Do you remember the episode of The Brady Bunch where Marcia is cast, against her will, as Juliet in her school’s production of Romeo and Juliet? She auditions for the role of the nurse but does such a “good” job that the drama teacher wants her to be Juliet. When she tells her family that she just doesn’t think that she is “the Juliet type” they hatch a scheme to convince her that she is worthy of the part. They repeatedly tell her she is pretty and smart and talented. Creepy moment alert: Greg even tells her that she is “a real groovy chick…for a sister, that is.” The plan works, but too well. Marcia becomes full of herself and begins to think that she is better than everyone else. When she argues with her parents about changing Shakespeare’s words, Mike remarks: “First the part’s a little too big for her. Now I think maybe she’s a little bit too big for the part.” Woah….Mr. Brady is deep. After she causes more trouble (yes, this is the word that is used to describe her actions)–like ridiculing her Romeo and talking back to the drama teacher–Carol decides that drastic measures must be taken. Without consulting Marcia (or even having any serious or lengthy conversation with her about why she was causing/being trouble), Carol and the drama teacher kick Marcia out of the play. Bad acting alert: Although it would be very easy to argue that Maureen McCormick’s acting is terrible throughout this episode, the piece de resistance comes at 22 minutes and 24 seconds when Carol reveals to Marcia that her name isn’t in the final program. Wow!

There is much that I could write about this episode (such as: Alice revealing that she went to an all girls school and performed–in drag!–as Julius Caesar). Well, I might just have to write about that later. But, in this post, I want to think about Marcia’s behavior, the Brady family’s scheme to build up her self-esteem and the troubling consequences of that scheme. And, I want to think about of this in relation to virtue ethics, moral education and Mike’s and Carol’s continued efforts to earn “the worst parents in the history of the world” award.

Nice. So, Marcia doesn’t want to be Juliet. Instead, she is happy to be cast as the nurse. Or, is she? According to Mike and Carol, she really wants to be the star, the beautiful and noble Juliet; she just doesn’t have enough self-esteem. She can’t see herself the way others do: as a “real groovy chick.”

Mike: You look beautiful and noble to me.
Carol: The trouble is, you don’t think you are.
Mike: That’s right. It’s your belief in yourself that counts, you know. You are what you think you are.
Marcia: You mean, if I think I’m beautiful and noble than I will be beautiful and noble.
Mike: That’s right. If you believe it, everybody will believe it too!

Ah ha! The trouble is that Marcia has a low opinion of herself (of course it couldn’t be that she actually wanted the role of the nurse–a pivotal and interesting, yet less glamorous role). What she needs, according to Mike and Carol is “the power of positive thinking!” That will get rid of her troubles! But when she starts thinking positively, more–and perhaps more serious–trouble is the result. She begins not only to believe in herself but to believe that she is the best; she is noble with an elevated status that makes her better than everyone else. She demonstrates this through shameful acts of hubris (and yes,  she acts badly…and badly acts).

But, what really has caused this hubris? Here is a series of related questions that trouble me:

• Is her hubris the result of an excessive display of pride/a deficient display of humility?
• Or, is it the necessary (and logical) result of the Brady family’s approach to building up her self-esteem?
• If there are some bad actions (and bad acting too!) in this episode, who is doing them? Is it really Marcia, who is following the advice of her parents to truly believe that she is noble and beautiful?
• Or is it Mike who encourages her to be beautiful and noble but equates that with being a star and thinking (too) highly of herself and fails to give her any substantial definitions of beauty that are counter to societal standards? (Standards that are often driven by capitalism and our role as consumers. And that discourage girls from ever thinking that they are beautiful enough. After all, if you think you are beautiful, you wouldn’t ever need to buy any products right?)
• Or Carol who promotes a decidedly superficial vision of “the power of positive thinking” that is not connected to any underlying ethic or understanding of how our positive (and negative) thinking has real just and/or unjust effects on others.

I suppose you know where I am going with this. Yes, Marcia does act badly. And yes, she does badly act. But, it is Mike and Carol who really act badly in this episode. The moral education that they offer to Marcia (and by extension, to us) is just plain bad. Marcia is encouraged to think positively about herself, but she is never given any guidance about how exactly to do that. Mike and Carol want her to build up her character, to make it (and her) more beautiful and noble. They don’t, however, give her any guidance on how to make her character virtuous. That is, they give her no strategies/skills/advice for what kinds of actions she should engage in.  And they fail to support their advice with any underlying moral vision or ethical system that could guide (or temper or foster) that positive thinking.

