(rock music)
- (Jared) What's up guys, Jared here. The name Sterling Archer brings to mind a few glorious,
if disturbing, images: whizzing bullets that rarely hit anything, Bloody Marys for breakfast,
and an adult secret agent with a category-4 Oedipal complex.
- (Archer) My head hurts! And I have no father!
- (Jared) But what if paying attention to who raised Archer
could give us greater insights into some of his more “unique” quirks?
- (Malory) Walson here dressed as some sort of cattle rapist-
- (Jared) No, not his mom. Have you seen the show?. We mean the reliable
friend who really guided him through his most formative years. That’s right,
the glowing screen of parental guidance and cultural formation,
the TV. Because maybe Archer’s profound bond with 1980’s cinema and tv
- (Archer) I, uh, no longer wish to be represented by TV's Michael Gray.
- (Jared) Can help us understand his inability to form healthy bonds with human beings.
Now, most American kids put in a solid amount of time in front of the magical box of wonders.
But ideally, it serves as a source of entertainment,
not as a stand-in for you know, necessary human interactions. So if we want to understand what
makes Archer so “Archer-y”, we need to look at how his childhood consumption
of film and television turned him into the sort of adult who thinks this is normal.
- (Archer) I don't care Pam! Now, having said that,
would you please come into this dirty toilet stall and have sex with me?
- (Jared) So let’s find out how being raised by screens can seriously screw a person up in
this Wisecrack Edition on Archer: Raised by TV. And as always, spoilers ahead.
- (Jared) In case you’ve been on the Archer family liquid diet and forgot what the show is about,
a quick refresher. Archer’s first seven seasons take place in a vaguely
cold-war-esque timeline that shares all of our pop culture points of reference:
- (Archer) Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts?
- (Jared) While playing fast and loose with everything else. Archer, who works for his mother,
Malory, is a top tier international spy with a penchant for boozily bungling missions. Oh, also
for the past few seasons, he’s been in a lifeless coma. But the “show goes on” inside his bizarre
unconscious as he dreams up new adventures for his team set everywhere from 1940s LA to outer space.
As we see through flashbacks in the series,
Archer’s childhood was not great. His mom abandoned him as a baby, leaving him under
the care of a stiff British butler (and heroin addict), Woodhouse. Upon her return,
his mother makes up for lost time by moving houses and “accidentally” forgetting to tell Archer.
- (Malory) Just like that Christmas break where I moved and forgot to
give my new address to his stupid boarding school.
- (Jared) She also steals his bike to “teach him a lesson,”
- (Archer) You stole my bike? - (Malory) I came home from
work and it was just lying on the sidewalk and I thought, 'Oh - this will teach him!'
- (Jared) beats him with a paddle when he cries, and turns him into a full-fledged
gambling addict and alcoholic before he loses all his baby teeth. Real “mother of the year” stuff.
- (Ray) My mama told me she loved me all the time. - (Malory) Exactly. Look how you turned out.
- (Jared) We don’t know much else about his childhood, but none of it seems great - He once
spent five weeks in the hospital after getting a hard-core prep-school swirly. However, we do know
that Archer’s childhood hero was none other than the pride of Florida State University,
Burt Reynolds. This suggests that Archer was busy forming attachments to the people on his TV screen
- (Archer) Well then we better keep Dr. Bellows away from Jeanie.
- (Jared) While his mom was out doing spy stuff and his caretaker was
in doing... heroin stuff. While we don’t really SEE Archer watching TV,
the pop culture he absorbed as a kid clearly functions as a crucial layer of his character.
- (Archer) Lana, for all we know they're building a gun dam suit with bazookas for hands!
- (Jared) And being raised by the television puts Archer right at home in modern culture,
where kids between two and five spend about thirty-two hours a week watching the boob tube.
Coincidentally, that’s also how much time I spend
each week wondering what Woody would say to me if granted the power of human speech.
But anyway. If Archer spent his childhood absorbing ad-based content while being profoundly
socially isolated and ignored by his sole parental figure, what are the long term effects?
Let’s start with one of the most crucial aspects of childhood development:
learning quote unquote “normal” cultural and social practices. For instance, saying “please
and thank you,” knowing the boundaries of polite conversation, and so on. Most kids pick this stuff
up via their family, school, church, or local dojo. Learning this stuff helps us functionally
participate in society and get along with others. It also helps us develop healthy social boundaries
so that we don’t get an erection in front of our mother... inspired by the thought of her dying.
- (Malory) The thought of me dead gives you an erection!?
- (Jared) But Archer, who grew up essentially parentless,
friendless, and without any cultural or religious structure, lacks the type of socialization that
most functional members of society have. That’s a big reason why he has such a hard time connecting
with other people and always seems hopelessly out of sync with his colleagues, lovers, and friends.
- (Archer) Ironic isn't it? - (Cyril) I'm not sure
that's technically irony - (Archer) What? This is
like Oh Henry and Alanis Morisette had a baby and named it this exact situation!
