The Cupcake Revelation Reading American sitcoms and their representation of the social world

Master Thesis presented by: Milana Kogan 10849041

Supervisor: Joke Hermes 2. Reader: Jaap Kooijman

Media Studies: Television and Cross-Media Culture (M.A.) Graduate School of Humanities University of Amsterdam

Academic year 2014/2015 Index

I Introduction i. Sitcom as genre ii. Genre as contract iii. Role of television in society iv. Political economic context v. TV as cultural phenomenon

II Sitcom and the understanding of the social world i. Realism in sitcom ii. Method iii. Methodology

III Sitcom and the financial crisis of the 2010s, the case of 2 Broke Girls and Sex and the City i. 2 Broke Girls and poverty ii. Cupcake, the connection between two eras iii. Impact of the financial crisis as shown on 2 Broke Girls iv. Sex and the City and financial issues that never become a real problem v. Sitcom’s representation of finances as dependent on the historical era in which the sitcom is made: Before and after the financial crisis vi. “Emotional realism” in sitcom and in the representation of society

IV Sitcom and US politics in the 90s and early 2000s, social political values on screen. The case of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma & Greg i. Reagan, Bush, their values and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air ii. A new president, changing values and Dharma and Gregg iii. Political values in sitcom: it is not just economical upheaval, it is also political change that can be taken up in sitcom

V Conclusion

VI Appendix VII Notes VIII Bibliography List of Readings List of Literature List of Internet References IX Declaration

2 I Introduction

The relation between television and society has been a matter of debate since the emergence of television in the 1950s. Its impact on social change, social behavior, attitudes and values and the learning from the images it conveys has always proposed questions. Television is considered to be the leading medium of society (Koch 2010: 17). The TV screen is seen as a window to the world. It opens peoples’ minds to things that might have remained unseen. It challenges the audience’s view of the world by showing them otherwise concealed societies and norms. Thus, TV is able to gather and organize world knowledge and make it consumable (Schmitz 2012: 134). It presents a world and understanding of society that might differ from what is considered realistic but it can also represent the zeitgeist, showing society as it is perceived by the majority of the audience. In this way, television sends out social-cultural messages and gives meaning to the social world. These messages and the underlying meaning-creation vary in and among the variety of genres that television offers. According to Connolly, “television does not represent the manifest actuality of our society but rather reflects symbolically the structure of values and relationships beneath the surface” (Connolly 2014: 24). This implies that even unrealistic, distorted representation of social facts represent the social values and esteem in which these values are regarded. In fact this shows a verisimilitude, a representation of something on TV that is likely to happen in the same way in real life in society. David Marc explains the effects of television on social orders and states that social norms, orders and values, such as topics revolving around career, relationships, and independence, can be re-configured through TV. In this case, the term ‘yuppie’ (young urban professional) and how it is understood had been predicted and partially created in television of the 70s that thematized new ideas and norms, such as career-driven and independent women in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its offsets (David Marc 1999: 143f.). These shows, commonly belonging to the genre sitcom, as will be explained in a further paragraph, shifted the depiction of a domestic environment to a more open, public environment and changed its general topics and settings. Turner suggests that television constructs a culture that could be consumed and read by its viewers, who will differ from nation to nation. British and American TV each create a culture that they understand as the norm. It depends on the culture of the audience whether the produced norm is scrutinized (Turner, 2005: 416). In the case of sitcom, especially the sitcoms from the 80s were aiming to give the audience advice and ideas about social issues that Berman describes as an advice on “how to run our lives” (Berman, 1987: 5) and “an attitude towards things and towards ourselves” (ibid.). The genre that I will further analyze is the sitcom, short for situation comedy that has developed as a from of comedy. According to the theory by Henri Bergson, “comedy is human, one laughs about traces of humanism” (Bergson, 1956: 62) and Sypher adds that “the ambivalence of comedy reappears in its social meanings, for comedy is both hatred and reveal, rebellion and defense, attack and escape. It is revolutionary and conservative. Socially, it is both sympathy and persecution.” (Sypher in Bergson, 1956: 242) But mostly, as defined by Neale and Krutnik, comedy can represent everyday life with a happy ending and filled with laughter (Neale and Krutnik 1999:

3 1). In relation to Sypher, it is notable that comedy is celebrating truth, which Sypher marks as “philosophical and psychologic compensation” (Sypher in Bergson, 1956: 246). Only if society is capable of laughing at the imperfections of the world, it can set itself free from the limitations of things. Therefore the comedic narrative has to represent the social world. When a work has verisimilitude, that is, it is represented close to the relations of the social world, or to what the viewer believes to be true, respectively the public opinion, it “has implications for conventional notions of realism” (Chandler 1997a: 47) and in turn can be truly understood and compensated. Krijnen et al. however argue that it is the realism that keeps viewer on a distant level of a narrative while fiction establishes as sense of shared experience (Krijnen et al. 2005: 357). Sitcom can be then seen as a representation of the general situation of the world and the society, and it can address current social events and problems that arise from social change. By its representation, sitcom helps understand the social world and social changes. Three top economists agree1 that the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 has been the biggest crisis since the Great Depression in 1929. It caused the increasing widening between the rich and the poor and therefor unemployment, evictions and foreclosures among the populations. Large financial institutions collapsed, stock markets dropped and thus the economic activity decreased, leading to a global recession between 2008 and 2012. During this time, particularly in 2011, the American TV comedy series 2 Broke Girls was first broadcasted on national American television, showing the life of two waitresses in their mid- twenties, who can barely afford to live. They discuss their poverty openly. One of the 2 Broke Girls is Max Black who is used to saving the little money she has and living in poor conditions. She lives and works in Williamsburg, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York that is known for low rents that attract artists and young people who dream of starting their own businesses, for an ethnic melting pot, where different cultures and ethnicities come together, but also for a broad hipster culture that fosters a rapid gentrification.2 The other Broke Girl is Caroline Channing, a socialite and former rich girl from Manhattan whose father lost all their money in a Ponzi scheme, a fraudulent investment operation in which the operator doesn't pay back investors with earned profit, but uses new investments instead and thus generates high profit for himself. Her father is arrested for the fraud and thrown in jail, so Caroline has to start over as she is left without one cent. She begins working at the diner in which Max works, and becomes Max's co-worker, roommate and eventually best friend. She also comes up with the idea of starting a cupcake business with Max, when she finds out that the latter is a good baker. The sitcom thematizes poverty and the obtaining of money at first and wealth in general, and how two different characters, on the one hand a person that has always been poor and on the other hand a girl that is adjusted to wealth, deal with the effects of constant or sudden poverty. The gap between the rich and the poor is represented on the one side between the two different characters who show a different approach in dealing with poverty, wealth and the stigma that comes with each of the problems. On the other side the show represents the issues for both characters that are concomitant with the financial crisis, such as the problem of being in debt and paying it back.

4 In the thesis, I argue that sitcoms, in particularly the sitcom 2 Broke Girls, are not just shows for entertainment purposes but can be used to understand the social world, in this case the financial crisis and its effects on both rich and poor and how people deal with poverty. My research question will answer, how the sitcom 2 Broke Girls deals with the financial crisis, in order to show that earlier sitcoms also made contemporary social events a subject of discussion. The following questions are center of my analysis.

• Is it specific for the TV series 2 Broke Girls to deal with a contemporary social event or crisis like the financial crisis or does the genre of sitcom to which the series belongs do this more often? • Can more contemporary themes be found in other series of the same genre? • Is the interrelation between the social event of the financial crisis and the television show 2 Broke Girls a fluke or can an interrelation be detected between social events and problems in earlier decades?

In order to answer these questions I will analyze the narrative, dialogues of specific episodes and the setting of 2 Broke Girls and relate it to the financial crisis. In a second step I will take the cupcake, the main symbol and subject of the business that Max and Caroline attempt to start, as a connection to an earlier TV series, namely Sex and the City which was broadcasted between the years 1998 and 2004. Although the cupcake only had a short performance on that show, it gained popularity and high revenue for its businesses in society and is, as I argue, until now a symbol for wealth and success as well as an extravagant lifestyle. The cupcake per se is just another type of sweets, a simple thing, but it constitutes people’s ability to spend money on extravagancies, on a dessert that has popular value. Thus, the cupcake represents a cultural, popular good that is not simple candy. And indeed, a cupcake has so much value and relevance that in popular media a Reality TV show was dedicated to it.3 Based on the link to the cupcake, the series Sex and the City and its representation of wealth, poverty and consumption will be analyzed and referred to 2 Broke Girls which will hopefully show that in the earlier decade these topics were addressed differently, if they were addressed at all. While for the 2 Broke Girls the issue of their poverty, the problem of paying back bills and debts and the consumption and concomitant buying process presents a continuous struggle and is therefore the center of the comedy, the women from Sex and the City rarely address these issues, but instead revolve their lives around the consumption of high end goods and even compare their dates and sex exploits to forms of consumption. This juxtaposition of the two series of two different decades will show the specificity of each sitcom to address certain problems and thus the current social state. While the analysis of 2 Broke Girls and Sex and the City is specific for the financial crisis, I argue that sitcom represents the social world in many different aspects and thus is a representation of the real world in general. In order to argue more broadly, I will show that the logics of social representation don’t just apply to the above mentioned sitcoms but can be replicated for another era

5 within this genre. I will analyze two earlier sitcoms that deal with their contemporary social and political era, that primarily represent the presidency and its implied social values by its choice of narrative. The sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air was broadcasted between the years 1990 and 1996 and takes place during the presidency of George Bush and right after the Reagan era and deals with the question of Black representation in a mainly White society and surrounding and the change of Republican values. Dharma and Greg which was on TV from 1997 to 2002, is the last sitcom used to exemplify the interrelation between the sitcom’s narrative and its characters with Bill Clinton’s presidency and the consequential Democratic values. All sitcoms discussed in this paper will show that it is a specificity of the genre sitcom to deal with a contemporary social, economic or political reality and represent it verisimilar and thus reflect on the social order, or even reconfigure society’s understanding of the status quo. Therefore, it is crucial to clarify how sitcom can be understood and how it reflects society. As part of the broader system television, sitcom has its own way of dealing with specific events and representing the social world, which is reasoned in the fact that different genres have its own way of representation and build different expectations among their viewers. Further, television constructs in general a social reality. What is the broad role of television in constructing the social world? The underlying claim is that TV is needed to understand the social world.

Sitcom as genre

Sitcom as fictional narrative series has an ongoing storyline and recurring characters, whose lives are composed of comedic sequences, set within a family, workplace, or among a group of friends. An episode may feature a disruption of the usual situation and the character interactions, but this will usually be settled by the episode's end and the situation returned to how it was prior to the disruption. These episodes are then linked by the overarching storyline, driving the show forward. According to Marc, “sitcoms depend on familiarity, identification and redemption. The sitcom insists on a portrayal of reality. Since the seventies there has been a significant expansion of subject matter” (Marc, 1997: 20). For a long time, sitcoms have been criticized for its representations and therefore implicit failure to engage with social and political developments which excluded these representation from a larger social context (Mills, 2004: 64). The criticism also involved the representation of different aspects of society, such s class, rase and gender conflict as too simplistic and thus unrealistic (ibid.). But while other genres may rely on a “realist aesthetic”, sitcoms effectiveness depends in part on artificial elements which are best displayed by the laughter track, a device that produces fake laughs and sounds and has been used in sitcoms since their inception. This device mimics a live audience and thus a theatrical atmosphere. But rather importantly the laughter track implies the basic aim of this genre, namely to make people laugh. It reminds the audience of what has to be understood in a comedic sense. It doesn’t evoke negative emotions. Therefore it also implies a certain “distance from standard form of realism” (Mills 2004: 68) which is founded in that fact that it is pure entertainment and thus creates a feeling of harmony by resolving every problem in the

6 narrative (Mills 2004: 67ff). The narrative is constructed under the scheme of three basic phases: equilibrium, disruption and closure (Krijnen 2005: 357). During an episode the protagonists are presented in their usual setting. They have to face a problem, a so-called disruption that thematizes topics such as racism, sexism, generational conflict, war and peace, and psychological and behavioral disorder. Within the timeframe of the episode the problem has to be solved in order for the characters to find closure.

Genre as contract

Sitcom presents a plot in a genre-specific setting. Feuer notes that genre per se is “an abstract conception rather than something that exists empirically in the world (Feuer 1992: 144). The term ‘genre’ originated from the Latin word for ‘class’ or ‘kind’ and is broadly referred to “distinctive type of text” (Chandler 1997a: 1). Further, Chandler’s definition involves that genre “constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (structure and style) which are shared by the texts” (ibid., 2). Chandler suggests that genre frames the way readers and viewers understand and interpret a text, so it is crucial to focus on how genre is identified (Chandler 1997a). Cohen also saw the importance of establishing genres because they involved the human need for distinction (Cohen 1986: 204). The contract theory of genre ramifies within this concept as it “rests on agreement between a writer and a particular public that specifies the proper use of a cultural artifact” (ibid., 208, Jameson 1981: 105, Neale 1980: 51). Neale thereby defines genre as “a set of expectations” (1980: 51). Jameson claims about genre that it is “immanently and intrinsically an ideology in its own right” (Jameson 1981: 105) which in other words means that genre provides expectations and norms for the interpretation of its text through the viewer or reader. Each recipient signs an invisible contract when he watches or reads a specific genre. Its text and style tell them how to react and interpret the text and what to expect from it. The result of a plot can be anticipated by interpretation of each genre. Tudor (1974), Lichter et al. (1991) and Chandler (1997) note that genre defines the social world and embodies values and ideological assumptions. Lichter et al. focus on televisual genre and reflectors of the values of program-makers, yet can also reflect values that represent an era. Following that, Neale (1980) stresses that genres not only reflect but also shape such values (Neale 1980: 16). Thereby it’s not the economic interest that produces and fosters genre but it’s indeed the capitalist environment and economic factors that perpetuate a profitable genre (Neale 1980: 51). The genre contract mainly enables viewers and/or readers to judge a text and its reality status and satisfy expectations that are made upon the genre. Chandler notes that “familiarity with a genre enables readers to generate feasible predictions about events in a narrative (Chandler 1997a: 8) which in turn provide help for the interpretation. Because it can be understood as a means of construction of style and text, Fiske sees genre as “a means of constructing both the audience and the reading subject” (Fiske 1987: 114). Thus each genre can be understood as creating its own social reality.

7 When watching sitcoms, one expects to be amused and entertained. Sitcoms evoke positive feelings, humor and fun. Although this genre creates its own social reality and thus comprises a degree of realism, it presents a social world in which problems can easily be solved. The disruption of the narrative in each episode of a sitcom presents individual problems, such as not being able to pay rent, or not having insurance (examples from 2 Broke Girls). The problems and disruptions can be solved by sheer luck and are therefore are not transferable to society. However, this is how sitcom gives advice and constructs social meaning. It ridicules the presented problem by presenting it as an individual problems, allowing itself judgement over the protagonists who have to deal with the disruption. Humor leads to the problematic situation, but humor also leads out of there, packing the moral message in a u-turn construction. Thereby all bad an evil is constantly excluded from the problem-solving action in the sitcom, thus presenting a constant positive social world by sorting. Foremost, sitcom offers the idea that “all problems can be resolved with wit and humor within a short period of time” (Henry 1994: 86).

