After the tumult of World War II, Americans longed for tranquility and order. Leave It to Beaver was an artistic expression of a particular time in history. Mathers’ idea offers the perfect template for viewing this popular classic. As we celebrate Leave It to Beaver‘s sixtieth anniversary, Mr.
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The show is often misrepresented as a “sanitized,” “unrealistic,” or “cookie cutter” portrayal of a “perfect nuclear family”-phrases which reveal scorn for the very concepts of family and domesticity.īy contrast, Jerry Mathers, who played the title character and was a college philosophy major, has likened the series to a “medieval morality play” in which Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue. To many, Leave It to Beaver is merely a phrase conjuring up a host of media-propagated clichés about society in the 1950s-bland, “white-bread,” conformist, and so on. The main reason-apart from its top-notch production values-is that it avoided the topical and ephemeral and drew instead from the wellspring of the moral imagination, creating characters and situations which have become archetypes. Viewed today, Leave It to Beaver remains ever fresh, even as other pop-culture products have faded and dated. Since its premiere sixty years ago, the beloved sitcom Leave It to Beaver (1957-63) has been such an “enduring source of inspiration” for many, unfolding the story of a young boy who learned “first principles” and was guided in “virtue and wisdom” in the midst of his family. Russell Kirk defined the moral imagination as “an enduring source of inspiration that elevates us to first principles as it guides us upwards towards virtue and wisdom and redemption.” It is a quality which informs the great works of art, not excluding the more popular art forms of film and television.
“Leave It to Beaver” was very much a medieval morality play, in which the character of the Beaver repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue.