Television

The end of World War II brought with it a technology new to most American households: television. NBC, CBS, and ABC all began broadcasting regular programming between 1947 and 1948. This new (to the general populace) technology brought with it faces to go with the voices already familiar to the average American. Most of the first television shows were continuations of radio programs, including Ozzie and Harriet (first aired radio 1944, television 1952) and Father Knows Best (first aired radio 1949, television 1954). The transition to moving images from disembodied voices focused attention away from mere plot considerations to the visual component of these stories. Plot lines already familiar to audiences from the radio had a new visual component.

I Love Lucy, in some regards the most popular television show of all time, likewise began as a radio program. I Love Lucy began in 1950, when the Columbia Broadcasting Systems

approached Lucille Ball with a proposition: transition her popular radio show, My Favorite Husband, into a television series. Ball accepted under the condition that her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, replace Richard Denning, her husband on the radio show. Her insistence stemmed from her desire to share a schedule, and home, with her husband, an attempt at mending a fraying relationship pulled apart by hectic Hollywood schedules (Sanders & Gilbert, 1993). Ball and Arnaz, together with the producer and screenwriters for My Favorite Husband, created a

vaudeville show to counter CBS’s argument that an American audience would be unable to relate to their interracial marriage. They toured with great success, and convinced CBS to greenlight the pilot (Arnaz, 1977; Ball & Hoffmann, 1997). Upon viewing the pilot, whose material drew heavily from this vaudeville act, CBS waivered. They failed to commit to producing I Love Lucy until it became clear that, if CBS passed on the pilot, other networks were interested. CBS

offered the same excuses for their hesitation as they did when Ball first requested Arnaz play her television husband; their audience would find their marriage unbelievable and unsuitable

(Sanders & Gilbert, 1993). However, the success of Ball and Arnaz’s vaudeville tour weakened CBS’s position and made the CBS argument problematic, as the vaudeville act dispelled

concerns about the American public’s willingness to accept their marriage. It seems odd, then, that CBS’s problems with the pilot would be the same as before it filmed, especially since CBS agreed to fund the pilot based on the vaudeville show’s performance.

Fifties broadcasters filmed pilots to attract sponsors for their programming and never intended to televise these pilots. A modified script of the Lucy pilot served as the basis for season one episode six, “The Audition.” A copy of the pilot unearthed in the late 1980s aired for the first time in 1990. As a draft of “The Audition,” the original pilot reveals unspoken arguments against the show as originally conceptualized, and the aired episode resolves subversive gender

performance that questions the representative nature of the housewife. Changes to the pilot to create “The Audition” revolve around Lucy’s character, implying concerns with the show’s concept revolved around gender roles and Lucy’s characterization of housewife. I Love Lucy reveals the fabric of the social imaginary is fraying, as televised portrayals of housewife question its representative nature and therefore its role in the public sphere. I begin my discussion with an analysis of changes in the two episodes of I Love Lucy to reveal the problem of the imaginary of housewife; women failed to find it representative. In fact, mediated representations of housewife like Lucy Ricardo provided women a space in which to find common ground with other

housewives discontent with their role, as Lucy publicized the problem of bored housewives dreaming of the chance to self-determine.

June Cleaver would seem to make an opposing argument. She first entered American living rooms October 4, 1957, first serving her family dinner the same day the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. She continues to represent the social imaginary of what it meant to be a woman, wife, and mother in the Fifties suburbs. Douglas and Michaels (2004) used June Cleaver’s name interchangeably with “Fifties housewife” throughout their book to debunk and criticize the ways the “mommy myth” continues to define and restrict women’s lives. However, the nostalgic tone of Leave It to Beaver defines its portrayal of the suburbs as idealized and old- fashioned, and therefore undermines June as the representative housewife. As such, June and Lucy both allow women silenced by the social imaginary to begin the fight against its claims to representation. Situation comedies reveal the social imaginary faltering when confronted with the lived experience of its female suburban audience by exposing the discontent of housewives and portraying the role of housewife as idealistic and old-fashioned. These televised portrayals of housewife begin to create a space for women to contest the social imaginary by creating a community united in a fight against an unrepresentative imaginary.

2 VISUALIZING THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY: THE IMAGE OF THE FIFTIES