Role of television in society

The term society can be broadly defined. According to the Oxford Dictionary online (www.oxforddictionaries.com) ‘society’ can relate to “the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community”, but it can also refer to “an organization or club formed for a particular purpose or activity”. Both definitions have in common that society is understood in a paradigm of shared norms, values, orders and purposes. Culture exists within society which is in the Oxford Dictionary defined as “the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group”, but can also encompass “the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group”. Silverblatt has noted that cultures and thus their realities are neither singular nor univocal. Rather multi-cultures exist, which, in comparison to nature, are various and varietal. As people exist in these multi-cultures simultaneously, interpretation of the texts and messages, these cultures (and hence societies) disseminate cause various interpretations and eventually tension between them (Silverblatt et al. 1995: 49). Tension can also accrue from change within a society or culture. Social change is a global phenomenon that, Bourdieu (1980) defined as crisis that is a sudden structural change. In a stable social state, specific social rules structure the fields in which participants act and thus define their order. Bourdieu’s notion of crisis functions as a conjuncture that destabilized the general order. What then becomes a historical event can lead to question the pre-existing orders of a society and its ordinary experience and by this means effect the changing of a structured society. The dissemination and representation of the crisis and conjunction of serial effects is important to “maintaining the status quo” (Bourdieu 1980: 268) and implement the societal changes. Crucial hereby is the depiction of these certain causes on different modes of media, particularly on television which is the leading medium since the 1960s and plays a crucial role in disseminating public images and identities. Lull (1982) has argued that mass media such as television is capable of coordinating human interaction with social and cultural institutions and thus form a social 8 consensus that he defines as “a systematic form of interaction [that] takes place between television’s human senders and receivers” (10) which patterns the collective responses and thus understanding of society of audience members. French philosopher and sociologist Bourdieu (2001) called the previously explained phenomena a reality effect. Television creates images and social beliefs and suppositions by showing things and making people believe in what is shown. This entails the power to mobilize (248). For Bourdieu is at stake

in local as well as global political struggles, […] the capacity to impose a way of seeing the world, of making people wear ‘glasses’ that force them to see the world divided up in certain ways (…). These divisions create groups that can be mobilized, and that mobilization makes it possible for them to convince everyone else that they exist, to exert pressure and obtain privileges, and so forth. Television plays a determining role in all such struggles today (249).

Because television has the power to mobilize and thus to give life to ideas, it is important for the reinforcement of social change. But Bourdieu also points out that TV creates its own reality which determines its modes of representation and its economical and political system. Both lead to censorship within the medium, which again leads to “homogenization and political conformity” (245). Thereby TV uses modes of exaggeration and dramatization, that blur the reality in which the events took place. Fiske and Hartley (2003) describe television in a similar sense, mainly as it “occupies the center of its culture” being a “highly centralized institution of modern society” which is also “response to the culture’s felt need for a common center, to which the television message always refers. Its centralization speaks to all members of our highly fragmented society” (Fiske and Hartley in Gripsrud 2007: 482). The topics that are usually thematized in televisions’ messages with respect to social public issues such as “the degradation of family values, civil conduct and democratic values are often seen valuable for their impact they have on social constructs and thus give them meaning rather than for purely their content and narrative (Krijnen et al. 354). Silverblatt (1995) exemplifies TV’s social impact by encompassing certain conditions to its entertainment programming, thus reflecting its mainstream appeal in society. In this way it can be useful to look at the evolution of a certain genre over several decades to make the changes in society and culture visible (40).

Political economic context

Sitcoms and other television genres are nationally or internationally marketed products that are highly influenced by checks and balances from advertisers, network and production companies (Marc 1997: 11). For Vink “the first function of television is to sell an audience as huge and legitimate as possible” (Vink 1995: 214), that are brought to advertisers that interrupt shows and programming with commercials of their commodities. Berman argues that when the plot of a

9 specific show revolves around current issues and topics, it also is an economically motivated decision. By trying to be relevant in terms of social issues and opinion, networks want to generate higher ratings and attract a bigger audience. This explains their motivation to produce material that will encourage viewers to form an opinion (Berman; 1987: 7ff). Mintz adds that the topics that are being dealt with also represent the values and ideas of the producers and distributors who ultimately decide what audiences get to see. Producers and distributors in turn have to follow the governments’ regulations which is also why the degree of manipulation remains unclear (Mintz, 1998: 50). This leads to the conclusion that TV programs of any genre are “corporate products, mass consumption commodities and expressions of the underlying assumptions of the corporate culture that has come to dominate society (Henry 1994: 89). The purpose of television thus is to control all these areas, in particular the audience, as they have a pivotal role for the television industry’s revenues and market share. Since the thesis focusses on the American television industry, this market shall be further explained. American TV has been dominated by three national commercial networks (NBC, CBS, ABC) from the fifties to the 80ies, one public network (PBS) and several private channels (including the most popular and successful cable channel HBO these days) and accounted for 90 percent of all viewing time (Adler and Caterm 1976; Nelson 1979, Mittell 2009). During the emergence and diffusion of enhanced digitalization and media convergence, the Big Three have decreased to a market share of approximately 32 percent in the broadcasting market in 2005 (Hindman and Wiegand 2008). Their goal to attract the broad masses has remained, in order to generate advertising revenues that depend on the number of viewer. Kellner called this action the promotion of “capitalist commodities and consumer values, social conformity, law and order and authority figures, television’s advertising is one of the major managers of consumer demand, its ideas, images, information, and entertainment are ubiquitous forces of socialization” (Kellner 1981: 31). Likewise, in contemporary television, consensus among writers, producers, programmers, advertisers, and audiences leads to the increased omnipresence of socialization forces and television’s impact. Another crucial role is played by economic pressure that lastly determines what is being produced. Revenue and income is not only provided by owners and companies that pay for the commercials but also by governments that give subsidies. For Bourdieu “these factors, which are so crude that they are obvious even to the most simple-minded critique, hide other things, all the anonymous and invisible mechanisms through which the many kinds of censorship operate to make television such a formidable instrument for maintaining the symbolic order” (Bourdieu 2001: 246). Economic factors are crucial for the production of TV narrative and thus what is being given meaning to and what might be ignored due to the achievement of economic sales figures. Therefore televisions’ images and messages are economically planned and censored in the interest of the investor, disseminated to a broad mass public in order to reach many viewers and generate high revenue. As Chomsky and Herman (2002 [1988]) have put it, the societal interests are represented and distributed primarily by the representatives that control and finance the system. As structural factor Chomsky and Herman call out “ownership and control, dependance on major

10 finding sources and mutual interests and relationships” between the television makers and those that provide it with stories. Yet, as they further elaborate, these structural factors are not entirely controlling. “Various papers of media organizations have some limited autonomy” (xx) and thus individual values can influence the messages that are disseminated by television. On the one hand, television then is a means of entertainment, escapism and thus has to fulfill the task of creating a fantasy world. On the other hand, as a cultural good, it is bound to restrictions and producers’ ideas and understanding of what can and cannot be shown in order to earn high revenues with that cultural good.

TV as a cultural phenomenon

Television and inclosed its genre sitcom, like any other medium, encompasses different cultural phenomena. Popular culture does not only encompass and reflect upon social change, but “reinforces cultural attitudes, behavior, values, preoccupations” and thereby forms ideologies surrounding a specific genre or the society in general, which is “the manner or the content of thinking characteristic of a culture” or society (Silverblatt 47). Silverblatt refers to critical theorist Stuart Hall who discussed cultural shaping as a result of the presentation of a worldview (e.g. showing certain lifestyles and occupations) and the hereafter resulting ideology. By being the voice of society and sending out messages, television also educates and insulates the audience in regard to cultural values, attitudes and behaviors (47) and thus, one could argue, gives meaning to them. Following Hermes (2005), popular texts and thus cultural phenomena or popular culture help the viewer to understand who they are (1) and by this are able to construct meaning to society. Now, not only the nation forms the sense of belonging, right and duties and thus forms the citizenship, but the media, and hence also TV that form new collectives and enables a cultural citizenship (Hermes 2005: 1). As Hermes further suggests,

in (popular) culture, the world, history, relationships between people, and so on are represented to us by means of codes and conventions all of which have their own historical lineage, and that we interpret using the particular cultural knowledges that result from our biographies. Given the enormous range of codes and conventions that are possible, the tension produced by the contradictory forces of history, and the inherent drive in all art and culture to find new forms of expression, popular culture is a domain in which we may practice the reinvention of who we are (2005: 4).

Thereby, the codes and conventions lead to the “social construction of reality” (Pollock, 1997) and thus give meaning of the world, culture and society. Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, and Sasson (1992) note that “we walk around with media-generated images of the world, using them to construct meaning about political and social issues. And the special genius of this system [the media] is to make the whole process seem so normal and natural that the very art of social construction is invisible” (374).

11 II Sitcom and the understanding of the social world

Realism in sitcoms

Sitcom as a genre has been around for decades, rising in the 1950s on American television. Emerging from comedy, sitcom, short for situational comedy, encompasses comedic narrative within an ongoing plot with ongoing characters that deal with different circumstantial problems in every new episode. In many cases, the sitcom orientates on social events and social changes that it includes in its storyline (Marc 1997). Sitcoms thus pertain a claim for realism as they depict the real world. Yet, the use of laughing tracks and other aesthetic means can change its realistic perception. It has also been mentioned previously that television and thus its genres are eligible to reflect on societal changes and consequently maintain or re-establish the status quo and create social relevance for them. The question of interest here is, what kind of relevance or realism can be expected in sitcoms? What is the degree to the recognizability of the social world? During the last decades, the paradigm of sitcom has changed. In its inception in the 1950s, the portrayed characters were middle class, intact nuclear families who lived in the suburban areas. The topics revolved around patriarchal images, archetypal domestic set ups and domestic spouse conflicts. Early sitcoms established traditional images of family and fostered the ideal of a “sheltered environment dissociated from the real world” (Henry 1994:84), where neither economic nor social problems occurred. The presentation of a happy life didn’t seem to resemble reality but rather tried to give meaning to the sufferings from the depression in the 1920s and Second World War. These shows avoided showing dangerous images, and distributing dangerous messages. In fact, by its setting in which every house looked the same, they represented a common moral will that “ensured a peaceful and prosperous destiny” (Marc 1997: 43). It wasn’t until the 1970s, that the sitcom incorporated real world problems about individual family and shifted the previous domestic space to workspaces, friend circles and generally out in the open. After the protests of 1968 and the second wave of feminism, women were presented more equally to men, than in the domestic sitcom era, hence they shattered the patriarchy and domestic idealization of the preceding era (Henry 1994, Marc 1997). Yet in the 1980s, there was a shift back to more family-centered, family-oriented traditional values and morals in sitcom narrative visible. This was caused by the so-called Reagan-era in the United States of America that were led by Republican president Ronald Reagan that was determined by moral messages that were depicted on sitcoms as well (Marc 1997). Since then, the sitcom landscape has undergone further change and evolution such as the society that surrounds it. Now, sitcom tries to relate to its audience. Characters are supposed to resemble the viewers. But being a form of the entertainment industry, sitcom dramatizes events and conditions (Berman 1987). However, sitcom’s main subject is human manners and the development of social conscience. Sitcom deals with questions and issues about morality concerning feminism, finance, gay rights, personal freedom and so on. They participate in the dialogue and give answers to social

12 change and the social reality but as Berman notes, “they exploit social issues without always making sense of them (Berman, 1987: 18). As Berman explains, “some value or standard has to be asserted or it has to be given up. Some action has to be permitted or discouraged” (1987: 17). Yet, through the closeness that is produced by the sitcom narrative, mainly by depicting characters from everyday social life, the moral lesson might be more effectively internalized by the audience, because they get the feeling of seeing one of them (Martin 2011). The genre of sitcom is not the only fictional genre that claims a realistic and verisimilar approach towards the representation of society and social change. In his analysis Vink (1995) has noted that in Brazilian novelas, a type of soap opera which is a series that goes on without closure, the characters resemble members of society, because they have memory, are capable of learning from past experience and their lives revolve around a large, complex community (167). Beside that, telenovelas capture contemporary reality, everyday news and events. Their time shift is adapted to real life events such as christmas or carnival, while political and cultural events are almost simultaneously responded on in the story line, such as references to elections (171). Vink notes that Brazilian novelas quickly capture the temper of the moment (213), but as Grisprud (1999) connotes, often marginalize these events (60) by embellishing the reality (Vink 213). Yet, novelas work through news issues (…) by providing narratives with resonance to the everyday experience or the prevalent thinking of their viewing publics” (Gripsurd 60).

Method

In order to answer the research question, the TV series 2 Broke Girls was chosen in relation to the financial crisis. I have been watching 2 Broke Girls since its first broadcasting and can call myself an enthusiastic viewer. While watching the sitcom, I realized that some episodes narrative was closely linked to social events or seized on contemporary social trends. To find the suitable episodes for this paper, I read the scripts of each episode of the first three seasons which were broadcasted between 2011 and 2013. The plot summaries additionally available on the internet movie data base (imdb.com), where I found titles, short descriptions of each episode and bits of dialogue of each episode. By this means I chose five episodes of the three seasons in total and re- watched each of them. Hereby it was relevant that each episode was linked to either the financial crisis or any event that was connected to it, like the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Actual news footage was then compared to the plot and sitcom narrative and the dialogues, in order to verify the connection. By close contextual reading I made the connection and references to the social event in the narrative of the show. Moreover I argue that the show 2 Broke Girls is not only a representation of the financial crisis but the consequential poverty that affects especially twenty-somethings in the US. Beside the close reading of the dialogue and the narrative I also analyzed how wealth, respectively poverty is depicted in 2 Broke Girls. Therefor I examined how consumption was presented in the sitcom on the basis of the attire of the main figures, their buying processes of goods they either need or want, 13 the things they either like or mock, and lastly on general indicators, to which I count their living situation, which again concerns the neighborhood their fictional lives take place and the size and design of their apartment. While the examination of their house and their attire is visible throughout the seasons, the connection to their consumption and to the financial crisis will be made by reference to chosen episodes which reference again to the historical and social events. The chosen episodes are listed in the chart (figure 1).

2 Broke Girls Sex and the City Work “And the very christmas Thanksgiving” “Ring a Ding Ding” (Season 1, Episode 10) (Season 4, Episode 16) “And the '90s Horse Party” “The Caste System” (Season 1, Episode 5) (Season 2, Episode 10) Banking “And the '90s Horse Party” “Ring a Ding Ding” (Season 1, Episode 5) (Season 4, Episode 16) Consumption “And the very christmas Thanksgiving” “Bay of married pigs” (Season 1, Episode 10) (Season 1, Episode 3) “And strokes of Goodwill” “Lights, Camera, Relationship” (Season 1, Episode 3) (Season 6, Episode 5) “All or Nothing” (Season 3, Episode 10) Social trends “And the Kickstarter” “Bay of married pigs” (Season 3, Episode 2) (Season 1, Episode 3) Insurance “And the broken hip” (Season 2, Episode 17) Wall Street “To Market, To Market” (Season 6, Episode 1)

Figure 1: listing of analyzed topics and the related episodes in 2 Broke Girls and Sex and the City, full summary of the episodes can be found in the appendix.

