Thursday, May 11, 2006

Celebrating Divorce?

I caught a couple of episodes of the latest reincarnation of Family Feud. The second episode was really more of the Anti-Family Feud.

When the show began in the 1970s, it was based off the concept of having two families compete to try and guess the most popular answers average Americans gave to specific questions. The show passed from Richard Dawson as host in the '70s to Ray Combs in the '80s. It was then reborn in 1999 with Louis Anderson hosting quite poorly and being replaced by Richard Karn in 2002. I have always enjoyed the show. I remember watching it in the '80s. It was always fun to try to guess the top survey answers. It was also a wonderful show in cerebrating family. Not many shows made possible the fun of game show competition for the whole family!

The episode I saw this morning was not of two competing families. Rather it was, excitingly announced, ex-wives verses ex-husbands. A game invented for the fun of competing families became a game for the demolished debris of families. Each ex-couple was announced with witty quips such as, "he's a writer and she's written him off," or "they went from first date to soul mates to court date." These couples made seemingly worthless vows and now celebrate the hollowness of their own words. I don't know if any of them have children, but I wondered if their children were so amused by the quips about the shattering of their families.

Certainly, and unfortunately, divorce is all too common in modern America. But I found it quite sad that a simple fun-loving game show designed around families should now appear to be celebrating divorce.

1 comment:

Lydia said...

This is so depressing. We are living in a culture of divorce. I've read several books about this:
"Forced Labor", "Back on Course"(Gavin and Patty McCleod), "Stolen Vows." In Aubrey Andelin's book, "Man of Steel and Velvet," he talked about the trend int he 60's to marry a young woman, who helped raise the children and sacrificed while the man continued his education, and then, when he became successful, he dumped her for someone younger.
No-fault divorce is unconstititional and is pushed through by lawyers without even considering whether the couple needs to divorce. It is similar to the days of Moses, when a Jew could just say, "I divorce thee" and they were divorced, because no divorce is discussed in these courts. A person simply tells a lawyer they want a divorce, and the court dates discuss the division of property and that is all! I've attended these outrageous sessions and not one attempt is made at trying to prevent the divorc--the lawyers take thousands of dollars from the couple and try to discourage reconciliation!