If you're from Africa, then why are you white?

One movie which follows a 3-act structure that I’m embarrassingly familiar with is Mean Girls. In this film, the protagonist narrates the story in the present while speaking retrospectively of her first year in an American public high school.  

First Act (set up, ~30 minutes):

 Cady is the protagonist, a naïve, previously homeschooled teenage girl with overprotective parents who just moved recently from Africa to the U.S.  It starts off with showing her parents sending her off to school in the same way that parents do for children on their first day of kindergarten.  Soon Cady meets Janice, the rule-breaking outcast, and Damian, her flamboyant sidekick.  Janice is used as a way of introducing the entire high school kingdom to Cady – she points out the cliques of the “freshmen, ROTC guys, Preps, J.V. Jocks, Asian nerds, Cool Asians, Varsity jocks, Unfriendly Black Hotties, Girls who eat their feelings, Girls who don’t eat anything, Desperate Wannabes, Burnouts, Sexually Active Band Geeks, and The Plastics (a.k.a. the worst people you will ever meet)”.  After taking a liking to Cady, the Plastics try to include the new girl into their ‘club.’ The inciting incident that sets the plot in motion is on Halloween when Regina backstabs Cady by kissing Aaron, Cady’s love interest.  Thus, Janice, Damian, and Cady get revenge by sabotaging Regina George to remove her from her adolescent throne (the dramatic premise).  The action continuously rises as Cady begins to have a false relationship with The Plastics while trying to get Regina fat with Swedish Nutrition bars, make her face smell like a foot, and steal her boyfriend.  This is the first plot point.

I'm not a regular mom. I'm a cool mom.

Second Act (Complication, ~60 minutes):

The relationship between Cady and the Plastics becomes stronger, and Janice notices that Cady is becoming more and more like them (leading up to the second plot point). During this time, there are more and more obstacles she faces from getting Aaron and breaking Regina George.  Janice remarks, “It’s been a month, and all we’ve done is make her face smell like a foot.”  Cady backstabs Janice after throwing a party at her place in an attempt to gain the ultimate “Queen Bee” status and steal Aaron away from Regina. After Janice finds out, she breaks it off with Cady and she begins to realize the severity of her actions. This is the first culmination.  The plot soon reaches the midpoint after the “Burn Book” is distributed throughout the high school, causing the kids to act like animals. 

Third Act (Resolution, ~30 minutes):

Thus, the principal issues a “Trust” workshop for the teenage girls in the school, which soon leads to Regina George running out on the street and getting hit by a bus, which is the climax of the movie.  After the climax, the third act presumes as Cady apologizes to everybody at the Spring Fling, does well in the Mathletes competition, and gets the guy she’s been lusting after.  Everything begins to settle down (dénouement) and “The Plastics” all find different niches in which they fit in, and peace is restored at the school (besides the fact that a new set of “Plastics” are entering). 

I only date guys who drink Snapple.

A strict rule of the past in sitcoms, the fourth wall separated the characters in sitcoms from the audience. Archie Bunker never reveals the fact that he is being recorded constantly in his house daily, and the characters in Friends never ask “Who are those people that keep laughing at us in the background?” But in newer shows, especially the mockumentary-style sitcoms such as The Office and Modern Family, the “proscenium arch” is being dissolved.  The laugh track becomes an ancient attribute of sitcoms, the characters speak to the camera, and unlike many sitcoms of the past, the characters actually LOOK at the camera – one example is the typical Jim Halpert face.

Look at me, I'm so self-aware!

A television show that continuously shatters the fourth wall without the pretense of a documentary/mockumentary is 30 Rock.  In this show, although the characters are not constantly aware that they are being taped, they satirize the entertainment industry, and essentially themselves, by blatantly plugging in their sponsor’s names and having mini-advertisements in the middle of the dialogue.

In the last clip shown, Verizon is plugged into the show with an obvious advertisement-style way, claiming that the company has great service and that everybody watching should get it. Then, further breaking the fourth wall, Liz Lemon stares at the camera saying “Can we have our money now?”  This shattering of the Proscenium arch makes the audience realize that the media industry needs to constantly advertise for companies in order to get money and realize that the characters in the show are simply characters.  Another thing about 30 Rock is that there is no laugh track, which allows the viewer to be more independent in judging what is funny and lessens the feeling of being in a large crowd of spectators. 

I left my thimbles and Socialist reading material at home.

I decided to use the movie Stranger Than Fiction as my example - in particular this scene below where Harold meets Miss Pascal in the bus and attempts to engage in small talk (I didn't choose it because the cinematography in this specific scene was so wonderful, but mostly because it was easy to find on YouTube and is a clear-cut example of this concept).

The Long Shot in this scene is at the very beginning where Harold (Will Ferrell) is not shown, and the camera only shows the people standing in the bus. This is done in order to go from General to Specific. If the camera only concentrated on Harold at first, the audience would be confused as to where he was.  In class, Prof. Ramirez-Berg also talked about how the long shot usually indicates loneliness - and in a way, I can see how that is in this movie since Harold does almost everything alone (at least in the beginning).  However, this this particular scene I feel like the long shot was done just to get the audience to get the general idea of the location.