After the analysis of 2 Broke Girls, I will compare the show to another, earlier sitcom, namely Sex and the City which aired on television from 1998 to 2004, to show that the representation of wealth and poverty has been handled differently before the financial crisis and that this representation shows a direct link to a contemporary economic social event or state. Here again, a close look at individual episodes and contextual reading helped choose the episodes. The main characters’ consumption habits and lifestyles were looked at throughout the six seasons of the series. A specific episode that revolves around financial issues was chosen to mark the different dealing of this topic in the narrative of the show. That there was only one episode that directly deals with topics of wealth and poverty shows how little emphasis was put onto this topic before the financial crisis and how relevant the topic on television narrative has become after the events. Using the constant comparative method (Glaser and Strauss 1967), I will lastly analyze the sitcoms The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma and Greg to show how each of the shows is linked to the political events and represents a certain era which is in this case the presidency of a specific

14 president of the United States. The political eras are in turn linked to a specific representation of certain topics that are listed in a tabular form in figure 2. The constant comparative method, as described by Glaser and Strauss, is an approach to generate theories inductively, in other words, to define a concept to a theory by using phenomenons or objects. Therefore, the goal is to explain, how the social world works and is given meaning to (Glaser and Straus 1967: 28ff.). The goal of this paper is to show that 2 Broke Girls’s way of dealing with a contemporary social event isn’t bound to just this series, but is a tool of the genre sitcom in general, that, through the help of comedy, addresses social issues and thus constructs meaning to society by representing the social world realistically. I will therefore use the frame of the genre and the frame of the historical period, to answer the research question.

The Fresh Prince Dharma and Greg Politics “The Fresh Prince Project” “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1) (Season 1, Episode 1) “Mistaken Identity” “He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father” (Season 1, Episode 6) (Season 1, Episode 9) “The Mamas and the Papas” (Season 5, Episode 23+24) Family Values “The Fresh Prince Project” “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1) (Season 1, Episode 1) “Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse” “The Mamas and the Papas” (Season 1, Episode 24) (Season 5, Episode 23+24) “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” (Season 6, Episode 14+15) Political engagement “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” “Mr. Montgomery Goes to Washington” (Season 6, Episode 14+15) (Season 1, Episode 8) American history “The Ethnic Tip” “He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father” (Season 1, Episode 17) (Season 1, Episode 9) Figure 2: listing of analyzed topics and the related episodes in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma and Greg

Methodology

The best research technique to study and analyze text is the qualitative content analysis. The reading of four sitcoms, 2 Broke Girls, Sex and the City, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma and Greg, will help to answer the overall research question, how the social reality is incorporated and represented in sitcom. By reading the text, the dialogues, looking at the setting and the plot of the sitcoms, I examine the structure of this genre and try to find an answer for my research question within the text. Qualitative content analysis is one of numerous research methods used to analyze text data. Qualitative content analysis goes beyond merely counting words to examining language for the purpose of classifying large amounts of text into an efficient number of categories that represent similar meanings (Weber 1990: 12). It can be a useful technique for allowing to discover and

15 describe the focus of individual, group, institutional, or social attention (Weber 1990: 70). The goal of content analysis is “to provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study” (Downe-Wamboldt, 1992: 314). Krippendorf defines content analysis as “one of the most important research techniques” (Krippendorf 1989: 403) that “seeks to analyze data within a specific context in view of the meaning someone attributes to them” (ibid.). He distinguishes qualitative content analysis from quantitative research. The latter aims to make “replicable and valid interferences from data to their context” (ibid.). He refers to the scholars Bernard Berelson and Harold D. Lasswell who emphasized “the quantification of the ‘what’ that messages communicate” (ibid.) which leads to identifiable elements that can be either verified or falsified. In contrast, in the qualitative content analysis, meaning is attributed to texts and images. Media content does not have to be described literal, rather its meaning and relevance are examined (ibid., 404f.). According to Krippendorff (1980), six questions must be addressed in content analysis:

1) Which data are analyzed? 1) Episodes and abstracts from four sitcoms

2) How are they defined? 2) The studied sitcoms are in chronological order: 2 Broke Girls, Sex and the City, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma and Greg. 3) What is the population from which they are 3) Each sitcom was broadcasted on American drawn? television from the early 90s until now. 4) What is the context relative to which the data 4) Sitcom is a televisual genre that uses are analyzed? techniques of comedy and disruptive plot narrative which is solved at the end of an episode. The sitcoms that are analyzed belong to four different historical eras and are analyzed in order to show that sitcom is a lens of society. 5) What are the boundaries of the analysis? 5) There are no boundaries, as the data is fully available online and the social circumstances that it belong to can be accessed on news-websites. 6) What is the target of the inferences? 6) The target is the research question, namely is it specific for the genre sitcom to be a lens of society and represent social reality and if so, how is it done? The phenomenon analyzed in this study is the social ability of sitcom. Table: line up of Krippendorf’s questions and answers 16 The scholars referred to in this study include Henri Bergson, John Fiske, David Marc, Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik. Even though the literature dates back to the 1980s and 1990s, it has to be noted that in the realm of social interrelation between society and television has mainly stayed the same as in its emergence since the 1950s. With the raise of the internet, social and mobile media the focus of research has shifted from traditional media to new media and has viewed television from different perspectives, such as its capability and changing mode of creating flow (Caldwell 2003, Gripsrud 2004, Urrichio 2004, Williams 1974) and user generated content (e.g. Poell and Borra 2011). However strong the impact of the internet has been on the media landscape, television still remains the leading medium. Therefore it is interesting to find out, whether its impact on society has changed since its emergence and whether the representation of society has shifted towards a creation of socially relevant sitcoms. What has changed is how the television industry deals with new competition and market strategy. However, this study focusses on traditional TV and its interrelation without social reality and therefore these scholars can give insights to the works of television. By applying their theories I can also establish whether or not television as a traditional medium has changed in order to convey messages and values and represent social reality.

17 III Sitcom and the financial crisis of the 2010s, the case of 2 Broke Girls and Sex and the City

Analyzing situational comedy shows is important because jokes pertaining to stereotypes are often present in the script which in turn can provide an understanding of society, social groups and the social world respectively. Images and messages have yet the ability to act upon the viewers, influence their attitude, behavior and thinking and foster those stereotypes. What is presented on television is assumed to be relevant to society and in turn construct meaning to society and help understand society understand itself (Silverblatt 1995, Keller 1981, Shrum 2012, Zettl 1998, Chandler 1997, Neale 1980). By the depiction of characters that appear close to real life, thus like real people, respectively like one of the audience members themselves, sitcom relates to the audience and gathers them closer to the story, thus is able to develop social consensus among the audience about certain issues and topics (Berman 1987: 8). This chapter proposes the question, how quickly sitcoms can react and incorporate social events and how this incorporation is narratively dealt with. Does the direct reaction to social (economic) events foster or obstruct the construction of images and stereotypes? In how far can television realistically depict cultural events and how do they influence the narrative? The American TV series 2 Broke Girls and Sex and the City are representing two eras of society and with it, television content and messages. 2 Broke Girls started in 2011, which can be classified as a post-financial-crisis-moment in the course of the topic, whereas Sex and the City premiered in the late 1990s and aired until 2004, which I will refer to as the pre-financial-crisis-era. Belonging to these different eras, both TV series deal differently with the issue of finance, money and economy. Yet, there is a connection via the cupcake business that the protagonists of 2 Broke Girls, Max and Caroline attempt to build, to which I will come back later.

2 Broke Girls and poverty

2 Broke Girls is an American comedy series that was created for Warner Bros. Television by the writer Michael Patrick King and writer and comedian Whitney Cummings. The TV show premiered on the American TV channel CBS on September 2011 during prime time and currently (2015) runs in its fifth season. Although the comedy series has received mixed response from critics, it was nominated for three Emmy Awards in 2012 and won the Emmy for Art Direction that year. Critics point out that the series uses racial stereotypes and relies on overly sexualized humor, using the connotations of so-called rape jokes and other sexist kind of humor.4 The plot of the series revolves around the lives of the two fictive women in their mid-twenties, Max Black and Caroline Channing. Together they share an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Caroline comes from a formerly financially safe and wealthy background. As the daughter of a multi-millionaire she could live the life of her dreams in New York’s High Society. Due to bad luck and her father’s fraudulent investment operations on the financial market, Caroline is left penniless and disgraced.

18 By contrast, her roommate Max grew up in poverty and a broken family. Together, they struggle economically and work as waitresses in a diner in their neighborhood Williamsburg, to earn an income. As a result of their backgrounds they have entirely different perspectives on life, yet they befriend each other, and attempt to build up a cupcake business together. The series shows their efforts to make the money to eventually open their business. Their economic struggles are represented throughout the show, for example when they can’t afford new clothes and therefore go to a thrift store,

Max Black: Lots of people cry at Goodwill. You go to France you eat snails; you come here you cry. (Season I, Episode 3 “And Strokes of Goodwill)

They also have to work two jobs in order to finance kitchen supplies that Caroline broke out of her clumsiness, and are therefore sleep deprived, tired and overwhelmed with their situation (Season I, Episode 10 “And the very christmas Thanksgiving”) When they finally have success and open their first, little cupcake store, they don’t cover insurance and explain that with their poverty, leading to them needing insurance because a customer broke his hip in their store and immediately sues them.

Han: Yeah, you're being sued. Caroline: What law school did you go to, Cal State-the-obvious? Max: Did you graduate magna come rarely? Han: I told you, I pulled out. But don't worry, accidents like this happen in stores all the time. That's why all businesses have insurance. Caroline. Well, not all businesses. Han: How could you not have insurance? You need to get protection. And I'm not talking about condoms. Caroline: We’re not idiots, Han.We had the insurance discussion. I was like, "Max, we need insurance." And she was like, "Do we have any money?" And I was like, "No." And she was like, "What are the chances something will happen?" And I was like, "A million to one. " And she was like, "I like those odds. Let's go get gummi bears." And I was like, “Okay. (Season 2, Episode 17 “And the broken hip)

This example shows sitcom’s ability to ridicule its protagonists but at the same time offering an advice to the audiences. The disruption of the plot here is that Max and Caroline don’t have insurance and therefore get in a situation where it is needed. Humor is presented in a u-turn construction. It leads them towards a problem, disrupts their lives, and makes them realize that they are not indestructible. But before they experience any significant damage, for example being sued by the guest, they find a solution and solve the problem. The moral message is linked to the presented individual problem, which is the fact that Max and Caroline should not think bad things would not happen to them in this case. Similarly, the solution to the problem is presented humoristic, thus the sitcom gives advice on different levels and gives meaning to the individual and neoliberal nature of the entire situation.

19 Cupcake, the connection between two eras

The 2 Broke Girls's wish to build the business seems constantly interrupted by their personal living conditions. It is yet very interesting that their pursuited career is represented by the cupcake, which was popularized by anther show in the 1990s and gained its fame. During this decade, the television series Sex and the City was critically acclaimed and celebrated, portraying the lives of four New York women in their mid-thirties who never seemed to have financial troubles throughout the run of the six season. They had successful careers, yet never seemed to work, were always dressed in expensive designer clothes and were always going to fancy restaurants. Financial struggles seemed nonexistent in the pre-financial-crisis-era before 2007. After Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw featured the ultimately most famous cupcake bakery Magnolia Bakery in one of their episodes, the sweet became a luxury item and thus a multibillion-dollar industry (Musser 2009, Goldman 2011, Klein 2012). After having been part on the show, not only Magnolia Bakery’s business grew, but several other cupcake bakeries opened up, selling cupcakes on average for 3 Dollars and making it thus a fashionable dessert (Klein 2012). In 2 Broke Girls, Max and Caroline try to leave their working-class lives behind by entering exactly this luxurious industry and trying to become successful in the cupcake business, as it is referred to by Caroline throughout the series. Although there is no evident connection between the two series prima facie, I argue that the cupcake is the linkage between them that represents a wishful state of wealth and prosperity and to simply leave the influences of the financial crisis behind. Supposedly by luck I have made this linkage, though I would prefer to characterize this lucky finding as serendipity. Louis Pasteur’s saying, as quoted by Dunbar and Fugelsang (2005), “Chance favors only the prepared mind” helps to understand the occurrence of luck during research. The term was first introduced by Horace Walpole in 1754 when he explained discoveries that were made by accident and sagacity, without having been in quest of (Rosenman 1994). The term serendipity has the connotation of happy accident which can only be exploited by a clever, or in less judgmental words, prepared person. Researchers who recognize serendipitous can generate important research ideas (Stosskopf 2010, Rosenman 1994). As discovery in a cultural, humanistic and partially anthropological context, a discovery is the “identification of something that will allow the person identifying it to alter their perspective on a given theme or problem and, naturally enable them go forward in the knowledge of their product” (Hazan and Hertzog, 2012). As such I would also classify my discovery of the cupcake as the linkage between the TV series. The cupcake appears to me as they symbol of wealth whose wealth and position was shaped in the pre-financial-crisis-show Sex and the City and on that the post-financial-crisis show 2 Broke Girls tries to build on. Furthermore, the cupcake symbolizes a frivolous behavior of its consumers who can afford to spend their money. Of all possibilities to build up a business today, the creators of 2 Broke Girls who are also the creators of Sex and the City, chose the cupcake, which symbolizes wealth without being the prerogative of the rich as classic symbol like jewelry. Even though cupcakes only made one appearance on Sex and the City (Season 3, Episode 5: No Ifs, Ands, or Butts), this one had considerable influence on its popularity.

20 However, the market entrance to a competitive and successful market branch has become much more difficult since the big financial crisis in 2007, which is also know as the Global Financial Crisis and was considered the biggest crisis since the Big Depression in the 1930s. The results of these events were increased and prolonged unemployment, numerous evictions and foreclosures. Several business failed, international wealth such as consumer wealth declined over the next years and it caused a downturn in economic activity which lead to the 2008-2012 global recession and several national crisis throughout the world8. The glamour of the world that Sex and the City portrayed has vanished to the portrayal of the lives of 2 Broke Girls, as is also suggested in the title. The title thus captures the dramatic changes of our society and economy between 1998 and now. The events of the Financial Crisis, though not directly mentioned, seem to have been incorporated into the plot of the series 2 Broke Girls.

Impact of the financial crisis as shown on 2 Broke Girls

In almost every episode their financial situations, respectively their lack of money and savings, seems to dominate the narrative. Most realistically the series shows the struggles of mid- twenty-aged persons, when Caroline discovers Max’ debt and wants to help her pay off her student loan (Season I, Episode 5). This episode will further be the focus of this analysis and case study. In this episode, that was aired on October 17, 2011, Caroline and Max throw a 90s-theme party in order to make money for their cupcake business, but more so to earn money to pay off Max’s student loan.This episode captured the reality of many young people who are unable to pay off their student debts. This episode came up during the Occupy Wall Street Movement which started on the same day as the broadcast of the episode. Occupy Wall Street was about social and economic inequality, corruption and mostly about the unbalanced influence of corporations on government, particularly the financial services sector. Occupy Wall Street’s slogan “We are the 99%” refers to income inequality and wealth distribution (OccupyWallStreet-About)6. A lot of students and young professionals participated in the Movement because they were suffering from high debts and low wages. While a lot of TV shows avoid the unpleasant topic of finances, 2 Broke Girls openly discusses them and shows the downsides of economy: poverty, debts and difficulties. The topic of money and finances is represented with a high depth of financial literacy and considerations of societal values. When Caroline discovers Max debt, she tries to figure out the interest rates on Maxs’ credit cards and points out the importance of paying down the student loan debt to avoid bankruptcy. By this example it becomes visible that media now seems to be able to capture the reality of many young and generally working-class people and thus shows that the days of glamorous rich white people are over7. Quite realistically this scene also shows the fear of a lot of young people who went to college to have a better future and have to start this life by paying off huge loans.

