Happy Days in the Seventies

So, I'm sitting here with my family watching a first season episode of Happy Days.  The episode is called "Great Expectations" and it's doing a lot to remind me that beatniks were hipsters before being a hippie was cool... And then my brain imploded.

AT ANY RATE... My family has been greatly enjoying the first season of Happy Days.  Except for maybe my wife, who would rather be watching some crap called Storage Wars.  The kids and I love it, though.

I have strong memories of Happy Days from when I was a kid.  We would assume our normal seats in the living room and there were certain shows we never missed.  Happy Days was one of them.  I don't actually remember any of the episode plot lines.  But the characters, atmosphere and situations are strongly imprinted.  This first season of the show is a bit different.

Writing this blog has me noticing my chosen 'theme' everywhere I look now.  And Happy Days is a perfect example.  It's the seventies version of the fifties.  So what does that say to us?

The producers of Happy Days are reaching a very wide and enthusiastic audience of this show.  Obviously, people who grew up in the fifties and could identify with the situations and culture presented.  The chord struck with this audience was so strong that they went and got their kids and plunked their butts down and watched the show together.

This tapping into the power of nostalgia can be very lucrative, as movies, TV, comics and toy companies are very aware of in today's world.  But it seems to me that it was a new concept back then.  And suddenly, as a bi-product of this phenomenon, we also have a whole generation that grew up in the seventies and know all about the culture of the fifties filtered thought the scope of things like Happy Days, American Graffiti, and Grease.

BUT... There's one more twist that plays around in my mind as I ponder these things while sipping green tea out of my favorite Scooby Doo glass... The content.  The episodic plots of Happy Days, and especially a lot of what was in the movie Grease, would not have been found in the movies and TV shows of the day.  The themes are different, the delivery is certainly different, and the situations are much more racy than what was considered acceptable television in the fifties.  At least for the first season of Happy Days.

So, is this bad?  We're seeing the fifties filtered through the seventies filtered through Hollywood television standards filtered through Henry Winkler's dreamy, penetrating gaze.

No.  It's not bad at all, as long as we're cognizant of what culture we're really experiencing.  You can't study the Wild West by watching Roy Rogers in those sequined shirts!  It's a filter.   Even Leave it to Beaver, filmed and aired in the fifties, is a filter.  My mother is adamant in the fact that Leave it to Beaver was extremely realistic.  (She also wouldn't let me watch Fantasy Island because it had the word 'fantasy' in it.  And just you forget about Charlie's Angels, mister!)  

But Many people would say that Happy Days is a more accurate version of the culture of the fifties than what Leave it to Beaver actually reflects.  Certainly the producers of Happy Days and the creative people behind American Graffiti.  

So can something filmed and aired in the 1970's BE a more accurate cultural reflection of the 1950's than something filmed and aired in the 1950's?

Is your head spinning yet?  I think about crap like this ALL THE TIME.

Remember the show That 70's Show?  I loved that show.  The late 1990's version of what the 1970's were like.  A Happy Days clone!  I devoutly followed that show.  Even when, after about five seasons, it 'jumped the shark'.

Which is a Happy Days reference... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_the_shark

...now my head really hurts.

Thanks,

DCD