When Carol Brady praises Marcia’s new found belief in herself (at the beginning of Marcia’s diva period) as “the power of positive thinking,” she is referencing a very watered-down, overly simplified, faithless, pop psychology version of Norman Vincent Peale’s wildly popular self-help book, The Power of Positive Thinking. Carol’s advice seems to fit this equation: Power of Positive Thinking – ethical vision or virtue ethics = Marcia-as-major-diva.

While I was searching for an image of Marcia to use for this post, I came across an entry entitled, “The Hubris of Marcia Brady” on The Brady Bunch Blog. For a different take on Marcia, check it out.

There are all sorts of ways in which Jackson remains troubling to many of us–his family life, his behavior, his body–all raise questions for us: Just how many plastic surgeries can one body have? What kind of father could he possibly be? Why won’t he ever grow up? But, these questions don’t get at why I am (and have been for a while) troubled by Michael Jackson. For me, the most troubling set of questions revolve around this: What happened? What happened to him, and, more importantly, what has happened to us? What was lost when Michael went from a talented dancer and musician to a MTV spectacle and tabloid freak? And, what does this loss signify?

In their reflection on Jackson, k-punk laments the disturbing shift in Jackson (as musician, as person, as body, as image) from Off the Wall to Thriller. Jackson the wide-eyed, youthful, hopeful, happy, exuberant body in motion in the throes of disco-era Off the Wall becomes transformed (or distorted?) into the living dead, hyper-commodity, MTV staple, tabloid spectacle brought on by the enormous success of Thriller. While k-punk is disturbed by the juxtaposition of the images of Off-the-Wall Michael with Thriller Michael, there is an earlier image of Michael that has haunted me for several years now.

When I grow up, I’m gonna be happy and do what I like to do,
Like making noise and making faces and making friends like you.
And when we grow up, do you think we’ll see
That I’m still like you and you’re still like me?
I might be pretty; you might grow tall.
But we don’t have to change at all.
spoken: I don’t want to change, see, ’cause I still want to be your friend, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

In 1974 Jackson appeared on the ABC television special, Free to be…you and me. Singing with Roberta Flack on “When We Grow Up,” Jackson is sweet and funny and, most importantly, full of life and hope. For me, this song captures the (perhaps naive) hope and promise that some (but definitely not all) 1970s social justice movements against racism and sexism often exuded. When I watch Free to be…you and me I am always amazed at its hopeful and anti-cynical belief that anything was possible, that the freedom to be and love and do what you want was waiting for all of us if we just worked together as “Brothers and Sisters.”

Many may argue that this belief in the possibilities of a better (read: more just, more “free”) world is too naive and uncritical. Indeed, the hope represented in this special and in Jackson’s song with Flack do seem a bit too pollyannaish and ignore-ant (yes, I just made up my own word: to ignore + to be unaware = ignore-ant) of the real things that get in the way of a better present and future. But, is this the only way to think of hope and possibility? Can we be hopeful and troubled/troubling/willing to trouble at the same time? For me, one of the real tragedies that Jackson’s shift from 1974 Michael (the year I was born) to 2009 Michael is the replacement of all hope and possibility with ironic distance and cynicism. Is it really an either/or situation here? Must we either have uncritical and naive hope or realistic and thoughtful cynicism? Can’t we be both hopeful and critical, aware of injustice but still willing to believe that better futures are possible? And, is the progression of our lives (much like Jackson’s) a gradual move from hopefulness to hopelessness, from innocence to bitterness or freakishness?

What other visions of hope can we imagine/express/believe in? The prophetic pragmatism and tragic-comic hope of Cornel West or the visionary pragmatism of Patricia Hill Collins are good places to start…

While I did read (and loved) all of the Little House books and I did watch the television series (well, not the last season or so when Mrs. Oleson lost her money and they all had to move away from the town. Am I remembering that right?), I was never as big of a fan of The Ingalls family as I was of the Brady Bunch. It is true that “Pa, I can’t see!” is a regular part of my lexicon and Albert and his brush with morphine addiction comes up sometimes in my conversations with STA. But, when I think back on my years (and I mean years) of intense television viewing as a kid/teenager/college student, Little House was never a big deal. Mabye it should have been.

When I came across “Troublemaker” I was immediately intrigued. Of course, Laura is the tomboy who is not afraid to speak her mind and who resists the feminine rules/regulations that are imposed on her. She is also the instigator who fights against the capitalist machinery (aka Nellie Oleson). And, she is someone who is curious about the world–a little scholar-in-training. All of these things indicate that she makes trouble and is in for some trouble. She refuses to accept her assigned status and she is willing to challenge those with power and privilege (her nemesis fluctuates between Nellie Oleson and her mom Mrs. Oleson, part of the richest and most powerful family in town). Therefore, she must be punished–occasionally or frequently–by being ridiculed, ostracized, shamed and dismissed as nothing but trouble. Looks like this episode will focus on Half-pint as the juvenile delinquent (more on this once I watch the episode).

