I’ve been on vacation the last couple of weeks in Orlando—searching for alligators and playing cards and spending altogether too much time waiting in line for Space Mountain. But between all that line-standing and ride-riding at Disneyworld, the fam and I did find time to flip on the television to watch a little-known cable channel called Me-TV.
The network specializes in long-gone TV shows, from the merely old (The Bob Newhart Show and The Odd Couple) to the truly ancient (The Twilight Zone and The Honeymooners). And while at first the charm was just showing my kids some of the shows I had watched growing up (in reruns, mind you … I’m not that old), there was more than just nostalgia at work: These things were flat-out funny.
And they also drove home a point that I should’ve understood better, given the amount of time we spend talking about it here at Plugged In. Culture has changed a whole bunch since Lucille Ball was ‘splaining her latest madcap adventure to her hubby.
Case in point: We watched an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show (the show ran from 1961 to ’66) in which little Ritchie, Rob and Laura Petrie’s precocious son, learned a couple of very bad words from one of his new friends. Rob and Laura were beside themselves with concern (particularly when little Ritchie wrote the word down on his classroom chalkboard), and spent the entire episode wringing their hands on how this kid to stop using these naughty words … particularly since they were was so naughty that they refused to repeat them.
Fast-forward to a more modern age with modern sitcoms, specifically Modern Family—an Emmy-winning show that’ll likely wind up on Me-TV in a couple of decades. A recent episode featured a very similar scenario: Cameron and Mitchell, the show’s gay couple, discover their cute-as-a-button adopted daughter, Lily, has learned the f-word.
Cam and Mitchell, like Rob and Laura, struggle with how to handle the situation. I mean, what sitcom parent doesn’t want to raise their kids in the best, most loving way possible? And they certainly didn’t want their toddler blurting out this nuclear-level profanity during an upcoming wedding.
But the attitude of these two shows toward the words themselves were quite different. Ritchie learned the offending word (which we never had a hint of what it was) from a pal of his—not his parents. Cam and Mitchell, meanwhile, might’ve unintentionally “taught” Lily the offending word (which was only partly bleeped on the show). And while Ritchie’s cursing was no laughing matter for Rob and Laura—the comedy was driven more by the couple’s discomfort—Lily’s blue streak was a source, mostly, of amusement for the full extended family.
Granted, The Dick Van Dyke Show was written in a time when sitcoms often reflected a whitewashed idealism and there was a tacit understanding that they shouldn’t offend anyone’s sensibilities. Rob and Laura slept in twin beds, for goodness’ sake.
Even so, there was a refreshing (at least for me) understanding that bad words weren’t “normal.” Only folks who didn’t know any better used ’em. By the time Modern Family came out, that understanding had vanished. “Normal” people swear: They just try to not to teach their 3-year-olds to do the same.
Now, I don’t think we can say that this episode of Modern Family is pushing the culture to normalize cursing. From what I gathered listening to parents in line at Disneyworld, whispering obscenities under their breaths that they hoped that their children couldn’t hear, language is harsher than it was in Rob and Laura’s day. The “normal” Petrie family would be quite abnormal today. And I find that a little sad, because I suppose that makes me and my non-swearing family a little off-kilter, too.
And it makes me wonder whether, when the Modern Families of the world are considered golden oldies, we’ll also consider those shows as relics of a sweeter, more innocent time.
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