"All Happy Families Are Alike . . . "

 

"All Happy Families Are Alike . . . "

May 8 2022



The happy family

in the magazine ad

from 1950-something

is how those who were never there

imagine it was.

And for those who were,

memory can't be trusted.

They are in a big Chevrolet

on a brand new Interstate,

executive dad

in suit and tie

nifty hat,

homemaker mom

in white gloves

and cotton dress.

The boy is blonde

hair slicked back.

The little girl, also fair

is in her Sunday best,

smiling

at something corny her father said

I can only assume.

The car

gets 5 miles per gallon,

is unsafe at any speed.

But gas is cheap

and plentiful.

The lush green fields

on either side

are doused in DDT,

the ripening corn

ready to be harvested.

Dad's affair

with his secretary

is still under wraps.

While mom's fondness for Valium

is hardly a family secret,

since most of her bridge club

are also enjoying

the miracle drug.

And while Vice President Nixon

was down in Washington

plotting for the top job,

America bestrode the world,

and the future could only get

bigger, brighter, better.

There were no black faces

in the pages of Life,

and everyone had a job.

Because the America it mirrored

was white

Christian

classless.

There was the Bomb, of course,

but it protected us.

And shelters were big sellers

so why so much fuss?

All the talk

was of the new Ford Edsel,

about to make

its splashy debut.

But this was a Chevy family,

who, thank you very much,

were happy

to stick with what they knew.

My thanks to Leo Tolstoy for the title. If you're unfamiliar with the quote, the rest of the sentence goes: ...but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This picture (see above), which accompanied an article in the online New Yorker, kept catching my eye. A poem, it seems, was inevitable! Although the illustration, as irresistible as it is, looks to me more 40s, or even 30s, than the decade in question. Still, it perfectly captures the zeitgeist of that decade. Or, at least, our contemporary view of it.

Although the poem gets at the realities behind the nostalgia-tinged images, it probably was a simpler time: politics was less toxic and polarized, discourse more civil; we were naive about our place in the environment; and the future seemed a brighter place. It represented the apotheosis of the nuclear family. Then again, no other kind of family was even contemplated, let alone tolerated.

But, of course, the 50s weren't nearly as simple as we remember them. That's the toxic nature of nostalgia. Especially when notions of a golden past are weaponized by ambitious and unscrupulous populists. Make America Great Again is a nice slogan, but is wilfully ignorant of history, not to mention the undertone of racism and intolerance it subtly signals.