21 Caroline: You can’t just keep lying to collection agencies. You have to pay your bills. Max: I have a system. I pay everyone 5 dollars a week, just enough to keep hem from freaking out. It’s the methadone-clinic banking system. Caroline: That is a complete waste of money. Five dollars won't even cover the interest you're accruing.What's the interest rate on your credit card? Max: Dunno. My interest rate in this conversation is zero. (…) Caroline: Max, I interned at Merrill Lynch. Let me help you with this. It's the least I can do. I had nowhere to go. You took me in. Let me repay my debt to you by helping with your debt to everyone in the world, apparently. Caroline: What is this a student loan? Oh, my God.Max, you went to college? That wasn't a judgment. (…) Max, a student loan is the worst bill you can ignore. It can never be expunged. (…) Max: Listen, everybody's broke in their 20s. (Season 1, Episode 5 “And the 90s Horse Party”)

When the girls throw a party to earn their money, Carline’s wealthy ex-boyfriend shows up, who separated from her, when he found out that she became insolvent. Caroline then hides from him. Max uses this moment to ask her, whether she felt better luxuriating in unearned wealth and whether it was shameful then to earn her own money by working hard for it.

Caroline: I can't face him because I'm a waitress. Last time he saw me, I was a billionaire in a townhouse. Now I'm a waitress in a walk-in freezer. Max: So, when you were laying around on your trust fund, doing nothing every day, having other people scrub your toilet, you could hold your head up high? But now that you support yourself by earning your own money, that's somehow shameful? Who cares what he thinks? He is the guy who just paid $100 to party with a horse. He's the loser, not you. (Season 1, Episode 5 “And the 90s Horse Party”)

In this scene, the show showed a shift of society’s understanding of value from using unearned wealth to working hard for themselves, to being financially responsible for themselves. This moment can be seen as setting 2 Broke Girls, in particular Max and Caroline, as part of the 99 percent of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which are understood as the vast majority of society that has financial problems but values their employment and working hard for money.

Sex and the City and financial issues that never become a real problem

While in the series Sex and the City the four women talked about their hard earned money, their interaction never seemed to revolve about their actual job, but rather about the problems they had as women in successful careers, for example having to prove themselves to men. The era of the society of Sex and the City was characterized by a stable economy and economic growth throughout the nineties, steady job creation, low inflation, rising productivity, and a surging stock market that 22 resulted from a combination of rapid technological changes and sound central monetary policy. It started after the end of the early 1990s recession, and ended with the start of the early 2000s recession, following the bursting of the dot com bubble that had no visible effect on the narrative of Sex and the City, because the dot com bubble didn't impact as many people as the big financial crisis in 2008. The messages sent out by that series rather dealt with feminist questions than social values about money and financial issues. It even seemed that financial issues never were a problem. Even when Carrie realized she had spend over 40.000 thousand dollars on shoes and thus again was unable to pay her apartment, this problem was resolved by a loan of her friend Charlotte who gave Carrie her wedding ring.

Carrie: No. I am. The lady at the bank said I was an unattractive candidate for a loan. Where did all my money go? I know I've made some. Miranda: At $400 a pop, how many of these do you have? Fifty? Carrie: Come on. Miranda: A hundred? Carrie: Would that be wrong? Miranda: 100 times 400, there's your down payment. Carrie: That’s only $4,000. Miranda: No, it's $40,000. Carrie: I spent $40,000 on shoes and I have no place to live? I will literally be the old woman who lived in her shoes. (Season 4, Episode 16 “Ring a Ding Ding”)

Because Carrie had spend so all this money on shoes, and because, as she later states but what seems to be her general lifestyle, likes her “money right where I can see it. Hanging in my closet” (Carrie Bradshaw in Season 6, Episode 1 “To Market, To Market”), she doesn’t have assets in the bank and therefore is unable to get a loan in her bank.

Banker: Okay. Let's look at your assets here at the bank. You may be able to use them as collateral for the loan. It says here that you have $700 in your checking account. Carrie: I just paid my credit card bill. Banker: And $957 in savings. Carrie: Look, Linda. You're single, right? I'm sure you can appreciate my problem. I just broke up with my fiancé which, trust me, is traumatic enough. And now I have 25 days to either find the money to buy my place or I am out on the street. Banker: Do you have any other income, besides the column? Carrie: No. But I was chosen as New York magazine's best pick for city columnist. I was the pick over Pete Hamill. Banker: What about your assets outside the bank? Property, stocks, bonds? Carrie: No. Banker: I’m sorry, Ms. Bradshaw, but you are not a desirable candidate for a loan. Carrie (voice over narration): After assessing what little assets I had, I realized I would have to change my lifestyle. (Season 4, Episode 16 “Ring a Ding Ding”)

23 In the same episode it becomes clear that money and financial problem presented an uncomfortable issue in general. Charlotte for instance didn’t want to discuss money neither with her friends nor in general and thus felt uncomfortable during the conversation with her friends who wanted to help Carrie. Charlotte instead avoided looking at her and changed the subject as soon as possible. Carrie then addresses how she feels about Charlotte’s behavior which leads to a fight that shows Charlotte opinion that finances should be dealt with privately.

Carrie: Why didn't you offer me the money? Charlotte: I knew you were going to say that. Carrie: I wouldn't take it. Charlotte: Then what does it matter if I offer it or not? Carrie: Because I would have offered it to you. You're my friend. Charlotte: Money and friendship don't mix. My father and his friend Paul were never the same… Carrie: We’re not talking about your father and his friend Paul. We're talking about you and your friend, me. And for the record, I am aware that I have some financial messiness hat I have to clean up, and to that end, I am looking into some freelance magazine work. I have been offered $4 a word at Vogue. That is a lot. Most people get $2. So, yes, I have made some mistakes, and, Charlotte, you have made some mistakes. When you were making those mistakes, I was sitting across from you at the coffee shop, nodding and listening and supporting you. I was not sitting at a Chinese restaurant, turning away when you should have been looking at me. And what kills me is, you don't even have to work. You're volunteering. Charlotte: I love you. But it's not my job to fix your finances. You're a 35 year old woman. You need to learn to stand on your own. (Season 4, Episode 16 “Ring a Ding Ding”)

In no further episode this issues was discussed again. Carrie’s loan and one-time financial problems seemingly disappeared. It became again a private issue. While 2 Broke Girls indeed does portray a society that is shattered by the aftermath of the financial crisis, “Sex and the City provides an excellent example of how “hegemonic feminism” (Doudaki 2012: 5) looks, how it thinks, and what it does. ‘‘White, middle-class women unwilling to be treated like second-class citizens in the boardroom, in education, or in bed” (ibid.). The hegemonic and arguably hedonistic lifestyle of the women in Sex and the City is constantly represented in their self-centredness, and thus a hedonistic postmodern consumer culture is marked. In this culture “the individual is primary looking for the possibility of desire, for desire itself, and its greatest fear is the lack of it. The agony of identity for the postmodern individual contains the agony of desire and the quest for its fulfilment through pleasure” (Doudaki 2012: 7). The pleasure in the series is defined by men and sex, as the title suggests, but even more so by their interest in fashion and other consumer goods that the four women can’t seem to get enough off and use as an act of self-expression. What they strive to achieve in life is “having it all”, a phrase that rises often within the narrative of the series. “For the women in Sex and the City, it often appears as though hedonism and narcissism have displaced the masochist position they occupy in patriarchal structures of desire” (Arthurs 2003: 93). The series thus represents a postfeminist world 24 in which woman are financially independent (from men) and have their two life spheres, the private, domestic and their professional one, whereby the professional one is inferior to the personal one and often seems interrupted by the latter. Thereby, their jobs become another form of self-expression (Arthurs 2003:84). Even the exploration of their sexuality represent their agency in their consumer- driven lifestyle. By putting the occupations of the four women in the background and focussing on their sexual relationships and consumption, Sex and the City seems to devalue the effort to earn money, yet it represents the women as autonomous and independent, set free from patriarchal ideologies that were leading the media (Lorié 2011, Arthurs 2003). Arthurs mentions hereby the cultural influence this portrayal of a hedonistic lifestyle had in the 1990s and was called the “bourgeois bohemians”, which have

“replaced the Yuppies and the former dominant class in the US (and other Western economies). The key feature of this new class fraction is their ability to reconcile the contradictions between bourgeois and bohemian values and lifestyles. Sexual permissiveness, that in the bohemian movements of the 1960s was articulated with radical anti-capitalist political values, has been re-articulated to conform, not only with the materialist priorities of consumer culture, but also with the emancipatory politics of the 1970s and 1980s. One effect has been to free white, middle-class women from the sexual constraints required by bourgeois respectability (Arthurs 2003: 86).

Sitcom’s representation of finances as dependent on the historical era in which the sitcom is made: Before and after the financial crisis

The protagonists of Sex and the City all have successful careers and jobs that they love. Each character’s profession appears as a component of her identity, as something she choose deliberately and not by last chance. Their successful careers enables all of them to be financially independent and live autonomously and thus to shape their identity as they wish, without restrictions, as Max and Caroline have to deal with. This is why consumption plays an important role in the series. Because, as mentioned above, they indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle, where the aim is to have it all (Season 3, Episode 10 “All or Nothing”), where even men are compared to consumer goods such as fashion and where therefore sex is partially linked to consumption, preferably represented by Carrie’s job as a sex columnist (Arthurs 2003, Akass and McCabe 2004).

Carrie: He was like the flesh and blood equivalent of a DKNY dress. You know it's not your style, but it's right there, so you try it on anyway. (Season 1, Episode 3 “Bay of Married Pigs”)

Hence, the value of economic independence is higher than the accumulation of wealth, which appears as the leading topic in 2 Broke Girls. Although they openly discuss their poverty, 2 Broke Girls always has their goal in mind, that is their own business. In Sex and the City wealth is not sought of, it exists. The four women are highly respected in their fields of occupation and don’t 25 have to worry about their economic state. Therefore Sex and the City displays wealth through consumption, fashion and style rather than to show how it's earned, while 2 Broke Girls focusses exactly on the process of making money and all its obstacles. Thus, in 2 Broke Girls the consumer lifestyle seems no longer neither desirable nor achievable. Max and Caroline seem to be independent from men and mainly autonomous, yet they are struggling to pay their rent and work multiple jobs. They can’t even afford to buy a new blender even though they are working several jobs (Season 1, Episode 10). As a result, they are mocking almost all zeitgeist and consumer trends in the series, for example Cronuts, an inventory from a New York City Bakery in 2013 that had a short popular moment, Starbucks, and Whole Foods. They use Kickstarter to generate money for new pants for Caroline, and the highest investor gets to hit Caroline in her face for his financial effort.

Max: Kickstarter, that's the website where strangers give money for crap that no one in the real world would invest in, right? Caroline (for her video for Kickstarter): I can't tell you my name, and I can't show you my face because I'm too ashamed. Sadly, I find myself in a situation where I am no longer able to provide myself with the garments I need in order to be the best in my day-to-day life. I'm aware that this is not a problem for everybody. (Season 3, Episode 2 “And the Kickstarter).

Meanwhile, Sex and the City builds their whole narrative upon consumption. Not only fashion items are consumed, but also men who represent yet another good that is “tried on, adjusted” and replaced. “Sex and the City is able to exploit fully the glossy women’s magazines’ consumerist approach to sexuality, in which women’s sexual pleasure and agency is frankly encouraged as part of a consumer lifestyle and attitude” (Arthur 2008: 85, 94). It is however notable that Sex and the City was not produced for the network channel and thus for a broad audience. Instead the focus was set on narrow audiences from its choice of airing position on a cable channel, namely HBO. It was made not as prime-time network TV but as subscription cable television. During the multiplication of channels, among which many cable channels appeared which were privately monetized by the audience, the program could be diversified and particularly social groups or taste cultures could be addressed, on other words the cable channel are marketed to niche audience. The audience as a direct purchaser of the channel has a clear economic relation to the product. In this sense, Arthurs describes Sex and the City’s addressees as “affluent, white women as a segment of the market, in which it re-mediates the address developed in the established women’s media, namely glossy women’s magazines” (Arthurs 2010: 84). The representation of the working class girls Max and Caroline whose income mainly comes from their waitress jobs is furthermore depicted in the setting of the show. They share an apartment in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, which is known for its low rents and many young artists who move their to aspire a career. Though the area is being gentrified since a few years9, it is still the most affordable neighborhood of the hip and stylish ones that young adults can identify with. However, the size of their apartment, consisting of a big living room, a separate bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and a yard, seems unrealistically to be afforded by two seemingly 26 broke girls. In 2 Broke Girls, on the one hand, the series manages to show profound accuracy in financial topics, on the other hand however, the series jokes about what it represents, that being the working class. While, like in the analyzed episode, being able to make their own money and paying off debts is portrayed as wortwhile, the working class itself is constantly the matter of mocking throughout the show. One of the recurring jokes is about prostitution which according to the show seems as the only other option in their situation, which is being poor10. Aside from that, Max who has always suffered from poverty, is depicted contrary to their believe of the working class. She is witty and smart and her poverty is not attributed to laziness. Instead she works hard, has two jobs in the course of the series and no fear of her future because, as she utters at one point, she is “too poor to have a fear of success”, thereby describing her daily struggles that leave no time to contemplate possible future success.

Emotional realism on sitcoms and in the representation of society

As presented in the previous chapters, media authenticity, in other words representation of the real life on TV, may remain a preferable state, because TV is a cultural good that underlies restrictions and boundaries from television’s agencies, particularly advertisers, governments and producers whose aim is to attract large audiences. In so far, television does not provide the audience with a realistic social world but rather with a symbolic world that represents a wishful state of the viewers and thus social and cultural values. Thereby we don’t see the objective social reality, but something to wish for (Fiske and Hartley 1978). And 2 Broke Girls ties on to the intriguing idea of showing what is implemented in social values, namely having a big apartment, good friends and a job to love. Since the viewer knows that waitresses earn a low salary and assumes based on his or her knowledge of economy that mid-twenty-year-olds have a wasteful use of money, they might assume that the protagonists of 2 Broke Girls are, as the title intends, indeed broke and will struggle to build up their business. Yet, the series can’t portray the whole misery of the lives of two poor girls because it has also to fulfill viewers’ needs such as their demand for entertainment, escapism and the portrayal of a state-of-mind. Seeing the 2 Broke Girls live in an appropriate small apartment as it would probably happen in reality, viewers could get the feeling of watching a Reality TV show format rather that a fictional comedy show. Suggested by the need of escaping ones’s own world when watching television, viewers want to forget about their problems and personal issues and escape to a different world, maybe a world, that seems more aspirational than theirs, maybe a world, that gives them hope for their own world. The representation of the social world might be (partially) unrealistic or un-verisimilar, but viewer might develop emotional attachment to the characters because of what they experience which in turn makes the sitcom realistic. Hall calls this phenomenon “emotional realism” (2003: 635). Media and televisual realism describes media representation to the real world (ibid., 624) that can go to a point where the real world may appear different (Busselle and Bilandzic 2008: 255). Emotional realism embraces a rather unrealistic representation of the social world, but affects the

27 viewer by the experiences of the portrayed characters and thereby leads to emotional engagement with their own reality. The problems that Max and Caroline experience may seem individually linked to them, but show that they will always find a solution and be able to re-arrange the status quo, thereby reinforcing the viewer that he will they are able to do so as well. This is why the comedy series makes jokes about its own narrative plot, the poor working- class girls mock the whole working class, which for example in the analyzed episode represents the 99 percent of the Occupy Movement. By being a part of what they satirize they invite the viewers to laugh about themselves, offer them simultaneously the ambition and believe that everyone can build a business of they are willing to work hard enough. The series aims for a realistic, almost literal representation of some issues, respectively the portrayal of Max and Caroline, two mid-twenty- year-olds who want to build up the life of their dreams with limited possibilities like not having money. But it also leaves the viewers with desirable motifs, like portraying the monetary limited girls living in a big apartment in an inexpensive neighborhood. Fiske (1988) has noted that a television show’s popularity can be attributed to the audience’s ability to identify with a show’s protagonist, stating, ‘‘all television texts must, in order to be popular, contain within them unresolved contradictions that the viewer can exploit in order to find within them structural similarities to his or her own social relations and identity’’ (392). 2 Broke Girls seemingly realistic representation of the shattered economy and the working class is supposed to be an incentive, to change social norms and values. By using the cupcake business as a symbol, it is arguably that the pre-financial-crisis-era, respectively the era of Sex and the City, is a preferable condition, where women (and human beings in general) were autonomous and independent and consumerism was celebrated. Finally, beside the financial problems that 2 Broke Girls face, their friendship seems to overcome every issue. They support and help each other without being overly sentimental, in other words they dare to be honest with each other and to argue, though they always find reconciliation.

