Watching the Thriller episode "A Third for Pinochle," I am reminded of how much I love light-hearted domestic murder stories. These were a common feature of several anthology suspense programs in the 1950s; I am pretty sure that more than half of the episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents are about one spouse trying to murder the other. This was also a common setup for stories in the E.C. horror comics, much to the dismay of noted spoilsport Dr. Frederic Wertham.
One reason I find these stories so interesting is that I feel like they speak to a common tension in 1950s American domestic life. As I have gotten older, I have become more skeptical of any Utopian worldview, and I have come to regard the view of the 1950s I had learned as just such a fantasy. I grew up in a conservative environment, and I was always given the impression that the 1950s were a magical time when people had sex only in the confines of holy matrimony (and, of course, only with each other), no one ever had a serious domestic argument, and divorce would never even be considered. Well, you know, maybe among those people such things might happen... (I never did learn definitely who "those people" might be, I think they were just the exception to prove the rule.)
This was the view I was given of 1950s home life, and it theoretically makes everything that comes after seem positively bleak. Sometime after 1959 people suddenly discovered hedonism and divorce and the country fell into moral decay, or some such thing. This attitude was usually caught up in the implication that all good Christian children should want to grow up and recreate the 1950s-era conservative heaven-on-earth, doing away with any sort of marital strife or--God help us--awkward feelings. The anxiety to live out someone else's difficult fantasy is a tremendous source of pressure, and I pretty much grew up in terror that I would somehow fail to become this paragon of morality.
As an adult, however, I had an epiphany: If domestic life was so blissful and problem-free in the 1950s, where did all those TV shows with domestic murder plots come from? What about all those issues of Tales From the Crypt? Don't get me wrong; I did not suspect that couples in the 1950s really were murdering each other in droves. But these were popular TV shows and popular comic books. If "everyone" in the 1950s really did live relatively untroubled domestic lives, why would they be willing to watch one story after another where a husband shoots a nagging wife, or where a wife poisons her philandering husband? What if people in the 1950s did have the cultural expectations to live these picture-perfect domestic lives, and they had few venues to openly talk about their frustrations, but they still had frustrations and needed some sort of catharsis. What if all these stories were acting as a sort of cultural release valve, to take the pressure off these all-to-human people.
Another noteworthy detail of these domestic murder plots: they are often played for laughs. Gallows humor, to be sure, but they feature a high degree of comic music, silly plot twists, and wry jokes about death and murder. The killer often gets his or her comeuppance, but always in a way that makes me chuckle and think Oh, you almost got away with it.... This added to my interpretation of these stories as a fun catharsis in a time of moral stodginess. People had anxieties they cold not express, they probably had moments when they would think of awful actions like murder, but probably also would have felt tremendous stigma if they told other people about it. Someone who imagines a murder--we often conclude--must be plotting a murder. Even though we ourselves might get so frustrated by an argument or bad customer service that we think Oh, I'd like to get my hands on you. So here is a body of fiction meant for entertainment, taking those subliminal wishes and turning them into a whimsical, harmless, series of crimes.
The comic domestic murder plot is, to me, a mark of social progress, like enjoying violent video games in place of watching gladiators in a literal arena. Bloodlust is a pretty common human emotion--or so I hope; my success as a writer might depend on it!--and virtual bloodshed is better for us all than literal bloodshed. Enjoying a story about poisoned tea or a faked car accident is always preferable to letting stress and isolation lead people to turn such stories into nonfiction. The upbeat music and humor reminds us to sit back and enjoy, and let our fantasies play out in a safe, sane, arena.
No comments:
Post a Comment