While preparing a post on friends vs. frenemies during the rising-harmony vs. rising-strife phases of Turchin's 50-year cycle in civic cohesion vs. breakdown, I came across one of the fondest memories that late Gen X-ers have of the peak of social harmony circa the mid-'90s -- friends entering each other's rooms through the bedroom window, rather than going through the usual doors on the ground floor.
To clarify, this rarely happened in real life and is mainly a trope from pop culture. And yet, even as a pop culture trope, it didn't exist long before the '90s, and ceased afterwards. Pop culture is dynamic, not static, and it reflects the broader zeitgeist -- not only within the cultural domains, but in the IRL social domains like families, friends, communities, and so on.
In order to pay proper homage to this cultural phenomenon, and to understand it properly, and to trace its origins or spiritual ancestors, I'm putting together this standalone post instead of relegating it to the comment thread.
First, as a summary for those who remember or as a whirlwind tour for those poor unfortunate souls who weren't part of that world, here is a compilation video of the trope from Slate's YouTube channel. It's not meant to be exhaustive, and I will add more examples below and in the comments as I come across them.
We have to clearly delineate what the trope is -- it's not the very broad definition from TV Tropes or IMDB, where it's merely entering the home through a window. That covers criminals breaking & entering, or spies and snoops, frenemies trying to sabotage each other, etc.
But more importantly, this *does not* cover an existing romantic couple, or between two people where there's already romantic tension or sexual intent -- that trope is already fairly well established. For example, Romeo observing Juliet on her balcony, serenades in the same spatial position, princes scaling the walls of a tower to reach the princess' window a la Rapunzel, and many other fairly old and pre-American examples.
The distinctly all-American 20th-century trope covers friends, acquaintances, peers, and similar relationships. They might escalate into romantic relationships, or they might not, that's not crucial. And since it's about friendship and camaraderie, it is not restricted to an opposite-sex pair -- it could be two guy friends, or two girl friends, or a mixed-sex pair.
A few further examples:
Here is a short compilation just from Clarissa Explains It All (1991-'94), to emphasize how frequently this trope appeared in that show -- just about every episode, often multiple times per episode. Whenever Sam meets up with Clarissa at her home, there's a thud of the ladder against the window, Clarissa says "Hi Sam," a leitmotif guitar chord strums, and he enters.
Here is an example from a '95 episode of Boy Meets World, where friends Cory and Topanga start to declare their romantic feelings for each other. At other times in the show, guy friends Cory and Shawn enter through the window. It's not just for mixed-sex or potentially romantic partners.
Here is an example from a '94 episode of Married with Children, where Bud is paid a visit by an acquaintance, the niece of his next-door neighbor, and things escalate from there. (In the same clip, one of Kelly's bf du jour guys accidentally climbs up the same ladder, thinking it's her room, before being told it's the next window over.)
Here is a pic from Doogie Howser (unknown year, but '89 or the early '90s) showing Doogie's best friend Vinnie entering through the window. Another guy friend example.
Unfortunately, the show that probably started, but at the very least was the first popularizer of this trope -- Saved by the Bell -- doesn't have any video clips or images of the many times that friends entered through the bedroom window. But it was common, for both same-sex friends like Zack and Screech, and mixed-sex friends like Zack and Jessie.
Doogie Howser is the other contender for first example, since it and Saved by the Bell both began airing in the fall of '89, a couple years ahead of Clarissa and Boy Meets World. I'd have to start watching my Saved by the Bell DVDs to see when the first instance was, but there's a 1st season clip of Screech being pushed out the open window by Zack in a panic. So I'm guessing the trope began in its 1st season. IDK about Doogie Howser, and won't watch episodes just to see.
In any case, Saved by the Bell was by far the more popular and influential of the two, not just among teen shows of the time, but their legacy ever since. So for the time being, I'm going to declare it the originator of this trope. Earlier examples of "entering through the window" from the '80s involved romantic couples, like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Heathers. Maybe those could be considered proto-examples.