Max: This is not what I think. I'm not sick of you. Caroline: Really? 'Cause when I see it in writing, it feels like you are. Max: It’s not me. (…) Caroline: It’s not fine. It sucks. I'm hurt. You're the one person I care most about. Max: No, you are the one person I care the most about. Caroline: Well, right now it doesn't feel that way. Max:It has to feel that way! You are my best friend, Caroline! I love you. (Season 3, Episode 2 “And the Kickstarter”)

Thus, in sitcom problems are solved in order to establish comfort and a good feeling. Sex and the City also validates female friendship, and presents it as a substitute for family and men and marriage respectively (Doudaki 2012: 7; Arthurs 2010: 95). Beyond the financial issues that 2 Broke Girls face and overcome by their strong company, the women in Sex and the City deal with other issues that they live through together. Having a nice apartment, money, and a full closet of designer clothes, they face the problems of aging, sickness and relationship problems. These issues represent 28 a social world that has different values than the world in 2 Broke Girls. Even though both worlds put emphasis on the value of friendship, Sex and the City seems to go back to a world that value the basic needs, namely being healthy and in love. In conclusion, both sitcoms create different social worlds.

29 2 Broke Girls Sex and the City Work/Job Their job and their pursuit of a All four women have successful career is a constant struggle and careers, they work as an art dealer, thus topic of the show. Waitress is a lawyer, a columnist and a a low class job, a servant. The publicist, which are highly building of their own business, considered jobs. Their work never the cupcake shop, singles out as a represents an issue, as they are complicated path because they constantly represented as even don’t have money to open to more successful than their male neither invest nor get a loan. counterparts. However, working for their own m o n e y i s r e p r e s e n t e d a s something worthwhile and achievable, even if it’s a little. Banking Analysis of interest rates and Carrie asks for a loan and isn't importance of paying back debt is considered a desirable candidate realistically represented by because she doesn’t have any applying actual interest rates and savings. However, she doesn’t market data. Paying back their have debts either. debt however requires them to In six seasons, a bank is only come up with creative idea on visited or generally addressed how to make extra money. once. Consumption Shopping at Goodwill Stores and Shopping is a main topic in the Thrift Stores, purchase of new and sitcom, when even men are needed items, such as cooking metaphorically tried on like a supplies demands Max and “DKNY dress”, consumption Caroline to start another job. takes place in the best restaurants of New York, in designer stores in Manhattan and once Carrie walks into a Thrift Shop or Discount Store, she makes fun of it and calls it unbelievable. Social Trends Social trends of contemporary None of the four women struggles culture are a matter of jokes in to make a living, so social trends many episodes. They mock and contemporary zeitgeist are Kickstarter, instead of using it very important to them. They themselves, Cronuts, hipster, and were the newest shoes by designer any celebrity that makes the news M a n o l o B l a h n i k , g o t o to name a few. Thus, the address restaurants, bars and cafes “du the divide between rich and poor jour” and want to the hippest and that for poor people, these events, parties and locations of the things don’t matter as they have to city. Being in means having it all, make a living first. which seems to be the most important achievement in SatC. Social trends represents status. Insurance They didn’t get insurance (for their first, failed Cupcake store) because they didn’t have the money and didn’t think it was important, before facing the problems of an injured costumer who sues them.

30 2 Broke Girls Sex and the City Wall Street Wall Street is represented by Wall Street is presented as a Caroline’s father who took part in joyful and fun environment where fraudulent investments. Thus the ringing the bell to introduce a new Wall Street is shown as greedy, stock is a big celebration. Girls unstable construction that can’t discuss investing. function. The latter is in turn Next to the positive representation represented by the former of the Wall Street, a Wall Street socialite Caroline who has to deal trader is presented as greedy fraud with sudden, unexpected poverty. who gives out unauthorized A result that can also be advice and is looked for by the transferred to the financial crisis FBI. and its outcome. Figure 3: Summary of analyzed topics and results in 2 Broke Girls and Sex and the City

31 IV Sitcom and US politics in the 90s and early 2000s, social political values on screen. The case of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma & Greg

In the previous chapter, I argued that the representation of the social world and proximity to contemporary social events is a means of narrative of the sitcom 2 Broke Girls that can also be traced in another sitcom which was broadcasted ten years earlier, namely Sex and the City. Both sitcoms thematize the economic state of an era by conceptualizing events that revolve around economy. In 2 Broke Girls, the financial crisis, the resulting poverty and speculative investment banker represent the contemporary social world and thus show its significance outside television. In Sex and the City that takes place in the late 1990s, early 2000s, finances are dealt with on another level, precisely the broad consumption and a luxurious lifestyle. Thereby finances don’t appear as an issue and are rather a resource for fun and spontaneous activities and a freedom to choose from many options. These options are represented in both fashion and men choices as the series provides the idea of “having it all” (quote from the series, season 3, episode 10 “All or Nothing”). In the late 1990s, having it all was indeed probable because the American economy experienced an investment boom that lead to an extended period of economic prosperity (Tevlin and Whelan 2000; Jerman and Quadrini 2002). Both sitcoms can be understood as a lens to understand the world they are set in. They represent the social and particularly economic reality of each era by emphasizing the particular topic. While 2 Broke Girls which is set after the financial crisis, selects issues revolving around money or not having any respectively, Sex and the City which is set during the financial boom, presents money as no problem at all, especially for middle-class women in their thirties. Both series do however emphasize the strong value of friendship. Thus, these sitcoms give the social world meaning, by fostering ideals of each era, either having it all, or accepting the impossibility of it. But can this kind of representation and giving meaning be transferred on the genre of sitcom in general? Are there other ways that represent the social reality and that serve as a lens to the world in other historical periods? If yes, how is it handled in earlier sitcoms? In the 1990s, besides the financial boom, two particular political orientations structured the image of the United States. In the first half of the decade, President George H.W Bush represented the Republican Party, and in the second half the Democrats, represented by Bill Clinton, were the leading political party. The sitcoms The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma and Greg which were broadcasted during this time, capture the essence of the different parties and presidencies, epitomizing the social values that were disseminated during the different presidencies. Social values are a representation of the current political orientation of a society, expressing what the politics stands and fights for and thus also linked to political practices. Karwat (1982) defines values as “abstract ideas of phenomena” (198) that are “of lasting significance to the satisfaction of needs of political subjects. These ideas are a subjective reflection of the objective needs of social subjects; they express the subject's attitude toward its own needs. Therefore, it seems right to call values ideas of needs” (198). As politic values, Karwat describes needs that are indivisible entireties of societies as a whole that are represented by individuals (199) and are important to a certain kind of social practice which Karwat understands as politics. He further

32 defines politics as “shaping (regulating, consolidating, transforming) of political relations” (200). However, political needs aren’t necessarily consistent with values of an entire society just like political practice represents the politics of a certain class or social certain group, like the division between Republicans and Democrats in the United Stated of America has divergent interests for their country and moreover themselves. Thus, politics “is a reflection of the needs of a given large social group and a view of the needs of the whole society in the light of its needs. And last, the social origin of politics is connected with the differentiation, discreteness, incomplete replaceability, and conflict of social needs, accompanied by a conflict between the range of needs and the range of opportunities for satisfying them” (Karwat 202). While socio-political values express the political orientation of a regime, they also relate to the norms of a culture. Santrock (2007) defines values as the means to give life meaning (465), and what allows judgement over good or bad and thus defines what is important and worthwhile in a society. Values that are embodied by a political party can also be translated into popular cultural values when they are seized on by the media industry. Macé (2002) underlies the multiplicity of values in a society that combined, create an “average” culture (242) which gets highlighted in its representation on television, for example in sitcoms. Political practice fortifies specific values by giving them stronger meaning and importance than others. The Republican Party enhances family values stronger than the Democrats for instance and thus gives the family as a construct a higher meaning than the Democrats do. Karwat’s notion of “values as ideas of needs” therefore emphasizes the high significance that certain values hold. He further states that “political practice embraces political goals that express needs of society-wide significance (…). Political activities are pursued with political goals in view which determine their specific character, and this characteristic governs political practice” (199). Hence, political and social values determine what is considered significant and meaningful in a society and culture and provide ideas for popular culture values. With this in mind, the interrelation between the representation of social and political values and their depiction on television prompts question.

• How does the current political practice influence the depiction of socio-political and social values and social groups?

• In how far is the political practice incorporated in the narrative of a series?

• How does the series represent socio-political values and thus the political practice of a time?

To answer these question, I will offer the series The Fresh Prince of Bel Air as example that aired after Reagan’s presidency during George H. W. Bush’s governance. I argue that Republican values and ideas are told in the series in order to distribute its messages in the audience. As it will later become clear, the characters of the show are supporter of the Republican party and represents strong family values and republican beliefs. Due to their blackness they also show an adaption to white culture by their behavior, attitude and social class that renders them “raceless" (Ducille 2011: 417). Ducille states that if “blackness is the irreducible sign of difference (…), then whiteness is the

33 quintessential sign of in-difference — that is, not difference” (ibid.). The whiteness of the black characters is juxtaposed by the title figure, the fresh prince, who appears to remind them of their heritage and stands indeed out in his difference to the others. Democrat Bill Clinton followed the presidency of Bush, and on behalf of that I argue that the changing political landscape transformed onto television and sitcom narrative. To show how politics influences sitcoms, I will analyze the series Dharma and Greg, that was broadcasted on American television among others during Bill Clinton’s second term (1997-2001) and captures his attempts to unification (Skowronek 1997: 458) by relating two entirely different families with different believes and attitudes to each other. I believe that their social clashes represent political discrepancies that Clinton had to deal with during his first term (1993-1997) and the democratic values that encompass diversity, disparity and celebrate openness.

Reagan, Bush, their values and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is an American television sitcom that aired from 1990 to 1996 for six seasons and 148 episodes on NBC. Depicting a Black family, it was critically acclaimed, having won and been nominated for several awards and was popular among black and white audiences alike (Internet movie data base, imdb.com). The show is about a successful, wealthy Black family that lives in Bel Air, an affluent neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. They take Will, a street-smart teenager and their nephew to live with them. Will used to live with his mother in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father has left the family. Due to troubles with other kids in his neighborhood in West Philadelphia, an area that is known for a high criminal rate, his mother decides to send him to live with his aunt and uncle. Will is the epitome of a black teenager who uses slang, loves rap- and hip hop-music and is an extraordinary basketball player. Throughout the series he shows his issues concerning authority, making many jokes about authority figures, and superiors. His uncle Phillip Banks is a successful attorney who later, in the middle of the series, becomes a judge. His aunt Vivian Banks is an English Professor and also teaches Black history. In the episode “The Ethnic Tip” (Season 1, Episode 17) for instance, Will blames his school, the Bel Air Academy, a preppy private High School, for not teaching the entire history, but focussing only on the white part. Will proposes a black history class be instituted at the school. To his surprise his aunt teaches the class and also teaches Will that he doesn’t know as much as he thought about his background, heritage and history.

Vivian: Will, why did you want to take a class in black history? Will: Because I'm interested in it. Vivian: Are you really? Will: Hey, I read the autobiography of Malcolm X like three times. Vivian: And that makes you interested? Will: That's a very important book. Vivian: Will, you can read the book, you can wear the shirt, you can even shout out 34 the slogans, but unless you know ALL the history behind it, you're trivializing the entire struggle. Now you started something very good. Now it's up to you to finish it. (Season 1, Episode 17 “The Ethnic Tip”)

The fact that Will’s interest in his Black heritage is limited to few, sometimes stereotypical means, shows his interaction with the Blacks and also represents an outdated way of the depiction of African-Americans. Later in the analysis I will come back to this issue. Additionally, Will lives with his three cousins and a butler in the huge Bel Air mansion. Corrizzato describes each of the three cousins, starting with Hilary, the eldest as a “snotty Valley Girls concerned mostly with shopping and her social status”, Carlton as a “preppy teenager with snobbish behavior”, and who is constantly interested in his school, school activities and the country club, and Ashley, the youngest daughter of the Banks, as a very impressionable character” (Corrizzato, 2012). While the elder two cousins question Will’s style and attitude that is both colorful and dynamic, Ashley is fascinated by Will and often follows his ideas. In the pilot, Ashley already looks up to him and gets taught how to rap, mainly to the resentment of her parents, especially because she performs her rap after her mother asks her to say grace at a sophisticated formal dinner.

Vivian: Sweety, would you say grace, please? Ashley: Yes, Mommy. Hey there, lord. My name is Ashley Banks. / My family and friends wanna give you some thanks. / So before this dinner's all swallowed and chewed, / Thank you, God, for this stupid food. (rap) (Season 1, Episode 1 “The Fresh Prince Project”)

Lastly, the family is supported by their English and Black butler Geoffrey who completes the picture of the upper-class family. The series shows two different lifestyles that represent different values and norms. Will who grew up in simple, poor conditions in Philadelphia, expresses his “Blackness” in his style, his music, his choice of words and his seemingly strict definition of what constitutes an African American. In the theme song of the series* (unofficial version of the theme song, that was never released in this long form), Will already expresses his fears of the sophisticated and presumably white lifestyle of his relatives.

But wait I hear they're prissy, bourgeois, all that Is this the type of place that they just send this cool cat? I don't think so I’ll see when I get there I hope they're prepared for the prince of Bel-Air

As opposed to this, the Banks family represents old-fashioned values. They became successful by hard work, but also come from a poor background. The latter is invisible to Will. He often accuses his family of forgetting about their social belonging as African Americans and is therefore surprised when he realizes that his uncle and his aunt have knowledge and experience of “being black”, e.g.

35 when Philip explains to him that he has heard human rights activist speak or when Vivian encourages him to learn about the whole Black history as mentioned above.

Will: I remind you of where you came from and what you used to be. Now I don't know somewhere between Princeton and the office, you got soft. You forgot who you are and where you came from. Phillip Banks: You think you're so wise. [Will looks away from Uncle Phil] Phillip Banks: Look at me when I'm talking to you. Let me tell you something, son. I grew up on the streets just like you. I encountered bigotry you could not imagine. Now you have a nice poster of Malcolm X on your wall. I heard the brother speak, I read every word he wrote. Believe me, I know where I come from. Will: You actually heard Malcolm speak? Phillip Banks: That's right. So before you criticize somebody, you find out what he's all about. (Season 1, Episode 1 “The Fresh Prince Project”)

As Will expresses that he wants to remind his family “where [they] came from”, he thereby expresses his perception of the family, mainly that he thinks that they are a sell out because they don’t fit into the classic black definition, rather almost appear white to Will. Another example can be found in the same episode earlier, when Carlton and Will get ready for the formal dinner at the Bank’s residence.

