Television Sitcom Essay

Situation comedies, or sitcoms for short, first began between 1946 and 1947 in the United Kingdom when broadcast station BBC aired Pinwright’s Progress (Aaron,2014). The United States soon followed airing their first sitcom in 1950. William Asher has been credited with being the “man who invented the sitcom,” having directed over two dozen of the leading sitcoms from the 1950s through the 1970s (Cook, 1999). Some of Asher’s finest works include “Bewitched” and “I Love Lucy”, classics that are still

able to understand the plot and identify the characters. Newman and Levine stated, “Television has been classified as feminine, and thereby as a less worthy, significant, and serious medium, has been a fact of its history (11)”. This theory can also be applied to Homeland because the story and its characters make the show to be very easy to follow and digest. One neither has to be fully paying attention to the television set nor has to start watching the show from the very beginning. The show’s thematic

Effects of Television on Our Society INTRODUCTION Plato once, prophetically, posed a question that hints at the very core of this project. In philosophizing on the issue of entertainment and its various, sometimes questionable, sources he asked his fellow citizens to consider the following “Shall we just carelessly allow our children to hear casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we

Evolution of Family Sitcoms “Blood is thicker than water.” A saying commonly heralded by family members in order to reaffirm the importance of family unity. These words spoke loudly to the entertainment industry as they were trying to create new content for television. Situational comedies were quite popular, but there was a lack of relation to family audiences. The most logical step was to combine the two. Since then, the family sitcom is becoming the yearly ritual for television pilots. Furthermore

Let Me Entertain You Television has entertained us since the 1940’s. Drama, comedy, cartoons are as much a part of our lives now as they were in the 1940’s. Television in the past stopped at midnight with the singing of The National Anthem and a test pattern that showed until the next morning. Television now is available twenty four hours a day. In the beginning, there were only three channels and now we have access to over 1,200 channels. Television shows in the 1940’s included The Lone Ranger;

Women who changed the face of television abstract The 2oth century witnessed a radical change in the perception of women. With the women’s movement, female organizations starting and advocacy of equal rights; the rise of a new generation of women arose. One that was independent, outspoken and not your submissive homemaker of suburbia as it was depicted at the start of the 1900’s. These women graced the television screen and changed the face of women in television drastically. This presentation

the idealism of the past through juxtaposing old and new facets of television. The show, Pleasantville existed in an enclosed predictable ecosystem with no knowledge of corruption or world outside itself depicting the values portrayed in television of the 1950s. Everyone had a role and like most sitcoms, even today every episode concluded in a positive manner, usually with a lesson that reaffirmed the viewer’s beliefs. Television and films were mostly PG until the 60s, which is visualized in Pleasantville’s

Television has seen a very big change in the content of its shows, specifically situational comedies, or most commonly known as sitcoms. For my assignment I decided to watch, “Leave it to Beaver” and compare the 1950’s show to sitcoms today. There are a vast amount of differences between, “Leave it to Beaver” and current sitcoms. One major difference I noticed between the two was the cultural aspect of each show. In “Leave it to Beaver” and other sitcoms of the 1950’s there are cultural values and

Introduction: Television has been a huge part of our culture since the early 1950s. Although it was developed early, because of World War II commercial broadcasting was put on hold until after the war. Since 1950 television has progressed rapidly. In the 60s color television was invented which brought shows to a whole new level. Primitive forms of cable television existed as early as 1948 but cable did not become a significant medium until the 80s. Everyone in the country was watching the big four

that sitcoms are incorrectly regarded as simplistic, and that to uncover their complexity and fully explain sitcom a comparison to other television and film genres needs to be made (Mills 2005:25-29). There is truth in the claim that sitcoms are complex. This is proven through analysing how sitcom relates to a wider cultural and social context, and understanding how hidden cultural references work as vehicles of humour. The narrative complexity and cultural references of the American sitcom Unbreakable