WandaVision’s Post-war Paradise: Television as Escapism

An analysis of WandaVision as allegorical for television’s escapist affordances.

Following World War II, American culture shifted its focus toward domesticity and familial values as Americans moved to the burgeoning suburbs. After such a tumultuous period, the masses were looking for a return to comfort, and television provided the escapist fantasy so many craved. Lynn Spigel, author of “The Suburban Home Companion” has this to say about the medium’s escapist role in the 50s: “Indeed, television-at its most ideal-promised to bring to audiences not merely an illusion of reality as in the cinema, but a sense of ‘being there,’ a kind of hyperrealism” to experience a life they never could in reality. However, scholars have since called attention to television’s escapist promises and its increasing permeation into our everyday lives. In their seminal essay “The Culture Industry,” Adorno and Horkheimer state, “The paradise offered by the culture industry is the same old drudgery. Both escape and elopement are pre-designed to lead back to the starting point. Pleasure promotes the resignation which it ought to help to forget.” Viewing television as a numbing vice for the masses, Spigel’s declaration of TV as a means of quelling audience anxieties and providing a falsified experience preferable to reality is a precursor to the critique of television performed by Adorno and Horkheimer. 

This notion of TV as escapism is demonstrated by the pilot episode of Marvel’s WandaVision, as the program works to expose the illusory nature of television by replicating and deconstructing the post-war era of escapist TV. By recreating sitcom shows of the post-war era and reflecting the social phenomena of that time, while also viewing the main character, Wanda, through the lens of an average TV viewer, WandaVision deconstructs the potemkin, idyllic lifestyle that television provides its audiences, thereby exposing and critiquing the escapist illusion the medium creates. 

WandaVision’s pilot demonstrates a connection with post-war television as explained by Spiegel as early as the opening theme. She states “During the 50s, millions of Americans…responded to a severe housing shortage in the cities by fleeing to new mass-produced suburbs. In both scholarly studies and popular literature from the period, suburbia emerged as a conformist-oriented society where belonging to the neighborhood Network was just as important as the return to family life.” The show begins on a black screen, before a click is heard and TV static plays to reveal a newly wed Wanda and Vision in a black and white color palette driving toward suburbia with an optimistic theme song playing that describes the couple’s move. Wanda and Vision arrive in an ideal suburban town to a new home all their own, to which the episode plays out in a traditional sitcom format until its inevitable deconstruction. Their move follows “The Snap,” an act of mass genocide across the galaxy as incited by the evil titan Thanos, which parallels the realities of World War II. Meaning, in its opening seconds, WandaVision aligns itself with post-war television. By recreating popular television at the time through matching the aesthetics of a post-war sitcom, emphasizing values of domesticity and family and reflecting the real-world shift to suburbia many shows at the time also replicated, WandaVision positions itself as a post-war era show that provides an idyllic life onscreen in order to set up its inevitable deconstruction of this falsified fantasy. 

The program continues to align itself with the post-war era while also introducing the idea of television as escape by presenting the ideal community. After Vision leaves for work and Wanda is left alone at home - reflecting gendered stereotypes represented on programs at the time - Agnes, Wanda’s next door neighbor, visits the isolated housewife throughout the episode for comfort. In this way, WandaVision reflects the efforts of post-war television - to present an ideal neighborhood that contrasted the unexpected uncanniness of the assumedly perfect communities. Upon moving to the suburbs and learning that utopia was less than optimal, audiences of the 50s needed an escape from their expected paradise. Spiegel states, “These nightmarish visions of the pre-planned community served as an impetus for the arrival of a surrogate community on television. Television provided an illusion of the ideal neighborhood - the way it was supposed to be. Just when people had left their life-long companions in the city, television sitcoms pictured romanticized versions of neighbor and family bonding.” This quote not only illuminates how WandaVision aligns itself with popular post-war television by replicating its representation of the perfect community, but it also demonstrates the escapist nature of television. By providing an illusory, ideal reality, television quells audience anxieties, and WandaVision aims to recreate the identifiers of the manufactured reality TV presents in order to expose that falsity. 