Saved by the Bell, in fact, might be the originator of so-called postmodern TV comedy shows, with frequent and lengthy addresses to the audience (breaking the 4th wall), cut-away imagination sequences, cut-away homages / pastiches of classic and contempo pop culture, and other self-aware / meta-commentary techniques that would come to define comedy shows of the '90s and even the 21st century.
How long did the trope last? Not really beyond the '90s, except as a target for send-up and pastiche as in Kickass (2010), or as a callback to the original show during a sequel show (like Girl Meets World from the mid-2010s). The last major show to do it was Dawson's Creek from the late '90s -- the examples were frequent, involving various friends, not necessarily romantic in tone, and still participating in the trend itself, without being a self-aware reference or allusion. And that was a popular / influential teen show.
The most notable later example is not a TV show or movie at all, but the iconic music video for "You Belong with Me" by Taylor Swift from 2008. Admittedly, the two mixed-sex neighbors don't enter each other's rooms, but they do socially interact, emotionally connect, and play supportive roles in each other's lives, across the narrow gap between their homes. They start out not romantically involved, "just friends," although it does eventually escalate to romance, after the girl-next-door gets rid of her mean-girl rival (his current, then ex-gf).
I appreciate the honesty of this video for acknowledging that the peak of social harmony was over by the 2000s, so it would've been inauthentic to LARP as teens from 1993 and directly enter each other's rooms through the window. The interaction across the gap while still in their separate rooms conveys the same spirit, albeit at a lower intensity since friends, and the sexes, are no longer as close as they used to be back in the '90s. And it is still their personal rooms where they're connecting -- not their living rooms, kitchens, rec rooms, etc., so the intimacy and just-the-two-of-us-ness is preserved.
Cute. ^_^
Also worth noting that she takes the initiative in their relationship: she's the first to start communicating through notes between their windows, at the dance she tracks him down, and most importantly she is the first one to show him her note that says "I love you", and he only shows his note saying the same thing after she has already done so. Very '90s vibe -- the song could easily make a good soundtrack for a "Pete and Ellen" compilation video using scenes from The Adventures of Pete and Pete.
* * *
This is a very '90s trope, and it's no coincidence that appeared and spread around the peak of social harmony. How did it channel the harmonious social mood?
It's mainly about the directness of the friends' interactions -- they don't have to knock at the front door, then wait in the living room, then hang out for a snack in the kitchen, and then ultimately wind up in the privacy of the person's personal room. It's not as though those various checkpoints along the way always led toward a hanging-out session in the personal room -- they're all various places where the guest can be turned away.
Knocking on the front door? Maybe they'll be ignored by someone pretending not to be home, or they'll be greeted at the door, but not invited in -- "I'm kinda busy right now..." Or maybe defused by hanging out on the front porch / patio for a bit, and once the convo is over, time to head on back home, without even stepping foot inside.
Hanging out in the living room, perhaps while watching some TV? Well, that's a great big time-suck and energy-exhauster right there. You can while away hours vegging out on the living room couch in front of the TV. After getting your fill of that activity, it's time to head on back home, without going to the personal room.
Sitting down at the kitchen table for a little snack or maybe doing some homework together? Well, you can have a brief little chat there, and after the homework is done, and the meal is starting to fill your belly, might as well head on home, without going to the personal room.
Ditto for a trip to the basement rec room, gamer station, or dad's den / man cave. It diverts the social energy into an activity like playing games, and after you've spent an hour or so doing that, you're feeling a little exhausted, might as well head on home.
There's just something about hanging out in the personal room that you can't get from those other spaces -- especially those that don't even let you inside, like chatting on the front porch, shooting hoops in the driveway, and so on.
It's more intimate, more private, the door is closed and it's just the best buds in their own little world, whereas the rest of the household may show up in the other non-personal spaces in the home, like the living room, kitchen, or basement rec room. Hell, if it's an outside space, the general public might show up unannounced!
