Lipsitz, White and The Honeymooners

I think the episode of The Honeymooners (“Better Living Through TV”) wedges in interesting ways between Lipsitz’s “Meaning of Memory” and Mimi White’s “Watching the Girls Go Buy.” Also, it might prove interesting to bring both Lipsitz’s article and White’s chapter into conversation with each other because they seem to set up their arguments similarly, insofar as they present television as a vehicle for American consumerism (Lipsitz’ discusses TV as a vehicle for legitimation; White talks about these programs appeal to ‘repeated consumption and extended accumulation’), while illuminating how the medium’s codes of consumerism become the very tools by which a complicated set of readings counter to its economic imperatives can arise. They both intently lay out the ideological fissures inherent in these two bodies of programming, which is, of course, a quick comparison that momentarily sets aside the historical distance between their objects. Indeed, they do take quite different approaches to their objects. Lipsitz locates these white ethnic working class sitcoms within the class histories of the U.S., beginning with the Great Depression of the 1930s through the post-war boom. His formal analyses primarily focuses on narrative, as he pays more attention to how the story arcs of specific episodes revolve around disciplining the American viewer, who might still carry over from the Depression lessons of frugality and self-abnegation, into patterns of spending “above one’s means” and asserting one’s individualism/family loyalty (even feminism -- the mother deserves her pleasures, too) through consumptive pleasures. However, these shows’ references to historical realities of working-class immigrant in fact undercut their commodified messages. White, on the other hand, is more finely attuned to visual strategies of home shopping television, specifically HSN. She really picks apart the “bargain-basement” production quality (which was so much fun to read for me, for some reason; something about White talking about the star filters brought joy into my world) and specifies that it is in these more spectacular aesthetics where a complicated set of class constructions sit: the working-class, “chintzy” quality to the look and products being sold actually hail both those viewers with the cultural capital to scrutinize the programming for precisely these qualities and those who traffic within this taste culture. And, of course, these taste cultures are feminized.

I thought it interesting then how the particular episode of “The Honeymooners” we watched kind of moves between these two arguments in certain ways. For one, as Lipsitz notes, Alice Kramden is constructed as the practical, frugal character while Ralph is constantly getting himself into trouble with his irresponsible spending habits. In “Better Living Through TV,” Ralph gets involved in a get rich quick scheme, as he stumbles upon a bunch of all-in-one kitchen gadgets that he wants to sell (I want one, though I could do without the corn remover). In order to move his product, however, he goes onto none-other-than a home shopping show, pointing to obvious existence of precursors to networks like the Home Shopping Network. Most interstingly, it seems like the Honeymooners in fact ironizes, nay critiques, the class underpinnings of home shopping TV. In keeping with the conventions of this subgenre, Ralph is made to appear as the class fool as he believes he is going to make a ton of money but then freezes on live TV. But his antics also the expose the cracks in how these shows might inflate the value of its products - I think the object breaks on camera (this might have been a blooper), he can’t core the apple, etc. So the scenario sort of points to an America that has shifted to a consumerist economy where there might be a market of “working-class dupes” who would be willing to purchase such products off of television. But it doesn't critique the dupes, but the production of these working class desires, embodied by the figure of Ralph.