This episode is not the only reason that I am intrigued by Little House on the Prairie. Last night, when I was randomly browsing some online journals (yes, I do that and I am proud of it!), I stumbled across an article in Frontiers entitled “Civilization and her Discontents: The Unsettling Nature of Ma in Little House in the Big Woods.” Who knew that there was so much to say about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her troubling relationship with Ma? Who knew that all of this could be connected to the tension between wilderness and progress/domestication and industrialization and the destabilizing of the frontier/Manifest Destiny ethos in late 1800s/early 1900s U.S? Who knew that so many feminists had written about this series of books? Well, maybe I should have known….

And, to top it all off, Little House on the Prairie, The Musical (starring Melissa Gilbert as Ma!) is coming to the Ordway here in St. Paul this fall. The universe is trying to tell me something–I must watch (and perhaps embrace?) Little House on the Prairie! And I must reread the books series! It looks like I must also never, ever sleep again. Sigh…I mean, yawn.

It seems to be a given that The Brady Bunch is a show that reflects and encourages traditional family values. Really? I have heard this so often that I found myself wondering, Who actually claims this? A quick google search yielded this result. The Museum of Broadcast Communication (MBC) writes:

In an era in which situation comedies emphasized how social climes were changing, The Brady Bunch was one of the few series that hearkened back to the traditional family values seen in such sitcoms as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best.

So, if this is the case and The Brady Bunch really does reflect traditional family values, what does that mean? According to the MBC, traditional family values include ignorance as innocence, a refusal to address changing social climes, and hypocrisy.

Unlike All in the Family or even Julia, The Brady Bunch tried to steer clear of the political and social issues of the day. Rarely were non-white characters introduced into the series. Women’s liberation and gender equality were boiled down to brother-sister in-fighting. The counterculture of the 1960s was represented in random minor characters portrayed as buffoons–or in Greg trying to impress a girl with hippie jargon. The representation of childhood in the series as a time of blissful innocence was in marked contrast to what was happening off camera. Many of the boys and girls playing the Brady children dated each other secretly, making out in their trailers or in the doghouse of the Brady’s pet, Tiger. Oldest boy Barry Williams attempted to date Florence Henderson and filmed at least one episode while high on marijuana. All these incidents (as well as Robert Reed’s homosexuality) occurred behind closed doors, coming to light only a decade after the series originally aired.

Mimi Marinucci, who has written an excellent article, “Television, Generation X, and Third-wave Feminism: A Contextual Analysis of the Brady Bunch,” offers one more family value to the list: sexism repackaged as equality. She writes: “Because the sexist messages of The Brady Bunch were often hidden beneath an egalitarian facade, however, our dismissive attitude left us vulnerable to the show’s subtly sexist subtext” (512). Marinucci’s analysis of the show (and Gen X’s/3rd wave feminists’ irony and sarcasm) is helpful in providing a deeper look at The Brady Bunch that includes more than the simplistic notion that the Bradys ignored social issues and presented family life as wholesome, white, and insular (which is the charge that the MBC is leveling against it).

Here is my take on all of this: The family values that Mike and Carol live by are not merely bad because they are hopelessly naive, outdated or disingenuous. They are bad because they help foster a world view that is unjust. They encourage kids to gang up on each other or at least look the other way when the kids are “othering” each other. They equate truth telling and honesty with tattling and squealing. They discourage personal achievement and individuality by teaching kids that being good at something leads to selfishness, becoming too-full-of-yourself, and disloyalty. And, most troubling for me, they have created a family that demands conformity, uniformity, and togetherness and that shames and ostracizes any family member that dares to think different/ly (an Apple family this is not).  It is because of their promotion of these family values that Mike and Carol are bad (as in not good, not just, not morally/ethically responsible) parents.

Now, don’t worry, I have much more to say about these values and the Bradys. Look for future entries on the joys of conformity and group think (Jan, the only child), how getting along is more important than ensuring that everyone is treated justly (Kitty Carry-All is missing), why being the star only leads to a big head and sisters and brothers who don’t like you (Juliet is the Sun), and how privacy and the desire for a “room of one’s own” smacks of disloyalty (Jan, the only child). Okay, this is too much fun. I love critically dissecting the Bradys (almost as much as I love watching the show).