Nothing is cozier, socially and spatially defended against outside forces and surveillance, than hanging out in the personal room. There's not even a distinct and dedicated material thing there to define your activity, like the couch or TV in the living room, or the fridge and table in the kitchen, or the video game console or pool table in the rec room. It's just the person's bed -- which as friends you won't be sharing -- and their closet and clothing-related furniture, and various personal thingies strewn about.
And that's just it -- it lacks any other material purpose that could divert your attention away from just hanging out, having a convo, sharing secrets, giving advice, venting frustrations, coming up with plans, and in general opening up to and supporting each other. No distractions.
The material things that are present, heighten the sense of intimacy and personal closeness -- that's the bed the person sleeps in, that's the closet where their clothes are stored, that's their book collection they browse while bored-in-their-room-alone, and so on. The person is opening themselves up just by letting you be around these personal things, more so than by merely inviting you inside their home while remaining in a non-private room with distractions that could divert the interaction away from interpersonal bonding.
So, by entering the personal room directly via the window to the outside, all these other non-private spaces are avoided, and none of the social energy is dissipated by the room-specific material focal objects. And there is virtually no chance of just being sent away, unlike at the other checkpoints -- the visitor is taking a literal physical risk of falling and injuring themselves or dying, by appearing at the second-story window -- you can't send such a vulnerable person away!
Oh, forgot to mention -- the window is always above the ground floor! That introduces the physical risk, and what makes it a costly and therefore honest signal, of the visitor's need to come in, preventing any chance of rejection. A visitor who isn't a close friend isn't going to take those physical risks, only to appear rude and presumptuous to the resident -- so the only person who ever makes these trips is a close and trusted friend.
Aside from saving all the social energy for the close bonding space, it also clears away any sense of the two friends playing petty and pointless games with each other, to assert dominance or put the other in their place, etc. The entrance to the personal room is direct, immediate, and unquestioned. No need to jump through any hoops (other than climbing up there, of course), pass inspections, receive permission slips, or other manner of checking off boxes on an application form, as though you were being hired for a job rather than invited to hang out by a friend.
I deny the claim that it's related to doing an end-run around parental supervision -- often enough, the parents aren't even home at the time, nor are any other siblings or household members. But if you're just watching TV in the living room, supposedly all alone, those parents or siblings could show up at any moment and spoil the intimacy, given how close the living room is to the doors, and given its expectation as a non-private space, so whoever shows up won't think anything about going right to the living room where you're already hanging out on the couch. Ditto for doing homework or having a snack at the kitchen table.
If you entered an otherwise empty home through those rooms, your privacy could be interrupted before you get to the personal room. By heading straight to the personal room, you're not bypassing an existing third party in the home -- you're removing even the potential future interruption, by not slow-rolling your presence through various non-private rooms in the home, even when no one else is home for the time being.
In these various ways, it's intensifying or elevating the guest-host relationship, where guests are never turned away, but hosts are never put upon or betrayed by those guests. But it's a small number involved -- just those two, not multiple guests coming over for dinner or having a place to sleep. It's the two friends, with the rest of the world kept outside (even if they're inside the same home -- outside of the personal room, at any rate).
It's camaraderie, but also intimacy, not the bonds among a large team of people (which may be shown in other ways in the TV show).
The roles are complimentary rather than identical -- a guest, and a host. And although seemingly setting up a dominance hierarchy with a requester at the mercy of the space-controller, the unquestioned and unconditional access levels this potential hierarchy, and emphasizes the egalitarian nature of social relations when harmony rather than strife and competition is the norm. Roles are complimentary, but egalitarian.
* * *
So far, so good -- but remember, there's a cycle at work here. It's not enough to show how the social mood and pop culture were related during the most recent peak of social harmony -- ideally, we'd observe a similar match from the peak before that one (roughly the second half of the '20s through the mid-'40s). And even more ideally, a similar decline in the trope during the previous rising-strife phase (roughly the late '40s through the early '70s, tied together by the strands of second-wave feminism, African-American civil rights, and students vs. the school authorities).
