My daughter has fallen in love with I Love Lucy and I am getting to enjoy all the old shows all over again. It's been a long time since I've seen any of these, and for the most part they still hold up well. Slapstick and people acting silly never really goes out of style. But what was Lucy's strength and what was constantly imitated afterward, was the domestic set-up, the best friends that are always around, and the deep, squabbling relationship that develops between the four main characters. Basically, family.Everyone remembers Lucy at the chocolate factory, or trying to sell VitaMeataVegamin, or the constant attempts to get into show business via Ricky's night club and beyond. What I had forgotten was how deeply ingrained that flat little world was in my consciousness. Watching the antics in the Ricardos' apartment I realize that really remember it - how it looks, where the bathroom must be, etc. It was a real place to me in childhood. Some of Lucy's classic moments - like when she is forced to tell the truth and all her girlfriends gang up on her and ask all the forbidden questions - how old are you? how much do you weigh? etc., etc., is still a delight to watch, especially as she answers each question and then proceeds to tell each gal what she can't stand about them. Freedom!
After viewing a few episodes that is a new perspective for me about Lucy. She is irrepressible, to the point of dementia and annoyance at times, admittedly, but she has a will that won't be stopped. She is a woman living in the 1950s wearing pants and going where she wants, when she wants, no matter what her Latino husband has to say about it. Of course most of the situations were created for maximum comic effect, but the message is still clear - if Lucy wants to get into the show, get a job, get a new apartment - she will find a way.
The New York location also fed into my childhood desire to get to that city as soon as I could, because that's where everything happens, right? Between Lucy, The Odd Couple and Barney Miller, I was convinced I had it all covered where the big city was concerned. I wonder now, however, if there could be a Mrs. Trumbull in my building, because there might be the occasional night I might want to hit a modern-day Tropicana...
Of course the show is peppered with loads of things that would never be on television today. Lucy and Ricky are constantly smoking. They fight and threaten physical violence. Somehow I don't find these factors too troubling. It's a time capsule. And the music Desi sings and plays is great. Times and mores change, not always for the better. There is something about how the Ricardos and the Mertzes spend their days that I would like to tap into in some way in our modern lives. I don't expect to be donning a Superman outfit for the kid's next birthday, or "soaking up local color" at an Italian winery, but upping the level of silliness is always a good thing. In the meantime, it is fun to watch Lucy and Ethel sing "Friendship" while they tear each other's matching ball gowns apart. It's even more fun watching my daughter giggle while she watches.
6 comments:
I agree with much of what you write, save for one point.
I dearly love the comic situations Lucy Ricardo gets into -- just the word "VitaMeataVegemin" gets me chuckling -- but not the way she gets into them. To me, that Lucy had to scheme in order to find a way to do what she dreamed of doing, and her inevitable ineptitude once she did, always tended to undermine the positive features of her character.
The only time I can remember that Ricky messed things up as thoroughly as Lucy did was the chocolate factory episode, when his arroz con pollo didn't quite turn out as he had planned. Usually, he ended up the magnanimously forgiving husband who loved Lucy despite her silliness ...
Perhaps it bothers me more because I was a child when those shows were new (or newish) -- the female straitjacket wasn't quite as much an artifact of the past as it is (thank all the gods!) for your Lucy.
I totally hear you, and a few years ago would have probably had the same hesitations. But now I look at the scheming and hare-brained plots as very childlike - sort of like the kinds of scams my five-year old is just starting to put together. Maybe I am mellower than I thought...or I choose to not really view it as sexual politics and am going straight for the comedy. WAAAAAAaaah!
I guess I was simply old enough to see the implications in action all around me, so, while I loved the comedy, its context troubled me. No doubt, had I seen these shows through the eyes of a five year old (directly or vicariously), I'd have reacted differently ...
Funny I don't remember them smoking! That's bad and yes maybe there are some issues with the scheming and equality but I have to say I would rather my child watch I Love Lucy than most TV today.
I thought it was bad in the seventies and eighties when most comedies became about mocking other people and how that translated into how kids behaved towards each other in school.
Now even those shows seem charming compared with what's on TV currently. I'm so sick of how all the crime dramas are so cavalier about killing another young female to get the plot started. My absolute least favorite has to be Criminal Minds which went as far as to show a young girl being tortured on video in one episode.
I was watching an old movie the other day that had been given an R rating and I thought this is so tame compared to what I could see on any channel. I don't want us to go back to a time when you couldn't show a bra on a woman in an advertisement but just maybe we could do with a little more slap stick.
I watched Law & Order a lot while I was pregnant, because I've always liked mysteries and whodunnits - now I can't watch any crime shows. Most of them seem to be about something unnecessarily grisly, to see how much they can gross us out. I don't even know if it's still on, but Cold Case always seemed to be about some crime against a child. Yuk. I enjoyed Bones for the humor and David Boreanaz, but now that the kid is old enough to understand what is going on, watching it is really out of the question. You might say tape it, but when would I have time to watch it? I Love Lucy, cartoons and cooking and home shows seem to be what ends up on TV for us. And the random movie. Oh, and the Tudors, whenever that comes back on. I won't quit that.
p.s. re the smoking - I think that the cigarettes were the sponsor for the shows - plus that was the culture. I could pull out some glamorous shots of my parents, looking a bit like Lucy and Ricky, with cigarettes poised...
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