In comedy and soap opera / melodrama, the two modes discussed in
this week’s reading, the possibilities for the female protagonist are seemingly
endless and far from normative. Lucy can
exhibit outrageous physical behavior (as analyzed by Pat Mellencamp). Gracie can subvert the English language (also
discussed by Mellencamp). Soap operas /
melodramas can provide heightened drama where exaggerated vice and virtue are
played out against the domestic sphere.
But what is the ultimate effect of providing these exaggerated fantasies
of escape from domesticity? Does the
space of the home and the space of the domestic sphere, whether conveyed in
embedded advertisements (as discussed in the authentically reappropriated
working class experience of The
Goldbergs, Mama and other shows analyzed by George Lipsitz) or a
normalizing conclusion (as we discussed last week with Father Knows Best), suggest these shows are less subversive than
they initially appear? In my view, these
shows might be operating on one of two levels.
They might provide just enough of a spectacle of escape, whether in the
high-flying drama of Lucy and Ethel’s scheme-of-the-week or the fantasy of
outlandish affairs on the day’s episode of Guiding
Light, to allow women a fantasy of liberation without actually encouraging
them to leave the home (after all, Lucy goes back to her husband, virtue is
rewarded and vice is punished in the end).
Or, in a more subversive turn, these shows might, through language or
ideological critique, provide subtle alternatives to women, models
ideologically counter to the ideal mother / obedient housewife which, despite a
pat conclusion or condemnation of “deviance,” hold sway after the final scenes.
In some ways, the space of the home and the centrality of the
television as discussed by Lynn Spigel, enforcing female subjugation to the
confinement of the home, may be seen to speak to either interpretation. If a women feels increasingly confined in the
act of watching television, she will be increasingly drawn to the liberatory
aesthetics of a show like I Love Lucy,
which provides images of a woman temporarily free from the home, and thereby
providing an “armchair (or stoveside)” view of another life. This life, however, comes to an end at the
end of each episode. Much in the same
way Tania Modleski writes about soaps habituating women for lives of
interruption, these sitcom episodes habituating women for lives of only
temporary escape, via television, from their “rightful places.” However, it is notable that what is often
most memorable about these shows, as evidenced by Pat Mellencamp’s analysis of
jokes in I Love Lucy and The George Burns
and Gracie Allen Show is not
their endings but the humor. If the
jokes are outlandish or clever enough, then what strikes a viewer might not be
the pat conclusion, but the potential for an empowering challenge to normative
modes of representation sustained throughout the bulk of these shows.
The question then remains, what defines subversive
television? What is presented (the style
of humor, structure of ending, etc.) or how a viewer interprets this
information? It seems, especially for
humor or melodrama, much is left to the viewer, whether this reading is in line
with or against what the producers / network, etc. may have intended.
-Allison Ross
No comments:
Post a Comment