Well, there's no 100% match to the Radio Days environment -- no pop culture trope of friends entering each other's personal rooms through the window. But there was a closely related one, so closely related, in fact, that the '90s trope incorporated a key element of it that was not needed for the purposes of "friends entering a 2nd-story window" -- but *was* necessary to signal its spiritual origins in the earlier trope born in the '30s and '40s.
I tried to think of what other scenarios and architectural forms the "friends entering through the window" trope resembled, so I could check their origins and cyclic popularity. At first I was misled by the "scaling the castle / tower walls" scenario -- again, that's mainly in the context of a princess and her suitor, not friends. And it also relies on the external walls being a defensive obstruction, and bypassing parental supervision, and the personal room being a prison cell rather than a sanctuary, and so on.
Then it hit me -- the rooms from the '90s were like treehouses! Then it all fell into place. But before analyzing the similarities, let's note one similarity that is not necessary structurally, and only serves as a reference to the earlier example.
Quite often, including the most iconic examples like Clarissa Explains It All and Saved by the Bell, outside the window is a huge tree, visible through the window, lying no more than 10 feet away. In the '90s trope, the tree is not typically used as the means of ascending the walls -- usually it's a ladder, as in Clarissa. Why is this huge tree trunk and large branches and abundant foliage taking up most of the view through the window to the outside?
They could have left the space blank -- blue skies, sunsets, warm sunlight, etc. could be pouring in. They could have put some remote natural landscape, like rolling hills and mountains, as is typical for California where these shows tend to be filmed. They could have made the view of the neighboring house (a la the Taylor Swift video).
Even if there was a tree in view, they don't have to make it so massive and place it so close to the window -- why, it's like the room practically sits within the tree itself. But that's just it! They're making the room look like a treehouse, and none of the other choices for "what's outside the window" would have given it a treehouse vibe.
The ladder that the visitor climbs up to the window is not a scheming mechanism used to counteract a defensive obstacle in warfare or imprisonment -- it's just this trope's version of an entry staircase that leads to a door on the ground floor, or an even grander exterior staircase that leads to a 2nd-story door. Or more to the point, like the ladder used to enter a treehouse -- and it usually was a ladder, not a climbing rope or a spiral staircase around the tree trunk or whatever else.
Climbing a ladder, 5 feet away from a massive tree trunk, to enter a residential sanctuary among close friends -- that's a treehouse. The only twist in the '90s version is that the treehouse is not attached to the outdoor tree, but belongs to the indoor section of the house. It's an internal treehouse, or a home within the home. After all, this room has its own entrance to the outside world, its own staircase of sorts connecting the ground to the entrance -- it's a smaller home, nested within a larger home.
The personal mini-home may not have a stove, sink, shower, TV set, laundry machines, and other things that are necessary to consider it a full home. Then again, neither does a treehouse. But this room is also a home of its own in its spatial and social relation to the outside world and to people who live outside the household.
Also, both a treehouse and the '90s teen room hit on the theme of social harmony in assuming a lack of paranoia by the dwellers, regarding the general public. Couldn't some random stranger, perhaps one with malicious motives, just plop the ladder against the wall, and barge through the unlocked / open window? There's no security guard or other checkpoint to ensure that this doesn't happen.
So the tropes are clearly saying that the dwellers do not expect such anti-social behavior to be common or even existent at all. Once the trope starts to fade from popularity, that is therefore a signal of the fraying trust among strangers or community members or neighbors. Suddenly, the mood becomes, "You never know who might climb that ladder into your window".
That is not connected to the crime rate, BTW, since the late '80s and early '90s were the peak of the homicide rate in America, right when this trope was born and spread like crazy. Also right around the origin of helicopter parenting. The previous trope, of treehouses, was born during a falling-crime period (the mid-to-late '30s, as discussed below). So there's no similarity between the two trope's relation to the crime rate.
