Form and Meaning in Sitcoms since the 1950s - Literature review Example

Form and Meaning in Sitcoms since the 1950s Since the widespread distribution of the television set into private homes and the ability to transmit a number of stations, the situation comedy has been a popular program format. This format was developed during the 1950s with shows such as I Love Lucy which were themselves adaptations from live ‘dinner’ shows and other forms of entertainment such as radio and stage. At its base, the sit-com is presented as a continuous performance in which the characters work their way through a complex situation in a comical and, eventually, amicable way. The comedy depended a great deal on the ability of the audience to ‘get’ the joke as laughter from the audience was always a sign during stage performances that the play was being well received. This element of external interaction was incorporated into the sit-com, but with the added benefit of being able to record the show first and then air it later. Thus, unexpected reactions from the audience could be cut out, errors in performance could be tried again and prompts for audience reaction weren’t as obvious. By combining these two approaches, the sit-com still maintains the illusion of being a live event in spite of the great degree of editing and production involved. This ability to edit and change has also introduced more meaning into the shows produced. Just as the comedies of stage and radio were reflections of their society, so have the sit-coms of the past several decades reflected the society that produce them but with the greater realization of preservation of performance and significance to audiences. In many ways, the sit-com of today has not changed a great deal in its structural format even as its reflection of society has altered and the level of meaning presented has deepened with greater understanding of the principles at work. Before one can look at individual sit-coms to see if they hold up to a common definition, it is helpful to have a definition and idea of development in place. Generally sit-coms, or situation comedies, are defined as a form of comedy that presents episodes of recurring characters as they interact within a common environment, facing some sort of complication and resolving it at the end with some form of happy ending. The sit-com has developed from a long history of stage performances intended to entertain the masses by featuring stories they were able to relate with while also poking gentle fun at the lifestyles of the wealthy. According to Lewisohn, precursors of the sitcom have existed since the times of ancient Greece in the plays of Aristophanes, ancient Rome through Terence and Plautus and Sudraka in ancient India (2003). Although these plays focused on developing the ideas of comedy and its relationship to the ‘common man’, the true ancestors of sitcom are found in the post-Renaissance period, following the introduction of the printing press and the ability for the stories to be preserved and distributed at an affordable rate of exchange for those whom the comedy was created. In other words, as long as only the rich were able to afford books and other printed material, there was no true need to develop recurring characters that the middle class audience could enjoy. However, with the development of a viable middle class and the ability for this class to purchase reading materials, the idea of recurring characters became more pressing. The less these characters and their situation (the home, the workplace, etc.) needed to be described, the more valuable printing space could be devoted to the development and resolution of the story episode. Ancestral examples of sitcoms can be found in Shakespeare, Moliere, the Commedia dell’arte and Punch and Judy shows (Lewisohn, 2003). The types of humor and situations involved in these early plays were preserved in scripts as well as in written eyewitness accounts, such as in journals and reports, and show a strong relationship to the earlier pranks and gags of modern television sitcoms. Generally speaking, sitcoms have several elements in common with one another that have been carried forward from these earlier plays, into the modern world through the early sitcoms such as I Love Lucy and preserved through to the present day with shows such as Married with Children and Friends. The first such element is the focus on comedy or entertainment. Every sitcom relies heavily on the basic building blocks of comedy including some, if not all, of the following: slapstick, satire, sarcasm, irony, pranks, sight gags, parody, comedy of errors, black comedy, romantic comedy, scatological humor or comedy of manners among other things (Marteinson, 2006). In keeping with this focus, sitcoms always end with a happy ending, or at least a resolution that returns everything back to the ‘normal’ situation for this group of people which has the effect of being humorous to the audience. As this discussion will show, this is one of the elements of the sitcom that has been altered over the years. Sitcoms generally focus on a limited number of main characters who reappear week after week within the same general environment – generally it’s a family or a family-like group as they appear in their most accustomed living space. Although facing different issues each week, even the basic action from week to week is highly repetitive. “Each episode in a sitcom tends to involve an encounter between a stable ‘inside’ (comprising regular characters in an established situation), and an enticing or intrusive ‘outside’ (which tends to threaten the former’s stability); and the way sitcoms tend to structure the relationships between their regular characters along familial, or quasi-familial, lines” (Krutnik, 1990). These situations tend to be situations faced by middle class families all the time and tend to bring focus on the elements of life that trap us into specific behavior characteristics such as marriage, parenthood, professional position (or lack of it), or sense of self. “In the sitcom, there is an emphasis on repetition and forestalling of closure in terms of the series as a whole. Characters do not learn or develop across episodes” (Dover, 1997). However, at the close of each episode, there is generally reinforcement in the need for the individual to come into line with the group. Again, this concept has been altered in more recent years. In summary, the sitcom is thus characterized by familial relationship of recurring characters who don’t grow or change over time and who are very closely identified with a typical environment and a middle class lifestyle. They are prevented from being drama by the focus on comedic elements and the inclusion of a happy ending in which the individual must