My husband, an immigrant from the Soviet Union, divides consumer experiences via a simple binary: this is, or is not the America he was promised. A Starbucks that’s out of half-and-half is not the America he was promised, while a restaurant with unlimited soft drink refills is. At the peak of the America-I-Was-Promised hierarchy is a weekend afternoon with a beer in hand, watching football (US pigskin or otherwise) on TV while ensconced in an overstuffed La-Z-Boy recliner. It’s an image that was pushed deliberately in the 1970s, when NFL heartthrob quarterback Joe Namath appeared in magazine ads for the brand, a vision of masculine potential energy surrounded by a lot of brown tones and vaguely sleazy taglines.
The La-Z-Boy recliner is one of the last viable vestiges of the 20th century American dream, expansive as a classic Cadillac, but without the obvious fuel emissions. La-Z-Boy has emerged in the wake of the 2008 recession as both a stock market winner and luxury brand among millennials. In both form and meaning, it’s imagined as enormous, drawing revulsion from spouses who don’t want their dad’s ugly furniture parked in the living room, and longing from those for whom The Chair is symbolic of a good life. It’s a piece of interior decor that originated as medical furniture and can serve as a home hospital bed today. It’s an object that taps into our deepest, most American anxieties about comfort and leisure and bodies at rest.
The battle for the seat of America
The two furniture legacies built in Michigan typify the state’s, if not the country’s, cultural divide and explain some of the reasons for our confused feelings about living room recliners. On the east side of the state is the city of Monroe, where in the mid-1920s cousins Edward M. Knabusch and Edwin J. Shoemaker founded Floral City Furniture Company. In 1929, they would invent a product so iconic that it would eventually become the name of the company: the upholstered La-Z-Boy recliner. To the west are office furniture powerhouse Steelcaseand Herman Miller, best known for the Eames chair, Aeron chair, and office cubicle. One could view western Michigan, also home to proto-side-hustle empire Amway, as tending the furnace that powers our current total work nightmare.
The geographic divide between Michigan’s iconic furniture brands and what they produce mirrors the nation’s push and pull between work and leisure. In the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s there was a fear of leisure, and by extension the La-Z-Boy recliner, a sense that maybe something that’s this comfortable can’t be morally okay. Judgment of recliners was tremendous, with La-Z-Boy attracting the most negative attention probably due to being the most recognizable brand. In the midst of the ’80s’ work-and-sweat fixation, William E. Geist of the New York Times headed to a La-Z-Boy showroom before the New York City Marathon to talk to customers who found runners “wacky” and planned to spend the day reaching into a polystyrene cooler for a cold beer. Several entries in the genre known as “men telling us how lazy we all are,” mentioning La-Z-Boy as symbolic of our woes, made their way into Vanity Fairand NPR. A few years after Brooke Shields was named La-Z-Boy spokesperson in 2010, a reporter wrote that she’d have trouble selling to women since La-Z-Boy “is synonymous with the words lethargic, sluggish and idle.”
The La-Z-Boy recliner was cast as an object that softens the body to the point that it takes on the form of the chair. A review of the movie Knocked Up calls lead character Ben “a La-Z-Boy in human form,” an image helpfully illustrated by artist Benedikt Notter in a NSFW Instagram post. 2008’s Wall-E features recliners turned into a lifestyle, where people essentially merge with their chairs due to an excess of comfort and convenience. Defending harsh boot camp tactics, Lance Corporal Gene Talley asked military newspaper Stars and Stripes, “Do you want a La-Z-Boy [recliner] in combat?”