In this era, television has become an even bigger source of entertainment than it was back then. Producers often want shows that will keep people anxious and watching. This includes basing characters and story lines off of fictional subjects. It would be far too boring to watch TV about a normal, everyday family. As Ehrenreich states, “And what they do do – watch television – is far too boring to be televised for more than a fraction of a second…” This is exactly why people do not want to come home and watch TV about just another typical family or another average person. What people want now-a-days is to be entertained. Even in the show Modern Family, the title contrasts what the sitcom is about. The…
Television has so many shows since I was younger. There were only a few shows I knew back then, but now there are many more. The only shows I like the most are Martin, and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.…
In the world of entertainment, TV shows have without a doubt has flooded all of daytime television. It all started with the simple and exploited topics on Sally Jessy Raphael and Geraldo. Anyone who tunes in to these talk shows know that they are very similar but vary in style and format. Many have enjoyed the trashy subjects that come on Jenny Jones (no longer airing), while others may like to watch more serious and light topics on the Maury Povich Show. This may be but no two shows can be on such opposite ends of the scale as far as content other then the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey show.…
Parody is like walking a tightrope, it’s incredible hard to succeed, but if you can make it to the other end it can turn out to be downright hilarious. Most full-blown parodies are found in films, like the gut-busting films like Spaceballs (1987) and The Naked Gun (1988), on the flip side TV rarely delves into this territory. Although one of the greatest examples comes from the show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a show from the 1970’s that parodies soap operas. This is a fondly remembered show, which leads to a big question why did this show succeed? There are two big reasons why the show succeeds and these are the way Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman parodied soap operas in their form and industrial aspects.…
Family Guy, a show many people love to hate. With the creators not scared to speak the ugly truth, to say the show has harsh critics is an understatement. Antonia Peacocke, a Harvard student at the time, wrote an article about the show called, Family Guy and Freud: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. An outstanding article and an interesting take on the series as a whole. She points out that she wasn’t much of a fan at first, that the humor was not of her liking, but the show ended up growing on her (300). This television series seems to have that effect on most people, however, not all people come over to the dark side. Since the show does speak on such controversial subjects, many people cannot understand why it’s still on the air. What…
Does the world want another Adolf Hitler? Adolf Hitler was responsible for thousands of deaths of innocent people, both adults and children. Donald J. Trump resembles Adolf Hitler in the way they rose to power and the way they choose to run the country. For example, they both proposed mass deportations of a particular race and rose to power. However, their childhood lives were much different. Adolf Hitler was an orphan who was very lost in childhood and especially poor. However, Donald J. Trump is an entrepreneur who is known for big business, yet he decided to step into the world of politics. He did in fact win the presidency, but controversy has already begun. Donald Trump should not be president of the United States because he deceives people,…
One of the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States is television. Whether it's used to spread news, watch sports, or watching a sitcom, television can be used to address the many issues of the period. Television shows such as Battlestar Galactica, The Twilight Zone, The Cosby Show, and Freaks and Geeks have reflected the many societal and political issues of their time period.…
Parodies, today, can be found just about everywhere in literacy and in some forms of media; TV or internet. A parody is a literary term meaning, an exaggerated impression of another literary works’ style. Prominent examples of parodies are found in the film industry. The Simpsons is a great example of a show that uses parodies. The Simpsons usually has parodies of films, most conspicuous example is the film Citizen Kane. In the episode Rosebud, the use of symbols and cinematography creates a parody of the classic film Citizen Kane to appeal to many demographics.…
The Simpsons is an American TV series, created by Matt Groening. This TV show is more for children. The series is a satirical representation of the middle-class American lifestyle epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a request for a series of animated shorts with a producer James L. Brooks. The Simpsons have a place in the fictional town of Springfield American in an unknown and impossible to determine, in the US state. The show is intentionally elusive regarding the location of Springfield.…
“It seems today, all you see, is violence and sex on TV.” We’ve all heard that line that comes at the opening of Family Guy. The popular satire show that divides opinion, even among people who seem to like the same things. Some call it an amazing illustration of our society, while others may deem it downright disgusting and offensive. While the general consensus agrees that the show itself has fallen off quite a bit in terms of its humor and context, there are still a good number of viewers who watch very avidly. Do these people ignore its shortcomings, or do other people merely act too sensitive when it comes to this show.…
The Simpsons are one of the longest running and most popular television shows. This popularity exists because "the Simpsons [have] always operated on two levels. On one level appealing to children as a fast paced cartoon and then for the older audiences for its wit and [satire]" (Batscha). Satire is the common thread with binds all of The Simpsons episodes. The writers show the absurdity in ordinary everyday situations including religion, politics and other social issues. This has been the leading cause for its controversy and longevity. However, the Simpsons' crude style is necessary and meant to induce anger. The public school system is one of the most common targets of satire.…
"The Cosby Show" aired in 1987, ensuring family values, with the light-hearted humor of Bill Cosby, himself (Christian). Then arrived, a new type of sitcom, the Slobcom, was introduced in "Married With Children." This show was exactly the opposite of the domcoms of the early days. "Married With Children" showed a dysfunctional family, consisting of a deadbeat dad, a frustrated and lazy housewife and "sexually charged delinquent children" (Aamidor). Sitcoms basically followed the mold of previous programs, in earlier decades. Up until 1989, when "The Simpsons" came into the living rooms of Americans. "The Simpsons" was an animated sitcom that targeted both adolescents and adults, and gave "The Cosby Show" a run for its Thursday night ratings. Using the slobcom antics, similar to "Married With Children," "The Simpsons" took situation comedies to a new level, using the classic "Doh!" humor of everyone 's favorite animated family…
The Simpsons is an animated program that will appeal to children simply because it is an animated program. The scenes rarely last more than two or three minutes so as not to bore those members of the audience who were raised on video games and therefore have very short attention spans. The Simpsons contains many levels of humor that appeal to vastly different segments of the population. The show contains very basic and even slapstick type humor which appeals to the members of the audience with average to below average intelligence, yet at the same time includes witty humor and satire which is better…
This assignment proved to be a very difficult one for me, for the very fact that I just don’t watch a lot of television at all. I don’t find much of anything at all that is entertaining to me. So many of the sit coms today have such a dysfunctional portrayal of families and I find that many of them down right degrade and show nothing but disrespect for the father’s especially. Nonetheless I chose to use “The Cosby Show” as my program of choice because it is one I used to watch when I did find time for television viewing and found it somewhat entertaining.…
The epic of the Trojan War have two names that stand out even more than of its protagonists: Homer and Heinrich Schliemann. Homer, the greatest poet of all time, compiled stories of an oral tradition that sang the heroic deeds of a war that pitted the city of Troy with a coalition of Greek States to the 8th century BC. A war that happened five centuries before and that was the last heroic deed of a powerful civilization whose track would disappear from history soon after until little more than one century ago it was returned to find. So, for almost 3,000 years, that fabulous civilization destroyed Troy only became legend transmitted by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey, deeds so the war, and even the very existence of Troy was taken as an…