TELEVISION & PRIME TIME FAMILIES.   Term Paper ID:28230 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: How major 1950s-1980s sitcoms reflect family values. Effects of advertising, revenues, cultural conflicts & issues.... More...

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Paper Abstract: How major 1950s-1980s sitcoms reflect family values. Effects of advertising, revenues, cultural conflicts & issues. Paper Introduction: Prime Time Families Introduction Ella Taylor considers American television to be a contemporary form of storytelling that reveals generally held views about the identity and role of the family in American culture. She argues that television's accessibility and the size and heterogeneity of its audience make it the most truly popular and populist of modern cultural forms. Also, the language and imagery of family can be observed in all genres of television shows, including comedy and dramatic series, daytime and nighttime soaps, made-for-TV movies, and even news programming. Taylor analyzes each decade of television programming as a combination of marketing exigencies and cultural trends that produced different portraits of American social life. She argues against shows that promote 'traditional v Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. [31] Ibid., 8. [9] Ibid., 23. Shecontends that the plurality of form and meaning offered by 198 sprogramming challenged the boundaries of family so much as to render themuncontrollable and incomprehensible.[38] Thus, she argues that in the late198 s public discussion began to narrow again and programs such as TheCosby Show threatened to quash the innovation of 197 s programming and thehealthy diversity of 198 s television families by reverting to 'traditionalvalues' that never, in fact, existed.[39]Conclusion Taylor's frame of a decade-by-decade approach and her focus on theepisodic series limits her analysis of television culture in postwarAmerica. "The American Videology", 2. [22] Ibid., 4 -41.. [5] Ibid. This occurred incontrast to a changing American landscape, in which blacks and rural whiteswere migrating north in large numbers and race was becoming a major sourceof urban conflict. [17] Ibid., 27. [3 ] Ibid., 65. [28] Ibid., 45. [26] Ibid. Bibliography Caputi, Jane. [36] Caputi, 2. [1 ] Ibid. Nevertheless,she never gave up. Liebes'argument assumes that television is a montage of programs and theaudience's perceptions are formed through a combination of these genresrather than by focusing on any single one.[5] Thus, Liebes argues thefamily image of the late 198 s (when Taylor's book was published) wasformed as much by the Huxtables as by the Ewings, the Carringtons, therelationships of Hill Street Blues, and the soap families. She offers Lucy Ricardo's tireless efforts to break outof her traditional wife and mother role as an example of these lurkingtensions. Taylor, Ella. She argues thatwhile the programs advocated the drive to make money, they werecomplemented by commercials instructing viewers in how to become perfectconsumers and, by extension, perfect families.[15] Despite Taylor's articulation of the medium of television as a publicconversation, she notes that throughout the 195 s, television familiesbecame almost exclusively white as well as middle-class. In fact,Caputi argues the 197 s shows were internally inconsistent.[36] Forexample, even though Archie Bunker was a bigot, he was still the centralfocus and hero of the show. "Prime Time Families: Television Culture in PostwarAmerica." American Journal of Sociology. Thus, at a time when television programmers wereallegedly reaching out to more cosmopolitan audiences, the "ethniccomedies" of the early 195 s were in fact disappearing. "The American Videology." Liebes, Tamar. [33] Ibid., 151. [37] Ibid. [18] Ibid. [29] Ibid., 6. Together, Liebesconcludes, these genres create a more complex picture of family thanTaylor's analysis would suggest.[6] Jane Caputi, on the other hand, agrees with Taylor's decision to focuson the episodic series as the most characteristic form of populartelevision.[7] Caputi maintains that the episodic series embraced andreflected social values because they relied on advertising revenues.However, this view is shortsighted because it does not take into accountthat the programs would then be targeted at the largest, most affluentaudience rather than reflect or acknowledge more marginal classes andcultures. However, Lucy's attempts to get into show business and to rebelagainst Ricky's arbitrary authority always ended in failure. Taylor argues that comedy is a more flexible form than drama becauseit can create multiple, conflicting and oppositional realities within thesafe confines of the joke.[17] Thus, she argues that irreconcilablesocietal tensions lurked beneath the comforting middle-class conformity ofthe 195 s sitcoms. [35] Ibid. [39] Ibid., 167. Prime Time Families: Television Culture in PostwarAmerica. [6] Ibid. Because her argument is based solely on ananalysis of episodic series, she argues that although such series remainedthe dominant television genre, they moved from their previously 'consensualmood' toward a more abrasive style that attempted to broach contemporarysocial issues.