CHAPTER ELEVEN
Haley Gienow-McConnell
A discussion was begun in earnest in 1980 by George Gerbner about the stigmatizing effects wrought by media portrayals of mental illness in his landmark essay “Stigma: Social Functions of the Portrayal of Mental Illness in the Mass Media.” Through his appraisal of mental illness in popular media, Gerbner concluded that the mentally ill represent “a stigmatized group that serves as a lightning rod for [viewers’] pent-up insecurities and, at the same time, demonstrates the moral and physical price to be paid for deviance.”1 He recommended that further and ongoing research be conducted into the nature and influence of popular portrayals of mental illness in order to mitigate its stigmatizing effects.
In the years since, a significant literature has emerged to attest to the powerful presence and influence of mental illness as it appears in myriad forms in our culture.2 In their essay “Mental Illness Depictions in Prime-Time Drama: Identifying the Discursive Resources,” Claire Wilson et al. conclude that “The media has been shown to be the public’s single most important source of information about mental illness, and that these sources are generally very negative.” Furthermore, they found that certain patterns and themes were persistent in these sources and, as a result, “In these circumstances, the frequent exposure to the same understandings of mental illness can create self-validating impressions of the correctness of those understandings.”3 In sum, mental illness in popular media is a highly informative and high-stakes issue.
Much has been written about film and its portrayals of mental illness.4 Increasing attention is being devoted to the topic of mental illness on television, as well as to the presence of disability in general on the small screen.5 Since, as Gerbner and others have argued, media images of mental illness are powerful influences on public consciousness, the history of these images cannot be overlooked.
The following is a discussion of how CBS television’s The Waltons, one of the most popular and enduring prime-time dramas of the 1970s and early 1980s, handled the topic of mental illness, and specifically how it contributed to popular perceptions of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).6 It is also a discussion of how The Waltons was distinct among other on-screen examples of the Vietnam experience in the 1970s and early 1980s. Given that The Waltons was a long-running television serial which aired from 1972 to 1981 but depicted events set in rural Virginia from 1933 to 1946, The Waltons makes for an interesting case study of mental illness in popular culture, since it simultaneously depicted story lines about mental illness in the United States during World War II, the milieu in which the show was set, while reflecting attitudes towards mental illness during the post-Vietnam era of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the milieu in which the show was produced and viewed.
During its final few seasons on the air, The Waltons broached mental health disabilities via several story lines that explored the psychological and emotional ramifications of war.7 The most noteworthy example was an episode entitled “The Tempest” (2/05/81), which depicted the challenges faced by Curtis Willard, husband of eldest Walton daughter Mary-Ellen, upon his return from service in World War II and reunification with his wife. The story went that Mary-Ellen married local country doctor Curtis Willard around the time that war was breaking out in Europe. A couple of years hence, Curtis was drafted into the medical corps and stationed to serve at Pearl Harbor. Following the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, Curtis was presumed dead in the fray, forcing Mary-Ellen and their son John-Curtis to resume a life without him. In actuality, Curt survived, though was severely injured and in a coma for some time. Audiences learned that, after convalescing in a veterans’ hospital, Curt decided to remain estranged from his family. His decision was informed by his belief that they would be better off without him. The trauma endured through witnessing the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and through coping with the injuries that resulted, negatively impacted Curt’s mental health and his sense of identity. In addition to the psychological trauma wrought by the events of Pearl Harbor, Curt’s mental health was further impacted by a physical trauma he endured in the fray. He explained to Mary-Ellen “I can never be a real husband, Mary-Ellen. I can never father another child. I’m not a whole man, and I’m never gonna be one.”8 In Curt’s own words, the combination of these traumas left him feeling “empty and lifeless.”9