- (Cyril) No! - (Archer) Yes it is!
- (Jared) See, instead of learning about culture through observing genuine human interactions,
Archer has learned everything through the small screen. And his reactions
to a whole number of scenarios show that he’d be more at home in an episode of MASH
- (Archer) Thanks Radar.
- (Jared) Or The Flintstones-
- (Archer) Kickin it Bedrock style!
- (Jared) than he ever is in the normal world. He can’t even appreciate Krieger being a good
listener without comparing him to Oprah, the best conversationalist on daytime television.
- (Archer) Seriously Kireger, you are my Oprah.
- (Jared) Archer’s problem is that he is unable to draw a clear line of demarcation between the
world as it appears on screen and the real world. A study carried out by the Canadian
pediatrics society on the effects of television viewing on child development found that,
“The inability of young children to distinguish everyday reality from what happens on screen,
along with their efforts to make sense of competing experiential realms,
may interfere with and impede executive function.” Which is to say, the difficulty
of separating between real life and TV life as a child can eventually make real life adult tasks,
like separating our professional lives from our sex lives, more difficult. Archer’s own problem
in distinguishing the screen world from the real world bleeds into every aspect of his life,
from his blunt seduction techniques to his over-the-top spy antics. In Archer’s tv addled
brain, every real-life mansion is probably hiding a Scrooge McDuck style coin vault in the basement.
- (Archer) Somewhere in this mansion, I have to assume, is a gigantic Scrooge McDuckian vault!
- (Jared) But even more basic to becoming a functional human is understanding how
language works. That doesn’t just mean the literal definition of words, but also how
they function in a social context. It’s knowing that the phrase “it’s lit” doesn’t mean the party
house is on fire. And our buddy Sterling, didn’t learn about the social function of language from
observing organic human interactions, or from a helpful teacher or therapist.
He learned it by absorbing dialogue written by a room full of Ivy League grads in sweatpants.
See, normal human language revolves around communicating ideas, subtext,
and the nuances of human emotion. But the dialogue in movies and television serves the purpose of
creating entertaining narratives and keeping easily distracted eyeballs glued to the screen.
Because of this, it’s often laced with the type of over-the-top verbiage that might sound normal
when The Rock says it but would be ridiculous in real life. A bad-ass line might read on screen:
- You tell em I'm coming! And Hell's coming with me you hear!
- (Jared) But probably won’t work when shouted in a rowdy Dave and Buster’s.
Archer’s attempts at badassery are always imbued with a hint of patheticness,
in trying to imitate what he saw on screen, he becomes a caricature of it.
- (Archer) Something about I rescue Lana and she begs me to take her back so
Cyril commits suicide. I swear to God I had something for this.
- (Jared) That’s because our buddy Sterling’s conception of language was
shaped not by interacting with his peers, but by observing rousing on-screen dialogue. At least
he didn’t grow up on Gilmore Girls. They talk so fast. And all that coffee. It’s all too much
- In the moments just before the act- - Oh god!
- We were actually discussing modern day Marxism in America, which is not what I
would have deemed a 'come and get it' sort of conversation but nevertheless he came
and got it and I have to figure out what that means to me on a psychological level.
- (Jared) There is no more obvious example of this
than Archer’s favorite way to call out perceived innuendo-
- (Archer) Um, phrasing?
- (Jared) Because tv both wants to be sexy AND to appeal to your grandma in Poughkeepsie,
it often relies on veiled sexual references, innuendos that we all kind of get but don’t really
raise eyebrows. And while these jokes might be normal in the conference room of Dunder Mifflin:
- (Michael) That's what she said
- (Jared) In the real world people usually just mean what they say, especially in the workplace.
But because Archer’s brain expects dialogue and not conversation, he sees this type of
thing everywhere. Even when he can barely get a word out he can always muster up a:
- (Archer) Phrasing.
- (Jared) And while Archer has a pretty good vocabulary,
his whole understanding of the social function of language seems to be deeply shaped by years
of consuming tv. As a result, he not only mis-reads things said by others,
- (Archer) I thought you put it on auto pilot? - (Rip) It just maintains course and altitude,
it doesn't know how to find the ONLY AIRSTRIP within 1,000 miles
so it can land itself when it needs gas! - (Archer) Then I uh, misunderstood the concept.
- (Jared) But also says wildly offensive or out of
bounds things only to be surprised that they didn’t go over smoothly.
- (Archer) Hey! You wanna smell something? - (Secretary) I swear to God Mr. Archer,
I have HR on speed dial!
- (Jared) He talks to normal folks like he’s playing the role of an American
James Bond reboot -- which, I mean, he is, but you get what I’m saying.
Now, we’re not trying to say that consuming too much pop culture has made Archer dumb,
far from it. The guy is able to drop a Herman Melville reference on a dime
- (Archer) I would prefer not to. Bartleby the Scrivner? Anybody?
- (Jared) And he speaks like ten languages.
