The purpose of this research is to examine the case-study analysis of the television show Cheers by Heather L. Hundley, which takes the view that the show "naturalizes" beer consumption in ways that tend to confirm and support the norms of masculinity as a dominant social modality. The plan of the research will be to set forth the general line of argument that Hundley makes about the strategies informing the social role that Cheers plays and then to discuss how the application of discourse analysis to the program connects selected program attributes to controversial social-issue fronts, with a view toward evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of her reading.
Hundley's close reading of the final season of Cheers focuses on the show's portrayal of beer drinking as a social--and socializing--exercise. This portrayal, says Hundley, constitutes the "dominant reading encoded in the text's [= show's] narrative [= dramatic] structures" (Hundley 263). That is, the consumption of beer is the "common ideological frame" (262) for the pattern of ideas emerging in the program and is the dominant, or naturalizing, mechanism and standard by which the meanings made by the program emerge.
Clarity about the critical context of Hundley's discussion of Cheers is central to an understanding of her characterization of the program's portrayal of beer drinking as a naturalizing agent. Hundley begins from the standpoint of structural analysis, which Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck say (379) "focuses on issues of determination and often begins by examining the ways in which constraints in the economic, political, and organizational environments place limitations on effective controllers." In other words, social forms, customs, and practices very much impel, compel, or shape human behavior in contemporary society, rather than the other way around. In the context of structural analysis, Hundley engages in what she terms "application of the construct of di...