Analysis Of ' I Love Lucy '

In Judy Brady’s essay, “I Want a Wife,” she examines why she would like to have a wife. Brady believes that a wife performs all house chores and the husband does nothing, but to expect the wife to do everything for him. Brady tries to persuade the reader to look at a husband viewpoint of what a wife should be. The essay was written during the early 1960’s, during the second wave of the feminist movement in America. Brady is pushed by certain reasons to write, “I Want a Wife” to show the humanist humor.

Throughout this article Brady uses ethos, logos, and pathos to illustrate her opinion that the wife does too much in a family. Brady connects with her audience by relating to what was expected of them back in the 1970’s. She states reasons to why she wants a wife and lists what she says a wife would do for her. Lastly, Brady connects emotionally to her audience by

Throughout If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin the main characters have to overcome the challenges of racism, and the traits that go hand and hand with it, justice and prejudice, to realize what they actually needed was the family love they already had. Even though there are many romantic and even some graphic passages in the book, Baldwin mainly focuses on how they had to come together as a family when Alonzo (Fonny) was in jail and awaiting trial. If Beale Street Could Talk is essentially a story about the human capacity to love.

The modes of persuasion are noticeably spread throughout all of Mary Ewald's letter to the

Rewinding back to the 1950’s, I Love Lucy was one of the most popular sitcoms on television. There were two main characters and they happen to be married. The husband’s name was Ricky and the wife’s name is Lucy. Ricky is a talented singer and part of a band. On the other hand, his wife strives to be famous and share her talents with the world. Her husband claims that she has no talent and she would be better off staying at home to be a housewife. Throughout the show, Lucy finds herself getting into trouble as she often tries to perform at Tropicana, the place in which Ricky works.

She is talked about as, “Lucille Ball is known as the First Lady of comedy.” (Patrie 1). Tons looked up to Ball and saw how much she accomplished for the comedy and acting industry. She is also considered as a, “pioneer of the modern sitcom.” (Johnson 1). Ball was seen as an influential person for the ways in which she was able to introduce new ideas. She and Arnaz even introduced developing the production technique used for the modern sitcom, filming I Love Lucy in segments, with three cameras, before a live audience. When I Love Lucy first aired, many people fell in love with the show admediatly. It had such a big impact that, “In 1953, 67% of American homes tuned in every Monday night to watch the show.” (Gehring 1). For that many to be watching the show, they must have enjoyed all the humor and relationships. Some believed that the show’s comic resilience was able to comfort the viewers who were struggling with their own personal demons and to also encourage the viewers to practice their own persistence as

In Judy (Syfers) Brady’s article, “I Want a Wife”, she expresses her opinions in a satirical commentary that offers hypothetical criteria for an ideal wife, with an underlying message that deals with how people should be grateful for all of the deeds and chores that women do. Brady utilizes the strategy of

(SIP-A) They lose most of their emotions and become thoughtless to the life they are living. (STEWE-1) Montag makes Millie think and questions her, “‘Millie does’-he licked his lips-’does your ‘family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all of their heart and soul, Millie?’ He felt her blinking slowly at the back of his neck. ‘Why’d you ask a silly question like that?’” (Bradbury 73). Montag asks Millie a question he already knows the answer to. He wants to get Millie to think and slow down for a moment and realize that all the stuff she has will never make her completely happy. (STEWE-2) Loving someone is clearly not as important as their tv, “‘Anyway, Pete and I always said, no tears, nothing like that. It's our third marriage each and we're independent..’ ‘That reminds me,’ said Mildred, ‘Did you see that Clara Dove five-minute romance last night in your wall? Well, it was all about this woman who-’” (Bradbury 91). These people don't seem to care that they've gotten married and divorced, married and divorced, over and over. They don't cry but they just move right along. However, their tv’s will always stay with them. Right after one of Mildred’s friends finish talking about getting divorced and married, Mildred continues to talk about another show on their tv. (SIP-B) Due to spending so much time with their machines and tv’s, they have become a machine, only obeying what their tv’s tell them to do. (STEWE-1) There is no more color or difference in their society anymore because everyone wants the same and acts the same, “‘Police suggest the entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows…’ like gray colorless animals peering from electric caves, faces with gray colorless eyes, gray tongues and gray thoughts” (Bradbury 131-132). Everyone obeys

First titled Life and Stuff, Roseanne aired its first season in 1988 and its last season in 1997. The show starred Roseanne Barr as Roseanne Conner and John Goodman as Dan Conner. The couple lived in Lanford, Illinois with their three children Becky, Darlene, and D.J. They are a blue-collar, working-class family with both parents working outside of the home. They struggled just to pay the bills and put food on the table, sometimes each working two jobs. It portrayed real life issues such as pre-marital sex and pregnancy, financial struggles, sexuality, infidelity, death, drugs, and much more. In the first of its nine seasons, Roseanne (Barr) works at Wellman Plastics, along with her sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) and friend Crystal

Everybody loves Raymond is a show that was first released during the year of 1996 and ran all the way to 2005. The show is centered around Ray Barone, a talented sports writer who constantly has to put up with his wife, brother, kids, and even parents. Raymond is generally very sarcastic, no matter what the situation, and he does just about everything in his power to not have to deal with his kids. Instead he leaves most of the responsibilities of child care and cleaning to his wife, Debra. Although Everybody Loves Raymond manages to pull off being a wonderful show, it still plays into the stereotypical behavior of Gender roles, which ultimately prevents society from making any real progress.

persuade the reader to adopt a particular way of thinking. The feature article poses the

Given the certain circumstances, literature is a very strong thing in this world. It has the power to shape beliefs of the reader, such as who to love or hate, why people did certain things in the story, or even the understanding of whether someone did the right thing or not. The author has the control of what to think, and it’s like they are the puppet master in the whole operation. Not only do they have the control of the reader’s belief, they get to choose who is given power, and gets to shape people’s beliefs in the story itself. It’s not also positive sometimes either. As shown, in literature, power can be given to individuals whose use it to negativity shape people’s beliefs.

The 1950’s had a male dominant tone. Although wives were seen as the people who “ran the house” the husbands were going to work early in the morning and not coming home until night. A perfect example of what marriage supposedly looked like was the popular TV show “I Love Lucy” starting in 1951. Within months the show had millions of viewers becoming a

Homer Simpson is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists in the TV show The Simpsons. Dan Castellanta voices him. He lives in a fictional town called Springfield, Oregon, United States. He is married to Marge Simpson with three children named Bart, Lisa and Maggie. He has a pet dog named Santa’s Little Helper and cat called Snowball. Homer currently works in the show at a Nuclear Power Plant as a Safety inspector but has worked at previous jobs before. Homer is known to be crude, overweight, clumsy, lazy, heavy drinker and ignorant. (Simpsons Wiki, n.d)

Not to mention, the tone of language used in the show was subtle, elegant, and proper but with the use of some lingos and discriminating words of phases; like, “knot head”, “kidding”, “island native”, “banana boat” especially from the male’s members of the family; when in fact, this type of language is not conventional and acceptable to be exposed on television in the 1950’s. Additionally, in the 50’s, the sexual content represented in television was strongly regulated; to illustrate, the only form of affection presented in the show was a kiss on the cheek between the marriage couple; in addition, the couple were sleeping in separate bed, the reason of this situation, has to be with the principles of that period of time; instead, they show the husband and wife sleeping in separate bed with not physical contact between both of them. Furthermore, the multicultural or racial aspect was a taboo in 1950’s, for this reason, was extremely limited African-American or any other ethnic characters on television shows. Overall, “Father Knows Best”, is an excellent example of the sociocultural character of the society of that time.