Sitcom:What It Is, How It Works
Comedy in the Sitcom
by
Richard F. Taflinger
This
page has been accessed since
31 May 1996.
The plots of all three types of situation
comedy provide four of the six basic criteria for humor: appeal to the
intellect rather than emotion, established societal norms, incongruity to those
norms, and the perception by the audience that the occurrences are essentially
harmless to both the characters and to the sensibilities and beliefs of the
audience.
The societal norms are fairly well
established by current American attitudes and mores that are well understood by
the majority of American society. Any special attitudes with which the audience
must be acquainted are given in the exposition to the episode to which they
apply.
Actcoms use actions that are incongruous with reality as
perceived by society. When Rob (THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW) dreams he is literally
a puppet controlled by strings held by his wife, it violates the norms of
people not being controlled by strings and the idea that husbands are
controlled by their wives. When on LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY, Laverne wants to be
like Shirley and begins to act like her, it violates the idea of personal
identity, and is incongruous with the character the audience knows Laverne to
be. Lucy (I LOVE LUCY) violates the norms of action when she tries to convert
her
In all cases, in an actcom
it is the actions that are incongruous, not the characters or thought.
Domcoms illustrate the effects of behavior by characters that is incongruous with the established norms of
behavior. In this way, the characters can be shown aligning their attitudes and
actions with the norms. Barbara (ONE DAY AT A TIME) is pressured by her
boyfriend to go to bed with him, and the conflict within herself
is shown, until she aligns herself with the established norm of avoiding sexual
relations until mature enough to handle them. Mary (THE DONNA REED SHOW) learns
to be herself and that "flashy" isn't necessarily good.
In all domcoms, it
is the established norms of behavior by characters that is used to provide
incongruity for humorous effect, rather than actions or thought.
The dramedy holds
societal norms up for examination by illustrating them in extreme cases.
Attitudes on sex, crime, war, patriotism, race, religion, etc., are carried by
characters who are either strongly for or strongly
against societal norms for those attitudes. Hawkeye (M*A*S*H) is strongly for
personal freedom and life, and plots show him in conflict with warmongers and
rigid militarists and disciplinarians. Archie Bunker (ALL IN THE FAMILY) is a
racial and political bigot, heaping scorn on blacks, Jews, foreigners and
women, and anyone else whose political views are not as conservative as his
own. He is shown in conflict with those whose attitudes and beliefs run counter
to his. However, unlike other types of situation comedies, the characters in a dramedy do not hold the societal norms: the norms are the
foundation from which they depart, their attitudes and
actions incongruous with the norms in order to hold the norms up for
examination.
The actcom only
appeals to the intellect in that it does not have an emotional content: the
characters do not react in a fashion that could create a real emotion (e.g.,
grief, pathos, awe) in the audience.
The domcom can and
does appeal to the emotions of the audience, but only as a byproduct of
illustrating growth in the character as he or she copes with an emotional
situation. In any case, the emotion is shortlived as
it is often maudlin and ended with a short comic scene, to relieve the emotion.
The dramedy is the
only form of situation comedy that has emotional appeal as a regular part of
the effect of the show. The intellect is appealed to during the examination of
the societal norm, but emotion is used to show the effect of the societal norm
on the characters.
In all cases, the actions and attitudes are
perceived by the audience as harmless: people are not physically, mentally, or
emotionally hurt by the events that occur. Even in the domcom,
in which a character's emotions may be whipsawed by events, the audience is
still aware that by the end the character will not only be spiritually unharmed
but will be happier than before. Only in a dramedy is
there a chance that a character will be harmed, and those moments are not
humorous: they many be poignant, sad, or horrifying,
but they are not funny.
However, in the last several years sitcoms
have begun taking chances, violating the norms, ideas or attitudes of the ideal
"Middle American" family in such a way that some people seem them as
harmful (and therefore not funny). Shows such as MARRIED . . . WITH CHILDREN
and WOOPS! base much of their humor on not just
violating but making fun of the norms. Those people that actually adhere to
those norms feel insulted because their attitudes are being held up to
ridicule, and thus they feel harmed by such humor. These people sometimes
accuse the shows of being lewd, crude, and tasteless, and try to have the shows
cancelled, or run campaigns to reduce sponsor support.
The characters in all three types of
situation comedy provide the final two criteria for humor: they are inherently
human, and, for the most part, they react in a mechanical manner to stimuli.
That the characters are inherently human is,
in most situation comedies, obvious: they appear, talk
and act like human beings. In those situation comedies, actcoms
all, that have nonhuman characters (MR. ED, THE HATHAWAYS, MY MOTHER, THE CAR),
such characters still give the impression that they are human beings, merely in
disguise: Mr. Ed, a horse, talks and thinks like a man; the three chimps on THE
HATHAWAYS act like human children; the car on MY MOTHER, THE CAR talks and
thinks like a woman.
In an actcom, as
previously stated, human characteristics are either ignored or exaggerated.
Nonetheless, they are human characteristics. The characters are also the most
mechanically acting in any of the three types of situation comedy: they are
almost robotic in their following of a course of action that, with a little
thought, would obviously be doomed to failure. In many episodes of most actcoms, the same course of action is followed several
times, each time in a way that is more elaborate and exaggerated than the time
before. For example, in the I LOVE LUCY episode cited previously, Lucy tries
three different ways to gain Ricky's attention, each more exaggerated than the
one before. The final solution was simply telling Ricky that she wanted the
romance back in their marriage, thus breaking the chain of mechanical response
to the lack of results to her various plots.
In the domcom, the
mechanical responses to stimuli are greatly reduced as compared with the actcom. The main character, in particular, is a reasonable
and reasoning person, although he or she will often have a knee jerk reaction
in keeping with established norms upon first encountering the problem. Many of
those around rher are not so reasonable and reasoning, and provide most of the
humor. In consequence, the domcom is not as funny as
an actcom, but more humorous in a human fashion, with
a feeling of enjoyment rather than laughs.
In the dramedy,
mechanical responses are greatly reduced as part of the action: the characters
will usually act in a manner indicating thought and foresight. Instead, the
responses appear more in the form of verbal humor, jokes for their own sake,
even practical jokes played on other characters so that the audience laughs
along with the characters rather than at them, the mechanical aspects internal
to the joke and relating to the plot only as comic intensification. The
characters are, in consequence, the most human of all the characters discussed
in the situation comedy, being funny because these people are just more
consistently funny than the norm.
Summary
Those situation comedies that work, that the
audience laughs at and enjoys and that the networks keep on the air because the
audiences like them, use all six criteria for humor. They avoid emotionally
involving the audience, they understand and follow the established societal
norms and act to violate them, the audiences perceive the acts as harmless, and
the characters are inherently human and act in a mechanical manner to stimuli.
Those situation comedies that do not have all six criteria do not remain long
on the air.
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