I remember watching the two different episodes in which Alice feels like she isn’t needed or wanted anymore and decides that she has to leave. In Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore from the first season, Alice feels that she has been replaced by new Mom, Carol. And in Goodbye, Alice, Hello from the fourth season, Alice thinks that the kids don’t like her and don’t want her around anymore. Instead of telling the family that she feels unwanted, she makes up some lame excuse about an Aunt in Sacramento/Seattle who is sick (in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore) and an Uncle who has a great business opportunity for her (in Goodbye, Alice, Hello). I remember thinking, wow, aren’t you just a little too sensitive. Nobody said you weren’t needed. And who cares if the kids like you or not?

Now watching them again with a deeper critical awareness of feminism, the difficulties of caregiving and domestic work, and the politics of family and kinship configurations, I see these episodes very differently. Alice is not being too sensitive. She is not overreacting. She does not need to get over herself (I am sure at some point my younger self must have thought that she should do just that). No, Alice’s reaction and response to thinking and feeling that she was no longer needed was justified. It doesn’t demonstrate that she is overly sensitive and too invested in a family that isn’t hers. Instead, it reflects the tenuous and very difficult position she occupies as the paid caregiver who functions unofficially and invisibly as the Bradys’ other mother.

In almost every episode Alice is represented as the loving (often laughable, arguably queer) housekeeper who is more than a maid; she is an honorary family member. She goes on all of their trips–even their honeymoon! Never mind that she goes along to work (watch the kids, fetch the water for the campsite, walk Tiger the dog). But, even as the Brady family seems to think of her as part of the family, this is not really the case. She is just the hired help.

While Carol might consider her a friend and a confidante, she is not above pulling rank with Alice and demanding that she do something (like in Goodbye, Alice, Hello, when she forces Alice to tell her who broke the lamp. The implied message is that Alice better tell Carol or she will be fired). And while Mike may act as if he respects and values her loyal service, he jokingly links her position as servant/maid with slavery and then laments the fact that he can no longer force her to do his bidding because of Abraham Lincoln. What about the kids? Sure they love her and think of her as a friend (and as comic relief), but they also make sure she knows who has the power in the family (like when Cindy’s secret admirer comes over for their “date.” As she walks by Alice in the kitchen, Cindy commands her to bring them some refreshments).

Alice’s position as a part of the family is tenuous because she is being paid to be there. She is not an equal member. She is an employee with 8 bosses. If she makes a mistake or disobeys the rules, she won’t be reprimanded or given a time out, she will be fired. She will lose her livelihood and her benefits and her living quarters (which, true to form, are right off of the kitchen). Alice’s position is also tenuous because she has no real claim on any of the family members. Sure she has taken care of Bobby his whole life, but if she is fired she can’t demand to be allowed to have a relationship with him. She has been a mother to the kids (and a sexless wife/secretary to Mike) but she has no rights or legal claim to that position. Lucky for her that she is white and a legal citizen of the U.S. Otherwise her position as domestic worker would be even more tenuous. For more on this, see here and here.

Alice’s position is difficult because the kind of work she is doing–cooking, cleaning, drying off tears, counseling heartbroken Marcia, building up Jan’s self-esteem, contending with Greg’s often failed performances of (hyper) masculinity—is not really considered work. Taking care of others is invisible work that is done by individuals (mostly women) who are invisible as workers. Folding the sheets and watching the kids? That’s not work, that’s just what women do while men go to the office and design powder puff buildings for BeeBee Gallini.

Feminist theorists have written a lot (and I mean a lot!) about the undervaluing of “women’s” caregiving as work. But, this isn’t just a problem for housewives who aren’t appreciated for all that they do around the house. This is a problem for the invisible nannies, maids, domestic workers, and servants that actually get paid to do the housework (see this article for a discussion of the moral dilemma that nannies create for femnists). Could the fact that Alice not only recognized but felt (on a daily basis) her tenuous and undervalued position as (secondary in status but primary in actual care) caregiver to the Brady kids and Mike been the reason she reacted so strongly and dramatically in both episodes?

There is (yet) another approach to take on this issue of Alice and her trouble (that is, her tenuous position). While Alice is officially only the paid housekeeper, she is effectively (but without recognition) a second mother to the Brady kids. The trouble with being the second mother is that people just don’t have two mothers. That scenario is not part of the happy heterosexual and patriarchal nuclear family with its one father, one mother and multiple kids. So, her role as a primary caregiver who mothers the children must remain unrecognized (in J Butler speak it is unintelligible within dominant discourse).

