The Sub-Literature of the Mass Media

For what is the use of asking, I ask, when we cannot even authoritatively decide whether a question asks or doesn’t ask?

—Paul de Man, “Semiology and Rhetoric” 

In his essay “Semiology and Rhetoric” Paul de Man utilizes three citations to illustrate his discussion of grammatical and rhetorical meaning.  The first comes  “from the sub-literature of the mass media” and looks at a rhetorical question asked by Archie Bunker in All in the Family and Edith Bunker’s grammatical reading of it.  The episode from which this moment is extracted—“Archie and the Bowling Team”—tells the story of Archie’s bid for the bowling team and begins with Edith re-lacing her husband’s bowling shoes in preparation for the occasion.  Because his wife does it for him the process is a simple, self-explanatory one for Archie (Edith does it), but for Edith, as she is faced with the task, it requires more nuance:

“How do you want me to lace these?”

“Through the holes, Edith, through the holes.”

“No, I mean do you want me to lace them over or under?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, you see if you lace them over they show more, and these are new so I—”

“Edith, Edith I didn’t say ‘what’s the difference?’ (explain it to me)¹ I said ‘what’s the difference?’ (who the hell cares)².”

“Oh I’m sorry Archie, I misunderstood you, you see, when you said—”

“Will you stifle your stuff and lace the shoes?” 

Archie Bunker is not preoccupied with the nuance of these possibilities of interpretation: shoelace tying only concerns women, and therefore the actual difference between lacing over and under, and the subsequent difference between intonations of asking what that difference is, does not interest him.   Thus “‘what’s the difference?’ (who the hell cares)²,” the rhetorical question that does not really ask, has priority over “‘what’s the difference?’ (explain it to me)¹,” the grammatical question that sincerely asks—it is the one that does not lead to anymore discussion of shoelace tying.

            Edith on the other hand lives in the increasingly Derridean world of the early 1970s that Archie refuses to acknowledge—he prefers that of the show’s theme where “guy’s like him”—white bigots—“had it made,” and Herbert Hoover saved the world from the unneeded welfare state.  This new world is not constrained by what’s masculine and what’s feminine, and in what role each person belongs: there exists no such priority between “‘what’s the difference?’ (who the hell cares)²” and “‘what’s the difference?’ (explain it to me)¹.”  Language differs as it defers just as the lacing a shoe one way differs from the other and Edith defers this indefinable quandary—who can say after all which is the right way?—to Archie.  Archie’s question—“what’s the difference?”—defers itself to its grammatical and rhetorical meanings each differing and, in turn, deferring into the web of language. Archie is the man of the house, though, so no such proliferation of ambiguity may be tolerated, rather this “stuff”—the infinitely perplexing situation of différance—must be “stifled.”

            Archie is, in the words of de Man, “the great believer in the authority of origins (as long, of course, as they are the right origins)” and he “lives in a world where literal and figurative meanings get in each other’s way, though not without discomforts.”  The great “discomfort” in this episode is that he does not make it onto the bowling team, although he gets literally the same score as his black competitor, because the team does not wish to appear racist, even though they are, bringing the tangible scores into collision with an abstract figurative score whose existence Archie resents with a passion.  Bowling has its origin, in Archie’s mind, with beer-drinking, pot-bellied white Americans—the American Bowling Congress did standardize the game in New York City in 1895—when it’s historical development owes debt to innumerable origins, the first dating back 3500 years to Egypt, though this surely is not “the right origin” in Archie’s opinion.

            But let’s imagine, as de Man invites us to do, a different type of sitcom protagonist, one that “is a de-bunker rather than a ‘Bunker,’ and a de-bunker of the arche (or origin), an archie Debunker such as Nietzche or Jacques Derrida for instance, who asks the question ‘What is the Difference’—and we cannot tell from his grammar whether he ‘really’ wants to know ‘what’ difference is or is just telling us that we shouldn’t even try to find out.”   Could such a character exist in a situation comedy, a context in which each joke must be comprehended immediately, each frustration easily and logically placed within the storyline, and every violation of the norm addressed and, in the words of Archie, “stifled”?  But  “what is the use of asking, I ask, when we cannot even authoritatively decide whether a question asks or doesn’t ask”?