The Politics and Ideology of The Brady Bunch

 

Once upon a time not so long ago I met an individual who argued that American television was "liberal". All American television at all times and all places, he hypothesised, was "liberal".

Given that he made a general argument about the politics and ideology of American television my response to his general hypothesis was to ask him how the television show The Brady Bunch, which ran on the ABC television network from 1969 to 1974, an era in American television history dominated and monopolised by the three television network behemoths, CBS, the ratings leader, NBC, the perennial second place network, and ABC, the network typically at the bottom of the ratings at the time, was "liberal". His response was a pretty good one. He argued that since remarriage was at the heart of The Brady Bunch, the remarriage of Mike Brady (Robert Reed) and Carol Martin (Florence Henderson) to each other, each of whom brought three children into the new family--Greg, Peter, and Bobby from the Mike side and Marcia, Jan, and Cindy from the Carol side--The Brady Bunch was, in the context of a changing American marriage, divorce, and remarriage landscape--liberal.

There is no doubt that divorce was on the rise in the United States in the era of the culture war over Vietnam, government size, race, immigration, education, music, and drugs. Census data shows an increase in divorce during the Great Depression, a period of economic struggle, a period in which demographics are typically impacted by economic and political realities, World War II, a period where men had gone to war and significant numbers of American women were working, and in the 1960s (which lasted into the 1970s), the era of the counterculture and the culture war over it. It is not a straight-line increase in divorce, however. The American divorce rate rose from 7.9 per thousand in 1932 to 12.1 per thousand in 1940 to 16.4 in 1946. As America re-Victorianised after World War II, something reflected in American politics and ideology and in American television in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the divorce rate fell to 8.4. By 1972 it had risen again to 10.9 per thousand. Several commentators have also seen The Brady Bunch as a response, on some level, to the rise in the rates or remarriage during the era. According to the Pew Research Center 72% of those who had divorced had remarried in 1960.

The problem for those who want to argue that The Brady Bunch, a sitcom of remarriage, was a response to the changing liberal divorce times is that The Brady Bunch does not have two divorcees remarry, the liberal scenario. It has two widows remarry, the conservative scenario. If we borrow Peter Biskind's typology of 1950s American films--liberal, conservative, left wing, right wing--The Brady Bunch is, to paraphrase Donnie and Marie Osmond, a little bit conservative--it has two widows rather than two divorcees remarry--and a little bit liberal--the show is conscious of changing American divorce and remarriage patterns. The Brady Bunch, like The Mod Squad (ABC, 1968-1973), The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and M*A*S*H* (CBS, 1972-1983), has its cake and eats it too. On the one hand, The Brady Bunch reflects the changing divorce and remarriage culture of the times, while, on the other hand, it reflects the more conservative nature of the entertainment apparatus of the United States, an entertainment apparatus, which, for obvious reasons, contains this reflection of the swinging sixties within the broader more Victorian culture that dominated American television from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s and which dominated American White and WASP culture since the birth of the nation. After all, at the time the three networks were the only game in town and each of them wanted to reach the largest total audience possible because, in an age where niche demographic television had not yet come to dominate the media world, more money could be made from advertising targeted at the biggest demographic possible across all groups.

Today, of course, the new digital media environment, like so much of life in the core nation world, is segmented just like the military and work and beyond is segmented. Since the age of cable TV and satellites ended the era of the dominance of the three big television networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, networks each of who tried to reach the largest demographic possible, in the 1980s, radio and television stations and networks, and particularly the television stations and radio stations that once dominated a monopolistic market, have morphed from trying to reach the broadest demographic possible to trying to reach the segmented parts of the audience to which their programming is targeted. The cable "news" networks want to, after all, sell advertising, including ideologically correct and politically correct advertising, to its targeted demographic. Fox News, for instance, targets its propaganda, its ideologically and politically correct sensationalist product, at the angry White little schooled males in their market demographic. This means that, to use an analogy, Richard Milhous Nixon was the political equivalent of ABC, CBS, and NBC during the antenna age. He wanted to get the largest demographic possible and he wanted to do something for each of those demographics in a way that didn't offend anyone. It also means that Donald Trump is the political equivalent of Fox News. He targets his right wing demographic and he paints in sensationalistic and emotional hues, the sensationalism and emotions of the yellow press, in order to rev his demographic, his rageoholic demographic, up.

By the way, the first divorcee who would show up on network American television would show up four years after The Brady Bunch ended. It would be the same liberal lion who brought All in the Family (CBS, 1971-1979), an American remake of a British television show, to television, a TV show that gave equal time to right wing and liberal views, who would bring a divorcee to American television in One Day at a Time, Norman Lear. One Day at A Time (CBS, 1975-1984) centred around the life of a divorcee, Ann Romano, her two teenage daughters, and an absent father. Interestingly, and something that tells us about American television in the wake of the countercultural 1960s, Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970-1977), was originally written as a divorcee who moved to Minneapolis looking for work. CBS, however, nixed this idea and this little story--CBS nixing Mary Richards the divorcee--says a lot about the politics of American television in the network or antenna era.