But, wait, the trouble is even worse than not being recognized. The happy heterosexual family as the ideal (and natural) kinship configuration is predicated on the belief that 1 dad, 1 mom, many kids is the only healthy and proper way in which to raise kids. So, any indication that other configurations could work (or, horror of horrors, might actually be better for the kids) must, at all costs, be concealed. For this reason, Alice’s role as another mother (and a successful one at that) must not only go unrecognized (and unvalued), it must also be undercut. Alice might do the majority of caring for the children, but she cannot be understood (or represented within the show) as a mother. There is only room for one mother in the Brady household and that mother is happy heterosexual, Mrs. Carol Brady. Maybe that is why Alice is so sensitive. She’s not fooling herself, she knows that she isn’t really a mother to the Bradys and that the love she receives as a caregiver will only last as long as her paycheck does. Or, maybe that is why Alice is represented as having such a dramatic (and selfish) overreaction in the episodes. When she thinks that the kids don’t like her anymore, she doesn’t tough it out like a “real” mother would (I mean, how many times have your kids told you that they hate you. I stopped counting a long time ago). Instead, she runs away. See, the show seems to be reminding us, she isn’t a real mother. Real mothers tough it out. Real mothers don’t leave.

I would have liked to see them (the producers and writers of the show, the kids, Mike and Carol) recognize and represent Alice as another mother. What kind of radical kinship configuration could this have allowed for? The Brady Bunch was already breaking ground by focusing on a “blended” family and subtly injecting the storylines with second wave feminism. Why not queer it up a little too?

Now back to the subject of this particular blog: Mike and Carol Brady are the worst parents in the history of the world. Is that a little too harsh? Perhaps, but the more I watch the show, the more umbrage I take with their parenting choices and the more I realize just who is actually doing the parenting in the family: Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby and Cindy. That’s right, the kids parent each other (I have a lot to say about this in connection to Foucault and disciplinary power in future entries).

On the surface, Mike and Carol seem like the perfect parents (okay, maybe not, but it seems like they are supposed to represent the best parents ever). They are beautiful, kind, loving. They hardly ever yell or fight. They do *fun* things with the kids–like taking them on boat cruises, camping, and to Hawaii or acting in films about the Pilgrims or dancing in Hoe Downs with them. Yee Haw! These parents will do anything for their kids…they even take them (and Alice and Tiger and Fluffy) on their honeymoon. Despite all of this evidence in support of Mike and Carol as parents of the year, I can’t shake the feeling that the advice they give is just plain bad (or at least more often bad than good).

So, how and why are Mike and Carol the worst parents in the world? Bad advice. Crazy behavior. Inappropriate comments. And more. Much, much more. As I make my way through the first 4 (and maybe the 5th too!) seasons, I plan to offer a series of entries in which I catalog the countless ways in which Mike and Carol Brady fail to live up to the standard of perfect sitcom parents. Now what, you may ask, does this series of entries have to do with trouble and troublemaking? Maybe I am trying to trouble the representation of family values as the perfect heterosexual/nuclear family with their perfect moral lessons and their pretty family that always loves each other and gets along and resolves their issues in 23 minutes or less. And maybe I am trying to unsettle the idea that parents (especially ones as “beautiful” as Mike and Carol) always have all of the right answers.

Exhibit A: Here is the first among many examples of how Mike and Carol Brady are the worst parents in the history of the world. I am confident that the evidence requires no explanation (okay, I will give an explanation in another entry about Alice and her tenuous position in the family as the housekeeper):

See here at 3:52. In “Alice doesn’t live here anymore” Alice decides to leave because she thinks she is no longer needed. As Mike and Carol are talking it over, Carol mentions how she really wishes Alice wouldn’t leave. Mike says, “Well, we can’t make her stay. Abraham Lincoln put a stop to that.” Really? STA and I both couldn’t believe our ears when Mr. Mike-Father-of-the-year-Brady uttered this gem.

• The focus on reason and its limits
• The conflict between the “troublemaker” (Buddy Hinton) and the troubled (Peter and Cindy)
• The performances of (failed) masculinity by Mike, Peter, Buddy, Alice, Cindy and the performances of (failed) femininity by Carol, Alice, Mrs. Hinton
• The failed possibilities for alliance building between Buddy and Peter

I hope to get to all of these topics in future blogs. But before I do that, I want to write about an issue that seems particularly important in light of the recent accounts of anti-gay bullying suicides: the trouble with bullies. This spring, several kids committed suicide after being taunted, verbally abused, and physically threatened. As many have argued–like Box Turtle Bulletin and Advocate–the cause of these suicides was not just harassment but anti-gay harassment that could have been prevented if the schools that these students had attended had better anti-bullying programs in place (see this for more).

These tragic cases point to the physical, emotional and psychic consequences of bullying and raise the troubling questions: Who is to blame for these suicides and who should be held responsible? What sorts of actions can we take to ensure that these tragedies stop occurring? How have our traditional strategies for dealing with bullies failed to protect our children?

