The Sitcom

The television sitcom is typically plays out in an episodic format. Each episode tends to have a separate plot and the episodes do not necessarily connect to the others in plot line. With a sitcom, you can turn on any episode and understand what is going on without any prior knowledge of the show. It is easy to follow a sitcom and usually all loose ends are tied up by the end on an episode.

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Lately, a sitcom I follow weekly is Modern Family. This show consists of three families. There is the grandfather and his new, younger wife, his son and his partner, and his daughter and her family. Every week, the three families get into some sort of trouble. Each week starts off new and does not connect back to the week before. The last episode I watched was one where there was an earthquake and each family was affected by it differently. By the end of the episode, everything was taken care of and life was back to normal. The last minute of the show just about always consists of a wrap up where a narrator reflects over all the things that happened in the episode and presents the moral of the story. This brings the episode to a nice close and the next week it starts off a new with a clean palate and room for a brand new plot line. This makes it extremely easy to follow the show and if an episode is missed, there isn’t anything to catch up on.

Shots in Films

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The decision on how to shoot a scene can aid to convey the meaning. Angles and tightness of a shot are ways to establish a tone as well as emotions.

The close shot is used in movies to convey character’s emotions. In the movie Titanic in the famous scene where Jack and Rose are on the front of the boat, there is a close shot of the two characters sharing the moment. The two are in love and the close shot reflects the closeness they feel in the moment.

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Long shots also convey emotions, but those of sadness and loneliness. In the movie Forrest Gump, there is a long shot of Forrest while he visits his wife’s grave. It shows him standing along in front of the grave as well as the large tree. There is a sense of endlessness in the background of the country and we see that Forrest is really all alone there. This shot conveys his feelings of loneliness after his wife has died.

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Aside from how much is shown in a shot, the angle from which the camera shoots can convey meaning. In the movie Slumdog Millionaire, one of the final scenes is when Jamal wins the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” As he confetti rains down on the stage and he is handed his million-dollar check, there is a shot of him from a low angle. This shot creates a tallness and greatness in Jamal. When the camera shoots from the low angle, it makes the subject seem bigger and powerful. His victory is further conveyed in this low angle shot and we see him finally succeed.

The Star Vehicle

The studio system of the earlier days was designed for maximum profit. Each star being contracted to the studio meant studios created trademark stars. Stars became known for specific genres of films and studios molded these stars to fit what audiences wanted.

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Studios created many more films than they do today and had control over every aspect of a movie. They used the same stars in the same kinds of films and audiences came to know these stars for their specific roles. Studios created many films of the same genre with the same actors because they knew that audiences liked the type. Once they knew what people liked, they kept creating it in different forms. As well as stars being known for a specific genre, they were also known sometime for a specific thing that they did in every film. Humphrey Bogart became known for his hat and trench coat look in many of his films and Judy Garland was known to sing a song in just about every film she was in. These stars were created by the studio companies and were used to create the films that audiences went wild for. The studio system has changed greatly from its beginnings. 

All in the Family vs. Modern Family

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The television family has come a long way. In the 70’s in many shows, it was only acceptable to show the mother, father and children picture. Today, people encounter every type of person in television characters.

All in the Family, a sitcom from the 70’s, in one episode attempted to take on the issue of homosexuality. The goal was to critique people’s one-sided views of the gay community. Archie Bunker, the typical American, was homophobic and in this particular episode encountered one of his son-in-law’s possibly gay friends. He refers to him as a fairy and many other offensive names. Though the episode was an attempted satire, many identified with Archie.

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Even though the episode’s aim was not to make fun of gay people, the way it approached the critique was questionable. I cannot imagine a show like that airing today. Modern Family, as the title suggests depicts the modern family unit in its many shapes and forms. The show follows the lives of three different families, the typical mother, father and children unit, the gay couple and adoptive daughter, and the older man with the much younger wife. The show shows these not so typical family units and the normalcy and love that they possess. Though both shows aimed to shoot down stereotypes, they went about it very differently. Today, shows take a more straightforward approach and present the positives in situations that aren’t the norm.

