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Introduction: MEN MATTER
- The University of North Carolina Press
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i n T r o d U C T i o n men maTTer On December 8, 1952, American television audiences watching I Love Lucy saw a prime-time first: a pregnant actress playing the part of a pregnant woman. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, her real-life and television husband , along with the show’s producer, had decided to address directly a subject that had previously been taboo. Although women had been getting pregnant and having babies for millennia, television shows in the early 1950s routinelyacknowledged that fact by producing a baby without the nine-month preliminaries. Arnaz, already the father of little Lucie, wanted it to be different this time: “I wanted to talk about my child. I didn’t want to put Lucille in a closet for nine months. Having a baby is a perfectly natural happening.”1 CBs initially balked at the idea, worried that its audience would find pregnancyand childbirth subjects of questionable taste for television.The show’s sponsor, Philip Morris, also took some convincing. The cigarette maker ultimately agreed but insisted, ironically, that Lucy not smoke in the episodes about her pregnancy. Jess Oppenheimer, the show’s pro- 2 * inTrodUCTion ducer, recalled: “We felt certain we could extract all the inherent humor from the situation while staying within the bounds of good taste.” To ensure that nothing offensive escaped notice, the network arranged for a priest, a minister, and a rabbi to vet the scripts.2 In the popular situation comedy, Arnaz played Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban nightclub singerand orchestra leader, and Ball was Lucy Ricardo, a housewife with ambitions for a career beyond the confines of domestic life. Starting with the episode that aired in early December 1952, the series dealt with familiar prenatal topics and played up two different gendered responses. In the first episode, Ricky learned he was going to be a father. After a number of botched attempts to tell him the good news in private, Lucy went to the Tropicana Club to tell Ricky in public. Overwhelmed with happiness, Ricky sang of his—and their—joy: “We’re having a baby. My baby and me! We’re adding a limb to our family tree. While pushing that carriage, how proud I will be.”3 For television, the pregnancy was telescoped into seven episodes. Throughout the shows in which Lucy was “enceinte” (writers used the French word along with “expecting” to describe Lucy’s condition),4 the series took on various quirks of pregnant women, including food cravings , unpredictability, and preoccupations. Not only did these episodes open the door for television to look humorously and more frankly at experiences that most American women faced at least once during their lives, but they also allowed a comedic prime-time spoof of that other person involved with and affected by a pregnancy, the “expectant” father. Television critics and scholars of popular culture have tended to focus on Lucy’s role in the maternity episodes.5 To focus on Ricky, however, and through him on the millions of new fathers to whose condition he gives voice and humor, reveals not only a different point of view but the stirrings of cultural change. Ricky wants to be a father, but he is not sure how to react when the fact of his wife’s pregnancy seems to dismiss his importance or to ignore him completely. In one episode, Ricky laments explicitly, “It’s very hard to be an expectant father.” Pregnancy and childbirth , it seems, are conditions women know about and share in their particular gender-linked ways; in contrast, men have to learn and grow into their roles. [18.208.203.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 03:54 GMT) inTrodUCTion * 3 Even as Ricky declared he was thrilled with his wife’s new status, the show also portrayed his own more ambivalent feelings and confusions, playing his responses off against hers. For example, as they debated possible names for the baby, Lucy changed her mind frequently, and Ricky tolerantly went along with every suggestion. Lucy admitted wanting a girl, to dress up in frilly clothes, and Ricky wanted a boy, to play football and box. In one episode, Ricky suffers from what its title calls “Labor Pains.” Lucy is so preoccupied with baby clothes, diapering and bathing a doll for practice, and daydreaming about the baby that she seems not to notice him. She pays little attention to his needs and forgets her usual domestic tasks like cooking dinner. Finally Ricky...