelve years working mostly menial jobs. His pride in being the first white collar worker in his family was shattered. He ended his career working for the Postal Service, having jumped the hiring queue by working for a year and a half loading trucks on the graveyard shift. Though his military service added to his Postal Service pension, his retirement was substandard.
Unlike Archie, my father was able to able to grow as a result of misfortune. A devout Catholic, he came to the conclusion that American big business had become immoral. He gradually transitioned from a deep conservatism to views that more closely resembled the Catholic Workers. He became anti-war. He put new effort into his relationships with his family. He befriended minorities working with him in the Post Office. Because he deeply regretted losing fluency in the language spoken in his childhood home, he supported his co-workers who spoke Spanish on the job.
It is too easy to view men like Archie Bunker simply as full on bigots and misogynists. The reality is more complicated. Deep down, they truly loved their families, though they were often at a loss to express it. They were clumsy with their emotions. But they played roles for which they had been meticulously rehearsed, often acting for the benefit of more powerful interests at a high cost to themselves. In the end, many were subsidiary and unlamented victims.