Depiction of Women in Television Sitcoms

Television comedy reflects the social setting in which the show is produced, for writers, producers, and directors know that images reflecting the lives of the viewers have the power to evoke laughter more than images that are completely alien to the life experiences of the viewers. Comic styles on television have changed along with the times. This does not necessarily mean that the comedy is dated as some charge--I Love Lucy is no less funny now than it was in 1955, for example--but viewers look at these episodes with somewhat different eyes just the same. Consider just one element and how it has changed over the years, that element being the way women are depicted on television comedies. Lucy in I Love Lucy may be the star of the show, but in the context of 1950s society, she is subordinate to her husband, and indeed, much of the comedy derives from how she challenges that role by wanting to be what he is--someone in show business, someone known and recognized, someone with a role outside the home. More than a decade later, Mary in The Mary Tyler Moore Show would have a role outside the home but would still be secondary to the males in the workplace. Another fifteen years would bring Murphy in Murphy Brown to the screen, and by now the changes being wrought by the women's movement would greatly alter how this woman would be portrayed--she was now a major power in her own right, though with hints that she is seen as excessively shrill and too ambitious

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iors, for instance, and also limits the number of sets that can be used in any given episode because of the difficulty in moving them around during filming. The Mary Tyler Moore Show centered primarily on two sets--Mary's apartment, and the newsroom where she worked. The split between home and office also marked the show itself--stories centered on one or both of these two areas, showing a concern for Mary Richards as she made her way through her personal life and as she struggled with her professional life. The television situation comedy is usually a family program in a metaphoric sense. Many comedies center on a family unit, whether parents and children, mother and child, father and child, or husband and wife. Networks are convinced that the very concept of "family" is a way to attract viewers, and television executives like to think of the ensemble cast of a show as constituting a family. When a program is about a work situation rather than a home, it is still designed as a family, with a patriarch and a feeling of belonging such as exists in a family. The Mary Tyler Moore Show shows this influence clearly--while Mary Richards is purportedly on her own in the world, she finds herself part of an extended family at the t

Category: Psychology - D