As eldest son John-Boy explained in the episode’s opening narration: “A chill settled on Walton’s Mountain that first autumn after the conclusion of the Second World War. Mary-Ellen had been caught up in a whirlwind love affair that seemed certain to add a new member to the family. But a storm was brewing to the south, a storm that ended her romance and called her to a distant part of the country in search of a man she believed to be dead.”10 The language used from the episode’s outset was telling. Rather than referring to Curt’s psychological and physical challenges in clinical terms, his struggles were referred to in descriptive, metaphorical terms. The experience of service-induced post-traumatic stress, it was suggested, was a disruptive albeit temporary phenomenon. It was a problem to be weathered, with the expectation that with time and the right attitude, the “storm” would pass. The ensuing episode revolved around Mary-Ellen’s struggle to understand Curt’s behaviors and choices as he adjusted to civilian life a changed man. Whereas before his service Mary-Ellen knew Curt to be “a good husband and father and a fine doctor,” in other words, an upstanding member of his Walton’s Mountain community, post-service the townsfolk of Curt’s new haunt in Larksburg, Florida, described him as “nothing but trouble.”11 Upon reuniting with Curt and learning of his challenges post-service, Mary-Ellen echoed the townsfolk’s disapproval and exclaimed to Curt “The Great Warrior. Killed at Pearl Harbor. Decorated for heroism. Reported in all the newspapers. Just look at you now!”12
The townsfolk and Mary-Ellen’s sentiments generally reflected the overall perspective on PTSD espoused in the episode, a perspective that was more critical of the individual living with the psychiatric illness than of the circumstances and politics which led to said individual being traumatized in war. This perspective distinguished The Waltons among many of its celluloid contemporaries, whose messages tended toward anti-Vietnam rather than anti-veteran rhetoric. While the perspective adopted on The Waltons towards war and PTSD was in keeping with the sentiments of the World War II world in which the show was set, its echoes in the contemporary world of the 1970s and 1980s—in which it was viewed—were problematic. Because of the unique temporality of The Waltons, determining its position in mental health historiography is complex.
Some has been written about the history of Vietnam and the post-traumatic stress experience in film.13 By contrast, almost nothing has been written about Vietnam and post-traumatic stress in television. Considering the preeminence of television in the 1970s’ cultural landscape, and television’s power to shape public consciousness about mental illness, such an examination is important. By the 1970s television had morphed from the “toy with a flickering image” of its inception to a “powerful and influential communications medium” that commanded “an important place in the lives of most Americans.”14 And with only three major networks competing for an audience share throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, what shows like The Waltons said about mental illness mattered because their reach was vast.
While the literal war in Southeast Asia concluded in 1975, for many Vietnam veterans another war, battled on a psychological front, was just beginning. Yet the mental health and overall well-being of returned Vietnam veterans were given short shrift on the national agenda.15 The war in Vietnam was a war that most Americans wanted to forget. As Stephanie A. Slocum-Schaffer explained, “Quite simply, the nation did not want to be reminded of its disastrous defeat in Vietnam. Thus, bitter and frustrated soldiers, many with drug dependencies, came home to a bitter America that was at best indifferent and at worse … overtly hostile.”16
If the plight of the mentally anguished Vietnam veteran was fading from social justice marches, nightly newscasts, and presidential debates as the 1970s wore on, it was becoming increasingly visible on screen in fictionalized accounts. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, myriad depictions of the far-ranging consequences of the Vietnam War appeared in film. Film historian Robert Niemi observed “During the war and in the decades since, fiction and non-fiction films about Vietnam have engaged in an elaborate and always emotionally charged dialogue about the war’s meaning and consequences.” As compared to the typically patriotic and battle-charged films which emerged following World War II, Niemi explained “From rancorously partisan defenses and denouncements of American involvement, Vietnam War cinema has generally evolved into something more ideologically nuanced and elegiac.”17 For example, films such as Coming Home (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978), First Blood (1982), Combat Shock (1986), and Jacknife (1989) all broached the topic of the psychological distress endured by returning Vietnam veterans. Though these films had distinct plots and employed unique narrative devices, the commonalities that they shared were that they were produced during the post-Vietnam era, they spoke directly of the Vietnam experience and were generally critical of the war, and they used the more epic and provocative medium of film to tell their stories.