Carlton Banks: Wait 'till we come downstairs in these tuxes. People may not think we're twins, but I'll bet they'll think we're brothers. Will: You know, I don't think you'll have to worry about anybody mistaking you for a brother. (Season 1, Episode 1 “The Fresh Prince Project”)

According to Will, his cousin Carlton seems the least likable to represent the Black community, because he likes golf, his debating society, preppy clothes, has a lot of white friends at his school and doesn’t enjoy rap music. Carlton represents the yuppie figure, he plans his future carefully, shows interest in pursuing a successful career like his father did (example). A yuppie is an in 1984 emerged sub-genre of society that encompasses driven professionals who are remarkable for “their youth, their apparent sophistication and their commitment to the pursuit an ostentatious display of wealth” (Kaufmann 94f). After the Reagan era, in which black families were depicted as weak and poor and widely stereotyped to a criminal, uneducated race, the series The Fresh Prince of Bel Air showed the American audience the widening gap betters the classes of African Americas (Hodari, Coker 1996). The Banks family, and Philip Banks in particular represent an almost snobby way of life, who greatly value money and their position. But while Will accuses them of forgetting their Black background, they remind him, that it is indeed him, who ignores it and thus stereotypes himself. Nevertheless Will learns to adapt to the indulgent lifestyle but keeps reminding the others of the simplest pleasures in life. 36 In this sense, the series directly addresses both race and class issues and represents a black American experience that hasn’t been portrayed in this manner before. The series is build upon the idea, how each of the figures understands their blackness. For Will, it is defined in a traditional representation of the ethnicity: loud, colorful, with reference to rap and hip hop, and slang language. In contrast the Banks family is defined by their upper-class milieu with a hired help, their sleek style, the degree of their education and their political orientation. The family openly refers to themselves as Republicans. Their initial misunderstanding and their differences are marked by the use of language, like in this scene when Will firstly arrives at the Bank’s residence.

Vivian Banks: Did you enjoy the trip? Will: Oh, yo, the plane ride was stupid! I was looking for first class... Philip Banks: Excuse me? Will: No, I was sayin' the plane was dope! So, I was looking for... Philip Banks: Excuse me? Will: No. Stupid, dope. Oh. No, that doesn't mean what you... um, how would he say it? Oh, the flight was really neat, yeah. (Season 1, Episode 1 “The Fresh Prince Project”)

Nevertheless, although Will’s conduct and manners seem to stand out in comparison to the other characters, it’s not him who is mainly joked about, but the sophisticated and partially pretentious attitudes of Carlton, Philip and Hilary. In one scene, Will mocks his uncle for becoming a lawyer with his supposedly one aim to make a lot of money.

Philip Banks: Will, going to college isn't just about finding a job. It's about finding yourself, and finding what you do best that makes a contribution to the community. It shouldn't be just about money. Will: You really believe that, Uncle Phil? Philip Banks: Yes, son, I really do. Will: Then how do you explain becoming a lawyer? (Season 4, Episode 19 “You’d better shop around”)

In another scene Will mocks Carlton for his seize, calling him small throughout the series and thus expressing his attitude towards his cousin, which however vanishes in moments when he confesses his love to his family. Thus the mocking appears as a self-defense against the lifestyle which for Will exemplifies an assimilation towards the White culture. It is especially apparent in one scene, how Will and the Banks stand toward the “white system”, after they get in trouble for simply being black. After Will suggests to his uncle’s friend to drive his car to their vacation while the rest of the family is taking the helicopter (“What if you could find a nice responsible white man to drive [your] car there fore you?”), the friend picks Carlton which leaves Will discontent and again commenting on the presumably white behavior of his cousin, saying “It was my idea for me to drive his car to Palm Springs. How come he asked you to do it? This is a black thing, isn’t it?” (Season 1, Episode 6 “Mistaken Identity”). Will feels excluded and overlooked and because he thinks his cousin doesn’t approve of his black background, 37 he discriminates against himself and his blackness. On their way to spring vacation, Will who has sneaked into the car, and Carlton drive Philip’s friend’s car to the destination of the vacation. On their way they get lost and stopped by the police who quickly assumes that they are car thieves and imprisons them. Uncle Philip and his friend who is also his legal partner in a law firm, come to free the boys. In the end of this episode Will is still mad at the system that imprisons people based on their skin color while Carlton doesn’t react to the events in a bad manner. For him, the police were just doing their job and stopped them because they were going to slow. The following conversation shows their different attitudes.

Carlton Banks: The police were doing their job. We were detained a couple hours, and dad came and got us out. The system worked. Will: I hope you like that system, because you're gonna be seeing a lot more of it in your life. Carlton Banks: Not if I bring a map. Will: Man, you don't get it, do you? A map is not gonna help you. Neither is your Glee Club, or your fancy Bel Air address, or who your daddy is. They don't care about any of that. They only see one thing. [touching his face] (Season 1, Episode 6 “Mistaken Identity”)

However, towards the last scene, one can see, that Carlton just doesn’t want to believe that the system that he believes in would fail him because of his skin color. When he asks his dad, Philip replies that he wished that police stopped them (by referring to the boys and his own experiences) because they were going too slow, showing the viewer by his mimics and tone of voice that this indeed isn’t the fact. Thus, the series also thematizes institutionalized racism and identity politics. Corrizzat’s analysis of the series mentions that the new orders and norms of a primarily white system are adapted by the black community. “Will’s character, who is uprooted and re- inserted in a world that is made of order, hierarchy, luxury and butlers, does not recognize the new environment in which he has to live and grow as true and serious” (Corrizzato) and by this he has difficulties identifying with the “naturalized code including integrity, respectably and ethics, recognized both by African American people and by whites” (Corrizzato). Will has to learn that are more principles of blackness than he has adapted in this hometown. Corrizzato states that “such an effort probably aims at generating new black characters with their own identity, integrity and values, qualities that were almost completely erased in TV production during the Reagan presidency”. The so-called Reaganism impacted the American television production landscape and implied a new representation of blacks that was different from the slightly changing representation of blacks in the 1970s after the Civil Rights Movement. President Ronald Reagan who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, established a new representation of blacks on television. Gray (1995) notes that “American network television’s representation of Blacks as expression of social menace and male irresponsibility (and its opposite - the Cosby Show ideal of responsibility and citizenship) cannot be understood apart from the aggressive (and largely effective) attempts

38 on the part of the new right to reconfigure and establish a conservative hegemony hostile to progressive notions of racial entitlements” (Gray 16).

It is noted that in many speeches Reagan talked about returning to traditional values “just like in the good old days” (Gray 17), thus representing blackness as an unwelcome minority in society and on TV. The Cosby Show did the opposite in Reagan’s era, namely showing a successful and moral middle-class society, and thus was criticized for not dealing with issues like racism, prejudice, and discrimination, that were omnipresent to African-Americans and fostered by Reagan’s depicted ideology. According to this, The Cosby Show didn’t pertain as a realistic representation of black culture and the African-American society. The Fresh Prince goes a step further, showing two sides of the black community, whereas one is very wealthy and lives in a white surrounding, almost adapting and assimilating to the white lifestyle, yet keeping their black roots in mind, the other seems to embody a Reagan-esque point of view that seems to mock the others but in the end, learns from them and slowly lets go of his stereotypical representation, namely by going to college, attempting a career and expressing the genuine wish to have a family. Will’s stereotypical background is moreover represented by his upbringing by a single mother, because his father abandoned him when he was young. Many times Will shows that he doesn’t want to become like his father and that he has grown to a strong man even without him.

Philip Banks: I'm sorry, if... if there was something I could do... Will Smith: You ain't gotta do nothin', Uncle Phil. You know, ain't like I'm still five years old, you know? Ain't like I'm gonna be sitting up every night asking my mom "when's daddy coming home", you know? Who needs him? Hey, he wasn't there to teach me how to shoot my first basket, but I learned it, didn't I? And I got pretty damn good at it, too, didn't I, Uncle Phil? Philip Banks: Yeah, you did. Will Smith: Got through my first date without him, right? I learned how to drive, I learned how to shave, I learned how to fight without him. I had fourteen great birthdays without him; he never even sent me a damn card. [turns and shouts toward the door] Will Smith: TO HELL WITH HIM! [pause] Will Smith: I didn't need him then, and I don't need him now. Philip Banks: Will... Will... Will Smith: [voice rises to a shout] No, you know what, Uncle Phil? I'm gonna get through college without him, I'm gonna get a great job without him, I'm gonna marry me a beautiful honey, and I'm-a have me a whole bunch of kids. I'll be a better father than he ever was. And I sure as hell don't need him for that, 'cause there ain't a damn thing he can ever teach me about how to love my kids! (Season 4, Episode 24 “Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse")

However, the love of his mom seems genuine because she didn’t send him away because she was overwhelmed, but because she wanted to afford him a bright future that seems to be easier accessed from a place where white and black doesn't seem to make a difference.

39 Furthermore, Vivian and Philip mirror the social and political uplift, because their jobs were unaccessible to blacks only few years before, him being an attorney and a judge and her being a professor at a university. In 1940 there were only 1 percent back lawyers in the United States while in 1990 the number rose to 3,5 percent. Also the number of black professors and employees in the field of education has risen from 3,5 percent to 4,8 percent (Corrizzato). Not only their profession exemplifies the new representation of blacks that is close to the white lifestyle but also their political activity in the Republican party and Philip becoming a judge. Republican ideologies yet don’t seem to be much represented in the show. Republicans commonly are against fostering affirmative action towards blacks and thus accepting discrimination against them. Their voters are primarily white with only a small minority of black proponents (Zelizer 704). Albeit the Republican ideology towards the representation of Blacks in the Reagan presidency, during the first years of the The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Republican George H. W. Bush was president of the United States (1989 - 1993) and he was a great supporter of the Civil Rights movement and amendments, releasing several pro Civil Rights bills in the years of his presidency (Holmes; Schultz 2000: 282). This would not only explain the high status of the Banks family but also Philip’s aim and success to become a judge and later a member of the Republican Party (Season 6, Episodes 14-15 “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”). Philip’s reason to enter the Republicans is presented by his affirmation of the values which are describes as family values in the show that are “the foundation of the American way of life” (Season 6, Episode 14). Philip finds “the real tragedy in America today is that our youth aren’t being given any sense of direction by their parents” which can be transformed to the entire series. Philip and Vivian were the ones who gave Will, the kid from the bad neighborhood, a new perspective and direction on his life and integrated him in the primarily white world that, however, doesn’t see any difference between black and white and represents African-Americans just as successful as white citizens, without hiding their struggles. The series shows that it has overcome the Reagan-esque depiction of blacks and is heading towards a diverse narrative. What sociologist Herman Black (1985) describes ‘the Cosby moment’ (91), seems to be overcome in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air due to its diverse portrait of two types of black worlds, though being clearly affirmative to the affluent one in particular:

If, to its credit, the program did not construct a monolithic and one-dimensional view of blackness, then...its major drawback was its unwillingness to build on the very diversity and complexity of black life that it brought to television. That is to say, the show seemed unwilling to critique and engage various aspects of black diversity that it visually represented. In particular, The Cosby Show often failed even to comment on the economic and social disparities and constraints facing millions of African-Americans outside of the middle class (91).

At the time of the sixth season however, before it ended, the Democratic Party was leading the United States of America. Supposedly the series The Fresh Prince of Bel Air expressed a wish to turn back to the Republicans by letting Philip enter this party.

40 A new president, changing values and Dharma and Gregg

Approximately one year after The Fresh Prince of Bel Air was dismissed, during the lead of the Democratic Party, the series Dharma and Greg started airing on ABC. The series was broadcasted for five years, from 1997 to 2002 and is about two very different persons with different backgrounds who meet, fall in love and get married the same day, thus confusing their families and friends. The entire series deals with the unification of the different subjects, the families, their believes and ideas of life. Similarly to The Fresh Prince, Dharma and Greg shows two cultures clashing against each other, although in this series, the characters represent different white stereotypes, that are particularly common in San Francisco where the story takes place. Dharma is a free spirited yoga instructor who was born to hippie parents who never got married and who she calls by their first names. She is very cheerful and sensitive and compassionate, expressing a big ability for empathy. She received her education by homeschooling because her parents didn’t believe in the school system and who taught her to shun convention, trust her wildest instincts, and find the joy in everyday life. But she isn’t naive, instead she is very sarcastic and understands the real world, even though her parents, especially her father Larry seem to be unworldly and trapped in their Woodstock-esque behavior. That’s why a Native American friend of her father gave her the name "Crazy Man's Daughter”. With her parents she represents the stereotypical idea of hippies, who are critical of society, politically interested, sensible, and show their feelings (Athenstaedt et al.: 267). Dharma is a concept if Indian philosophy and has different meanings. According to Oxford dictionary of the Buddhist meaning of Dharma, which is applied because her parents are conforming to Buddhism, Dharma means “The state of Nature as it is (yathā bhūta)”, respectively the universal truth or law. Greg who is Dharma’s husband, is a lawyer and comes from a wealthy, conservative family. He went to boarding school, studied at elite schools and universities (Harvard University and Stanford Law School) and didn’t have much emotional contact to his parents. He appears sometimes uptight and decent but regarding his background often surprisingly open-minded. Him marrying Dharma the same day they met was his most exciting action to this day and even though their ethical and social differences lead to discrepancies, he never expresses signs of regret to this marriage. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that they have different outlooks on life and happiness. Dharma for example encourages Greg to seek happiness rather than fret about practical issues like money or that anything that happens for him, happens for a reason, while he is skeptical about this concept.

41 Dharma: Greg, don't you understand? This injury is the universe's way of telling you to slow down. Greg: Any universe that talks to me through my groin can go around the corner and kiss my butt. (Season 1, Episode 6 “Yoga and Boo Boo”)

Dharmas' parents are Abby and Larry. They never got married because they don’t believe in the social idea of marriages, although they were engaged. And despite having a grown daughter, they get another child. Abby is caring, free-spirited and vegan, which is an important trade of her character, because she refuses to do any harm to animals and expects the same from everyone else, too. Nevertheless, she appears smart and open-minded. Almost contrary to her is her husband Larry who is a stereotypical sixties radical who frequently rants about various conspiracies, doesn’t trust the government and thinks he is wanted by the FBI, and expresses his wish to be, after Greg discovers that he’s not. Although it is not directly shown, it is alluded that Larry smokes a lot of marijuana which is why he seems confused and clueless. Abby introduces his usual cluelessness with "he blew out his short term memory back in 1972”. Gregs’ parents are Katherine, who is called by her nickname Kitty and Edward. Kitty is an extravagant elite socialite, who has the highest aspirations for her sun that she also expresses to Dharma, yet acknowledging her as part of the family. Kitty appears as a manipulative, controlling woman with limited world views and a lack of understanding for anyone other than herself.