(Archer speaks foreign language)
- (Jared) But because he considers “hollywood-speak” to be what’s normative,
he’s left perpetually out of sync when conversing with others. It’s like trying to learn how to
drive a car by watching the Fast and the Furious movies -- what makes perfect sense on the screen
only leads to you flipping your Ford Fiesta in real life. But my god is it a glorious ride up
until that point. Of course this is Archer’s problem, he’s learned how to be a human
through observing what he has seen in fictional programming meant to entertain, not educate.
Now, obviously we’d be remiss to not mention Archer’s most obnoxious quality:
his super hyper definitely troubling overcompensating masculinity.
- (Archer) But I've also cut back on, you know. - (Malory) On what? Surely with you that
could almost literally be anything. - (Archer) Anonymous sex, if you must know!
- (Jared) While the contemporary version of Hollywood masculinity is often someone slight
and hairless like Timothee Chalamet, Archer’s vision of masculinity was shaped by the previously
mentioned pile of perfect chest-hair with a human growing out of it, Burt Reynolds. Famous for
playing the charming badass who beats your ass by day and seduces your wife by night, Reynolds
had an iconic run of films in the seventies and eighties and was a massive sex symbol.
Of course Reynolds was an actor playing to hyped up masculine stereotypes, not an
actual human being embodying them. But for a young Archer, he was the model of manhood,
a sort of 2D father figure filling the hole left by his biological father’s absence. And not to get
too Freudian, but, the one time Archer meets his real father he gives him a stuffed alligator for
his birthday. Archer’s favorite Reynolds film? None other than the 1976 “classic”
Gator. So Archer’s projection of a father figure onto Mr. Reynolds is not without
some sort of reptilian connection. Oh, and it’s kind of vaguely in play that Reynolds
could be Archer’s father, so maybe the Gator thing is less Freudian and more literal.
- (Archer) No... - (Burt Reynolds) Remember how I said I
kinda had a date? It's kinda with your mom. (Archer mutters and faints)
- (Jared) Regardless, masculinity is the most important thing, and if it means one
thing for Sterling Archer it means sex. Lots and lots of sex. Sex basically whenever,
wherever, and with whomever. One of the only times in the show that
he seems to actively avoid sex is when he meets a sixteen year old,
but he bookends their interaction by asking her to hit him up when she turns eighteen.
- (Archer) Literally the minute you turn 18 please call me.
- (Jared) Classy, I know.
But is it shocking that someone who learned
everything from tv and film would have this view of sex?
- (Archer) Shoot him Cyril! But just him I think the twins are warming up to me.
Right? Are you guys? Am I getting some signals?
- (Jared) After all, even most commercials have a sexual angle that guarantees that if you buy the
right body spray you’ll immediately be swimming in intercourse. And those are just the things
that play in between all the shows and movies where in the final analysis everything was
really about someone successfully getting laid. As we noted in a previous video, much
of Archer’s persona seems modeled around James Bond (who is basically Burt Reynolds that went
to an English prep school and has fancy gadgets) And if you’ve seen even nine seconds of a James
Bond movie you’ve seen him seducing a woman named something like Hungry Bottoms or Furry Kitten.
So why wouldn’t Archer’s personality largely revolve around the utter importance of
affirming his masculinity by sleeping with women? It’s not like he was exposed to any
other model of how a guy should act, or exist in a relationship. But hey,
Archer’s twisted upbringing at least kind of comes together at one point when the
real Burt Reynolds (his ideal father figure) ends up sleeping with his mom.
- (Malory) We were meeting for drinks! I mean obviously sex was implied.
- (Archer) Ahhh! - (Malory) And since when is he your hero?
- (Jared) Archer initially tries to break them up and kidnaps maybe-papa Burt.
But the two eventually kind of bond, and Burt even tells Archer about his fear of emotional intimacy.
- (Archer) I don't care about them! - (Burt Reynolds) Yes you do,
you just pretend you don't because you're afraid.
- (Jared) The inclusion of real Burt Reynolds in the episode seems like further evidence
that the creators of the show know that watching one-dimensional Reynolds characters ruined Archer,
but also that seeing the emotional complexity of the real Burt might just help him grow.
Of course while most of us don’t have tinnitus from a lifetime of
bullets whizzing by our ears (and somehow not killing us)
- (Archer) This is what i was talking about with the whole tinnitus thing.
- (Jared) Many of us have spent more hours than we might want to admit
staring at screens in theaters, in living rooms, and on our phones while we take our
ninth bathroom break at work. So maybe we’re all a bit more like Archer than we’d like to think.
But what do you think Wisecrack? Is Archer a case study in why sometimes we need to step
away from the screens and learn how to be human? Or are we just using this show
to work through our own childhood abandonment issues? Let us know in the comments. As always,
mad thanks to our patrons for all of your support. Hit that subscribe button like it’s
the source of YOUR emotional dysfunction and as always, thanks for watching. Peace.