again accept the traps of his life and come into compliance with the group. All of these elements can be found throughout television sitcoms from their earliest productions such as I Love Lucy. In this show, the audience was introduced to Lucy, her husband Ricky and their married neighbors Ethel and Fred. Little Ricky, the couple’s son, would make an occasional appearance as would a number of other characters, but the plots were kept relatively simple by focusing on just these few characters. Although the couples are not explicitly related, they are each married to one of the other characters and the relationship the couples share with one another is the equivalent of siblings. The majority of the action that takes place in these episodes is within the Ricardo home, although later episodes went to Hollywood and elsewhere and some episodes were shot outdoors or at Ricky’s club. Although the shows start before Ricky and Lucy have a child and continue until that child has reached the age of seven, they show no signs of actual character growth or change and the focus of the show continues to be the limiting but loving relationship shared between the crazy redhead and the fiery Cuban. In most shows, Lucy is the driving factor of the comedy as she tries various ways to gain attention, acclaim or prove her intelligence. These attempts invariably lead to complications that get quickly out of hand and usually Ricky must stop whatever he’s doing to put things right or to get Lucy to put things right. At the end, things are always set back to normal and Lucy and Ricky are back to being the loving couple. Although they live a middle class type of lifestyle, Ricky’s position in the entertainment industry automatically glamorizes them and places them just to the side of the common middle class existence. This same structural format can be found in later sitcoms such as Married with Children which was widely popular in the 1980s. This show also features a limited cast of recurring characters. This time, the full family is included as a means of identifying itself more closely with the middle class. Studies had shown that the typical middle class home consisted of a mother, father and 2.4 children. As a result, this show focused on Al Bundy and his wife Peggy plus their two children Bud and Kelly. The 0.4 child was represented by the dog Buck, who often demonstrated human-like thinking and was occasionally even given voice. This family was also joined by their neighbors Marcie Darcie and her husband Jefferson. This neighboring couple was introduced as a means of bringing conflict into the home each week. True to form, these characters show very little signs of personal development or aging, but some of these traditional elements of the sitcom are already changing. For example, Bud, Al’s son, transitions during the span of the show from being an awkward sex-starved teenage boy to a smooth playboy full of ideas for business scams. The majority of the action of the show takes place within the Bundy home, with the occasional trip to Al’s or another character’s workplace. This home is very clearly a middle class home from the front door to the tacky kitchen to the mostly bare basement. With the daughter’s sex symbol lifestyle, the son’s hijinks and the wife’s refusal to conform to the working side of being a housewife, Al is trapped within his situation and must constantly work to make the best of it. His repeated attempts to escape this situation, and his repeated failures, are the actions that drive the show forward and provide the repetitiveness characteristic of sitcoms. In the end, he must always fall back into acceptance that whether he wants to admit it or not, this is his family and this is where he’s stuck. Moving deeper into the 1990s and well into the new millennium, the sitcom Friends also follows the standard pattern of the sitcom but again makes modifications. The limited cast of characters is only related to the extent that they want to be. As the title suggests, they are friends and sometimes roommates all living in New York and gathering together either at the coffee shop or in Monica’s apartment. The show features three guys – Chandler, Joey and Ross – and three women – Monica, Rachel and Phoebe – but they do not feel fully compelled to couple off. Rather than focusing on the aims of one main character as the earlier shows had done, this sitcom allows the driving force to rotate among the various characters as they move away from and come together with their friends to solve the situations they find themselves in. There is some growth of the characters as a result, but this remains surprisingly stunted had they been real people. Serious subjects are introduced although the tension is kept off through the use of comedic elements and the show always ends with an upbeat message of love, togetherness and the need to stick together to make things work. In another slight shift away from the traditional sitcom formula, these characters are seen to find ways of working with the traps of their lives to make things better for themselves. Rachel grows from being a coffee house waitress expecting to find a man that will support her to a professional woman working in the fashion industry as she raises her daughter with some help from her friends. Monica expands her traditional love of cooking into a high-paying position as chef in a restaurant. Chandler overcomes his deep-seated fear of marriage to marry Monica. All of these changes force changes in the way the rest of the friends live their lives and interact with the changing circumstances of the changing character and thus point to a progression that suggests a subtle blending of the sitcom with true drama. Although the format of the sit-com hasn’t changed much, the message of the sit-com has, both influencing and reflecting changes in society. It has long been suspected that the images we see on TV have some bearing on how we perceive ourselves. The messages sent through these mediums are supposed to be a reflection of the kind of life that is portrayed on the screen. If a middle class family is depicted, it is expected that the program is a reflection of what a middle class family is with only a little emphasis thrown on the comedic moments found in everyday situations. This is achieved to great extent through the process of semiotics. Essentially, ‘semiotics’ is a term used to indicate the process of sign analysis in a given culture for indications of meaning at varying levels. “Semiology therefore aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification” (Barthes, 1964). Thus, it refers to any combination of contextual clues, such as language, image, color, shape, expression or placement, that are combined together in order to communicate a specific