On screen representation does not mean the suburban home was perfect, however, as WandaVision demonstrates real-world anxieties at the time - most notably, the social fear of fitting into the pre-planned community and the balance of public and private spheres. These anxieties exist in tandem as Agnes questions why Wanda is not yet married. In doing so, Agnes continues to reinforce gendered representations while amplifying the fear of fitting in described by Spiegel. Attempting to hide her true identity as the Scarlet Witch, Wanda flounders for answers, reflecting the fear of couples fitting into established social dynamics at the time by providing the clever parallel of Wanda attempting to hide her super hero role. Agnes and the Harts, Vision’s boss and his wife, also represent the fearful permeation of the domestic space, an aspect of suburban culture Spiegel notes television attempted to mediate. This phenomena is manifested in the episode’s central conflict, that being the Harts unexpectedly coming over for dinner, with Wanda and Vision scrambling to meet the 50s expectation of a perfect couple by providing a home cooked meal for the guests they reluctantly host. Agnes’ incessant visits while the Harts are over only causes the couple greater stress, thus demonstrating anxieties around performance and permeation that dominated the post-war suburbs, thereby further aligning the pilot with 50s television.

With Agnes dealt with and dinner prepared, the Harts, Wanda, and Vision sit at the table, ready for their meal. However, just as television provides an illusion, this dinner is exposed to be far from reality when Mr. Hart interrogates the couple about their decision to move. As he becomes unnaturally enraged at the heroes in disguise for not knowing why they relocated, a sense of uncanny dread settles. The camera shifts from the traditional multi-camera setup the rest of the episode was filmed in to match the 50s sitcom aesthetic to cold, geometric close-ups of the characters when Mr. Hart begins to choke on his food. No laugh track, no music, simply the struggling wails of the dinner guest and Wanda’s eerie insistence that Vision aids his boss, ordering him with emotionless dialogue. The rules of the show have been broken as the camera and characters have both transitioned away from 50s sitcom illusions for a moment of grim reality. With Vision’s assistance, Mr. Hart is saved and the show immediately returns to its comforting 50s aesthetic. The episode concludes with Wanda and Vision shaking off the deconstruction of their manufactured reality by sitting on the couch, Wanda magically manifesting rings around each of their fingers and Vision clicking a remote before staring into the camera.

Meaning, WandaVision has perfectly aligned itself with sitcoms of the post-war era to make for a satisfying exposure of the escapist fantasy television provides. By recreating and reflecting the anxieties, values, aesthetics, and ideal lifestyle seen in 50s sitcoms, WandaVision is able to strikingly break down the illusion of domestic perfection provided at the time. As Spiegel states, the television worked to aid in the transition to suburban life, providing the new suburban home with distractions and illusions to make families feel better about their own lives. However, WandaVision provides a critique of this escapism when viewing Wanda as a representation of the average viewer. 

The overarching plot of the show has Wanda, traumatized by “The Snap,” constructing the ideal lifestyles she’s seen on television to exist within. Meaning, this manufactured world of 50s sitcom is even more escapist than presumed, as Wanda quite literally uses the medium of television to distract herself from the horrors of her own reality and traumatic past. Rather than working through her emotions, Wanda sits comfortably in a world she’s seen on TV, one that is illusory, escapist, and fantastical in nature. 

In this way, WandaVision takes Spiegel’s comforting post-war television to the extreme: it is not just entertainment, but rather a means of distracting one from the terrifying reality outside of their screens. Westview is not 50s suburbia, but a creation of Wanda’s own tortured psyche in an effort to distract herself from reality, much as the modern audience member voluntarily sits in front of their television, watching sitcom after sitcom to relieve their anxieties and numb themselves to real life. As outlined by Spiegel and elaborated by Adorno and Horkheimer, through its own deconstruction, WandaVision states television is not just entertainment, but an escapist distraction from unwanted aspects of the viewer’s own world.