70's Sitcoms
My blog partner and I have been looking at 70's sitcoms as a genere. I was struck by the fact that in family dramas, white families live in houses with lawns, and african-american families live in apartments in the city. This was made really clear to me as I was looking at "The Brady Bunch," and "The Jeffersons." These representations are important because they are part of what creates individual views of a particular group. It's seems easier to see how particular representations have operated to create stereotypes when I'm looking at a 70's sitcom from my perspective here in 2006; but it's that much more difficult to get a handle on how the present representations of particular groups by the media are shaping the next
thirty years of stereotypes.
posted by Nate | 7:16 AM
1 Comments:
Hmm. When I think of big shows now, I think of maybe "Sex and the City" and "Friends" - urban yuppies living in extremely unrealistically-sized apartments, spending way more time socializing and shopping than actually working to pay for all of this leisure activity. The thing about representations of African American people and families on TV that I've noticed is that there is this segregation by channel. The WB (I think it's recently changed names) Network has a number of prime time sitcoms featuring almost all-black casts/characters - so they are niche marketing those shows to a particular and narrow demographic. I guess that cable tv has allowed for much more narrow marketing to specific demographics, so large networks don't have to bother looking like they are being inclusive in their programming. The big networks show the middle class white shows (urban and suburban) and smaller niche channels show segregated African American shows. Progress?
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