[26] This change in approach was reflected in the 'relevance'television programs that grew out of a complex interplay between emergentsocial and cultural trends and more immediate pressures for change inratings and programming strategies within the television industry.[27] Taylor argues that these programs tended to be short-lived becausetheir purpose was not to dismantle the mass audience but to fine-tune it.Programming was still based on advertising revenues and these programs werestill an attempt to address the family as a whole to maintain the financialsupport of the moneymaking sectors of society.[28] Such relevance programsincluded The Mod Squad, Headmaster, and Storefront Lawyers, which pepperedtheir scripts with the language of youth and the action with drug cultureand political subversion. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1989.----------------------- [1] Taylor, Ella. Prime Time FamiliesIntroduction Ella Taylor considers American television to be a contemporary form ofstorytelling that reveals generally held views about the identity and roleof the family in American culture.[1] She argues that television'saccessibility and the size and heterogeneity of its audience make it themost truly popular and populist of modern cultural forms. [21] Ibid., 42. [7] Caputi, 1. And Taylor argues that the character and plot of I LoveLucy intersected repeatedly to give viewers a heroine who always bouncedback to test the limits of the traditional role required of her.[18] Because television programming is based on advertising revenues, itwas slow to reflect the changing American landscape of the 195 s and196 s.[19] Instead, these changes became apparent through the news.[2 ] Thecountry was undergoing a period of increasing civil and urban unrest, anincreasingly volatile economy, the escalating Vietnam War, and a generationof college students rebelling against the values of their parents. Taylor argues that the episodic series served as a frame for thedevelopment of a "specifically televisual articulation of family andworkplace."[13] She surveys the major 195 s sitcoms and concludes thatthese series offered their audience a view of the American family as a vastmiddle class of happy American families who had already made it to thechoicer suburbs (Leave It to Beaver) or were on their way there (I LoveLucy) or aspired to middle-class status (The Honeymooners).[14] Theseprograms reflected the middle-class obsession with money. Also, thelanguage and imagery of family can be observed in all genres of televisionshows, including comedy and dramatic series, daytime and nighttime soaps,made-for-TV movies, and even news programming. She argues against shows that promote'traditional values' and prefers those that allow public ventilation ofsocial concerns.[2] Thus, she concludes that the episodic series, whichincludes the half-hour situation comedy and the one-hour action-adventureseries, particularly those of the 197 s, fostered the viewer attachment toindividual characters and their relationships that generated the fullestpossibilities for a meditation on domestic themes.[3] Tamar Liebes disagrees with Taylor's decision to focus on the episodicseries to examine the portrayal of family by television as a whole.[4]Liebes argues that by focusing on one genre, Taylor ignores the rich andchanging environment of the other genres of which it is part. [24] Ibid., 43. She contends that the domesticity thatdefined the episodic form in the 195 s and 196 s was grounded upon anidealized family steeped in postwar values of progress, affluence andnational consensus as well as in the political economy of the televisionindustry.[12] The television series during this time presented to theiraudience a benign, uncontroversial, white, middle-class family that Taylorargued was intended to offend no one. Programming dependent on advertising revenues does not reflectsociety; rather, it reflects the sectors of society the advertisers wish totarget.Television Programming and Family Values Taylor maintains that the formulaic nature of television programmingoperates as a conversation between producers and audiences.[8] She arguesthat although critics attack television for its formulaic character,television offers the same genre conventions as the novel or the epic poemto the degree that the formulaic nature of these forms means they can beunderstood and recognized in relation to other forms by their audiences.[9] In fact, modern popular culture must be simple and easily understoodbecause of its broad appeal and its diffusion through the mass media.Television program's broad plot and characters produce a feeling of instantfamiliarity in its audience.