"What's happening all over?
I'll tell you what's happening all over:
Guy sittin' home by a television set,
Who used to be something of a rover—
That's what's happening all over."
These lines, from the immortal early 1950s musical comedy Guys and Dolls, keep racing through my little pea brain nowadays. The reason is that I recently bought a twelve-hour "special collectors' edition" of Victory at Sea, the classic early 1950s NBC documentary, on VHS. Day after day, I sit at home and watch it. Over and over, I see the Japanese waiting in trenches and cages while the Marines storm ashore. Night after night, I see waves crashing over transports on the Murmansk run, Rommel fleeing Montgomery, B-29s pulverizing Tokyo, brave soldiers being carried away from beaches on stretches, fields of crosses at cemeteries in the Marianas.
There is a reason that I watch all of this heroism over and over again. The reason is that what is usually watched for rest and recreation, mass culture on television and in movies, has taken a ratchet turn for the worse so profound that I can only overcome total despair by turning to the glories of the past--now available at the press of a button on my faithful flickering Sony.
Herewith, from the point of view of both an insider and a viewer, is a brief tour de la boue of what's new and unfortunate in mass culture.
Producer's Fantasy
1.) The ersatz family. Over the past five years, "family" has become a major buzzword in sitcom programming. It means, if it works, reaching the perfect audience, getting no heat from the preachers, and selling into bigtime rerun money. As a producer's fantasy, it also means, please God, another Cosby Show.
The result is that on any night, between 8 and 9 P.M. especially, the networks are crammed to bursting with families of every description. The nauseating part in that these families are painfully faked up, tricked up, and unappealing. There are families with little kids and one mother. There are families with little kids and one father. There are also shows with a little kid and two fathers and no mother. Now, God help us, there is even a show with little kids, three fathers--two straight, one gay--and no mother. There are also shows with both parents.
The problem, or at least the problem as I see it, is that not only are the situations totally askew, but so are the emotions in the families. The little children are terrifyingly materialistic. The young men are startlingly ambivalent about women. The middle-aged women are sexually avaricious to the point of nymphomania.
Of course--and this is an old, old standby--the Dads are stone morons. Indeed, this is the only point in common with the sitcoms that middle-aged viewers may recall from days of yore.
But even the strange affects of the families are not the problem. It is the relations between and among the characters that are so frightening. And, in
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