In other words, WandaVision is explicitly an “immigrants trying to survive in America” story, and its supporting characters cannot always keep their derision under wraps like they might be able to in an actual TV comedy (or in the “wholesome, polite” society we keep being told the ‘50s were like). WandaVision says the quiet part out loud, framing its assimilation story not just as more plot-driven MCU shenanigans, but as an arrow shot at the xenophobic culture of the era that produced such pop culture. It’s okay to isolate yourself from all this pain and inoculate yourself with consumerism, with convenience, with the domestic, easily wrapped up, American exceptionalist pleasures of television comedy. The 1950s economic postwar boom meant that a TV found its way into every suburban household, giving every suburban resident unprecedented access to information - information centered for and controlled by white sources of power that told its viewers to keep fleeing cities to the suburbs, to watch out for the Russians dropping the bomb on us at any moment, to be warned that foreign Communists have infiltrated our America at every corner. And I’m not just speaking of the slowly gurgling idea that Wanda and Vision are escaping their fraught “MCU life” for a more friendly “television life.” The pleasures of this episode are many - the writers, led by creator Jac Schaeffer, obviously understand and love the comedic rhythms, so tightly theatrical in inspiration, of early multicam sitcoms - but they’re all a facade, an attempt at assimilation into this life. Vision goes to work at a job he doesn’t understand, exposing himself to culture he openly finds irrelevant and trite - but that’s okay, because he’s contributing to society’s squeaky-clean images of “success” and “pleasure.” Wanda ( Elizabeth Olsen, Emmy-worthy) stays at home, cooking and cleaning, trying to understand why and how she needs to celebrate her husband - but that’s okay, because she’s contributing to society’s positioning of women as housewives, especially thanks to Hahn’s badgering methods of assimilation. The satirical jabs at the post-war baby boomer era are various and effective. Its farcical plotting, its reductive relationship and gender dynamics, its broadly-pitched slapstick multicam performances (in particular, I love Paul Bettany stepping through the piece of furniture in the opening credits, rather than tripping on it like his Dick Van Dyke Show influence might have done) all of these familiar elements are here to soothe and charm you… until they begin to poke at themselves, and poke at you. But the episode also does a touch of future-telling in its obvious aping of Bewitched, a 60s-to-70s sitcom about a witch trying to hide her real identity, not only in its similar premise but in its usage of chintzy special effects (the insert shot of wedding rings appearing, the seam in the jump-cut apparent, is charming and accurate to what you’d see on a Bewitched). I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, The Honeymooners (down to Kathryn Hahn’s off-screen husband being named Ralph, Jackie Gleason's leading Honeymooners character) - these are the classic shows WandaVision’s first entry wants us to think about (with the note that the show is more interested in presenting the prosperous middle-class politics of a Beaver than the working-class struggles of a Honeymooners). George Burns interrupted the plotlines of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show to speak directly to the audience about what they were watching Ernie Kovacs disrupted the early visual language of television to present a series of surreal, form-breaking vignettes and now, WandaVision is here to heighten and jam all of this into a pleasing, gripping, and very, very, very weird blender.Įpisode 1 throws us squarely into classic 1950s sitcom territory, giving us the production design, the 4:3 black-and-white photography, and the general visual “vibe” of these types of shows immediately. The MCU/Disney+ television show takes its cue from the genre and formal conventions of broadcast television, and even (especially?) in its earliest, most formative years, broadcast television has been weird - partially because of its status of intimacy within the American household, partially because the early talent pool consisted of vaudeville and theatre writers/performers who were more than willing to muck with people out of the gate, and partially because the creators of the form needed to immediately set themselves apart from the golden removedness of seeing a film at the cinema. WandaVision is weird, but not without precedent.
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