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Bowling Green State University Library Ia 40. 055) i+ CRITICISM AMD TELEVISION COMELY DRA.L'-: AN ANALYSIS OF ALL IN THE FAMILY .John Lewis Wright A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 1975 BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY IA (c) 1975 JOHN LEWIS WRIGHT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED W.'YW 610296 ABSTRACT Television has become the medium for the most popular art forms of our time, and there is a need for television criticism which is investi­ gative and founded on knowlege of traditional patterns of artistic ex­ pression. Television comedy drama is a new part of a long comic tradi­ tion. At the same time the medium itself changes somewhat the nature of the work; for example, the structure and pace of television comedy is highly controlled, the process of creation is communal, and the per­ vasiveness of the broadcast medium provides an audience of the greatest diversity. To demonstrate the application of traditional literary theories and methods, the various elements in the success of the American tele­ vision comedy series All in the Family are analysed, using the original scripts of the first four seasons as source materials. The British pro­ totype, Till Death Us Do Part, is examined in some detail as the Ameri­ can series is closely based on this program, with its bigoted father, absent-minded mother, and their troublesome daughter and son-in-law in realistic conflict in a lower-class setting. The study then traces the premiere of All in the Family: the process of getting the program broadcast, the critical reception, and the popularity of the series in its first season. The success of All in the Family may be attributed to a skillful combination of invention and convention. The program brought new depth to American television comedy by providing a realistic setting, by giv­ ing the family a past, and by introducing complex and controversial characters and issues. While the characters are recognizable members of a modern lower-middle-class urban family, they are also founded on stock comic figures: Archie the buffoon, T4ike the ironist, Edith the naif, and Gloria the ingenue. Similarly, though current and contro­ versial issues are raised, the resolution of problems is based on a tra­ ditional comic ethic of moderation and pragmatism. Finally, the series has been successful because it has created and maintained a tension between the modes of low and high comedy, blending farce and social satire. Included in the s tudy is a listing of the episodes of the first four seasons of the series, with titles, taping and air dates, personnel involved, and brief plot summaries. Ill ACKNOVZLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the members of my committee for their guidance and helpful criticism: Dr. Thomas Wymer, Dr. Ray Browne, and Dr. Michael Marsden. X am indebted to Tandem Productions of Los Angeles and A. L. S. Management Ltd. of London for providing the original scripts on which this study is based. Special thanks go to Dorothy Betts for her care and concern in preparing the manuscript. Finally, I thank my wife, Sandra Wright, for her insight and her help through the hard times. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER ONE ASSUMPTIONS.............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER TWO BRITISH ORIGINS......................................................................................................25 CHAPTER THREE AMERICAN DEBUT.........................................................................................................4? CHAPTER FOUR ELEMENT'S OF SUCCESS: SETTING......................................................................... ?O CHAPTER FIVE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS: ARCHIE AND EDITH .................................................. 79 CHAPTER SIX ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS: MIKE, GLORIA, AND OTHERS............................... 102 CHAPTER SEVEN ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS: ISSUES AND THEMES.................................................125 CHAPTER EIGHT COMEDY HIGH AND LOW.............................................................................................1M BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................. ■................................................. 14B APPENDIX DESCRIPTIVE LISTING OF ALL IN THE FAMILY PROGRAMMING, EPISODES 0101-0424.............................................................................................152 1 CHAPTER ONE ASSUMPTIONS On January 12, 19715 American television was changed. This date was the premiere of the comedy series All in the Family. The style and content of this new series marked a dramatic departure from the comedy drama of the preceding twenty-odd years of television programming. The very title of the series was an ironic commentary on the "family shows" that had prevailed on commercial television. The title seemed to prom­ ise the viewer another of those sentimental yet light-hearted looks at middle-class family life. But what viewers found, to their delight or dismay, was a comedy that confronted head-on such problems as the gener­ ation gap, sexual impotency, and bigotry. Furthermore, the problems were not trivialized but”were treated with sensitivity and dramatic real­ ism. Television comedy would never be the same after this date. Look­ ing back from the perspective of several years, one may see that the time was ripe for this sort of change in television comedy drama. Life styles and family patterns portrayed in most comedy programs did not approximate the reality of existence for most Americans, white or black, rich or poor. Of course, All in the Family was no perfect mirror of reality either, nor was it intended to be; like all good comedy, it was an exaggeration of certain aspects of life. It was an artistic presen­ tation of a particular view of the world. The purpose of this study is to investigate in depth the history and meaning of this television series All in the Family. The first chapter sets forth and discusses the major assumptions and approaches 2 involved in the study. As far as can be determined, there have been few 1 studies written on single television series. For this reason, some basic ground-plans need to be laid before beginning the construction of the study. The first assumption is that most current studies of television are peripheral and inadequate. They are peripheral because most research­ ers’ time and energy have been exhausted in studying areas only tangen­ tial to the programs themselves. To understand what has been done in television research, Harold Lasswell’s classic formulation of communica­ tion is helpful: Who Says What In Which Channel To Whom With V/hat 2 Effect. Most television scholarship has focussed on the last three elements of the communication process: the channel, the audience, and the effects. Studies of the channel include investigations of the historical development and economics of the various media, their tech­ niques, standards, and unique characteristics. The works of Marshall McLuhan represent perhaps the most visionary and best-known study of the channels of communication. Like most other media theorists, McLuhan is not especially concerned vjith the content of the media. He has said: "Our conventional response to all media, namely that it Is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the ’content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the 3 burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind." Rather he is preoccu­ pied with the impact which the media have on our daily lives and thought patterns by virtue of their mere existence. Large amounts of time and money have been spent trying to deter­ mine to whom the message is being sent, as broadcasters and advertisers 5 probe the audience to find out who is watching what. The audience- probers also want to know with what effects the message is being re­ ceived, and they have underwritten numerous projects to find out whether and in what ways audience behavior is influenced. In recent years the industry people as well as Presidential commissions and other independ­ ent bodies have occupied themselves with such questions as the effects of television violence upon viewers, particularly upon children. For example, in 1972 the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior issued a report examining televised violence, a report which was the result of three years of work 4 and over one million dollars in expense. Another issue has been the effect and effectiveness of political advertising on television. The social scientists have generally used quantitative methods in studying the audience and audience behavior. Two of the more significant of the studies in a social science context are Gary Steiner's The People Look at Television and the follow-up study Television and the Public, by 5 Robert T. Bower, both of which attempt to measure audience attitudes. The social scientists and McLuhanesque theorists have all added to the general body of knowledge about television; the problem is that their approaches have dominated television research far too much. Available studies of the Who and What of television are generally inadequate or at least irrelevant to understanding the esthetics of the medium. The Who is dealt with in technical manuals of broadcasting, such as the standard introductory text by Stasheff and Bretz, The Tele- g vision Program. These manuals are, of course, helpful lesson-books for the camera handlers,
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