sense of meaning to a particular cultural group. How this middle class family is defined to the rest of the world thus depends to a great extent on how it is understood by the people who produce the show. Therefore, their interpretation of a middle class family serves as a sort of instruction guide to those families who aspire to the middle class of what kind of behavior is expected. In analyzing the popular television shows in the above discussion, it can be determined that these shows provide a sort of barometer to the changing attitudes within dominant culture. In TV shows such as “I Love Lucy,” the dominant culture was revealed as being highly sexist and divided through its semiotics and content. As the content consistently showed, the female was expected to be at home tending to the house and the children while the man was out at work or doing something in public life. Lucy’s main goals in life were always to achieve some form of public recognition, which directly challenged the ideals of the age. However, through the comedic form of the hyper-ironic delivery, a number of questions began to be asked about the true nature and abilities of women because of the semiotics. Primary elements included in any discussion of semiotics include signifiers, signified and sign. The sign is the end product created through the combined forces of the signifier and the signified. The signifier can be described as “the form which the sign takes” (Chandler, 2006). This is different from the signified, which refers to “the concept it [the signifier] represents” (Chandler, 2006). Basically, the signifier is the most basic idea – the physical presence and activities of Lucy as she tries to make herself heard. The signified takes on the broader meaning – the idea of the Woman (in a general sense) attempting to be recognized. In more modern times, the show “Married With Children” conveys some of these same ideas regarding the expected roles of women, but with the twist of the wife refusing to adhere to social expectations. She looks good and spends a great deal of time concerning herself with outward appeal for public acceptance, but hasn’t the faintest idea of how to cook for her family and not the slightest interest in cleaning up after them. Emerging in the middle of the 1980s, the show reveals the throwback to the 50s ideals that appeared during this decade in film and television, but also mocked these ideas as being unrealistic and largely petty. This show works off of the myth of the quintessential American woman of the 50s by exposing its breaking points – when the woman refuses to adhere to her expectations, when the man refuses to live up to his, when the children are not perfect angels. “Barthes’ notion of myth is that of a socially constructed reality that is passed off as natural. Myth is a mode of signification in which the signifier is stripped of its history, the form is stripped of its substance, and then it is adorned with a substance that is artificial, but which appears entirely natural” (Ryder, 2004). This show firmly points out that women are simply refusing to bend to the same old ideals. The neighbor’s wife is the one who wears the pants in the family, with the larger income and the bigger ideas while the daughter in the show is a complete idiot who sleeps around indiscriminately with boys, again demonstrating the new freedom of women that can no longer be fully contained. In their own ways, each of these women can be seen as frightening by the men who are simply attempting to go about life in the same way that their fathers and grandfathers did, but now not finding the same kind of respect or admiration they achieved in the past. Entering the mid-1990s, the TV show “Friends” came out that explored the new, more equitable world of the approaching 21st century. While Lucy was trapped within the house constantly trying to get out and Peggy adamantly refused to fully engage with the ideal, the women of Friends are each seen to be working out their own paths through life. While Rachel begins the show thinking she will become one of the quintessential American women of legend who stays at home, always looks glamorous and depends on the husband to bring home the money, she never actually achieves this during the length of the show. Instead, she discovers interests of her own, a career and spends much of the show attempting to work out her emotional reactions to the various men who appear in her life. Monica is the quintessential American woman, insisting that her house be spotlessly clean, concerned that her shape matches the social expectations of her day and being noted as an excellent cook. However, she takes all of this one step further in putting her talents to use in her career as a successful chef. Although she does get married toward the end of the show’s history, this does not change her dominating personality or interfere with her career. The third main female character is Pheobe who takes an entirely different view on life and approaches it relatively successfully from her own point of view and with what works for her. Although she’s always doing something strange or different, she is always able to support herself and her friends while always remaining true to herself. All of these shows provide a helpful barometer to see both where traditional concepts have been breaking down as well as those areas in which new ideals are being bolstered. The primary elements of the sitcom remain largely in place as a tried and true formula at the same time that producers seem aware that the viewing audience is starting to get slightly tired of its predictability. There is a sure progression of thought from women being expected to remain at home and silent to women who refuse to stay at home or silent. While this transition is not without some of its major faults, as expressed through the fears of Married with Children, it is not without major benefits, such as in the stronger female characters of Friends. References Barthes, Roland. (1964). Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang. Chandler, Daniel. (2006). Semiotics for Beginners. Wales: The University of Wales. Dover, Richard. (1997). Situation Comedy. Available March 15, 2010 from “Friends.” “I Love Lucy.” Krutnik, Frank. (1990). Popular Film and Television Comedy. London: Routledge. Lewisohn, Mark. (2003). Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy. 2nd Ed. Revised. BBC Consumer Publishing. “Married with Children.” Marteinson, Peter. (2006). On the Problem of the Comic: A Philosophical Study on the Origins of Laughter. Legas Press, Ottawa. Ryder, Martin. (2004). “Semiotics: Language and Culture.” Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics. New York: Macmillan Reference. Available March 15, 2010 from Read More