[1 ] Taylor's approach to television is based on an understanding oftelevision as a central cultural medium that functions as a storyteller,which presents to its audience multiple meanings ranging from reactionaryto radical.[11] These meanings or cultural values are examined through thepublic conversation of television. [2] Caputi, Jane. For as Taylor herself notes, The MaryTyler Moore Show "is almost as likely to appeal to anti-feminists as it isto feminists."[37] Taylor concludes with an analysis of 198 s television programming. [19] Ibid., 41. [12] Taylor, 151. [38] Ibid., 166. Caputi sees no difference between the non-offensive 195 s sitcoms and the 197 s shows Taylor applauds. [23] Ibid., 42. Taylor argues that television and cultural criticism in the 197 srevealed common themes that now identified the American family as a majorsource of conflict and anxiety about social change.[29] In the 197 s publicattention was focused on changes in family structure, particularly domesticdistress.[3 ] She offers as support films such as The Graduate, OrdinaryPeople, and Kramer versus Kramer, which she argues expressed the pain offamily collapse underpinned by a longing for new ways of domesticliving.[31] She argues also that the popularity of self-help manuals borewitness to a mounting sense of trouble at home and a preoccupation withindividual fulfillment at the expense of commitment to marriage andfamily.[32] Thus, she argues this decade was typified by a mounting senseof confusion about the changing boundaries between family and work, privateand public spheres, and the implications of these changes for communitylife. Taylor analyzes each decade of television programming as a combinationof marketing exigencies and cultural trends that produced differentportraits of American social life. (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1989), 17. And, given Taylor's analysis of television programming in the late198 s, she may have been surprised by the advent of current shows like TheSimpsons and Once and Again, which reflect clearly the American culture'sconstant questioning of the definition of family. Taylor contends that television in the 197 s "reworked and commentedon the public concerns voiced by cultural critics, social scientists, andpolicymakers within the frame of its own language, raising and thensymbolically resolving the troubling issues of its time and place."[33]Relying particularly on All in the Family, but also M*A*S*H and The MaryTyler Moore Show, Taylor argues that commercial imperatives in the 197 sallowed for more innovative programming that interrupted the previouslybland conventions of the television family.[34] She contends that theBunkers, for example, raised the possibility that there could be more waysthan one to conduct family life.[35] Caputi, however, argues that Taylor's approach to 197 s programmingsuffers from inherent problems. [15] Ibid., 26. Thus,Taylor argues between 1963 and 1968 television news and entertainment weregenerating a dichotomous social imagery that both touched on and contrastedwith the political and social tenor of the period.[21] The dream of aharmonious, middle-class America united by material plenty and politicalconsensus was fraying visibly at the edges, and the latent schisms ofclass, race, gender, and generation were erupting into open conflict.[22] The women's movement was also beginning to emerge during this period.Taylor argues that the movement began to subvert the consciousness of bothmen and women and shook up traditional assumptions about sex roles,marriage, and family life.[23] The media was also beginning to focus on the'generation gap,' the conflict between parents and children, to explainsocial conflict.[24] Taylor contends that it was not until the late 196 sthat the tone of prime-time entertainment also began to shift and signal,in its own way, the collapse of the prevailing ideology of the period.[25] Taylor argues that the birth of a new ideology during the growingunrest of the 195 s and 196 s was reflected in the television programmingof the late 196 s and 197 s. Prime Time Families: Television Culture in PostwarAmerica. Nonetheless, she doesdraw interesting and persuasive conclusions about the relationship betweentelevision programming and American culture, particularly in the wayscommercial concerns and political events affect that relationship. [4] Liebes, Tamar. [2 ] Ibid., 29. [16] Ibid. "Prime Time Families: Television Culture in PostwarAmerica." American Journal of Sociology, 488. [14] Ibid., 25. [34] Ibid., 166. [13] Ibid. Taylor notes thatAmos 'n' Andy, The Goldbergs, and Life with Luigi were all dropped fromtelevision schedules by 1954.[16] Thus, it would appear that during the195 s, television families were idealized according to prevailing normsrather than a reflection of reality. Caputi argues such contradictions were areflection of the programmer's wish to appease both the dominant cultureand the growing subversive culture. [3] Taylor, 17. [25] Ibid., 44. [32] Ibid. [27] Ibid. [11] Caputi, 1. [8] Taylor, 18. 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