This brings us back to the curious example of The Waltons. The heavy pall cast by the Vietnam War, some have argued, contributed to the popularity of the Great Depression and World War II setting of The Waltons during the 1970s. James Person Jr. explained that “The Waltons, despite its setting and themes, was fresh and appealed to the nation’s sense of nostalgia and soul-searching during the twilight years of the Vietnam-War era.”18 Waltons historian Mike Chopra-Gant echoed Person and declared, “by the time The Waltons first appeared on American television screens in 1972, Americans … had been discomfited by the implicit inhumanity of the USA inscribed in appalling images of the terrified, agonised faces of helpless Vietnamese children bathed in American napalm while American troops stood by, seemingly immune to their suffering.” By contrast The Waltons was seemingly an anodyne.19 And in some respects, this was true. Episodes like “The Graduation” (February 21, 1974), where the central crisis revolves around the decision to allocate the family’s meager financial resources toward a new suit for eldest son John-Boy, or for a new cow for the family, represented a salve of sorts for audiences, as they were firmly rooted in the specifics of a rural family struggling through the Great Depression.
However, although The Waltons was an historically-situated television drama, upon closer analysis of other specific story lines on The Waltons, such as that of “The Tempest,” it was evident that American audiences did not always escape the turbulent world in which they lived while viewing The Waltons. Many story lines covertly referred to issues contemporary to the 1970s and early 1980s, while using the medium of television, and the historical backdrops of the Great Depression and World War II, as inert spaces in which to hash out such issues. When eldest son John-Boy referred to Curt and Mary-Ellen’s life just prior to his service in World War II as “the waning hours of a simpler era,” his remarks were pointed. Story lines like the “The Tempest” could be interpreted literally as the story of one man’s emotional hardships in the aftermath of service in World War II, but they could also be interpreted allegorically as relating to the post-Vietnam world. The tendency to produce historical fiction with contemporary resonance was not exclusive to The Waltons. In fact, it was a significant aspect of American television in the 1970s, according to Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska. She explained that among the most popular television series were “programs that emphasized characterization to introduce relatable protagonists and that involved current political and social issues.” These programs were “characterized as ‘relevance’ programming because of the way that they deliberately foregrounded the realities of life in the 1970s.”20
By contrast, shows like The Waltons, and its contemporary Little House on the Prairie, consciously foregrounded the past in their storytelling, while referring to contemporary issues in coded and implicit ways. Due to their historical settings, Little House and The Waltons offered a unique breed of realistic and relevance programming. Rymsza-Pawlowska elaborated: “In this programming context, Little House made similar avowals of realism…. As one critic observed, the show ‘dishe[d] up today’s hardships as 1870s hardships.’ If relevance programming aimed to advance television’s position by emphasizing its ability to represent and attend to social issues, shows such as Little House took the additional step of placing these issues within a historical milieu.”21
Thus, it behooves us to consider The Waltons as a legitimate and illuminating contribution to the discussion of mental health and the military on-screen in the 1970s and 1980s. Though set during the 1930s and 1940s, its relationship to the time in which it was produced was significant. The Waltons represented a counterpoint to the Vietnam films of the era, which tended to be contemporaneous to the period they were made, and overt in their commentary on the consequences of the Vietnam War. Of historically based television dramas like The Waltons, television historians S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, and Stanley Rothman argued, “Sometimes the disguise is elaborate enough to produce a genuinely covert political statement, with scripts that tackle controversial political issues symbolically or even allegorically.”22 For example, when Mary-Ellen sets out to reconnect with her estranged husband, she asks a local resident of Curt’s new hometown for directions to his home and is told to “Just look for the first junk heap you come to.”23 The literal interpretation of this exchange was that Curt failed to adjust and thrive upon his return from service. The subtext was that some returning service-persons living with mental illness, including Vietnam veterans by extension, not only struggled emotionally, they struggled socially and financially as well. And while these problems may have appeared insurmountable in the real world in which viewers lived, when filtered from Walton’s Mountain through the cathode-ray tube, they appeared more manageable, requiring little more than a good attitude and perseverance to overcome.
