I recently turned on an episode of 'The Waltons,' as I have recently moved to southern West Virginia and wanted to see how the show's fictionalized presentation stacked up against the real thing. I watched one episode; if that episode is any indication, this show was goddawful tripe.
The most minor offense is that the show was obviously filmed in a California backlot, not in the Virginia/West Virginia mountains. More significant is that the cast looks too well fed and groomed to seem Depression era people - you can almost hear the director tell them to take off their shoes and walk barefoot to school, in order to make these 1970s people look impoverished.
Allow me to recount the plot of the episode. John-Boy has barely scraped together $2.30 for a new pair of 'britches' to wear to the dance with some girl he had set his eyes on. (Isn't the Walton family Baptist?)
Meanwhile Grandpa discovers an injured seagull on his property and fixes up a cage to nurse it back to health. -Would a real time-pressed subsistence farmer do this? Engage in this bit of creature sentimentality when he slices the throats of pigs every October to keep his family fed? No, he'd wack the bird with a shovel and throw it on a compost pile.
And best of all, an elderly Scottish widow asks John-Boy over to repair her car - seems she wants to go to the seashore. J-B repairs it, while a doctor counsels the woman not to attempt to drive long distance. Here I catch on what's going to happen: Oh-oh, John Boy. Run away from this woman, fast, or kiss your dance goodbye.
Sure enough, she hornswaggles him into driving her to the shore instead of attending the dance. The General Store doesn't mind taking back the purchased britches- even after they had been altered. J-B and the widow head off, to the coast and back in one day, although I wouldn't try that now and the area's roads were often unpaved back then. (Can't have J-B and the widow out overnight.) J-B uses the refunded $2.30 to by lobster to simulate the widow's honeymoon dinner, which leaves her with a happy glow. Lesson: young people should ignore their sex drives and focus on pleasing the elderly, no matter how irrational their demands may be. Should I mention that the widow has a fatal heart attack right after this excursion? In the last scene, Grandpa sets the aforementioned seagull free. It's a symbol of the widow's spirit, get it? GET IT?
I have to mentioned this show's politics, only because Bush Sr. in 1991 mentioned this show as what Americans really want to see, as opposed to 'The Simpsons'. It was apparently based on the idea that what America nowadays needs to hear in the 'we were poor back then, but we were moral.'
Balderdash. If there ever was a moral golden age in America, it wasn't the early '30s. Banks foreclosing on farmers weren't conveying any kind of moral lesson except the mercilessness of capital. The legions of tramps left legions of wives and children behind. For every John Dillinger and Bonnie Parker, there were a thousand people you haven't heard of who looked for the solution to want outside the law.
Contrary to the theme of the show, poverty doesn't make a society more moral. Poverty just sucks.
The most minor offense is that the show was obviously filmed in a California backlot, not in the Virginia/West Virginia mountains. More significant is that the cast looks too well fed and groomed to seem Depression era people - you can almost hear the director tell them to take off their shoes and walk barefoot to school, in order to make these 1970s people look impoverished.
Allow me to recount the plot of the episode. John-Boy has barely scraped together $2.30 for a new pair of 'britches' to wear to the dance with some girl he had set his eyes on. (Isn't the Walton family Baptist?)
Meanwhile Grandpa discovers an injured seagull on his property and fixes up a cage to nurse it back to health. -Would a real time-pressed subsistence farmer do this? Engage in this bit of creature sentimentality when he slices the throats of pigs every October to keep his family fed? No, he'd wack the bird with a shovel and throw it on a compost pile.
And best of all, an elderly Scottish widow asks John-Boy over to repair her car - seems she wants to go to the seashore. J-B repairs it, while a doctor counsels the woman not to attempt to drive long distance. Here I catch on what's going to happen: Oh-oh, John Boy. Run away from this woman, fast, or kiss your dance goodbye.
Sure enough, she hornswaggles him into driving her to the shore instead of attending the dance. The General Store doesn't mind taking back the purchased britches- even after they had been altered. J-B and the widow head off, to the coast and back in one day, although I wouldn't try that now and the area's roads were often unpaved back then. (Can't have J-B and the widow out overnight.) J-B uses the refunded $2.30 to by lobster to simulate the widow's honeymoon dinner, which leaves her with a happy glow. Lesson: young people should ignore their sex drives and focus on pleasing the elderly, no matter how irrational their demands may be. Should I mention that the widow has a fatal heart attack right after this excursion? In the last scene, Grandpa sets the aforementioned seagull free. It's a symbol of the widow's spirit, get it? GET IT?
I have to mentioned this show's politics, only because Bush Sr. in 1991 mentioned this show as what Americans really want to see, as opposed to 'The Simpsons'. It was apparently based on the idea that what America nowadays needs to hear in the 'we were poor back then, but we were moral.'
Balderdash. If there ever was a moral golden age in America, it wasn't the early '30s. Banks foreclosing on farmers weren't conveying any kind of moral lesson except the mercilessness of capital. The legions of tramps left legions of wives and children behind. For every John Dillinger and Bonnie Parker, there were a thousand people you haven't heard of who looked for the solution to want outside the law.
Contrary to the theme of the show, poverty doesn't make a society more moral. Poverty just sucks.