The Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, used the term “archetype” to describe those innate, universal models of people, personalities and behaviors that reside deep within our subconscious mind. In short, an archetype is a model of a thing distilled down to its barest essence. A glance at such essential forms instantly communicates a whole host of complex information about the category of things we are observing.
American culture recently lost one of its most enduring and purest archetypal symbols with the passing of beloved actor Andy Griffith. Like most heroic forms, Griffith came replete with his own ode. Ask anyone who can whistle and mostly likely they can toot out the first few notes to his long-running television program’s theme song.
In the starring role of Mayberry town sheriff, Andy Taylor, Griffith deftly, wisely, subtly imposed order on a cadre of chaotic characters. To do this, he employed tropes well-familiar to many Southerners — let the urbane outsiders underestimate us and in so doing they will trip over their own presumptions — let the buffoon wander, but quietly save him from himself — don’t embarrass people, even when they might have it coming — be empathetic — resolve things informally, even though you have the power to force solutions. Do all of this with charity and without pride.
Andy Taylor became America’s sheriff and Mayberry, America’s hometown. They stood for simple, ethical, communal living. They watched over one another without being provincial or petty. Those who were always got their due.
Andy Taylor rose to the status of cultural icon in ways that Walking Tall’s Buford Pusser or In the Heat of the Night’s Bill Gillespie never could. He became the sheriff we all could admire at a time when the country’s relationship to the real police entered a period of tumult and transition.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
He was not just the consummate lawman, but a capable father, dutiful nephew, effective boss and devoted friend. With a character so powerful, the man who brought him to life was often eclipsed by his creation. The line between Griffith and Taylor was never clear, even as the aging Griffith charmed a new generation as folksy lawyer, Ben Matlock. The transition from Taylor to Matlock gave many of us a slight existential twinge as we tried to figure out how Sheriff Andy escaped Mayberry for law school and Atlanta. ‘‘Andy was Mayberry, and Mayberry was Andy,’’ Don Knotts, who played Barney Fife, said in a 1999 interview.
Writing for Boston.com Ted Anthony fixes Griffith’s seminal place in the timeline of American popular culture: “Griffith’s take on a post-Eisenhower ‘Our Town’ made him, to television, what Woody Guthrie had been to music two decades earlier — a popularizer who came from authentic country roots, polished it all up, then fed Americans back a more digestible version of rural culture. It was an approach that coincided with a musical folk revival in which rural songs were being popularized by mainstream musicians like never before.”
Unlike many country performers before him, Griffith imparted a nobility to rural living in the model of Jefferson and Washington over Snuffy Smith. Griffith showed that one need not be landed gentry to rise above Dog Patch parody. A good heart and proper motive were sufficient.
There has been no heir apparent to Griffith’s comedic country throne. The likes of Jeff Foxworthy and his minion come closest, but even then it takes a quartet of voices to approach Griffith’s depth. Viewed today, the Andy Griffith Show may be regarded as quaint, mawkish and irrelevant to modernity. As Ecclesiastes instructs, there is a season for everything. Perhaps the quixotic milieu of Mayberry is a relegate to a time lost, but as long as there are dirt roads along a mountainside there’ll be a place for that familiar whistled tune. Rest in peace, Andy.