In “A Fistful of Reasons,” the issue of bullying is taken up as Cindy, Peter and their parents (comically) struggle with how to solve the problem of Buddy Hinton and his bullying behavior. Buddy taunts Cindy for lisping (a gay signifier?) and threatens Peter with taunts and physical violence (calling Peter’s masculinity into question?). Here are the different ways that they try to address the problem:

1. To stop Buddy from teasing Cindy about her lisp, Mike and Carol try to train her to talk properly. They give her a tongue twister book so she can “get over her lisp” and talk just like everybody else. Almost the whole family (Mike, Carol, Alice, Greg, Peter and Bobby) help her with the exercises in the book. At first this method doesn’t work but by the end of the episode Cindy’s lisp has magically disappeared.
2. To stop Buddy from threatening and taunting Peter, Peter’s brothers Greg and Bobby attempt to shame Peter into fighting Buddy: “If you don’t fight him, everyone’s gonna call you a coward.” (or a sissy or a fag?)
3. To stop Buddy from teasing Cindy and calling her a baby, Mike and Carol encourage Peter to stand up to Buddy (like a man) not by fighting him but by using “calm, cool, reason.” They reinforce this lesson (especially after it fails for Peter) by attempting to use reason themselves with Buddy’s parents.
4. After these other methods have failed, Mike gives Peter permission to “defend himself” against Buddy. When Peter admits that he doesn’t know how to fight, Marcia and Alice give him some boxing lessons.
5. As I discussed in another entry, Peter finally solves the problem by punching Buddy and causing him to lisp. All of the kids laugh at him and he loses his power to bully others.

Now in the episode Buddy’s threatening behavior is not that threatening. Sure he punches Peter but the black eye that Peter gets doesn’t seem to cause him any pain and is easily dealt with by Alice; she gives Peter Tiger’s steak dinner to put on his eye and soon enough Peter is fine. Cindy seems sad, but only right after she is teased by Buddy (the episode opens with her tour de force crying performance complete with the burying of her head in her hands, the flinging of herself on the bed and the ever so dramatic wiping away of the tears to hide her pain from her parents). So, if there is some evidence of pain and trauma, it is quickly smoothed over in 23 (yes 23) minutes.

But, even though it is the Brady Bunch and it is a 23 minute sitcom and it takes place in 1970, the strategies that the Brady family comes up with for dealing with bullies are instructive for us as we think about how we (parents, children, communities, concerned citizens) handle the problem of bullies. The strategies that they came up with aren’t so different from our own. Maybe that is why we have such a problem and why so many kids are being left with no choice but to take their own lives.

Take the strategy for dealing with Cindy and her lisp. Mike and Carol’s solution: get rid of the lisp. Get rid of that thing that marks you as different and makes you a target for teasing. Now, this seems fine if it is a speech impediment (or does it? For more on why this is a problem, see this or this) but what if we read the lisp as a signifier of being gay. Should we be encouraging those who are taunted and harassed to assimilate, to get rid of their differences, to hide their sexuality? Is the best solution to just fit in? What tragic consequences might that produce? Furthermore, is there something significant about the fact that the girl (Cindy) is encouraged to resolve the situation by making herself less of a problem and by turning into what others expect of her while the boy (Peter) is encouraged to stand out and up to the problem by bravely distinguishing himself from others?

What about the strategy of shame as Greg and Bobby try to convince Peter to suck it up and fight Buddy like a man? Sure Greg and Bobby are trying to be helpful by encouraging Peter to do something about the threat instead of just sitting back and letting it happen. But, the result of their strategy is that the blame and the responsibility for the bullying and its harmful results is placed squarely on the shoulders of the bullied. In other words, if you are bullied and you don’t do anything about it, it’s your fault. You should have stood up yourself. You should have learned how to deal with conflict; it’s a part of growing up and living in the “real” world. Scan the comment section of many online articles about the anti-gay bullying phenomenon and you can find evidence of this line of reasoning.

These popular strategies place the burden of dealing with a bully on the bullied. Change yourself. Stand up for yourself. Just deal with it. Even calm, cool reasoning requires that the bullied suck it up (put those feelings of rage, fear and hurt aside) and reach out to the bully. But, why do most (or all?) of our strategies for confronting and addressing the bullying problem require that the bullied and not the bully be responsible for solving the problem? And, even more troubling, why don’t our solutions hold more people/institutions/communities accountable for the problem?

