What a Wonderful Family

All in the Family is wholly different from a contemporary family show such as Two and a Half Men, both in the way that it presents the families at hand, as well as the themes addressed.

All in the Family was originally intended to be a satire of a bigoted man, with his unassuming and vacuous wife, juxtaposed with his hippie daughter and son-in-law. The show would address certain issues, such as the idea of a person being a "fag" or "fairy" in the case of Michael's friend. Archie regarded him as a pansy for his perceived homosexual tendencies, such as a dislike for sports and appreciation for music and dance. Conversely, Archie is shocked to discover that his macho friend who used to play professional football is in fact gay, since he is so atypically gay in Archie's mind. In the Two and a Half Men episode "It was Mame Mom" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0735164/ the main characters, two brothers named Charlie and Alan pretend to be gay lovers so that they can impress an important client of Charlie's.

The two shows approach the matter of being homosexual very differently from one another; All in the Family centers the episode around Archie's realization that homosexuality is not strictly the domain of the effeminate and that even those he considers to be "normal" men can in fact be gay. The episode revolves around the theme of "what it means to be a gay," and looks at it in a broader social structure. The episode of Two and a Half Men however, does not examine the nature of being gay, rather it takes homosexuality as a norm in society. The episode does not revolve around the fact that there are gay individuals, but rather the antics of the characters whilst they pretend to be gay. I was also struck by the language used in All in the Family, such as the term fag, which seems to carry a much more derogatory meaning than most words and would not be used in television now. Indeed, it seems that All in the Family examined the nature of what it means to be gay, whereas Two and a Half Men did not feel the need to explore the idea of homosexuality, because the show assumed that all would be familiar with and accept it.