Perhaps I’m a victim of my time. When I was growing up,
movie stars were gorgeous. They were not overweight, their hair was beautifully
coiffed at all times in public and they wore lovely clothes. They did not look
like anyone I knew.
Even on TV people were nice looking, although perhaps not as
glamourous as movie stars. With the exception of very few shows, like The Honeymooners, leading men and ladies
were not overweight, and men never had a five-o’clock shadow, much less a beard,
unless representing another century. The only negative piece was that all of
the lead roles were white people.
I’m not saying here that I lived in ugly town. Quite the
contrary. The people in my neighborhood were nice looking, but average. The
women looked like – well, moms. A testament to the fact that mothers weren’t
always perfectly coiffed was the fact that before we went to any of the shops,
mothers of my neighborhood changed into a dress – or at least a skirt – combed
their hair and applied lipstick.
And I never knew my
mother to own pearls, much less wear them while vacuuming, as Beaver Cleaver’s
mother did. My dad didn’t wear a sweater while sitting around the house,
although he did carry a brief case, as the dads did in shows such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver. My parents didn’t
have a maid or a nanny, either. My mother did sometimes break into song for no
apparent reason, so I assumed other mothers behaved the same.
With the advent of color TV, something else happened.
Leading roles began to be performed by people of color. Diahann Carroll was the
first breakthrough African American actress to have her own show, Julia, in which she played a single mom
who worked as a nurse. While having a show that portrayed a black family having
the same trials and tribulations as a white one was groundbreaking, Ms. Carroll
was a strikingly beautiful actress who fit in with the other actresses at the
time.
But her show paved the way for other programs featuring
African American actors, such as The Mod
Squad, Amen, Star Trek – which featured the first interracial kiss on TV – and The Cosby Show. In time other ethnic
groups were represented in the weeknight lineup, and more recently, more sexually
diverse characters.
But gradually over the years, leading ladies and men in both
film and TV became less elegant. Perhaps it was the revolutionary atmosphere of
the ‘60s that started it. Male leads no longer looked like my dad, but more
like The Beatles. Female leads no longer acted in ways my mother would. People
who had heretofore been relegated to supporting roles because they lacked the
beauty, the elegance or the trim figures of stars of earlier days, were now
starring in their own shows.
It wasn’t just the shows that made this change. Commercials also
reflected this change. Where once a beauty queen would have hawked butter, now
a somewhat dowdy beautician soaked people’s nails in dishwashing liquid to
prove it was gentle on hands. Margaret Hamilton, best known as the wicked witch
of the west in the original Wizard of Oz
movie and looking less elegant without the green skin, sold Maxwell House
Coffee. And commercials that required singing turned to the tone deaf to croon
the jingle.
I wonder if the casting calls looked like this: tone deaf
child with a lisp wanted to sing in commercial.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t find a child
singing off-key – or lisping, for that matter – remotely cute. And it certainly
doesn’t encourage me to buy a product. In fact, I find that worse than having
10 different adults singing a jingle one at a time in different keys. It does
speak to me; it says here’s a product that will kill any talent you may have
had.
People may like the fact that actors in film and TV are just
like them. Maybe they enjoy watching people like Roseann or Archie Bunker make
fools of themselves. That was never my cuppa.
It is reassuring to know that just because you don’t fit a
narrow image of beauty like, perhaps, Marilyn Monroe or Twiggy, doesn’t mean
you can’t have a career in acting. But I’d like to see people make an effort to
look good to the best of their ability if they want to be stars.
I want my leading men and women to be beautiful. I want the
singers to be able to sing, and I don’t want the speakers to have a speech
impediment. Is that too much to ask?
Perhaps it’s because I see film and TV as fantasy, not
reality. I want the actors to reflect the fantasy of how I wish life was.
Reality I can get without leaving home. Yes, when I was a child I dreamed of
growing up to be the singers or actors of whom I was a fan. But I knew then
that’s what it was: a dream. I wasn’t going to have plastic surgery or starve
myself to turn into a fantasy.
I don’t look at actors as role models. They are human, just
like the rest of us. But they are the cream. The people in my neighborhood
don’t look like David Tennant or Meryl Streep. The lady next door could most
likely not get up in front of an audience and perform in a Shakespeare play.
When I turn on the TV, I want to be entertained by someone
who would never be my next door neighbor. I want to be enchanted, captivated
and taken to a fantasy land, that place we only find in dreams. Otherwise, I’m
just looking in the mirror and not liking what I see.