The next shot is the Medium Shot where Harold is "deep in thought" thinking about all the calculations and precisions in the world.  The camera does a kind of lazy shift (not sure what you call it) to resemble the motion of the bus, but it mostly continues to stay in the medium-shot mode the rest of the scene. This shot allows the audience to see that Harold is truly alone - there aren't even people sitting directly next to him.  Also, once Miss Pascal steps on the bus, it reveals the relationship between the two. Since Harold previously "o-ogled" her, she keeps a very far distance (especially evident in the shot where her purse is in the foreground and Harold is seen as very far away), until of course she falls into the seat closer to him. Also, in this scene where Harold is alone initially, the camera is slightly at a high-angle, as it is in a lot of the movie since we, the audience, have the power: we know what will happen to Harold since the narrator who is controlling his life is telling us. Thus, Harold is essentially powerless when faced with destiny and surreal forces acting upon him. However, there are many instances where he is at eye-level, allowing us to identify him in a more human-like way rather than simply a character in this story within a story.

Directly after the camera goes into Medium Shot when Harold is alone, it zooms in on his man-purse/briefcase onto his pen and paper - showing the irony of Harold calculating the precisions of his daily life while his life slowly starts to stray away from his routine, and all the mathematics of it melts away.  Soon after, Miss Pascal coincidentally steps into the bus, already revealing a shift in the story.

complete control of the media industry sucks out the creativity of film and propagandizes singular ideologies

One of the most important features of the classic Hollywood studio system was the fact that there were only about 8 different studios existing, 5 of them being vertically integrated and monopolizing the entire industry. These studios did not allow for independent studios to start, so that they could dominate the entire Hollywood films in what they wanted to create (hegemony!). This view of creating movies was also very limiting since the industries only went by the same formulas – thus making a creative process into an uninspired, unimaginative marketing ploy. These companies, in order to stay in business, would cast the essentially the same actors to play the same character (ex. Judy Garland and the naïve, always childlike girl who sings and dances.

This still happens now in some cases – ex. Michael Cera is always the socially awkward, stuttering boy who is lovestruck; Katherine Heigl is always the uptight, working woman who loosens up after she meets a man that changes her ways. However, typecasting was just completely standard back in the day – there would have never been a Johnny Depp-type actor who plays transvestites, pirates, drug dealers, and romantic male leads. Actors were used more to fulfill the audiences expectations.

Also, each message that the movies would send their audiences were completely owned and distributed by these industries too – there were absolutely no outlets for contradicting opinions. This complete ownership of the movie industry is apparent specifically in Casablanca, which we watched Thursday. The movie was essentially propaganda justifying anti-Axis sentiments – revealing that it is the U.S.’s responsibility to get involved in the war to help the underdogs. Humphrey Bogart is the perfect man to cast to spread this message since everything he says is completely neutral. He claims to not believe in anything, and he is a total cynic. However, he is loveable and secretly virtuous, and at the end he makes the sacrifice to help Lazslo and his true love escape in order to help restore peace to the entire world. If it were not for vertical integration, more independent studios could have joined the film industry, perhaps with a different viewpoint. Having Hollywood control the entire media industry allows for hegemony to become more apparent.

The Bunkers vs. The Bluths

Similar to All in the Family, the more contemporary family sitcoms also try to push the envelope to discuss the things that are considered taboo or politically incorrect.  An example of a contemporary dysfunctional family is one of my favorite sitcoms ever, Arrested Development, which got canceled about 3 seasons into the show.

This sitcom plays with concepts of incest among cousins (that may or may not be related…), Oedipal complexes (concerning the 30 year-old Buster and his mother who, at one point, used a Korean child as a slave), dating the mentally-handicapped, political commentary on the wealthy and well-connected, and homosexuality – most that are topics which probably could not have been put on screen in the past. In All in the Family, the topics addressed are those that were less discussed in their time, and more controversial and shocking to viewers, such as homosexuality (still somewhat of a taboo), what defines being a man or woman, racism, et cetera.

In both sitcoms, the protagonists are both white, male adults (Michael Bluth is the protagonist in AD and Archie Bunker in AITF).  This formula doesn’t seem to change very much in most mainstream, primetime television (the only exception in a family sitcom with a female leading lady is Roseanne, and as far as I know, there haven’t been any successful sitcoms with a non-white female as the lead).  Also, in both sitcoms each character has an offbeat personality that is to be laughed at rather than with.  In addition, the two families are dysfunctional, and there is a difference in the ordinary nuclear family structure regularly seen in older television shows like Leave it to Beaver.

On the other hand, the humor in both sitcoms is somewhat different.  In more modern sitcoms, the humor circles around awkwardness and absurdity.  Punch lines are becoming less frequent, although the dialogue may maintain wit, and there is no exact point when the viewer should laugh – hence there is also no laugh track.  This allows the viewer to be more independent since they are not told when they should find something funny.  Still, the humor is the same in that both use satire, although it is less apparent but intended, in All in the Family.

Another difference is the structure of the series.  Most family sitcoms in the past, and even some more ‘traditionally structured’ sitcoms in the present such as Modern Family, have episodes in which every day is a new day – whatever happened in the episode previous to this one is usually not pertinent to the following one.  However, in Arrested Development, it is a continuous story (with several sub-stories) that is playing throughout the whole series.   This might be due to the change in technology since in the past viewers could not access the entire seasons to television series easily, which has obviously changed nowadays.  

Additionally, the way that the show is shot has changed as well. The cameras nowadays take more license to angle themselves in a more informal manner, whereas decades ago the shows were shot in a very simple format that doesn't vary dramatically.  With more shows jumping on the mockumentary television bandwagon, the actors even now look at the cameras, knowing they are being watched.  In Arrested Development, the camera is frequently shot as if it is someone spying on them - peering through blinds and from behind trees or just shooting in shaky cam. These details show that the audience want sitcoms to be further realistic and less fabricated in order to relate more to its situations.

In seeing the evolution of sitcoms, it reveals how times have changed in revealing what is taboo and what is not, and it makes me wonder what we will find shocking decades from now.

Sorry for the long entry; I tend to ramble.