That`s Entertainment: A Survey of British and American Televisi

That’s Entertainment: A Survey
of British and American
Television
Jung & Dewhurst
Light Entertainment
stand-up
comedy
sketch & variety shows
sitcoms
Stand-up Comedy
“Whereas sitcoms depend on familiarity,
identification, and redemption of popular beliefs,
stand-up comedy often depends on the shocking
violation of normative taboos.”
(Marc, Comic Visions, 20)
Stand-up Comedy
a
comedian performs alone on stage (often
standing up)
 a collection of jokes enhanced by physical humor
(gags) + links between the jokes
 always performed in front of a live audience
 direct contact with the audience ⇒ comedian
“plays off of” the audience’s reaction &
sometimes includes the audience in a joke
Variety (Comedy) Shows
a mixture of comedy, music, and specialized acts
 first performed in theaters ⇒ moved to radio, film, & then
TV in the 20th century
 a series of sketches (some or all comic)

solo or double acts
 short (not more than 20 minutes)
 one setting, one-two characters
 two types: focused on the action or on the dialog


broadcast live in stage show format
Development of TV Variety Shows

Early TV variety shows
Comedians: Milton Berle, Jack Carter, Martha Raye, & George
Gobel
 Milton Berle's The Toast of the Town
 often created stars out of the performers

mostly disappeared from primetime by the 1960s
 remaining shows had a combination of music and comedy
– e.g., Sonny and Cher
 replaced by the sitcom
 brief Renaissance with the introduction of cable (Comedy
Central)

The Situation Comedy
comedy + situation drama
Family Sitcoms
 most
sitcoms
 focus on internal family roles
 set primarily in the “home” (home, cafe, bar, etc.)
 “comfort is offered both literally and figuratively
in a physically spacious yet spiritually warm
home.” (Marc 22)
 life skills taught
 how
to live together as a family; how to solve problems
Types of Families
blood family (Roseanne), melded family (The Brady
Bunch), metaphorical family (Cheers, Friends)
 nuclear family (1950s sitcoms)
 non-standard family



single parent families, parents divorced or widowed, never married
(My Three Sons, Murphy Brown)
sometimes families are different
monster families (The Munsters)
 vampire families (The Addams Family)
 alien families or family members (Third Rock from the Sun, Mork
and Mindy, Alf)


teenage sitcoms ⇒ mother is often missing

My Three Sons, Full House
Workplace Sitcoms
more sexual undertones
 focus on relationships between coworkers
 set primarily in the office
 office workers become new family
 examples: Taxi, Ally McBeal
 some sitcoms are hybrids (both at
work and at home)


Friends & Seinfeld
“the sitcom seems to require the presence of a quasifamilial structure in order to satisfy the needs of the
viewer. The TV viewer is always addressed by the
sitcom as a member of the family...”
(Jane Feuer, in: Creeber. TV Genre Book, 69)
Sitcom Formula
(Marc 190)
episode = familiar status quo ⇒ ritual
error made ⇒ ritual lesson learned ⇒
familiar status quo
“The situation has always been a simple and repeatable frame on
which to hang all manner of gags, one-liners, warm moments,
physical comedy and ideological conflicts.” (Jane Feuer, 69-70)
Functions of a Sitcom

to uphold the status quo


"sit-coms have been regarded as affirmative, non-threatening
representations of American life." (Campell & Kean. American
Cultural Studies, 279)
to express ideological conflicts in a non-aggressive way
class (The Beverly Hillbillies)
 race (All in the Family)
 liberals vs. conservatives (Family Ties)
 homosexuality (Ellen)


static vs. flexible characters
Success of Sitcoms
 extremely
exportable type of show
 often leads to extreme fans of the show & other
merchandising opportunities (the Simpsons)
 stars of the show often become celebrities in their
own right
 Sarah
Jessica Parker from Sex in the City
 Jennifer Aniston from Friends
 very
lucrative genre
Development of
American Sitcoms
from radio to the present
“Mirror of Reality” Sitcom
celebrities placed in fictional setting
 characters match their real lives
 The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet

(ABC, 1952-66)
former NBC radio show
 family resided in a television house modeled on their real
Hollywood home
 Ozzie played an actor on TV


“mirror of reality” sitcoms died out by the 1960s
(exception: I Love Lucy)
The 1950s Sitcom
 norms:
suburban, middle-class, hard-working,
white, patriarchal
 setting: the suburban home
 sitcom
begins with a brief shot of the exterior of the
family home
 focus
on the nuclear family
 traditional role of women (I Love Lucy)
 Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best
“Many sit-coms reproduced this formula
throughout the 1950s and seemed to
function to preserve and perpetuate a view
of social order and identity fixed within the
nuclear family with its established roles.”
(Campell & Kean. American Cultural
Studies, 276)
Subsequent sitcoms have challenged these norms.