In a “Fistful of Reasons,” the problem starts out as one between Cindy and Buddy. Then it becomes a problem between Peter and Buddy. Then it becomes a problem between the Brady parents and the Hinton parents. But, the solution ultimately resides in Peter. He alone must deal with the bully. There is not one point in this episode when anyone stops to think about what the school could do about Buddy’s behavior or about protecting or empowering Cindy or Peter. There is not one point in this episode when anyone stops to think about why this might be a problem for the community and what they should do about it. There is not one point in this episode when anyone stops to think about what institutional strategies are necessary for dealing with the specific forms that bullying takes (based on hatred of sissies, of gays, of non-normative, lisping bodies).

Of course, the Brady Bunch is just a show from the 1970s. And, of course, the episode, “A Fistful of Reasons” must resolve the problem in 23 minutes. So, why should we look to it to address these issues of bullying? It seems to me that the Brady Bunch, for good or bad, does an effective job (sometimes frighteningly so) of reflecting and tapping into the values that many of us implicitly or explicitly live by. It does this in ways that don’t register to us as we sit passively in front of the television. Here is where troublemaking comes in again: Even as we watch and enjoy the glorious, retro-cheesiness that is the Brady Bunch, we should never stop thinking critically about the messages it is sending us or the guidance it is giving us.

In my first entry on this episode I wrote about how the conflict between Peter Brady and Buddy Hinton demonstrated the failure of reason to successfully mediate conflict. Throughout the episode, Peter, Mike, and Carol all attempt to appeal to reason as the way to resolve conflict and to deal with Buddy the bully. Consider Mike Brady’s fatherly advice to Peter about how to handle the Buddy situation:

Fighting isn’t the answer to anything. If it were why the biggest and the strongest would always be right. That doesn’t make any sense does it? Did you try reasoning with Buddy Hinton? Explaining to him why he shouldn’t tease Cindy? Reasoning. Calm, cool reasoning. That’s a lot better than violence. And it’s the only sensible way to settle differences.

Peter, Mike and Carol all try to reason their way out of the conflict: Peter tries to reason with Buddy. Mike tries to reason with Buddy’s dad. And Carol tries to reason with Buddy’s mom. In each case, reason is no match for violence. Peter gets a black eye. Mike gets “escorted” off of Mr. Hinton’s property. Carol barely restrains herself from mixing it up with Mrs. Hinton.

So, reason fails. But wait–what do we make of the ending to the show? The exciting showdown between Peter and Buddy in the second-to-last scene? Consider what actually happens (sorry, I am also a big fan of Hercule Poirot and the final reveal in movies like Death on the Nile):

Having been trained to box by Alice and Marcia (hmmm…we will take up the issues with that at another time), Peter is ready to defend himself. He and Cindy walk through the park, trailed by a bunch of kids that Cindy has invited to witness the fight. Suddenly Buddy appears. Peter attempts to reason with him: “Cut it out. Let’s reason. Let’s talk about this.” Buddy refuses: “Shut up or fight.” Peter reluctantly agrees to fight. [Cue drumroll] Peter gets in the defensive stance. Buddy charges him and misses. Peter closes his eyes and lands a punch. Buddy falls into the bushes. Everyone, including Peter and Buddy are surprised. Peter apologizes. Buddy grabs his tooth and begins to talk–with a lisp. The kids laugh. Buddy asks them to stop. Cindy leads the taunts: “You sure talk funny. Baby Talk. Baby Talk. It’s a wonder you can walk!” Buddy runs off. Peter admonishes the kids: “Go on. Get outta here.” They leave as Cindy and Peter reflect on the dramatic events:

Cindy: Why shouldn’t we tease him?
Peter: For the same reason you didn’t like him teasing you.
Cindy: I guess you’re right. You know Peter, you’re verrrry (no, that’s not a typo, that’s how she said it) brave.
Peter: I am? Aww (he says as he sheepishly kicks the dirt and shakes his head). Come on. Let’s go home.

And so, the conflict is resolved. The trouble is over.

But, what happened? Peter punched Buddy which stopped the conflict between him and Buddy. So, violence was the answer, right? Not exactly. Then, Peter uses reason (when talking with Cindy) to stop the conflict between Buddy and the other kids. So, reason is the answer, right? Well… Peter was only able to act reasonably with/towards Buddy after he punched him. I get it: using violence allows us to be reasonable. Others take us seriously when we do violence to them. They listen to our reason once we have forced them to do so. Hence, the name: Fistful of Reason(s).

