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| (from left to right) Anson Williams, Donny Most, Marion Ross, Ron Howard, and Erin Moran on Happy Days. |
Since Happy Days is a forty-plus-year-old sitcom about people living sixty years ago, it can be difficult sometimes to judge the manners and mores of the characters. They're playing by different rules than we are now. It's not really fair to expect them to conform to the values of today.
I think a lot of viewers have a problem with that, not just with this one show but with all popular culture from the past. "Why can't they be more like us?" we wonder. "Why can't they believe the same things we believe and espouse all of our views? Are they cruel and hateful or just ignorant?" Personally, I feel that morality and philosophy evolve over time, which is only natural. Furthermore, values will continue to change, meaning that the people of the future will probably judge us to be the cruel, hateful, and ignorant ones.
I'm bringing up all of these things because the episode we're covering on the These Days Are Ours podcast this week is "Marion Rebels," which first aired on February 1, 1977. The plot concerns Marion Cunningham (Marion Ross), a wife and mother in 1950s Wisconsin. In the episode, she becomes bored and frustrated with her role as a homemaker and expresses a desire to work outside the house, enraging her husband Howard (Tom Bosley). In defiance, Marion takes a job as a waitress at Arnold's, a local drive-in restaurant and teen hangout frequented by her children, Richie (Ron Howard) and Joanie (Erin Moran).
Seen with modern-day eyes -- 2020 vision, if you will -- "Marion Rebels" is hardly a feminist broadside. You could say that Marion is just going from one servile role to another. But she's operating within a very different system than we are. To me, it's interesting to see how a woman of the 1950s tries to redefine herself while living in a very constrictive society. Anyway, we talk about all of this stuff and much more on this week's episode of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. Have a listen!