Sherwood Schwartz,
[URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/sherwood-schwartz-creator-of-gilligans-island-and-brady-bunch-dies-at-94/2011/07/12/gIQAHq7NBI_story.html"]who died Tuesday at the age of 94 [/URL], will not be remembered as one of television’s innovative geniuses. But he did create two of the most popular shows in TV history,
“Gilligan’s Island†and
“The Brady Bunch.†And he did something rare: He made people laugh, even in reruns.
But what did the sitcom king have in common with the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville? Answer: They both were interested in democracy in America.
In 2001, I published a book called
“Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization.†I wrote that “Gilligan’s Island†reflected the political confidence of 1960s America in the midst of the Cold War. A representative group of Americans could be dropped anywhere on the planet and they would rule, creating a small-scale model of U.S. democracy and fending off a sampling of its enemies, from Soviet cosmonauts to a Japanese soldierstill fighting World War II to a Latin American dictator.
Gilligan is the perfect democratic hero because he has no claims to superiority. The Professor has wisdom; the Millionaire has money and social status; the Skipper has a kind of military authority as captain. Gilligan is the pure common man. And, of course, the only time the castaways hold an election, he is chosen as president. Throughout the series, Gilligan represents the triumph of the ordinary over the extraordinary.
Schwartz learned about my book and wrote to me to get a copy. He explained that he had always thought of “Gilligan’s Island†as a show about democracy. . . . . .
. . . . . . . Once Schwartz had read the book, he wrote me another long letter explaining that it had always bothered him that people criticized “Gilligan’s Island†for being silly; they didn’t understand it, he said. “Not a single critic got it, with the basic concept of democracy staring them right in the face.†. . . . . .