Does anyone else see anything wrong with this? Should we be praising this very Brady resolution? Or, should we be asking some important, yet troubling, questions about why Peter needed violence to be reasonable? Or why the link between reason and violence is always obscured? Or why Marcia and Alice were the ones training Peter to box? Hmmm..I think I might need to take up that last question in another entry on Peter Brady and constructions of masculinity…

Making trouble and being in trouble are usually thought of as bad things—as things that we want to get out of as soon as possible. Smoothing over trouble and getting out of trouble becomes the goal. But, how do (and should) we resolve trouble? How do we get rid of it? And, how do we make sure that we deal with trouble in ways that don’t do harm to ourselves or others? What happens when trouble comes in the form of a violent bully? How do we resolve that situation? And, is resolution the best response?

So, for over 10 years now I have wanted to write about an episode of the Brady Bunch called “A Fistful of Reasons”.  If you haven’t seen it, you should. It is from the second season, which may be the best season of the series—“Will the real Jan Brady please stand up?” “The Liberation of Marcia Brady.” Need I say more?

It all started when I was in graduate school taking a class on Hermeneutics at School of Theology at Claremont. We were discussing Jurgen Habermas and his idea of communicative rationality. Simply (maybe too simply?) put, Habermas believes that we can resolve our conflicts and come to agreement by engaging in rational dialogue with each other. This dialogue involves the practicing of a certain set of rational and reasonable rules that we use as we talk with each other. In other words, our differences of opinion and conflicts with each other are smoothed over when we use “calm, cool reason.”

Habermas’ idea sounds great: using reason and being reasonable allows us to engage with others without resorting to violence, right? But, what happens when all of our appeals to reason and our attempts at rational conversations with others don’t seem to work? What happens when those with whom we come into conflict don’t want to talk or resolve differences but want to impose their own ideas onto us in violent ways? How do we get those people to listen to us? How do we reason with them? Enter Peter Brady and the Brady Bunch episode, “A Fistful of Reasons.”

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: One day little Cindy Brady is walking home from school. She runs into Buddy Hinton who teases her for lisping. The next day, the same thing happens but this time Cindy’s older brother Peter is with her. Peter tells Buddy to knock it off. When Buddy challenges him to a fight, Peter refuses and Buddy teases him. When Peter tells his parents Mike and Carol about the incident, Mike tells him to use calm, cool reason instead of violence to resolve the situation. The next day, calm, cool reason fails and Buddy punches Peter. Mike intervenes by talking “reasonably” with Buddy’s father. This attempt fails and almost leads to a fight between the two fathers. Carol also tries unsuccessfully to talk with Buddy’s mother. At this point, Mike decides that while reason should be the first course of action, Peter needs to be prepared to fight Buddy if and when reason fails to work. Peter trains for a fight. When he and Cindy run into Buddy again the next day, Peter tries to reason with the bully. When this fails, he ends up punching Buddy who falls on the ground and chips his tooth in the process. The chipped tooth causes Buddy to lisp and he learns what it feels like to speak “baby talk” as Cindy and the other kids tease him. Peter tells the kids to knock it off and the episode ends. Problem solved. Conflict resolved. Reason has failed. Violence has won. Or has it?

When I first saw this episode I thought about Habermas and envisioned writing an essay about how Peter Brady single-handedly defeats Habermas’ theory of communicative rationality. Repeatedly through the episode, reason is offered as the way to resolve the conflict between the bully and the bullied. And every time reason seems to fail. Violence (and the threat of violence) thwarts all attempts to mediate conflict; the bully Buddy refuses to listen, to reason, to back down on his teasing. This episode raises the questions to Habermas: how can we resolve conflicts and reach a consensus with people who aren’t willing to engage with us? Who not only refuse to practice our (rational) rules of engagement but seem to be hell bent on doing physical (punching Peter) or psychic (teasing Cindy) violence to us?

Recently I was able to show this episode and discuss it at length in my Feminist and Queer Explorations in Troublemaking class. Through the process of watching and discussing it, I started to think more about what was going on the episode. It seems too simple to offer it up as evidence for why Habermas was wrong, to see it only as proof for the failure of reason in the face of violence. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this episode has so much to offer us as we attempt to think about how and why reason fails, how it is connected to constructions and performances of masculinity and what the possibilities for engaging in troubling conflict differently are.

In the next few posts, I will offer my own analysis of “Fistful of Reasons.” As a teaser, here is what I posted on Facebook right before teaching the class in which we discussed the episode:

Today in class I am screening an episode of the Brady Bunch called “Fistful of Reasons.” Among other things, we will talk about how it raises questions about the usefulness of reason (a la Habermas) for mediating conflict. It also gets at some interesting questions about the performance of masculinity and its connections to instrumental reason and the abject homosexual (a la Butler). Who knew the Brady Bunch was so deep?

Be prepared to never watch the Brady Bunch the same way again…