Lab 6 Instructions: American Television Screening

1. Tonight's screenings are all representative American sitcoms. Let's start with a basic concern -- what is a sitcom? What characteristics define the sitcom as a genre? What kinds of settings are sitcoms most likely to occur? What themes and stories do sitcoms tend to tell? What kinds of characters are most likely to surface in the sitcom? Are there examples of sitcoms which do not easily fit into the generalizations you have made above? Why? Why are such works still considered to be sitcoms?

2. Why has the sitcom become such a staple on American television? What properties of the medium of television are exploited through the sitcom?

3. Why are most sitcoms half an hour and most dramas an hour? How has this worked to shape the differences between the kinds of stories that sitcoms and dramas can tell? What difference does it make that most sitcoms are taped while most dramas are filmed?

4. All of the sitcoms you will see tonight include representations of marriage and the family and in most cases, of the relations between parents and children. How have these representations changed over time? What social and historical factors might account for the shifts in the portrayal of the family you have observed? You might want to look closely at the specific members of the family and their relations, considering such things as the power relations between husbands and wives, the relationships between parents and children, the issue of extended as opposed to nuclear or broken families, the relationship of the family to the larger society.

5. The issue of race and ethnicity surfaces in many of these episodes, sometimes in a disguised form (such as in BEWITCHED), sometimes in a more overt form (such as in THE GOLDBERGS and THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE'S FATHER). What kinds of representations of race and ethnicity surface here? Which of the shows are most sympathetic to the experience of non-white or non-wasp characters? What kinds of relationships do the series posit between persons of different racial and ethnic backgrounds? How might the portrayal of the Japanese housekeeper in THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE'S FATHER relate to Christina Klein's discussion of cold war politics and sentimentality?

6. Some of these series strive towards a certain degree of "realism." Others adopt a more fantastic format. Don't assume that those series which are less "realistic" are not also trying to make a statement about contemporary society. How might we understand BEWITCHED, for example, as questioning some of the assumptions about female power and marriage which run through many of the other sitcoms we are watching? How might BEWITCHED be viewed as questioning consumer culture and advertising's role in shaping public opinion? How might this episode of BEWITCHED be seen as slyly poking fun at the "man in the grey flannel suit" and his economic productivity? How might we compare BEWITCHED with later examples of self-reflexive sitcoms such as THE SIMPSONS?

7. The episode of ALL IN THE FAMILY deals fairly directly with a topic which would have been considered highly controversial in the 1970s. What factors made it possible for this series to explore such material? How might we compare its treatment of this topic with more recent sitcoms which have struggled with the same issues?

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