Archie Bunker
Archie Bunker was a fictional character in the long-running and top-rated American television sitcoms All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place. He was a reactionary, bigoted, blue-collar worker and family man, played to acclaim by Carroll O'Connor. The Bunker character was first seen by the American public when All in the Family premiered in January 1971. In 1979 the show was retooled and renamed Archie Bunker’s Place due to the departure of family members Gloria and Michael, finally going off the air in 1983. Bunker lived in the borough of Queens in New York City—many sources say in the Corona neighborhood, although that neighborhood was never referenced on All in the Family itself. TV Guide once named Archie television's greatest character of all time.
All in the Family got many of its laughs by playing on Archie's bigotry, although the dynamic tension between Archie and his left wing son-in-law Michael "Meathead" Stivic (Rob Reiner) provided an ongoing political and social sounding board for a variety of topics. Other family members included wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and, after late 1975, grandson Joey Stivic.
In spite of his numerous flaws, Archie was simultaneously portrayed as being basically decent and, rather than possessing genuine malice, a product of the time in which he was raised. In the episode "Archie and the KKK," for example, Archie is invited to join a secret "Christian" club which turns out to be a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. In spite of his inherent discomfort around people of color, Archie responds with genuine revulsion at the group's violent methods, and attempts to thwart a cross burning.
Viewer reactions
Such was the name recognition and societal influence of the Bunker character that by 1972 commentators were discussing the "Archie Bunker vote" (i.e., the voting bloc comprised of urban, white, working-class men) in that year's presidential election; in the same year, there was a not insignificant parody election campaign, complete with T-shirts and bumper stickers, advocating "Archie Bunker for President." The term "Archie Bunker-ism," or just "Archie-ism," was also coined during the show's run to refer to the many malapropisms that Bunker used on the series.
Archie's opposition to the Klan in the episode mentioned above upset several watchdog groups, who believed that the show shouldn't have "humanized" what they viewed was a racist and believed that Archie should be kept thoroughly unlikable.
Trivia
- The inspiration for Archie Bunker was Alf Garnett, the character from the BBC sitcom Til Death Us Do Part, on which All in the Family was based.
- Archie, in turn, was the inspiration for Eric Cartman of South Park.
- In a lecture in 1979, philosopher Paul de Man used Archie to show that language is not in the first place 'logical' or even 'meaningful', but rhetorical. Rhetoric, in his view, always tends to suspend logic and subvert any clear meaning. "Asked by his wife whether he wants to have his bowling shoes laced over or laced under, Archie Bunker answers with a question: 'What's the difference?' Being a reader of sublime simplicity, his wife replies by patiently explaining the difference between lacing over and lacing under... but provokes only ire. 'What's the difference?' did not ask for the difference but means instead 'I don't give a damn what the difference is'"
- Archie's wife Edith died in 1980, at the beginning of the second season of Archie Bunker's Place. Actress Jean Stapleton still gets acting work, despite being typecast as "Edith."
- Archie's racism had subsided by the time Archie Bunker's Place began. During its second season, he hired a black nanny for Stephanie, Ellen Canby, and became fond of her. In one episode, Archie punched a man for making a remark about her and was thrown out for good from the lodge he had attended since the early days of All in the Family, the Kings Of Queens.
- In 1989 British musicians The KLF released a single "Kylie said to Jason" which makes reference to "the Archie Bunker show", and other sitcoms.
See also
- All In The Family
- Archie Bunker's Place
- Edith Bunker
- List of All in the Family episodes
- Anti-hero
- Meta-bigotry