When I saw they were updating the old Archie comic and cartoon with a live-action Fox-TV show called Riverdale, I cringed.
Because I suspected what was coming.
Vowed not to watch the show, because I didn't want to see or hear about what was coming. Just wanted to remember Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle, Jughead Jones and Ms. Grundy and the gang -- residents of a town called Riverdale -- as the characters I grew up with.
The main promotional photo of the Riverdale series looked plumb sinister: An auburn-haired, unsmiling Archie with his scowly gang of cohorts, looking like they wanted to kill people, suck their blood and dump their bodies in the woods. Nothing like Smiling Orange Haired Archie with that implied middle part and his also smiling (or in Reggie's case, smirking) old-school bunch, drawn with no lower eyelids.
Blowing off the Riverdale version of Archie, I went about my business. And everything was fine. Until I stumbled upon mention of a "steamy sex scene" between Archie and Veronica in an episode of the show.
Whew. A long way from Andy Hardy, the perkily wholesome character played by Mickey Rooney in the 1930s and '40s and on whom the Archie storyline was somewhat based. A steamy sex scene with one of the other characters? Gah! Not my Archie!
So why do I care so much?
Frankly, I cringe when they update any old shows, movies and comic-book characters. Period. Updating usually means ruining them somehow, usually by "sexing" them up. And I suppose that -- sorta like Betty and Veronica -- I had a thing for Archie.
As a black child who saw few comic-book characters who looked like me at the time, I held Archie in the same high regard as I held the original version of the country variety show Hee Haw, the only thing halfway worth watching on early, pre-cable-TV Saturday evenings and complete with Buck Owens, Roy Clark, Grandpa Jones, Lulu Roman and another Archie, Archie Campbell.
It wasn't as if Archie's image has always been squeaky clean. An online look at the history of the comic reveals that Archie and his pals have been taken in quite a few directions. Among them: a Christianized comic-book version. A couple of live-TV-show pilots and a 1990 TV movie. An update in the comic pages in the 2000-teens -- Life With Archie -- complete with serious, 21st-century themes and exploring the what-ifs of Archie-Betty and Archie-Veronica marriages. A spinoff comic-book series featuring the regulars as well as a gay friend, Kevin Keller, who came along in 2010 and appears in Riverdale. An Archie horror-comics run, complete with the Riverdalers battling zombies. Even Archie's death has been depicted; he was shot while saving Keller from an assassination attempt in a 2014 Life With Archie issue.
Of course nobody was going to keep a good Archie down. They were bound to dig him back up and twist and turn him some more. Something about that kid makes him just as mess-withable as a knock-kneed nerd in a field of bullies.
Granted, the last time I kept up with the Archie comics, they were pushing the envelope a bit anyway. At that point, Betty and Veronica were drawn pretty voluptuously and always sported short hemlines as they vied for Archie's attention.
But I guess I got stuck on Archie as that Andy Hardy alternative. And I wish that he'd been left alone, maybe not with a sterilized mid-20th-century vibe, but, geesh, at least suitable for all audiences. From what I've gathered reading "Riverdale Oversexualizes Its Teenage Characters," an article at TeenVogue.com, that Archie-Veronica sex scene is the tip of the iceberg. A serial killer afoot? Ms. Grundy -- much younger, not nearly so long-nosed, and a statutory rapist? Betty pole-dancing? Noooo!
In a July 2017 thought piece at Theawl.com, Deborah Krieger doesn't directly target sexual naughtiness, but asks, "Why Do Remakes Have to Be 'Darker' and 'Grittier'?"
"Who are these reboots for?" she writes. "Are they doing so to attract that elusive, all-important millennial viewer, capable of blowing up a show's popularity with a single tweet? Or are they hoping to capitalize on the nostalgia of Generations X and Baby Boomer, in order to create a wider audience -- and make these childhood properties seem more 'adult' oriented? What underlying assumptions are the creators making about their intended audiences?"
I don't know. But let's hope they don't get the idea to bring Andy Hardy into the 21st century. Or, for that matter Hee Haw -- at least leave that other Archie alone.
Good old-fashioned email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 09/30/2018