Kitty: We both know you're not the girl I would have picked for Greg. What matters is that you are the girl that Greg did pick. (Season 2, Episode 7 “Valet Girl”)

Her husband Edward has his own company, thus feels superior to the other characters. He shows that by addressing Dharma’s father by his last name, which is an English custom of gentry’s addressing manservants. Moreover he resents his son for not having gone to the same University as he did (University of Notre Dame), even though Greg went to a highly reputable university. He often drinks Scotch and tries to be as uninvolved in any crisis as possible. Despite the differences, the husbands Larry and Edward manage to get along, because they share one interest, that being the partial resentment of their wives. That being said, it is important to connote that Larry still shows love and sexual interest in his wife, while Edward and Kitty’s relationship is cold and rather labeled by class belonging and education that love. This is also, why Kitty doesn’t approve of Dharma. Yet both families never seem to overcome their disrespect and disdain for the other families and thus never get along. Dharma’s and Greg’s relationship can be described as a social satire (Bravo). Despite Dharma’s raison d’etre being “to give Greg something outside his culturally conservative comfort zone to react to” (Bravo), they both teach each other to deal with society. Greg learns to loosen up and Dharma learns to respect the norms of mainstream society. Set in San Francisco, the series captures different people and cultures. They embrace the social minorities like African high priests and lesbian lactation experts, accept late parenthood and diversity by showing different races, sexualities and types of people. Set during Bill Clinton’s presidency (1992), the series tries to unify different units that

42 seemed unable to be connected in the first place. Similarly to the Democratic party that supports equal opportunities for all Americans regardless of sex, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, or national origin (http://www.democrats.org), Dharma and Greg depict a wish for equality in all forms. Dharma’s mother gets pregnant and gives birth in an age other women enter menopause. A good friend of Greg and his wife are both short and their depiction confirms with the democratic support of people with disabilities. However, academics, intellectuals, and the highly educated overall constitute an important part of the Democratic voter base. Thus, it seems unlikely that Dharma’s family would be chosen to represent them, especially since Larry is highly doubtful against the government and believes to be part in many acts against the government, although it usually turns out that he is not involved in any, but instead dreamt of participation. When Greg decides to run for Congress, Dharma supports him, but her parents express misbelief.

Dharma: Sit down, come on. I have some really great news. Sit, sit, sit. Abby O'Neil: What? What? What? Dharma: Okay. So you know how Greg just won this really big case? Abby O'Neil: Yeah. Larry: [unsure] Yes. Abby O'Neil: I told you about it. Larry: I said yes! Dharma: Anyway, because of that, he's been asked to run for Congress. [Abby and Larry don't respond; Dharma chuckles nervously] Dharma: So, say something. What do you think? Larry: If this is a joke, tell me now... because my arm is numb and somebody might have to pound on my chest. (Season 1, Episode 8 “Mr. Montgomery Goes to Washington”)

When Dharma asks her parents to show their support and her mother agrees, Larry shows his attitude towards politics altogether.

Larry: You just want us to chuck our ethics at the door, and hop with a bunch of corrupt power brokers without uttering what we know to be the truth of the dark underbelly of the American political machine. (Season 1, Episode 8 “Mr. Montgomery Goes to Washington”)

Later the FBI runs a security check on the families, exposing Larry to the urgency of hiding because he told everyone that he broke into a federal building. It turns out that there is no record of him. In order to not ruin his self-esteem, which is build on his supposedly imaginative actions towards the government, they enact a situation where Larry has to steel his files from Greg’s office. It shows that Larry and Abby most probably don’t belong to any political party but rather despise the whole systems of politics altogether. Greg’s and his families political affiliation remains unclear as well, even when he goes into politics. The notion of democratic or republican is either concealed or rejected. Greg is referred to

43 as a congressional candidate. During his first official speech he embarrasses himself by not noticing his open fly and later being caught having sex with Dharma, but both moments which are depicted in the press don’t harm him. Rather they prove to be in his favor, because he appears as a human candidate with human decency. In a TV show about this event he is mentioned to have been caught having sex with his wife, which the news anchor describes as unusual for a politician. “He’s not committing adultery so we know he’s not a Democrat. But he was having sex, so we know he is not a Republican”. What is interesting about this representation is the mockery of both political parties. It also important to note, that this episode aired in 1997, before the political sex scandal concerning Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton emerged in 1998. Hence, the series doesn’t want to become a part of any political orientation and party and rather understands itself in the contrary depiction of politics supporters and opponents. However, in the end of the episode it’s not Greg who wins, but his opponent who comes out as gay to the publicity. Thus, the depiction and affirmative representation of minorities, and (former) subgroups of society mirrors the values and norms that Bill Clinton tried and successfully established. During his presidency, Clinton proposed several amendments that laws that represented a liberation and unification of separate, partially hostile groups (Proposed a national challenge to end the racial divide in America, the One America Initiative, tried to get Ehud Barak of Israel and Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian National Authority, to agree to a final settlement agreement, tried to allow gay men and lesbian women to serve in the armed forces, which turned to a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy) (Harris 2006), whereas the series proposes that too. However, Bill Clinton’s presidency doesn't manifest an ideology. In a newspaper article shortly after his presidency, it was mentioned that Clinton’s politic didn’t have a leitmotif, rather he steered a middle course, connecting the extreme ends, the social conservatives and the socio-liberals. According to this article, his presidency made any ideology obsolete.10 The series Dharma and Greg represents the values of unification of two different groups with different norms and societal attitudes. Throughout the show it tries to bring them together and close the gap, but it becomes particularly clear in the last episode of the series (Season 5, Episode 23+24 “The Mamas and the Papas”) that it is impossible to overcome different attitudes. The families can’t find common ground and acceptance for each other and even Dharma and Greg realize, that their different upbringing and background will cause difficulties when they will have to apply them together on one unit, which would be a child that they would raise together. Their discrepancies almost become irreconcilable. But they yet decide to get the baby anyway and find a way together, as a unit. Though their families don’t unite, they agree on being friendlier to each other. In such, the show represents the wishful state of values that Clinton attempted to achieve during his presidency. In the end, Dharma, “the state of nature as it is”, seems accomplished by the fact that all characters accept their situation as it is.

44 The Fresh Prince of Bel Air Dharma and Greg Politics Politics (in combination with In this sitcom, politics are not history) are an important topic of represented and addressed the sitcom. They are represented directly but via the differences in Philip’s job as a lawyer, and between the main characters later as a judge as well as Carton’s Dharma and Greg. It thus reflects pursuit to become like his father. Clinton’s presidency that was While they seem to be supportive described as not having any of the Republican ideology, Will underlying ideologies, thus being represents the opponent of know as the first post ideological contemporary political world, thus president. Even though Greg reflecting on an ongoing social works as a federal lawyer and struggle about the depiction of Larry, being an old hippie, doubts African-Americans in general. any governmental action, they become friends and thus represent an (possibly successful) attempt at unification. Political Engagement Only towards the end of the Even though Greg wants to series, direct political engagement become a congressman, it is never is narrated. Philip decides to enter revealed which party he belongs the Republican Party. While this to. On the contrary, both political episode was broadcasted, the parties are foreclosed, because he Democrats were leading the doesn’t represent any of the United States. This can be party’s disseminated values. This understood the representation of a can be seen as a representation wish to go back to the former and reference to Clinton’s post leadership. ideological leadership style. Family Value Family value is a strong element Family values are presented in of the sitcom, representing a main two different manners. On the one Republican value. It is directly hand Greg’s family represents addressed in the same episode, tradition and class, the need for when Philip joins the party, thus the right education in form of reflecting what was missing in private schools and elite society. Family values are also universities and therefore depicted by a loving, supportive marrying someone who is equal to family (Banks) in opposite to an oneself, even when that doesn’t abandoning father (Will’s father) consider love as represented by who is portrayed negatively. This Greg’s parents. On the other hand, representation enhances the Dharma’s family represents a importance of family values. liberal, free-spirited family that doesn’t go by the rules and sees love and closeness as the ultimate family value. American History American history, in particular the History is only referred to in form history of African-Americans of criticism by Larry when he is plays a pivotal role in the sitcom. referencing to his belonging and The incorporation of the history imagined activism during hippie as well as referencing to human culture. Historical reference, and rights activists throughout the political affinity seem obsolete, series represents a strong dispute thus referencing to Clinton’s post of the representation of African- ideological presidency, which A m e r i c a n s a n d t h e i r makes ideology obsolete, too. understanding of themselves and their background. Figure 4: Summary of analyzed topics and results in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma and Greg

45 Political values on sitcoms: it is not just economical upheaval, it is also political change that can be taken up in sitcom

In summary it can be said, therefore, that both series capture the essence of the political era in which they are made and represent its political values. Set in a republican era, under the presidency of George Bush, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air reinforces family values and republican beliefs. The characters, among whom at least two, namely Carlton and Philip are openly republican, foster the republican values of hard work that builds up to success, tradition by going to private schools and universities of high renown and pursuing classical careers such as lawyers, and judges. The location of Bel Air supports the idea of their supposedly white lifestyle, as this neighborhood offers homes to particularly affluent inhabitants. But The Fresh Prince of Bel Air demolishes at the same time another Republican depiction of blackness, in particular the idea of the stereotypical black man who comes from a broken home, has no respect for authorities and no interest to learn and adapt. While Will, the fresh prince at first perpetuates the stereotype, who comes from a predominantly black neighborhood in West Philadelphia and refuses to adapt, he indulges in the presented and offered lifestyle and thus changes his attitude, and in turn undermines the stereotype. Its highlight is certainly reached when Will doesn’t want to go back to his old neighborhood bur rather wants to stay in “white” Bel Air. The sitcom Dharma and Greg displays a symbiosis of a hippie culture with a traditional, conservative type. From beginning to the end the unification of two separate spaces of society is depicted as a problematic attempt. Therefore it represents the similar political attempt that Clinton dared during his presidency. Often his attempts didn’t result in his aims. Aside from that, the series incorporated the democratic values, first of all diversity and variety. Even though the characters failed to unify in the end of the series, they accepted each other’s different beliefs, accepting each other for who they are and that they are unchangeable. Diversity and mutual understanding represents the main social value that democrats propagate. Both sitcoms were broadcasted successively on American television, marking the change of the political leadership and the underlying change in society. They capture the ongoing change by depicting changing values and norms and giving meaning to the social change and its result. In reference to Lull (1982), both sitcoms form a social consensus about the ongoing political era and thus are able to maintain the status quo. Both sitcoms, and also the other two sitcoms discussed in the previous chapter, not only represent the social era they are both produces and set in, but they also reflect on society and thus the social world. They make the world identifiable, either by identification with the characters and their struggles or by narrative proximity to social events. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is socially relevant, because it reflects on the struggle that African- Americans faced after decades of being misrepresented and stereotyped, e.g. and particularly during the Reagan era. The incorporated topics (figure 4), such as family values, political engagement and history, are depicted from two sides, Will’s and the Bank’s family’s point of view. The sitcom thus shows the status quo from two perspectives and reinforces its values, just like Will, who questions his family’s motifs, slowly, over the run of the series, accepts and supports their ideals.

46 In a similar way, lastly, Dharma and Greg, reflect the following era under the presidency of Bill Clinton. With leaving any political, ideological concept aside, they reflect his presidency that led to the unification and acceptance of different, diverse groups but was known to be post ideological, that is left any ideology obsolete. In that way, sitcom encompasses social world themes and reflects on them narratively.

47 V Conclusion

Viewers of sitcom expect to be amused and comforted when watching this genre. They want to see everyday problems and lifestyles without particular proximity to the social world but rather emotional realism, in other words the viewer want to see themselves in a sitcom. Four sitcoms have been read in this paper in order to answer the following questions:

• Is it specific for the TV series 2 Broke Girls to deal with a contemporary social event or crisis like the financial crisis or does the genre of sitcom to which the series belongs do this more often? • Can more contemporary themes be found in other series of the same genre? • Is the interrelation between the social event of the financial crisis and the television show 2 Broke Girls a fluke or can an interrelation be detected between social events and problems in earlier decades?

2 Broke Girls addresses the effects of the global financial crisis and presents a world that is suffering from poverty and financial misfortune. Any attempt of 2 Broke Girls, Max and Caroline, to make money fails. Instead, they are struggling to build their cupcake business. The cupcake reminds us of wealth and success, because it has been Carrie’s and Miranda’s sweet indulgence and represented their extravagant lifestyle. It is not just a little cake, it’s also a symbol for pleasure and affluence. Carrie and Miranda, two of the protagonists of Sex and the City never struggled from money issues. The sitcom is set in a time that was booming financially, so they had no need to worry about money-related issues and could live an autonomous lifestyle, treating men like clothes and clothes and shoes like relevant possessions. The sitcom put relevance on hegemonic masculinity, presenting empowered women who don’t need a man for their happiness but want one in order “to have it all”. The financial reference is not relevant in Sex and the City and so it appears that the four emancipated women have moved beyond money, although they give it meaning by spending it. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, as well as Dharma and Greg represent the social world in which they are set by referencing to the political era in that they take place. The Fresh Prince addresses the representation of ethnicity during a second Republican presidency, after a time in which African-Americans have been widely stereotyped and misrepresented. Will, the initial Prince of Bel Air represents anxiety about race as a disruption of social order and learns to accept African- American history as well as the conglomeration into White culture. The sitcom particularly thematizes Republican values by giving them relevance. In the sitcom Dharma and Greg a connection to the social world can also be found. Set during Bill Clinton’s presidency who made ideology obsolete, Dharma and Greg represent neoliberalism and unification of two different families who learn to tolerate each other. However, as most of Clinton’s attempts to unify different groups failed, it does so as in Dharma’s and Greg’s world too.

48 Sitcom thus represents contemporary themes of the social world and gives meaning to them by emphasizing particular relevant topics, either poverty in 2 Broke Girls or affluent African- Americans in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Sitcom tackles a social anxiety, e.g. not being able to pay back debt, and restores order by presenting a humorous solution to each problem. In this way, sitcom can represent and reflect the social world and create emotional realism. In the reading of four sitcoms, though being set in different times and eras, three (2 Broke Girls, The Fresh Prince, Dharma and Greg) address wealth and finances, implying that this topic is always relevant to the social world. Sex and the City, the series that promotes the idea of “having it all” seems to have outgrown this issue. It constructs a world that is independent from these problems and emphasizes friendship between females and sexual relations to men, creating men as their substitute for money who can be tried on as designer dresses thus represent their underlined value. Jameson (1979) focuses his attention primarily on the notion of how images function in the modern American society as essentially fetishized commodities which retain little practical or functional value, abstracted from both meaning and personal significance. He states that most of what people read, watch, and listen to nowadays are principally reproductions of established thematic and ideological material which have been recycled, reified, and effectively repackaged as what Jameson calls ‘modern art (Jameson 1979: 131). According to his notion, no text that belongs to popular culture can be seen as meaningful. However, Jameson connotes the “transformational work” (141) that mass culture and mass media have to accomplish “on social and political anxieties and fantasies which must then have some effective presence in the mass cultural text in order subsequently to be "managed" or repressed” (Jameson 1979, ibid.). In this notion, sitcom addresses social anxieties and problems, such as poverty, race and sex in order to make these topics understandable for society and comprehensible and offering a calming solution that is encompassed in humor and laughter. The final difference between Sex and the City and the other three read sitcoms is the representation of the social world in terms of finances. Even though Dharma and Greg and especially his family, as well as Will’s family in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air are affluent and have no money issues, like Max and Caroline, the 2 Broke Girls, all sitcoms promote the idea that one can’t have the cake and eat it. That means that none of them can’t have the best of two desired worlds. Dharma and Greg love each other, and have no significant problems except that their parents do not get along. Will learns to adapt to a wealthy lifestyle and realizes that his idea of his Blackness consisting of hip hop music and indifference will not help him achieve what his uncle did by hard work. And Max and Caroline learn that it may be hard to achieve their goals but it gets easier when a friend support the other. Only Sex and The City aspires to “have it all”, thus representing a (social) world in which having the (cup-)cake and eating it seems possible.