patriarchal
women with magical powers (Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie)
 career women (Murphy Brown, Cybill)


white


middle-class, hard-working


black sitcoms like Sanford and Son, The Cosby Show
All in the Family, Roseanne
nuclear family

All in the Family, M*A*S*H*, Mary Tyler Moore Show,
Friends, Sex in the City
The 1960s Sitcom
not much different from the 1950s
sitcom
 women had magical powers; they
needed powers to complete
traditional role of women
 Bewitched (1964-72)

outsider with abnormal powers entering the
suburban home
 Samantha, the witch, married to a normal
man, Darrin


I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70)
similar to Bewitched
 male often inadequate (thus, show
questions patriarchal hierarchy)

The 1970s Sitcom

reflection of social changes in
America
Vietnam
 Hippy Generation

challenge to nuclear family
 Norman Lear’s Sitcoms
 M*A*S*H*
 rural sitcoms

The Beverly Hillbillies
 Green Acres

Norman Lear (b. 1922)
produced popular 1970s
sitcoms as All in the
Family, Sanford and Son
and Maude,
 based shows on British
sitcoms
 later helped produce
movies

All in the Family




working class family
Archie Bunker - father, a
likeable racist
show emphasized social and
political issues of the day d.
generational conflict ⇒
Archie's conservative views
with more reasonable views of
young couple, Mike & Gloria
The 1980s Sitcom
a return to conservatism and capitalism
(Family Ties, Silver Spoons)
The Cosby Show (1984-92)
the Huxtables were typical
Americans
 reaffirmed the norms of the
1950s


middle-class, suburban,
nuclear family, conflicts
between family members
resolved by dad
only difference ⇒ family is
black
 Cosby

a stand-up comedian
 the “perfect” father-figure

The 1990s Sitcom

nuclear family sitcoms are dysfunctional; inept fathers
Married ... with Children
 Roseanne


alternative families
single mothers (Murphy Brown) or two fathers (Full House)
 friends become the family

Friends
 Seinfeld


gender roles: strong women characters

Ellen, Murphy Brown, Cybill
The Downfall of the TV Dad
“Dad is now the one whose every move results
in his humiliation, Dad is one who simply
cannot meet the standard, which is now set by
his previous victims, the sarcastic mass of
women, children, employees.”
( Mark Crispin Miller, in: Gitlin. Watching Television, 205)
The “Gay” Sitcom

Early Homosexual sitcoms (Ellen)
sexual identity often masked at the beginning (androgynous
characters)
 homosexual “comes out”

only 1 gay character in a heterosexual world ⇒ several
homosexuals or an all gay cast (Will and Grace)
 focus on gender identity issues
 audience

general audience – jokes can be understood by the average person
 gay audience – inside jokes and references

Will & Grace
the “gay cultural
experience” with
specific gay
references
 appeals to
homosexual and
heterosexual
audience
 both identification
and parody (Jack &
Will)

Animated Adult Sitcoms
The Flintstones to South Park
Animated Adult Sitcoms
a proliferation of them in the 1990s
 family sitcoms – focus on family strife and resolution of
conflicts
 precursors: The Flintstones and The Jetsons (1960s)
 MTV animated sitcoms



Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, Daria, Ren and Stimpy
many of the cartoons dealt explicitly with sex and
violence (Ren and Stimpy)
The Simpsons (1989- )
 family
sitcom
 witty storylines
 political and social
satire
 cultural references
 star cameos
“The Simpsons is perhaps the most morally
exacting critique of American society that has
yet appeared on television.”
(Marc, Comic Visions, 193)
South Park







third-graders in a small town
called South Park
basic and crude humor
primitive cartoon drawings
yet, adult topics (sometimes
vulgar)
Kenny dies in each episode a
different way
school and authority
represented negatively
also cultural references and
star cameos
Black Sitcoms

Radio Shows ⇒ TV Shows (Amos ‘n’ Andy)
most popular program in radio history
 used white actors for black roles
 rural and small-town racial stereotypes
 black performers took over the roles in the TV version (CBS,
1951-3)


similar show: Beulah (ABC, 1950-53)

civil rights protests led to a cancellation of both shows ⇒
blacks disappeared from sitcoms for several years

1960s


black actors as extras in scenes (Car 54)
1970s
Sanford and Son (NBC, 1972-7)
 The Jeffersons (CBS, 1975-85)


1980s

Diff’rent Strokes (1978-86) & Webster
starring Gary Coleman and Emmanuel Lewis
 miniaturized black person playing the adopted son of good white parent
 precursor to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air


The Cosby Show
"race made little difference in the sit-com
because what emerges is still the bonds of family
and its powers of socialization and control in
contemporary America"
(Campell & Kean. American Cultural Studies, 279)