I really like
that Archie Bunker
character. I mean I wouldn’t
think much of him as a person – if he was
a real person…but as a character
(a very real character)
there’s so much there. Even still.

You wouldn’t (probably) get
away with it now – though the trick
seems to be to animate…
If it’s a cartoon it’s most definitely
not real – like constant subtitles/flash-cards
for the audience.
You’re allowed to laugh – because it can’t possibly
be real.

Archie Bunker was called the “Lovable Bigot” or
something like that.
The idea was he was ‘a laugh’ –

The show rolled out across the 1970s and then
into the 80s with Archie’s spinoff (which wasn’t
a patch, but it was still okay…)

I was a little kid
when I first watched
it. I barely understood
it. Was probably laughing
at my parents laughing.

Now it’s a revelation.

An uncomfortable
revelation.

A relevant revelation.

A strange, mercurial
temptation.

Carroll O’Connor played
Archie Bunker.
Normal Lear wrote
Archie Bunker.

Norman Lear is still
alive. Caroll
O’Connor is not.

Archie Bunker only
lives on in the memory
because Norman Lear, at 95, is a
living legend of TV – with so many
hits; not just All In The Family, not just
Archie Bunker’s Place.

He has said that he never imagined Archie
quite how Caroll O’Connor played him.

(I don’t think enough credit is given to ‘Edith’, Archie
Bunker’s wife, played by Jean Stapleton. She was Archie’s
enabler, his soulmate too. He loved her. Even when he
was telling her she was stupid, even as awful
as he got – he loved her! She was saintly, rather than
simple. She accepted him – and she was sweet. So that
allowed us to ‘accept’ him on whatever level).

What on earth I’m
trying to say here is now
lost to me – entirely…

…beyond the fact
that Archie Bunker was
real. His bigotry came
from a tough, working-class
life – of that time. He was
honest – he was opinionated,
he was cruel. He was real.

I feel nothing close to
him. And yet so
close to him.

All In The
Family feels like some
weird, mystic documentary
sometimes. A broad, silly
pantomime at others…

(which doesn’t mean
it’s still not a doco, of sorts)

You can see and feel
Archie Bunker being turned
into caricature when you
watch South Park, when you
hear and see him,
transmogrified into
that awful little shit, Eric
Cartman. Ranting and cussing
and throwing out racial slurs and
homophobic rants. And this. And
that. And what-have-you.

Cartman and South Park: also funny,
profoundly clever. Sure.

But never as real.

Never quite right – the aim, I guess,
being satire on a broader scale, an intentionally
over-the-top caricature.

Archie Bunker was
a Trojan Horse
of a sort.

And it takes
all sorts. Across
TV and in real life.

I’ll end this here.
And now.
(In a minute).

Because this isn’t
quite the poem or essay
I might have hoped for.

But Archie Bunker’s
on my mind. A lot
lately.

And that’s all I’ve
been trying
to say.