Television in many ways now opens up the world to see things they have never seen before. Many shows push the limits today and go where not many have gone before. ABC’s modern family shows how not every happy family has to consist of a husband and a wife. All in the Family earlier on tried to push the limits of what people would accept. 

Techonology

Technological change greatly influenced the radio industry in the 1920’s by making music and news easily available to a much broader audience.

The radio was first made for government and big business use. The earliest uses of radio waves were to transmit Morse code. Not until David Sarnoff came along did anyone think to make radios for commercial use. Once radios were developed for household use, many people were able to bring into the home a new piece of technology that would be able to inform as well as entertain at an instant.

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The home radio dramatically changed how people got news and entertainment. People at home were able to flip a switch and hear current news from across the nation, popular music and entertainment news. The radio quickly changed the American household and created national celebrities. Radio listeners came to know the radio stars through their shows. The radio enabled an audience to be exposed to people and lifestyles very different than their own. Americans were exposed to many products that they may have never known of through the radio advertisements. Advertisers saw a way into American households and took full advantage. Americans were so excited about the new technology that they didn’t seem to mind the ads.

The transformation radio underwent in the 1920’s dramatically changed the way society worked. The family much of the time sat around together listening to their favorite shows. This new technology kept changing and is still a major market today. We continue to see the impact of radio in today’s life. 

Cultivating a False Reality

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Men and women play different roles in today’s society. The perception of these typical gender roles is the outcome of many years of seeing in the media how women and men are supposed to act. The cultivation theory explains perfectly how society today perceives men and women’s roles.

The cultivation theory states that over time, seeing how the media represents reality, the audience creates a new reality for themselves. The media does not depict reality, but it can be easy to fall subject to this unrealistic society portrayed in the media. In this reality, men are the ones in charge, strong and brave; women live to be pretty and to find a man to serve.

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In Killing Us Softly 3, Jean Kilbourne exposes the so-called reality depicted by advertisers. Women in the media are never fat, always gorgeous and inferior to men. Is this the ideal woman that every man intends to find? The reality is that this woman does not exist, but the media has successfully shown her countless times and skewed society’s view of an actual woman. In Tough Guise, Jackson Katz lays out the changes men’s images have undergone over the years in the media. From movies to toys, men are depicted as macho tough guys. Over time, men are being depicted as more aggressive, violent and strong. This translates to how men think they need to be perceived and their reality is skewed. The media hardly ever depicts a real man or woman and in the real world people often times are walking around trying to be how they think they should be in relation to media representations.

If society were not overly exposed to these ideas in the media, would these ideas still exist? Whether this be reality or not, it is not likely that the media will stop using skinny women and overly bulked up men in movies or advertising. It is up to the audience to create their own reality not based on these influences. 

The Misrepresented Truth

The media has successfully gained control of society through its use of gate keeping. The media morphs and distorts the truth in order to keep the public blissfully unaware of the facts. Not many realize that they are clay in the potter’s hands. The concept of hegemony describes perfectly the media driven society we live in today.

Hegemony can be described as the way that a dominant group influences another group in order to control it. The average person combats the media daily as each different news station, magazine and paper tries to report the truth. The dominance of media is evident in today’s society and it is easy to let it take charge. Those in charge of what is reported and what is unimportant control what the public sees as the truth. With so many different places to gain information, the “truth” can be reported in many different ways. A credible source is hard to come by because bias is almost unavoidable. The gate keepers of what is reported can let through what they think is the truth and keep back what they do not approve of.

In reality television, we have all come to discover there is little to no reality present. Show editors control and manipulate what really happens in order to change the audience’s perception. For example, an editor can take footage from two different points in time completely and put them together to create a scene that never really happened, but looks quite good together. In the link below, it is shown how easily a situation can be manipulated in order to change what the end perception will be by the viewer. 

Editing Tricks 

There is no avoiding the media and it is up to the intelligent member of society to interpret and discover the truth.