Sitcoms (by Neil)

   When trying to analyze culture, the question often arises as to what one wants to study specifically, given the breadth of the subject and its different edges.  Thus, we approach its analysis through the selective tradition, which defines what makes culture particularly attractive or interesting.

 

        Williams (1977) uses it primarily to criticize "the deliberately selective and connecting process that offers a historical and cultural ratification of a contemporary order."  However, this time it is convenient to use it in terms of a contemporary phenomenon, in order to understand and criticize our own construction of traditions.

 

        An important part of the studies related to culture have referred to the production and organization of the meaning of these expressions as a space of power.  Cultural processes are important and interesting because through them links develop between their participants and, as Adornor and Horkheimer (1940) criticize, they are designed with the aim of being a uniform and universal product.

 

       Therefore, it is interesting to analyze how these issues of power through culture are developed through sitcoms, these are TV programs with quite similar structures, where there is also a standardization in their form; thr focus of attention is usually a group of friends, generally with well-defined characters within a social or racial stereotype, where different day-to-day problems that afflict the characters are represented, generally being resolved in a single episode.

 

  In our opinion, one of the most important aspects to study on this occasion is related to identity, understanding that individual and collective identities are always created under social pressure and individual aspirations, an aspect that a cultural-commercial product like sitcoms knows how to make the most of it.

 

        Therefore, it is not unreasonable to understand the proposal of sitcoms as unrealistic, which starts from the profitability and attractiveness that these programs offer, it is interesting to observe the evolution of the sitcom, in the first place mostly familiar, to the current ones, which develop in groups of friends, and this is nothing more than a benefit for the producers, by having a multitude of characters available to choose from, with different relationships between them, the opportunities to make humor increase in a group of friends that in a family unit.

 

 From the above, derives the unrealism to which we refer, the marked absence of a family nucleus in characters who on average are 30 or 40 years old is remarkable and in our opinion, it sends a wrong message to those who consume it, implying that  That level of standard is achieved through strong friendships, leaving families aside.  A very particular example is the sitcoms that take place in work areas, such as the acclaimed The Office, it is evident that it generates an unviable work environment and at the same time surreal, giving the impression that the entire existence of its characters is in relation to their work, and that this is normal, it is something that is fine, when in reality it is not.

 

        The cultural question can also be posed in another way, perhaps the most predominant way in everyday use.  It is here that the field of culture tends to be reduced to specialized, often elite, high-culture practices and products that are distinguished from common culture and that are owned by experts or privileged groups. From this perspective, sitcoms mostly represent very well segmented stereotypes, greatly reinforcing these social conceptions.

 

        In short, sitcoms as a cultural phenomenon are everything that Williams and Adornor referred to with the massification of culture and its mass production, this phenomenon is imminent given the hasty globalization and specialization of societies.

 

References

Adornor, T. & Horkheimer, M. (1940). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as mass deception.

Williams, R. (1991). The Analysis of Culture. London. Chatto & Windus.