And just as in the '90s teen room, the treehouse has a primary dweller or owner, and everyone else is a visitor -- potentially setting up a hierarchy, but entry into the treehouse is unquestioned, and the owner does not lord it over the requester. It's physically risky to climb up the ladder, lest you fall and injure yourself, so there's the same honest signal of need to enter.
There's a similar level of seclusion and intimacy, at least for treehouses that have a roof / ceiling and walls enclosing all the space between the floor and the ceiling. A few examples, mainly from circa 1960, are *not* houses in that sense, but more like a perch with only a floor and some low guard-rails (more on that later).
In addition to their physical / architectural seclusion, there's the presumption of social seclusion in that parents and other members of the household or the general public don't have an open invitation to just barge on in and interrupt the hanging-out session. At most, they can knock on the door, give a quick message like "dinner's in 15 minutes," and then leave them alone again.
Last but not least, the relationship among those who frequent the space is friends, peers, acquaintances, etc., perhaps same-sex and perhaps mixed-sex, not the obligatory mixed-sex pair for a "scaling the castle walls to the princess' room" trope. Even if there's a mixed-sex pair in the treehouse, it implies nothing about their romantic or sexual interaction -- only that they're close friends, acquaintances, etc., which may -- or may not -- lead to something more. It's a sanctuary for friends, not a makeshift motel for lovers -- exactly like the '90s teen room.
* * *
Having established not only the analogy between the '90s teen room and the treehouse, but the additional and unnecessary element of the massive tree right outside the window, which clearly makes the '90s teen room a revival of the treehouse concept, let's explore the origins and changing popularity of the treehouse trope.
As hard as it may be to believe about an architectural form, there is almost no history of treehouses, at least not easily available over the internet. Not even online references to books that are relevant.
In true midwit fashion, most "histories" of the treehouse lie that the treehouse has been a constant presence in human dwellings from ancient, even prehistoric times, up to the present, and universally present in every culture around the world.
That's obvious BS -- otherwise they would fill in all the gaps between "21st century America" and "Ancient Egypt" or whatever other remote example they point to. Did America have treehouses in the 19th C, 18th, 17th, 16th? Nobody will say.
Well, I will say it -- there don't seem to be treehouses in America until the early 20th C, right as we're undergoing our ethnogenesis into a new and distinct culture from our Euro forefathers, after wrapping up our integrative civil war (as always).
As for IRL structures, I can't find any references to when it began, although presumably there are off-hand mentions of them in newspapers from the 1910s or '20s or so. Unlike detached houses or apartment buildings or schools or churches, backyard treehouses were not pre-fab and did not involve architectural firms and contracted construction crews. So they were not big business, and left less of a money trail and paper trail. They were a labor of love by the father, maybe some other male relatives or neighbors.
That leaves us with pop culture portrayals of treehouses. I had a hunch that these would go back to the Midcentury or earlier, so I didn't bother with TV Tropes, which has poor coverage of that period. Instead, I went to IMDb and searched for TV shows and movies that have been tagged with "treehouse", which gives this list.
This relies on someone tagging the entry with this particular tag, so there are false negatives -- examples with a treehouse that have not been tagged with that term on their IMDb entry. But these taggers are pretty obsessive, and their range is pretty broad across time. So this'll have to be the best overview of the history of the trope in pop culture.
There are no examples whatsoever before the '30s. The first one, Our Blushing Brides, has a very elaborate full home in the treetops, for an adult bachelor courting an adult woman -- not this trope. The next one, So This Is Africa, is set on safari -- treehouse as the primitive residence of jungle-dwellers, not a modern American sanctuary for friends.
