sitcom essay
sitcom has been around since before TV started popping up in peoples homes (not literally). it originally started up on radio and has been with the same typical slapstick and canned laughter since then. it still has the same kind of forum with whole kind of dysfunctional family thing, crazy dad , cleanaholic mum and own-way kids in the same situations just different actors in each sitcom.
recently television sitcom has change in the sense that some actors and writers are more daring. they continuosly break the barriors of traditional sitcom on perpose to bring more exciting and daring entertainment to there audeience. comedy like boondocks and southpark are part of this group in my opinion because they dare to make jokes about race that instead of being racist make you think about yourself and how we all percive people. for those who havent seen boondocks it is an animation about two boys who live with there grandfather who isnt exactly kosher. during the episodes they show the ignorance of people using comedy, racism,the ignorance of the black communities but also that we have hope small but hope none the less in the young black community (Huie Freman).
as we have all gotten older so has sitcom, the convetions have become so boring and we seem to be watching the same thing over and over. there are some “hybrdids” like scrubs which are not based around slapstic with canned laughter.
reprisentation has changed over time the sterio types of different ethnicities also had to changed eg desmonds , a black family running a baber shop. comedys like scrubs are rreprisented as hybidsbecause they dont stick to the normal boring slapsitck. newer sitcoms have experimented with styles like social realism and and documentry like peep show.
As britain became more diverse steriotypes of race ha dto change. Desmonds a british comedy broadcast by channel 4 from 1989 to 1994 . Desmonds was aboyut a black family who came from Gyanan (parents), this was good in many ways in terms of breaking sterio types e.g. that everyone with a west indian accent is from jamaica. this was also good bacause the writers showed black and whight people united and together.
The preception of gender has a lso had to change over time but even now it hasnt changed that much. Early tv sitcoms like “I Love Lucy” showed women as typical house wives. even today we still see sitcoms like “my wife and kids” and ”simpsons” still show the same kind of preceptions eg. typical house wife cooking and cleaning laundry etc. but more sitcoms have change preceptions of women eg. ”Two and a half men”.
Family representation has also changed. The reprisentation of used to be based on a sort of perfect middle class whigt family wereas now families like “everybody hates Chris ” and “my wife and kids” have started to become more popular, families a little more disfunctional than the normal middle class sitcom.
The range of sitcom audience age groups has also changed over time. sitcoms like the “inbetweeners” are aimed at and are about 16+ sort of collage /university students. This has changed sitcom because we now see more shows abuot kids and there “adventures” at school/collage/uni instead of the boaring family type conventional theme. Although tease kind of shows are alot different to the normal reprisentation some still keep hints of the family theme in some scenes. But there are also more adult sitcoms like ”Every Body Love Ramond” and especially “Frasier” which still keeps the theme of the disfuntional family but with family members wich we dont usually see.
audiences are more sophistiacted in the sense that they understand the direction of which sitcom has been going and are getting tierd of it, there is demand for more creative and daring ideas which we are seeing starting to popping up more and more on our screens.
