Uncomfortable TV

[Mr Craig Clark]

Paul Mackin writes: 
   > Doesn't the TV show "Married with Children" deserve a bit of notice
   > discomfortwise. It's as subversive of conventional family values as you 
   > can decently get. No incest yet as far as I've noticed but just wait.  
   > Yet the despised, beseiged Bundys _carry on_. A brave affront to the 
   > World (America) that made them. 
 I think the average TV viewer is comforted by the Bundys. Because 
they are so awful, the average TV viewer can say "Hey, we're not that
bad! We're MUCH closer to the Brady Bunch than the Beseiged Bundys."
The Bundys serve to legitimise the smug morality of Toobland every 
bit as much as every other sitcom family. I think _The Simpsons_ comes 
closer to overturning Toobland morality, but even so I haven't seen 
it do anything as subversive as the final frame of _Twin Peaks_  (the 
heroic if wildly eccentric FBI agent turned totally evil...)

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"