But then we hit the jackpot -- a short film in the "Our Gang" series (later known as Little Rascals), called "Hi, Neighbor!" from 1934. You can watch the full episode here. Around 1:40, several friends are rounding up their peers, and pay a visit to one who is inside his treehouse. And this has 99% of the elements that the later mature form would have.
It has a roof and walls, not just a floor and guard rails, it has a clear entrance opening to separate interior from exterior, not to mention some other openings with shades of a sort (animal hides). It's mostly made from wood planks, but animal hides as well. It's located up in a tree, with a means of getting up and down (a rope, not a ladder), and this tree is located in the yard of his house in a typical suburban residential neighborhood.
The only minor differences are the use of the rope instead of ladder to climb up, and the wooden planks of the walls being stacked vertically instead of laid horizontally. The mature form would take the "horizontal wooden slabs" inspiration from log cabins, another distinctive American building type, and equally rugged and home-made and down-to-earth (and yet up in the air), rather than pre-fab or urban or sophisticated.
The social relations are the same as in later examples -- there's a primary dweller or owner of the treehouse, but anyone is free to visit him at any time, if they're a friend. This example doesn't show the other friends climbing up there with the owner, but given their ongoing bonds of friendship, and the others' familiarity with this spot to call on their friend, it is implied that they sometimes hang out in his treehouse, without having to show it on camera.
And it fits the theme of the series overall, which follows a group of friends or peers or neighborhood kids, who feel part of a single collective social unit that is not related to each other -- "Our Gang".
Moreover, there are early hints at what other aspects of American identity the treehouse was channeling -- the owner has a pet monkey hanging out with him in the treehouse, there are animal hides as window coverings and doors / curtains, and he lets out a primitive nonsense call to announce his descent...
Much like Tarzan! That's right, the treehouse stems directly from Tarzan and the grandfather of American mythology, Edgar Rice Burroughs. American identity is that we are part caveman, and part spaceman -- perhaps cavemen traveling to outer space, or perhaps cavemen who were visited and guided by an outer space civilization. But cavemen, at any rate, and Tarzan is one of the earliest avatars of this facet of our identity.
Interestingly, though, early film portrayals of Tarzan do not show him living in what we now consider a prototypical treehouse. See this review of the changing nature of his treehouse in film portrayals. The first novel in the Tarzan series came out in 1912, but as late as the first two movies where he's played by Johnny Weismuller, from '32 and '34, his tree "house" is more of a perch or platform in the treetops, without a clear roof or walls or door. It's not until Tarzan Escapes from '36 that it becomes a proper house in the treetops.
Also, Tarzan's treehouse is not shown as the gathering-place or social sanctuary for a group of friends, peers, and acquaintances -- but his domestic space with his mate, Jane. So it's in the romantic vein rather than friendship vein. And if anything, it post-dates the "treehouse for friends," which debuted in the 1934 short from Our Gang.
Nevertheless, the parallels are clear -- the neighborhood friends, whether male or female, are a bunch of little Tarzans and Janes, so their living space must also be in the trees, and requires a roof and walls and entrances just like any house. So the makers of Our Gang were not directly imitating a treehouse from Tarzan-related pop culture, since that came a few years later in Tarzan-world. But they were channeling the Tarzan lifestyle and identity, then applying it to contemporary suburban America -- with the primitive roots being only half-obscured by modernity, and the other half proudly displayed in full view!
Wow, it all traces back to Our Gang -- why didn't I think of that to begin with?! I'm just not that immersed in pre-WWII culture, I guess. At least it clicked once I saw it, but I should've suspected it would trace back to them.
After a questionable example in the Disney animated short "Orphans' Picnic," where the house is more the tree trunk itself, with a hole bored into it and a little wooden plank platform outside, the next major example of a proper house built in the treetops -- and set in contempo America -- is also an animated short. In the Mighty Mouse series, "Wolf! Wolf!" from 1944 shows Mighty Mouse's main home being a treehouse, although we don't know if it's the focus of a peer group.