49 VI Appendix

Summary and Description of analyzed episodes, sorted by chapter and chronology.

Sitcom and the financial crisis of the 2010s, the case of 2 Broke Girls and Sex and the City 2 Broke Girls

figure 5: 2 Broke Girls via www.imdb.com

Season 1, Episode 3 “And Strokes of Goodwill”: Max takes Caroline to a Goodwill store, because Caroline needs new shoes. Although Caroline is horrified at first and even cries, she quickly takes pleasure in finding cheap clothing. Max however is used to shopping at Goodwill and has a technique on finding good stuff, like a Strokes t-shirt that she really wanted. Another girl steals it which frustrates Max who in turn gets angry at Caroline. The next day, the girl who stole the t-shirt comes to the diner. Max has a brief verbal exchange with her, but it is Caroline who pays back for Max and visibly not accidentally spills food over the girl.

Season 1, Episode 5 “And the '90s Horse Party”: Caroline finds out that Max is deeply in dept and owes money to several agencies. Her most relevant liabilities belong to a student loan. To pay off her student loan and make more money for their cupcake business, they throw a '90's-themed party at the diner to attract rich hipsters and raise money. Before they find out that those rich hipsters are willing to pay a lot of money to ride their horse or go to any themed party at a pop-up location. Although all goes well, Caroline is horrified when her rich ex-boyfriend comes into the diner. In that moment, she learns for the first time, that making one’s own money is something she should be proud of and not ashamed and thus 50 hiding.This episode aired right after the beginning of Occupy Wall Street and marks its reference, because it features the broadest problem of the movement which is the problem of paying back a student loan which many graduates face and thus the poverty among college graduates.

Season 1, Episode 10 “And the very christmas Thanksgiving”: After working on Thanksgiving in the diner to feed the homeless, Max and Carline also work on Black Friday as elves in a big department store. Caroline, who has always been a fan of christmas, faces her first broke holiday. She has to work to make extra money to finance a new blender, because she broke the former one. During work, she looses her christmas spirit because she realizes that only money can buy presents and thus, apparently, happiness.

Season 2, Episode 17 “And the broken hip”: In season 2, Max and Caroline have opened a cupcake shop, which is not as successful as they hoped. When they finally start attracting some customers (hipsters again), a puppeteer starts performing in front of their store and repels clientele. After their request to leave doesn't work out, he enters their store and slips on a cupcake on the floor. As a result, the puppeteer sues Max and Caroline for the damages on his puppets. Since they don’t have insurance because they can’t afford it, they try to convince him to drop the charges.

Season 3, Episode 2 “And the Kickstarter”: By season 3, the former cupcake store had to go out of business and Max and Caroline are back at the beginning. They don’t have any money and thus can’t afford anything, not even new clothes. Max gets a new phone from her provider as a gift and Caroline still wears a ripped pair of pants that she staples so they don’t rip entirely. In order to raise money for a new pair of pants, Caroline starts a campaign on Kickstarter, an online fundraising site. She promises the person who invests the highest amount (500 Dollars) to let them punch her in her face, because she realizes how spoiled she is for that action.

51 Sex and the City

figure 6: Screenshot of Sex and the City via www.cloudninedaily.com

Season 1, Episode 3 “Bay of Married Pigs”: Carrie spends time with a married friend and her husband in their beach house. During her stay she walks in on the husband who stands naked in the kitchen. This encounter leads to Carrie’s expulsion of the beach house. Back in the city she contemplates on the relationship between singles and married people that she calls the secret war. She starts dating a guy who desperately wants to start a family and is suddenly welcomed to the married couples. While he is sure that he wants to marry her, Carrie is still only “trying him on”.

Season 3, Episode 10 “All or Nothing”: Samantha moves into a new apartment and celebrates with her friends. During the party she realizes that the women have it all: great apartments, great jobs, great lovers and great friends. However, this realization is disrupted, when it becomes clear that all of them are dealing with personal problems that prove, having it all is not enough. Samantha gets sick and suddenly feels lonely, Carrie cannot longer cope with her cheating of her boyfriend, and Charlotte is forces to sign a prenuptial agreement.

52 Season 4, Episode 16 “Ring a Ding Ding”: After the break-up from Aidan, Aidan, whom Carrie wanted to marry, moves out and leaves Carrie the option of either buying back her apartment for what he paid for it or selling it off. Carrie however, doesn’t have enough money and asks for a loan in her bank. There, she is certified as an undesirable candidate and realizes that she caused her financial misery by herself, by having spent approximately 40.000 Dollars on shoes. After seeing some affordable apartments that she doesn’t like, she considers accepting a loan from Mr. Big, her other ex-boyfriend. Her friends Miranda and Samantha offer to lent her their money, so Carrie tears Mr. Bigs check apart. Because Charlotte didn’t offer to help, Carrie takes out the rage on her, who, as Carrie believes, doesn’t have money issues and lives in an expensive Park Avenue apartment that she got from her ex-husband from whom she also got an expensive engagement ring. In the end, Charlotte gives Carrie the ring as a down-payment, so that Carrie can keep her apartment

Season 6, Episode 1 “To Market, To Market”: Carrie has received the honor to ring the bell on Wall Street, which is an act to open the market for a new stock, in the case for the newspaper Carrie is writing her column, the New York Star. She is also anticipating her first official date with Jack Berger which makes her nervous. In order to reduce her tension she takes her friend’s advice to go on another date that ends horribly. Meanwhile Miranda finds out that she is in love with the father of her child and ex-boyfriend Steve but contemplates that she invested too much into the relationship to function. Charlotte considers becoming a jew to being able to marry Harry. Samantha who lives in the (then) kinky Manhattan neighborhood Meatpacking District starts sleeping with her new neighbor, a Wall Street stock market trader who gives her a hot stock tip and later gets arrested by the FBI for insider trading.

Season 6, Episode 5 “Lights, Camera, Relationship”: Carrie and Jack Berger, both published writers, are in a relationship that takes a turning point when she becomes significantly more successful than him. While she receives a huge check for her success, he gets laid off. Not knowing what happened, she takes him shopping to Prada and purchases an expensive gift for him, which leaves him frustrated. When he later takes her on a bike ride, she can’t handle the tension any longer and freaks out, leading into a big fight. Samantha is dating Jerry, a former waiter and aspiring actor, whom she decided to help by doing his PR.

53 Sitcom and US politics in the 90s and early 2000s, social political values on screen. The case of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Dharma & Greg

Fresh Prince of Bel Air

figure 7: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air via www.hufftingtonpost.com

Season 1, Episode 1 “Pilot (The Fresh Prince Project)”: Will arrives at the Bank’s home and turns his family’s life upside down. His streetwise attitude collides against the stiff, wealthy lifestyle of the Bank’s family. Nevertheless, Will is ordered to fit in and attend a formal dinner. But his looks and his behavior stand out. Will also has a strong influence on Ashley, his youngest cousin which becomes highly visible when she raps during the evening prayer. Uncle Phil puts Will in the place for his inappropriate behavior, but is amazed when he hears him play the piano.

Season 1, Episode 6 “Mistaken Identity”: Philip and Vivian are spending the weekend in Palm Springs with Phil’s friends who are also lawyer like him. As they fly there by helicopter, Will and Carlton drive Phil’s friend’s Mercedes to Palm Springs. On the way, they get stopped by the police, mistaken for local car thieves and arrested. Even though Carlton says the truth, the police doesn’t believe them. Their phone call yields no help and so they confess the thefts in order to have a news report on them. Phil and his friend see this report on TV and get to the police station to release the boys by reminding the police of the boy’s rights. Later Carlton and Will argue over the reason why they were detained.

Season 1, Episode 17 “The Ethnic Tip”: Will has trouble with his history class and blames the school for not including black history in their curriculum. His aunt Vivian, who herself is a professor, starts teaching a class on black history. She 54 gives Carlton and William more assignments than the other students which doesn’t make them happy about the class. When their classmates sign a petition to keep Vivian as their permanent history teacher, Will and Carlton resist. At the end, Vivian teaches Will to not focus on one part of history, but to look at the entire struggle.

Season 4, Episode 24 “Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse”: After 14 years of missing, Will’s father reappears and wants to reconnect with his son. Will forgives his father and spend a lot of time with him. Vivian and Phil however can’t as easily forgive that he abandoned his wife and his son. When Will wants to go on a trip with his dad, he yet again, doesn’t show up and Will denounces him as his father.

Season 6, Episode 14 and 15 (two-part episode) “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”: Phil gets a chance to join the Republican Party, which Vivan doesn’t approve because she suffers from never seeing Phil and spending time with him. In the meantime, Ashley gets an opportunity to model. At the same event, where Phil discusses his entrance to the political field and family values that are closely linked to the Republicans, Ashley gets on stage as a model and shocks her parents, her father in particular. However, it’s not her action, but Phil’s that lead Vivian to separate from her husband. In the second part of the episode, their kids take drastic measures to reconcile them.

55 Dharma and Greg

figure 8: Screenshot of Dharma and Greg via www.fanpop.com

Season 1, Episode 1 “Pilot”: Dharma and Greg come from different background. He is a traditional, down-to-earth attorney, and she is a free-spirited hippie. They meet in the San Francisco subway, fall madly in love, go directly on a date that leads them to getting married in Reno. Back home, they face each other’s reality which consists of his snobbish, cold parents and her hippie parents who don’t support American classical values and traditions such as marriage. Together they are convinced that their love will conquer every obstacle.

Season 1, Episode 8 “Mr. Montgomery Goes to Washington”: Greg wins a high-profile criminal case and is thereafter suggested to pursue his life-long dream, entering the Congress. Dharma supports her husband and asks Kitty for advice to become a representable politician’s wife. Greg is worried that his family-in-law will embarrass him during his official announcement of his candidature, but everything goes well. However, it’s him who embarrasses himself by standing in front of the press with an open fly and later being caught having sex with Dharma in his car. The effect on public opinion is nevertheless positive as his actions are compared to both American parties and leave him in a positive light.

56 Season 1, Episode 9 “He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father”: Greg and his family must pass a standard FBI security check, so Dharma advises Larry to hide as he once broke into a federal building to burn records. It turns out that there is no record of Larry. Because they fear the truth would destroy Larry’s self-esteem, they recreate his records and encourage Larry to break into the building again and steal his fake records.

Season 5, Episode 23 and 24 (two-part episode) “The Mamas and the Papas”: Greg wants to spend his anniversary holiday with Dhrama but she promised both their parents to spend time with them equally. In order to do so, she invites all of them to a trip together where the families can’t stop fighting. It gets out of control and Dharma’s parents mount a tent camp in front of the house with ludicrous demands against the “hypocrites”. Dharma who wanted the families to reconcile, admits that this is impossible and leaves the country house with Greg. As Dharma and Greg drive off, they get stuck in the snow and start discussing whose parenting style is better as they are planning on having a child of their own. Even though they disagree on every aspect and can’t find a compromise they realize that their love is enough and can indeed conquer every obstacle even when their parents will never get along and they will disagree.

57 VII Notes

1 Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics and international business at New York University, Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University, and Nariman Behravesh, chief economist and executive vice president for IHS Global Insight http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/02/27/idUS193520+27-Feb-2009+BW20090227, Reuters. Retrieved September 30, 2009, from Business Wire News database. (Accessed on June 25th, 2015).

2 Article in New York Post on the gentrification in Williamsburg, Retrieved from June 16th, 2014: http://nypost.com/2014/06/16/brooklyn-gentrification-is-changing-juries-who-decide-cases/ (Accessed on June 15th, 2015).

3 Cupcake Wars is a Reality TV competition series on Food Network on American television that is about creating a unique and sublime cupcake. http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/cupcake-wars.html (Accessed on June 25th, 2015).

4 Criticism on 2 Broke Girls: Nussbaum, Emily (November 28, 2011). "Crass Warfare". The New Yorker: 72–74; Goodman, Tim (October 24, 2011). "The Sorry State Of '2 Broke Girls': Racism and Lame Sex Jokes” (Accessed on June 25th, 2015); Philpott, Chris (February 23, 2012). "2 Broke Girls: the worst new show of 2012". Stuff.co.nz. (Accessed on June 25th, 2015).

5 Three myths that sustain the economic crisis http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2012/aug/05/economic-crisis-myths-sustain (Accessed on June 20th, 2015).

6 Occupy Wall Street Movement http://occupywallst.org/ (Accessed on June 20th, 2015)

7 2 Broke Girls—The Anti-Occupy Wall Street TV Show? http://genprogress.org/voices/2011/10/25/17164/2-broke-girlsthe-antioccupy-wall-street-tv-show/ (Accessed on June 20th, 2015).

8 The Gentrification Of Williamsburg, Brooklyn In 3 Maps http://www.businessinsider.com/williamsburg-brooklyn-gentrification-in-3-maps-2013-12?IR=T (Accessed on June 20th, 2015).

9 The working class and the sitcom - how much reality is allowed? http://genderraceandthesitcom.blogspot.nl/2013/05/two-broke-girls.html) (Accessed on June 20th, 2015).

10 Bill Clinton - A president without ideologies. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/analyse-bill-clinton-ein-praesident-jenseits-der- ideologien-115076.html (Accessed on June 26th, 2015).

58 VIII Bibliography

List of readings

2 Broke Girls “And Strokes of Goodwill.” 2 Broke Girls. CBS. 3 Oct. 2011. Television “And the '90s Horse Party.” 2 Broke Girls. CBS. 17 Oct. 201. Television “And the very christmas Thanksgiving.” 2 Broke Girls. CBS. 21 Nov. 2011. Television “And the broken hip.” 2 Broke Girls. CBS. 18 Feb. 2013. Television “And the Kickstarter.” 2 Broke Girls. CBS. 30 Sept. 2013. Television

Sex and the City “Bay of Married Pigs.” Sex and the City. HBO. 21 June 1998. Television “All or Nothing.” Sex and the City. HBO. 13 Aug. 2000. Television “Ring a Ding Ding.” Sex and the City. HBO. 27 Jan. 2002. Television “To Market, To Market.” Sex and the City. HBO. 22 June 2003. Television “Lights, Camera, Relationship” Sex and the City. HBO. 20 July 2003. Television

Fresh Prince of Bel Air “Pilot (The Fresh Prince Project).” NBC. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. 10 Sept. 1990. Television “Mistaken Identity.” The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. NBC. 15 Oct. 1990. Television “The Ethnic Tip.” The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. NBC. 14 Jan. 1990. Television “Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse.” The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. NBC. 9 May 1994. Television “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.” The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. NBC. 12+19 Feb. 1996. Television

Dharma and Greg “Pilot.” Dharma and Greg. ABC. 24 Sept. 1997. Television “Mr. Montgomery Goes to Washington.” Dharma and Greg. ABC. 12 Nov. 1997. Television “He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father.” Dharma and Greg. ABC. 19 Nov. 1997. Television “The Mamas and the Papas.” Dharma and Greg. ABC. 30 April 2002. Television

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64 List of Internet References

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65 IX Declaration

I hereby declare that this Master thesis is my own work, and it does not contain other people’s work without this being stated; and does not contain my previous work without this being stated, and that the bibliography contains all the literature that I have used in writing the thesis, and that all references refer to this bibliography.

Amsterdam, June 26th, 2015

66 Word Count (Total): 28.903

Word Count (Text: Introduction to Conclusion): 21.887

67