Greetings over your interweb devices
“I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me
To see me looking back at you”
This image comes from a VERY early stage in my career with cameras — the random snapshot era. It would be a few years before I would start to understand composition, or the use of 35 mm cameras and film, or just about anything else. I chose the image, however, not for its lack of artistic effort, or even for its primary subject, my prep school buddy Sam (aka “The Commodore”), but to show the posters on my dorm room wall –– of Jim Steranko’s Captain America on frame right and obscured behind Sam, the legendary Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four. It is comic books (and their media adaptations) on my mind today.
Having heard and read good things about the series, “WandaVision,” I was keen to give it a view and finally got the opportunity to do so yesterday. I have been a comic book geek since my age was measured in single digits, and have enjoyed the Marvel Comics movies of the recent decades. Those who recommended the series to me were curious to hear my reactions to the story, which was told through a series of sitcom settings spanning from the 1950s right up to “The Office” and “Modern Family.” Given my lifelong historical study of TV history, my 35 year career making sitcoms, and my enjoyment of comics — this seemed like a great blending. But something about the earlier sections (the black and white homages) felt off to me. Maybe, it was that I really appreciate and hold those early shows in the highest esteem, or that there were some technical things that jarred me (even though I read that the producers consulted Dick Van Dyke, himself, for tips on the early sitcom styles) — but I was initially underwhelmed. As the episodes proceeded through the later time frames, I was much more satisfied with their conceptualizations and there were also lots of “Easter eggs,” little tv historical nods and winks, along the way to satisfy my inner geek.
What I finally realized, though, was that they were missing the visceral tie to the material of those first few decades. Sure, they had seen the reruns over the years, but well after the fact. The picture of Sam and the posters I chose is older than both the creator and director of the series — it even pre-dates Kevin Feige, the head of and brains behind Marvel Studios.
So is this just another “hey, you kids, get off my lawn” screed? Not really. I call attention to it more as a philosophical point in regards to our connection to history. As far as the viewing public is concerned, the piece worked — and, I must say, both the comic book and the tv fan in me was more than satisfied by the end of the final episode (and yes, I binged them all in one day). But the makers of the series really shined when they got to eras with which they were directly familiar — in the 80s, when they were young viewers of “Family Ties” and ABC’s TGIF lineup, and later, when they were budding filmmakers and became fans of “The Office.” You could see and feel they had a innate understanding of the material. When they studiously looked back at shows like “I Love Lucy,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” and “Bewitched,” however, it felt as if they approached those shows from a communal zeitgeist of ‘what it must have been like’ as opposed to ‘what it was actually like’ to have experienced those times.
In my lifetime, there was no one alive who actually knew Aristotle, Confucius, Da Vinci, or even Benjamin Franklin. We generally come by our knowledge of such historical figures through great authors and storytellers — who are, at best, reinterpreting older accounts and sharing an educated guess as to what those people and the times in which they lived were like. As a child, I remember a 90+ year old man guesting on a talk show who, when he was a toddler, accompanied his father at a speech given by Abraham Lincoln. He didn’t really know Lincoln, but he did have actual knowledge of that general era. I suspect he may have had some odd reactions to films set in post-civil war times, because he lived through them.
And me? I was born in the late 50s and was raised in the 60s and 70s. I have very fond and vivid memories of that era (as well as having a historical obsession with it). As I see others view it in a receding rear-view mirror, I am in that awkward phase of knowing the difference between how I perceived those years at the time, and how it is popularly perceived by many who were born much later. Eventually my own memories will muddy and fade, and the depiction of those 1950s and 1960s shows will look just fine. In the film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” there is a quote which sums it all up pretty well, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
To one and all, Be Safe-Stay Healthy