Fonzie & the Happy Days Gang - A Lesson In Deeply-Ingrained Misogyny

Being a Milwaukeean means being associated with certain things: Beer, bratwurst, cheese, beer, summer festivals, beer, diary products (especially ice cream), Jeffrey Dahmer (unfortunately), beer again, That 70's Show (possibly), and of course, Happy Days, and its spin-off, Laverne & Shirley.

Fonzie, of course, crosses over into science fiction with his appearance as a Saturday-morning cartoon character, as depicted in The Fonz & the Happy Days Gang. (1980) Fonzie, along with Richie Cunningham and Ralph Malph, meet up with a time-traveler named Cupcake (voiced by Didi Conn who played Frenchie in "Grease"). Her time-machine breaks down in 1957 Milwaukee just outside Arnold's diner, and Fonzie, being the "Mr. Fix-It" guy he is, gets the machine working again with one of his trade-mark hits on the device. New to the cast is a talking dog named "Mr. Cool," who is ostensibly meant to provide comic relief, but doesn't really. How exactly Fonzie, Richie, Ralph and Mr. Cool end up traveling with Cupcake inside the machine isn't revealed (one only gets a brief synopsis in the intro), but one would presume Cupcake wants to thank Fonzie with a time-trip to someplace exotic. Naturally, the time machine breaks down again, and the gang spend one adventure after another trying to get back to Milwaukee of 1957, but keep missing the mark. The famous DJ, Wolfman Jack, an icon of the 50's and 60's whose career got a huge resurgence after his appearance in the George Lucas movie American Graffiti, does the opening narration.

Now, I'm a stickler for sci fi history. So, naturally, I've made it my business to watch all the old cartoon episodes depicting Fonzie and his time-traveling adventures. Part of me revels in it, because it takes me back to my childhood days. (In fact, I can safely say that I have better memories of the cartoon Fonzie than I do of the original Happy Days version.) But at the same time, I am also appalled at the blatant misogyny depicted therein.

It's no secret that Fonzie is cast as a "ladies' man." In Happy Days, he continually gets, and usually makes out with, all the prettiest girls. The cartoon character is no different. But "Mr. Cool," is anything but cool around the pretty women depicted in the cartoon. Each time-travel adventure, without fail, features an encounter with an ingenue (that's young, pretty woman, for those of you who don't speak French), and Fonzie naturally sweeps her off her feet. Usually, Cupcake is insanely jealous over it. But Mr. Cool reacts to these women with wolf-whistles, objectifying barks, and sometimes even throwing himself into the young woman's arms. Some of this is to be expected - he is a dog, after all - but all of it is unacceptable by today's standards, and for good reason. Dog or not, he's committing sexual harassment. On a kid's cartoon show, no less!

Watching any old television show can be a lesson in how society has shifted. Laverne & Shirley, to cite just one another example, depicted incidents of near date-rape as casual slap-stick humor. Today, we're horrified to see this, but in America of the 1970's nobody batted an eye.

And that's the lesson, here. Our parents' and grandparents' generation was so blind to this sort of harassment that it appeared on a kids' show! In fact, lots of kids shows. And nobody thought to say, "Um, excuse me, I don't think women should be treated that way." Or, if anybody did, that person would have been laughed out of the room before being handed their pink slip.

Women lament how difficult it has been to get their voices heard, and their rights asserted. But just one episode of Fonzie & the Happy Days Gang illustrates exactly why this has been such an uphill climb. With young boys (such as I was at the time) having been taught such behavior so ubiquitously, unlearning it has been extremely difficult.

It adequately explains why some among my generation have become "men's rights advocates" (as if that needed to be a thing). It also explains the perverted mentality of the Trump cult to a great degree.

Science fiction has especially guilty of this sort of past trend. Early episodes of Star Trek certainly depict women in an exhibitionist way, and Kirk was, well, Kirk. (In fact, TOS should probably be renamed "Starlet Trek," since that's closer to the truth.) "The Girl In The Brass Bra" was a science fiction staple long before Princess Leia was depicted in Return of the Jedi at Jabba the Hutt's "feet." And that depiction may never go away. But we can at least exterminate the horrid behavior men have all-too-often committed around that depiction.

Look, sex sells. We all know it. So long as there are people trying to sell things, they will hire beautiful people to help draw eyes towards the product. But one can appreciate beauty without the wolf-whistles, cat-calls, or general assholery we all saw as kids in every single Hanna-Barbera cartoon, from Scooby Doo to Jabberjaw.

Women must not only feel safe, they must BE safe. That's not only an attainable goal, that's non-negotiable. 

There is no room for "Fonzies" in science fiction anymore, nor should there ever have been. There's no room for a skirt-chasing TOS Kirk, either. There's plenty of room for sexuality, of course, and there will be (and how!), but under the new and improved rules.

We'd be silly to think those rules have been finalized. And as a male, I don't think it wise to ever consider myself "grown past" the indoctrination cartoon-Fonzie inflicted upon me in my youth (to say nothing of all the other media in general). The ubiquitous nature of the old, bad influences makes that impossible. I must, out of an abundance of caution, never regard my efforts to self-improve as complete.

No thanks to Hanna-Barbera.

Eric

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