Television historian Ella Taylor described the Waltons as “an imaginary idealized family set in an imaginary, idealized past, equipped with the insights of applied psychology. They offer us a world in which traditional values of faith and kindness, persistence and initiative, respond to modern dilemmas of identity and development, and in which the aphoristic, material language of common sense mingles happily with contemporary psychological wisdom.”24 As a result, The Waltons offered an illuminating perspective on representations of PTSD on-screen in that it addressed the modern dilemma in the nostalgic framework of the 1940s, and couched its discussion of PTSD in 1940s sensibilities—and therefore in detached and reassuring tones. This basic formula through which The Waltons handled topics such as mental illness was common in television depictions of disability in this era. According to Paul Longmore, “in the ‘social problem’ dramas seen during the 1970s and 1980s, the subjects of our worries were addressed, but without deep examination. In such cases, television and film provide quick and simple solutions. They tell us that the problem is not as overwhelming as we fear, that it is manageable, or that it is not really our problem at all, but someone else’s.”25
Indeed, in episodes of The Waltons where characters were affected by disabilities, if the character affected by disability was a nonrecurring character, the disability could not be reversed. Its effects were permanent. In episodes where a member of the Walton family or a recurring character of the series was affected by disability, typically the disability was not permanent, and medical intervention, combined with perseverance, faith, and family, mitigated the effects of the disability. In this way, the Waltons, by overcoming their own disabilities and relegating permanent disabilities to nonrecurring characters, suggested this message to the viewing audience: Disability is not for us. Disability is for someone else. The writers of the series thereby created a safety net between the audience and disability. In the case of Curtis Willard, he resided in a kind of no-man’s-land of disability and mental illness. He was a Walton by extension, having married a Walton daughter, and so was expected to confront and overcome his PTSD. Indeed, Mary-Ellen was prescriptive in her appraisal of how best to manage Curt’s PTSD, as was typical of scenarios wherein the Waltons confront disability. After her initial reunion with Curt, Mary-Ellen telephoned her younger sister Erin to give her an update. “There’s something very wrong with him,” she reported of Curt. “I have to stay here. I have to get to the bottom of this.”26 And yet the episode made clear that though Mary-Ellen had strong opinions about how Curt should confront his PTSD, she would not be present for Curt’s recovery, nor would they resume their marriage. There was hope for Curt if he adhered to the Walton way and readjusted to civilian life, but his recovery was not meant for audience consumption. The onus of recovery was his individual burden to bear, and total redemption in the form of reconciliation with Mary-Ellen was not possible.
Although disability was embraced as a relevant social problem in series such as The Waltons, its deployment was not without its risks. It had to be handled in a certain way because “Disability happens around us more than we generally recognize or care to notice, and we harbor unspoken anxieties about the possibility of disablement, to us or to someone close to us. What we fear, we often stigmatize and shun and sometimes seek to destroy. Popular entertainment depicting disabled characters allude to these fears and prejudices, or address them obliquely or fragmentarily, seeking to reassure us about ourselves.”27 In addressing the topic of disability frequently, The Waltons conceded that disability was a relevant social issue, but in relegating permanent disabilities to non-recurring characters, The Waltons reassured its audience that this social problem was, as Paul Longmore put it, “not really our problem at all, but someone else’s.”28
In reality, mental health is everyone’s concern. The way mental illness is perceived and treated is informed by myriad social, political, and cultural factors, not the least of which includes popular culture. Even the seemingly most innocuous examples of mental illness in popular culture, examples such as The Waltons, are influential and have consequences. It is important to be media savvy and critical of these images, and it is important to understand that these images have a history, a history that has been overlooked. Mental illness means different things at different times. What we consider to be mental illness and best practice in a given period is different from our definitions and approaches in another period. Therefore, images of mental illness on-screen such as The Waltons, despite their shortcomings, should not be discounted as outdated treatments of the subject, but rather as important historical artifacts of the place and meaning of mental illness in our culture at a given time. Understanding the history and evolution of these images puts us in better stead to have productive, timely, and context-specific discussions about mental illness and its place in our current culture.
Notes
1. George Gerbner, “Stigma: Social Functions of the Portrayal of Mental Illness in the Mass Media,” in Attitudes Toward the Mentally Ill: Research Perspectives, ed. J. Rabkin, L. Gelb, and J.B. Lazar (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980), 45–47.
2. See Otto F. Wahl, Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995); D.I. Diefenbach, “The Portrayal of Mental Illness on Prime-time Television,” Journal of Community Psychology 25, no. 3 (1997): 289–302; Diana Rose, “Television, Madness, and Community Care,” Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 8, no. 3 (1998): 213–228; J.R. Cutcliffe and B. Hannigan, “Mass Media, ’Monsters’ and Mental Health Clients: The Need for Increased Lobbying,” Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 8, no. 4 (2001): 315–321; John Coverdale, Raymond Nairn, and D. Claasen, “Depictions of Mental Illness in Print Media: A Prospective National Sample,” The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 36, no. 5 (2002): 697–700; Otto F. Wahl, “Depictions of Mental Illnesses in Children’s Media,” Journal of Mental Health 12 (2003): 249–258; Otto F. Wahl, “News Media Portrayal of Mental Illness,” American Behavioral Scientist 46, (2003): 1594–600.