I can't find a video clip or still image, but in the live-action movie The Yearling from 1946, there's a treehouse that the protag sleeps in overnight. IDK if it's the focus for a peer group, though.
In the final major example from the '40s, and rounding out the maturation of the trope, is the Disney animated short "Donald's Happy Birthday" from 1949, with all the elements of what we now consider a treehouse. The only wrinkle is that its owners are three brothers (Huey, Dewey, and Louie), and it's shown as their own sanctuary, not necessarily one for a broader friend circle. But given that these brothers are also each others' closest friends, it doubles as a friend-based building too.
From there, the trope begins to fade in prominence, until the next major example of the TV show Dennis the Menace, which ran from '59 to '63. I used to watch that all the time on Nickelodeon in the '80s, when they still showed classic Midcentury shows. And I do remember him having a treehouse, or at least that fitting in with his world.
But it's not exactly a house anymore -- see this pic. It does have a floor, and low walls that only go up to waist height on children, but not walls that go over the kids' heads, and no ceiling or roof. It's a fairly open structure, more like a stand or perch or nest. And so, the door is more of a part of the low wall that swings open, like the gate of a residential fence, not an opening in a wall that separates an enclosed space from the outside world. It is built in a treetop and does use a ladder for climbing up. And it does involve friends (same-sex) -- that's his pal Tommy up there with him.
Still, you can see how less of a secluded sanctuary it is compared to the examples from the '30s and '40s. But then, that's only to be expected, giving the rising levels of social strife during the '50s and '60s, even somewhat beginning in the late '40s. Just cuz 1960 wasn't at the explosive peak of chaos of 10 years later, doesn't mean it was a harmonious stress-free kumbayah circle. I'll be revisiting this fact for other domains of society later. Suffice it to say that it was less socially harmonious than the '30s and '40s.
There's even an entire episode from 1960 about his tree house ("Dennis' Tree House"), which makes it into a social obstacle instead of a source of harmony. The treehouse is built right on the boundary with the yard of his neighbor, Mr. Wilson, who is upset that it might scare the birds away and he won't be able to enjoy his hobby of bird-watching. Things work out in the end, but it's part of a trend of the rising-strife phase that portrayed treehouses as sources of problems rather than unalloyed wholesomeness.
In a 1956 episode of Lassie ("The Tree House"), two friends Jeff and Porky get excited about building a treehouse and becoming blood-brothers -- seemingly off to a good start on the whole "treehouse as sanctuary for friends" theme. It's built in Jeff's yard with the help of his family. Unlike in Dennis the Menace, this is a proper treehouse with a roof, walls, doors, ladder, etc.
But then when they both spend the night in it, they bring their dogs along, and Porky's dog won't stop howling, keeping Jeff awake all night and making him so angry that he kicks out both the dog and his supposed blood-brother and guest Porky. When Jeff goes to apologize the next day for being a poor host / blood-brother, he finds the interior of the treehouse has been trashed, and assumes Porky did it as revenge -- more anti-social paranoia and suspiciousness and bad faith.
Later, there's a loud noise coming from the treehouse, and when Jeff goes to investigate -- there's a bear inside trashing the place even more. So that's what trashed the place before, not Porky -- but still, setting up the treehouse as a space that's vulnerable to roaming nomadic outsiders, including animals. Jeff's mom says no more treehouse. But it turns out the bear was escaped from the circus, not a wild one, so the mom says it's OK again. That makes no sense, there could still be wild bears or other troublesome animals roaming around that could climb up the ladder -- but the paranoid point has already been made. Beware! Caution! Risk!
The last of these problematizing examples is from 1970, from The Brady Bunch ("What Goes Up..."). In it, there's another proper treehouse, but it is still portrayed as a source of danger -- Bobby tries to climb up into it, but falls and sprains his ankle, leading him to develop a fear of heights on top of it.
