Television shows and mass culture

Print this article

History of Popular Culture—Week 3, Assignment 1

After watching one episode of “I Love Lucy” or “The Honeymooners,” discuss how television shows such as these helped to develop a new mass culture in America.

I Love Lucy was the most popular sitcom on television during its 1950s air time. On January 19, 1953, 44 million viewers—68% of American television sets—were tuned to the show to watch Lucy give birth to her and fellow actor and real-life husband Desi Arnaz’s son. Between 1952 and 1958, the show and its cast were nominated for or won 22 Emmy awards.

The show’s popularity was due mostly to its humanity: the actors’ and actresses’ ability to connect with their audiences, blending absurdity with believability.

Perhaps the key lies with the show’s mastery of the graceful transition from sense to nonsense. Each episode opens with a plausible situation (home economy, child rearing, postdating a check) thrown awry with exaggerated absurdity (Lucy is starched, frozen, stuffed with chocolate, locked in a trunk, and lowered to the deck of a ship by helicopter, just to name a few). Yet somehow, Lucy never seems to lose touch with the audience - the show is human, and so are we.

— http://www.tvland.com/shows/lucy/

Such popularity in the hearts and minds of Americans led to the show’s adoption into millions of homes in the United States. Watching the show was a shared experience to which the general public could relate. I Love Lucy contributed to the mass culture of American television through its pervasiveness into American homes, its commonality in American life.

How do these early sitcoms differ from those that are new and popular today?

In I Love Lucy, episodes were individually contained. The development of characters was kept to a minimum, and any conflict introduced during the episode was resolved by the episode’s end. In contrast to soap operas, which targeted daytime audiences, typically stay-at-home moms, there were no underlying plots or character developments.

Today, however, there are popular situational comedies that not only have encapsulated conflict-resolution pairs, but also feature character developments and subplots.

Friends, an immensely popular US sitcom of the 1990s-2000s, had an overall story arc similar to that of soap operas. In addition to using traditional sitcom stories, which were introduced and resolved in the same episode, the show always had two or three ongoing stories taking place at any given point in the show’s run. Friends also used other soap opera elements such as regularly resorting to an end-of-season cliffhanger and gradually developing the relationships of the characters over the course of the series.

— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_comedy#Characteristics

Will these sitcoms be as famous today as they were when introduced?

(I’m actually not sure what this question is asking, but I will assume that it means, “If these sitcoms—I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners—were introduced today, would they be as popular as when they were introduced?)

No, they would not be popular now if they were introduced to today’s television world. The ideas and ideals of the shows are too traditional to survive today’s “progressive” thought and editorial process: there are no gays or lesbians; there is no sexual innuendo or suggestion; their values were far more conservative than today’s popular beliefs, ie. Ricky and Lucy sleeping in separate beds. While the idea of a woman working and her husband staying home is acceptable today, it was highly unusual in the 1950s.

If you were to launch these shows today, what changes would you make in them and why?

In order to make them a better fit to today’s society, I would think that these changes needed to be made:

  • Wardrobe would be updated to reflect today’s styles
  • Husbands would have better-paying jobs
  • Single beds shared by married couples
  • Wives would have jobs
  • Children (Little Ricky) would go to daycare or school

Realistically, though, I can’t imagine changing I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners. The two are so ingrained in American culture as they are that I wouldn’t want to change them at all.

Sources:

Comments are closed.