3. Claire Wilson, Raymond Nairn, John Coverdale, and Aroha Panapa, “Mental Illness Depictions in Prime-Time Drama: Identifying the Discursive Resources,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 33 (1999): 232.
4. See, for example, David Robinson, Reel Psychiatry: Movie Portrayals of Psychiatric Conditions (Port Huron, MI: Rapid Psychler Press, 2003); Krin Gabbard and Glen O. Gabbard, Psychiatry and Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Danny Wedding and Mary Ann Boyd, Movies and Mental Illness: Using Films to Understand Psychopathology (Columbus: McGraw-Hill College, 1998); Mental Illness in Popular Media: Essays on the Representation of Disorders, ed. Lawrence C. Rubin (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012).
5. See Paul Longmore’s landmark essay, originally published in 1985, “Screening Stereotypes: Images of Disabled People in Television and Motion Pictures,” in Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability, ed. Paul K. Longmore (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003); Beth Haller, Representing Disability in An Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media (Louisville: Advocado Press, 2010); Different Bodies: Essays on Disability in Film and Television, ed. Marja Evelyn Mogk (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013).
6. Earl Hamner and Ralph Giffin, Goodnight John-Boy: A Celebration of an American Family and the Values That Have Sustained Us Through Good Times and Bad (Nashville: Cumberland House Publishing, 2002), 64.
7. Including The Waltons, “The Children’s Carol,” dir. Lawrence Dobkin (December 5, 1977; Warner Home Video, 2008), DVD; The Waltons, “The Conscience,” dir. Gwen Arner (January 4, 1979; Warner Home Video, 2012), DVD; The Waltons, “The Obstacle,” dir. William H. Bushnell (January 11, 1979; Warner Home Video, 2012), DVD; The Waltons, “The Lost Sheep,” dir. Walter Alzmann (November 1, 1979; Warner Home Video, 2009), DVD; The Waltons, “The Furlough,” dir. Harry Harris (February 21, 1980; Warner Home Video, 2009), DVD; and The Waltons, “The Whirlwind,” dir. Nell Cox (January 22, 1981; Warner Home Video, 2002), DVD.
8. The Waltons, “The Tempest,” dir. Gabrielle Beaumont (February 5, 1981; Warner Home Video, 2002), DVD.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. See Lauri E. Klobs, Disability Drama in Television and Film (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1988); Christian Keathley, “Trapped in the Affection-Image: Hollywood’s Post-Traumatic Cycle (1970–1976),” in Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability, eds. Christopher R. Smith and Anthony Enns (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001); Sharon Packer, “Cold War Paranoia and Postwar PTSD,” in Movies and the Modern Psyche, ed. Sharon Packer (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007).
14. Stephanie A. Slocum-Schaffer, America in the Seventies (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 179.
15. Ibid., 129.
16. Ibid., 209.
17. Robert Niemi, History in the Media: Film and Television (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 152.
18. James E. Person Jr., Earl Hamner: From Walton’s Mountain to Tomorrow (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2005), 75.
19. Mike Chopra-Gant, The Waltons: Nostalgia and Myth in Seventies America (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2013), 2.
20. Malgorzata J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, “Broadcasting the Past: History Television, ‘Nostalgia Culture,’ and the Emergence of the Miniseries in the 1970s United States,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 42, no. 2 (2014): 83–84.
21. Ibid., 83–84.
22. S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, and Stanley Rothman, Prime Time: How TV Portrays American Culture (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1994), 9–10.
23. The Waltons, “The Tempest,” 1981.
24. Ella Taylor, Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 103.
25. Paul Longmore, “Screening Stereotypes: Images of Disabled People in Television and Motion Pictures,” in Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability, ed. Paul K. Longmore (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 132.
26. The Waltons, “The Tempest,” 1981.
27. Paul Longmore, “Screening Stereotypes,” 132.
28. Ibid.