Let's be honest. The rural sitcoms of the 1960s were VERY condescending..

[TJ]

I recreated this thread after the original poster had edited the thread title and deleted their posts.

[JustaViewer]

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[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by JustaViewer

Rural areas of America should have been insulted, not supportive of shows that portrayed them as uneducated, backward half-wits. Many of the social changes that occurred in the 1960s found their roots in rural and small town America.

The "Liberal Reform" shows that replaced them in the 1970s were condescending as well, just had a different target.

I don't disagree with your basic premise, but I think you are overlooking the vanity aspect. Many 1960s viewers had come from the 1930s and 1940s, where they had at least some experiences with outhouses, genuine ice boxes, radio instead of TV, and horse drawn vehicles on paved roads.

So, I think these people could look at the rural shows both with a sense of nostalgia as well as a feeling of "come uppance". They looked at those arcane hicks, and felt BETTER than them, so the overall experience was rewarding.


Ponder the nostalgic reflections Ward Cleaver often makes about his boyhood days back on the farm. No shame there. I think the rural sitcoms cultivated a similar vein among their viewers.

[GentlemanJim]

I guess what I am saying is, for many viewers, their personal vanities made them identify more with the mainstream, than with their primitive roots.

For those whose personal histories included "swatting flies in the outhouse" as a child, the opportunity to reflect on these hapless hicks in the sitcoms, made the viewers happy that they they were not "that way" anymore.

[king of comedy]

The only Southern show which I thought was the best is The Andy Griffin Show. Andy was a very smart character and some but all of the supportive had characters who were hicks ( Ernest T. Bass) and some who were also smart. But I'm glad Designing Women came along and changed peoples' view of the South.

[RetroGuy2000]

My grandmother tended to make fun of television as she watched it. She would openly mock shows that did stupid things. From June Cleaver's pearls while cleaning to the antics on the Beverly Hillbillies, she'd yell at the TV. She'd also correct characters' grammar.

I know in later years, she greatly enjoyed Murder, She Wrote. She could just watch the show, without having to mock it. I know she appreciated shows that weren't as dumb as many of the 1960s era sitcoms (especially the rural shows).

[JustaViewer]

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[Charley Knox]

Originally Posted by JustaViewer

No doubt.
A combination of nostalgia and distain played into viewer reaction. Both of my parents grew up in the 1930s and 40s in a big city and remember outhouses and chickens and horse-drawn wagons. Economic class played a big role.

Don't forget The Great Depression and WWII also played a key role in making these shows appeal to a wide audience. The rural shows also still do really well in the ratings on retro channels like METV.

[merlinjones]

People could laugh at themselves and recognize their own perceived foibles then.

If you couldn't laugh at yourself you lacked self-awareness and wisdom (see also comedians, cartoons, caricature, and comic strips). Sadly, this is a trait that has been lost by the public at large in recent years.

[JustaViewer]

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[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by merlinjones

People could laugh at themselves and recognize their own perceived foibles then.

If you couldn't laugh at yourself you lacked self-awareness and wisdom (see also comedians, cartoons, caricature, and comic strips). Sadly, this is a trait that has been lost by the public at large in recent years.

I agree that is a VERY big part of it. Back then self-deprecating humor was very much in vogue. The ability to laugh at yourself was seen as a measure of strength, and self-assurance.
In today's neurotic obsessed environment, most seem preoccupied looking for opportunities to claim they've been offended by any influence failing to blow smoke up their a**, on cue.

[broadmoor]

Nope, sorry, but don't see them as condescending. The 1960s shows were just harkening back to age-old (comic) rural archetypes, and in a decidedly affectionate way.

It wasn't really a new strain or anything. You had rural/hillbilly/small-town based comedy foundations strewn throughout earlier pop-culture that all those 1960s sitcoms were built upon. You had Seth Parker on radio in the early-1930s, "Li'l Abner" dominating the comic-pages for decades. Will Rogers' down-home witticisms in film and radio. There was Bob Burns (whom I find quite funny) with his deadpan hillbilly humor. Republic Studios had a series of b-films starring the Weaver Bros. and Elviry, ripe with rural comedy/music, in the late-30s/early-40s. "Lum and Abner" were huge on radio well into the 1940s (and even had an RKO-released film series). And Judy Canova in the 1940s and early-1950s, on both radio and film, provided what was probably the biggest prototype of what became those 60s sitcoms. You can also have a sort of tie-in with the b-westerns of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry into all this as well, if you note the comedy and musical that accompanied them. Then, in the 1950s, you had the popular "Ma and Pa Kettle" film series, with the last film entry being released the same year (1957) that "The Real McCoys" made its debut.

If there's one element separating the 1960s rural tv-shows, I think they had a ring of nostalgia propelling their popularity. A kind of 'looking back' for familiarity and security, while the 1960s-era was zooming along with missile crises, assassinations, space races, moral decline, racial strife, and also very likely the fraying of the social-fabric that the advent of television itself helped create. So much of the population of the 1960s had roots and had memories of growing up on farms, in small-towns, rustic venues, etc. The 1960s rural sitcoms were probably 'comfort zones' for them. The material was not condescending towards them at all. Remember also that this older stuff... 'rural' type humor, was often quite zany/surreal. That was part of its style and part of its nature, going way, way back.

A good example of really old-time rustic humor can be seen with the husband-and-wife vaudeville duo "Summers & Hunt," who were popular in the 1910s/20s, and did film a Vitaphone short (1929), which captured their act. Not really all that removed from some of the bits you'd see in "The Beverly Hillbillies," quite frankly.

[Charley Knox]

Originally Posted by JustaViewer

The one rural show that WAS set in the Great Depression and in a small town was The Waltons. That show portrayed rural America in a very sympathetic light, not condescending. Although it was a drama not a comedy.

Still, the majority of shows on METV are either rural, western or family programs, while most of the urban sitcoms were relocated to Decades.

[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by MIKEPR

Shut up.

Of course, there is a segment of society that ENJOYS being offended, too. It has become so much a part of their normal, that they feel incomplete, in it's absence. So the "condescending" sitcoms in question might have given them their "fix". (takes all kinds)

[Will Dockery]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

My grandmother tended to make fun of television as she watched it. She would openly mock shows that did stupid things. From June Cleaver's pearls while cleaning to the antics on the Beverly Hillbillies, she'd yell at the TV. She'd also correct characters' grammar.

I know in later years, she greatly enjoyed Murder, She Wrote. She could just watch the show, without having to mock it. I know she appreciated shows that weren't as dumb as many of the 1960s era sitcoms (especially the rural shows).

Retro Guy..?

The same one from Nova BBS?

If so, great to see you.