Frank Zappa describes how American TV sitcoms portray fathers as weak and stupid

FRANK ZAPPA; "Turgid Flux"- Comments on American TV Culture (1991)

4:20 mark


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TRANSCRIPT

NZ film maker Geoff Steven: What..., shows like "Married With Children...", What does middle America think of the show? That, you know, is it threatening or...?

Frank Zappa: Threatening? No. I think they like it. I think they look at the Bundy character in there and go, "Yeah, I know him. I know a few Bundys myself." But the interesting thing about Bundy-like characters in all sit-coms, the universal rule of all sit-coms is: fathers are weak, fathers are bad, mothers are wise. Now, this has been with us since the '50s. And this has sent a very bad psychological message to the entire society. It has made fatherhood almost a criminal activity. And a lot of people would be dissuaded from ever becoming a dad based on the images that are presented to the public from American television shows. And this goes all over the world. And you know what? American dads lived up to the image. They eventually became just as stupid and ineffectual as--there's plenty of real Bundys out there. That's the reason why that show resonates. But there are real Bundys out there because there were many predecessors to the Bundy character.

GS: So you think it was very much life following art and not art capturing the reality of the American family?

FZ: I think that it's a loop. It seems to me that in the United States the family has been replaced by the squadron. If you look at MTV and the way the dancers are set up, young people group together in squadrons. Especially the Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation video. It's Squadronism. If you live in a place where you happen to be in a socially retarded area, where they don't have gangs there yet, well you know you have something that is like a little squad of guys. They have terms like "me and my crew". Nobody's got a family. Because who wants to hang out with a dad? You know, dads are like Bundys. And, if a dad does exist, if there's actually a person who caused the child to appear someplace, well he didn't think it was very much fun so he left this little creature with the mother and he went out to do something more interesting, and so therefore the squadron. And MTV is showing us the new family unit. Then again, if you live in a neighborhood where they don't have gangs, your other options are, you belong to the football team. There's another kind of a gang, where you belong to some other thing which is not a family.