What happened to treehouses just being wholesome sanctuaries for friends? Well, '56, '60, and '70 were all part of the rising-strife phase of the cycle. It wasn't the harmonious '30s and '40s anymore. So anything that might bring people together socially, like a treehouse sanctuary, had to be cast in a more negative and threatening light, as though it might introduce more strife than it would relieve. Not just physically, like scaring away the birds or posing a risk of falling injuries, but sowing the seeds of suspicion and resentment despite the promise of bringing camaraderie and appreciation, like driving a wedge between supposed blood-brothers.
* * *
It wasn't until after the peak of social chaos circa 1970 that that wary attitude began to wane, and treehouses regained their wholesome innocent pro-social connotations. Only a few years after the Brady Bunch episode, there was a renaissance of rural-themed TV shows, epitomized by The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie.
In a first-season episode of The Waltons (from '73), their treehouse makes its debut and would become a familiar fixture in their environment for years. It's a proper treehouse, not problematized, and since the show is set in the Depression, it revives the original wave of treehouse-mania from the '30s and '40s.
Our Gang was renamed Little Rascals, and given an animated format in 1982, which not only included a treehouse as a gathering spot for the friend circle, it was emphasized by being included in the intro sequence, to set the premise and sense of place and tone.
And from there, treehouses began to explode in popularity, although more so in movies that were set in the past, like Stand by Me and The Sandlot. Both of those are set in the early '60s, and so a proper treehouse and thriving friend circle would've been anachronistic for that time -- it would've been more appropriate for a movie set in the '30s or '40s. But still, by that time they were starting to swirl together all sorts of "pre-1968" periods of 20th-century America. A little bit of the '30s, a little bit of the late '50s or early '60s, always an unintended dash of the year in which it was made, it's all good.
Dennis the Menace was made into a movie in 1993, and it upgraded the treehouse to a proper one, again unlike the era in which the original TV show was made. Little Rascals was made into a movie the next year, although without a prominent treehouse.
The Simpsons had a treehouse in their backyard as a gathering spot for friends, and although I don't know when its first appearance was, the "Treehouse of Horror" series for Halloween began in 1990. The only episode from '89 was the very first one, so unless it's in that episode, it first appeared sometime in '90.
The revival of the wholesome and non-threatening treehouse trope during the '80s and '90s reflected the rising-harmony phase of the cycle, before merging with or enhancing the new trope of "teen's room as treehouse within the home itself".
After the '90s, the treehouse trope begins to fade once again, not to mention picking up the connotation of danger and threats, right back to Lassie and Dennis the Menace and The Brady Bunch. But that's only natural, as the social mood swung away from harmony and toward strife once again, and anything that would cement social bonds among friends would have to come under suspicion and then get eliminated altogether.
However, now that the pendulum is finally swinging back toward harmony, as of the past couple years, maybe treehouses, teen's room as a treehouse within the home, or some new variation on this perennial American theme will emerge -- assuming we still had a thriving pop culture production sector, which we do not at all. American culture -- meaning, all-American, appealing to and paid attention to by all -- has been extinct since 2020.
But in whatever fragmented niche-demo remains of American-ish culture that remain going forward, we're likely to see a gradual revival of this theme, likely peaking in the early 2040s.
Maybe in video games? Minecraft is still thriving, despite coming out in 2010, so perhaps treehouses will become the hot new thing to build. Mumei made a cozy little one for herself a couple years ago, Fauna made the huge sun-obscuring World Tree during that time (which was not just a tree, but had home-like architecture at the top), so... maybe it's the start of a new trend?
It'll probably be more visible in new games, where there's a prominent treehouse built into it, but it'll be some niche indie thing that not the whole world knows about, or something. But the urge to hang out with friends in treehouses -- or their present-day descendants, perhaps in a form not yet invented -- will become overpowering in the next two decades. Plenty of time for it to find some kind of realization in the cultural realm.
Look forward to seeing what it is, while still knowing in advance it won't top, as it were, the examples from the '30s and '40s or the '80s and '90s. ^_^
